Aeromodelling early 1960's

Three companies supplied most of the model kits and components around this period, KeilKraft, Mercury Models, and Veron. They certainly kept me happy for a few years. I built all the kits depicted here, and some I haven't illustrated, sometimes more than once

The KK-Nomad was the first kit I ever built. The little glider was given as a Christmas present. By the day after Boxing Day I was ready and itching to go fly it. It was only only ever lobbed off the sloping hill of the local park and probably only remained airborn for a handfull of seconds, but to me it flew; I was as good as hooked.

I also built the occasional battery powered electric boat kit. The most interesting boat was powered by a Jetex50c, which was a small solid fuel propellant reloadable rocket, mounted on a hydroplane hull of my own designed (if you could call it that), I could never get the Jetex unit to work properly on a model aircraft, but on this hull it travelled at a considerable rate of knots for a few seconds at a time; it's a good job it was only ever used in a children's paddling pool in the park.

This KK-Ladybird was my first attempt at finishing a model properly. It didn't fly too well, mainly down to my lack of trimming skills, but it did teach me to have a little more patience when things were going wrong.