From the archives

Welcome back to another quick retrospective jaunt through the RCM&E archives as we have at look at modelflying in 1961 as seen through the eyes of the magazine.

After a nicely balanced start the year before, the magazine went through early 1961 very much focused on electronics with article after article covering subjects such as tuning crystals, radio valves, the mains powered transmitter and the good old Ketchledge Linear Pulser.

The year before RCM&E had started a series of handy informative data cards and this January 1961 offering listed battery performance data across Mercury Dry Cells and Silver-Zinc accumulators to name just a couple.


The March 1961 issue had more on the care and charging of D.E.A.C. cells and noted that ‘reverse polarity within certain bounds causes no damage provided the current is not too high’.


Bob
Dunham’s 124mph Larks was in the April 1961 issue, the model had aileron and trim-elevator only.


The venerable Super 60 adorned the Keil Kraft adverts later in the year. Some fifty years on, this classic model is still being built, often as a trainer and is regularly seen at vintage meetings in the UK.


Peter Holland’s Tim-ber single channel trainer appeared in December. It weighed 1.75lbs and could climb to about 500ft in a couple of minutes. It was even stated that the model could climb like a sailplane from the slope!

Were you flying R/C in 1961? Was the aeromodelling experience the same? Better? Worse? Or just different? Why not share your views in our forum – we’d love to hear from you (link below).