Kenny's Old Time Model Airplane Magazine

A bit about me... and this web site's hopes and dreams for the future

I like to read old flying model airplane magazines from, say, 1935-1945. Sometimes I build the models; sometimes I just look. Some of my models fly; some just sit around and look good. Some I never finish. To me, the fun is in floating through the time machine and being absorbed into this fascinating period of aviation, and world history.

Although the flying model plans are the highlights of these magazines, what I always look at first, I have grown more and more interested in the rest of the content. The solid, shelf model plans, or 3-views, can be made into attractive models. Pick a low wing closed cockpit monoplane, carve it out of balsa, and leave it lying around. Little kids used to do this, but today it will attract attention like you would never expect. The stories read like old radio shows. High on drama, comedy, and excitement... not exactly prime sources of subtlety or ambiguity. Even the advertisements, sometimes especially the advertisements, are sources of entertainment.

With luck, and your feedback, I will be able to share with you the emotion and feeling of these Golden Age magazines.

The old magazines, Model Airplane News, Bill Barnes Air Trails, and Flying Aces in particular, were the source of these pulp fiction style hero stories, model airplane plans, and current event news articles. By posting small snips of these magazines, I hope to offer a fair representation of this age.

Here is a sample cover of the vintage magazines I will be talking about

These are the types of plans you will see

Check out this solid plan for a Grumman XF5F-1 Skyrocket

Check out this Free Flight rubber sport plan for the
American Zipper

Check out this Free Flight rubber scale plan for the Supermarine Spitfire

Here is a Bill Barnes adventure

Enjoy The Blood Red Road to Petra

Many of the documents I will be sharing will be in .pdf format

PDF files are to be read using Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is a free download from Adobe and is a simple tool from which these documents can be viewed and printed. To print, under print options select "print as image." This should result in a printed copy equal in size to the original.

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