Ah, yes. A favorite thing to do with old stick and tissue models was to stick a small firecracker inside, light it and toss the plane!
My parents bought me the PT-19 Flight Trainer that was held together with elastic bands so you could repair the damage after a nosedive into wherever you were learning to fly. After I ‘mastered’ the PT-19, they got me the Spitfire. I remember getting everything all set up and one afternoon a friend and I went across the street to the baseball diamond and had at it. Mark started the mighty Cox .049 and the Spitfire started to taxi. I got it airborne, did a few circles (while getting a bit dizzy as has been mentioned) and then one of the knots I tied on the control handle failed. The Spitfire went straight up and then straight down; plowed into the infield and disintegrated into dozens of pieces. Oh the humanity…
Remember the starter kits ? You got a battery that
was in a cardboard sleeve, a yellow glowhead clip, I think
the wires on the clip were red and blue but I could be wrong. Also
came with tin can of fuel, clear plastic fill tube. A few
wrenches etc. I also remember the glow heads would
burn out a lot.
oops!
i thought maybe i was the only one who ever did that. apprentaly not. youth fun.
I had the Stuka, dont know what ever happened to it but I do remember it was tough to fly and pretty dizzying when it did.
Terry
No doubt
No doubt why you became an airline pilot. I snapped the crankshafts in nose dives long before anything ever had a chance to simply wear out.
lol
I found some of the Cox engines would wear out pretty fast- those that used a ball and socket joint instead of a piston pin. Those joints wore pretty fast, and gave symptoms similar to a badly worn piston (wrist) pin.
Yup, those were the days. Had the Cox Sopwith Camel and my next door neighbour had the Fokker Triplane and a Stuka. Some flying, plenty of crashes 
Cox Corsair and Stuka here. I remember needing to bring a supply of the correctly sized rubber bands every flight session. The fuselage and wings were designed to be held together by rubber bands, so when you cracked up, the damage might not be catastrophic, with the bands hopefully breaking before the plastic did. The good ol’ days…
I had a Skyraider. This was 1977, or so. I never flew it but tinkered with the engine, which I didn’t have much luck with. I think I got it started a few times. Later on, I got a Stuka. I was in over my head, when I got it to fly. I think I made 3 dynamically unstable ‘phugoid’ circles before it went into a million pieces from a nose dive. Still, it was a cool bird. As I remember, there was a third string to release a bomb from it.
Oh yeah!..The PT-19 with lots of glue and splints…
When it wouldn’t fly anymore the engine was first placed on a “car” made from drawings in a model magazine (it had a propeller on the back) then came a balsa P-40 (which lasted several months) then one of my own designs (wood and tissue) which was “something to behold!” Square wingtips, solid wood rudder and elevator, coat hanger landing gear with various “kinks” after straightening the gear following rough landing (SOP for me).
My brother and I tried “carrier landings” on the picnic table using weights and string for arresting gear and a tailhook made from coathanger wire. We did manage to trap the wire but the plane along with the wire and weights never stayed on the table.
It was fun !
Help me with a fading memory here. Did Cox produce a P-26 with a throttleable .049? I remember having one, but I can’t find any reference to one anywhere.
I worked in a hobby shop in the mid- to late seventies. I sold quite a few Cox airplanes (and fuel cans and fuel filters and batteries). The one I remember best, though, was a P-40, complete with shark mouth stickers. It came in a delux box with a cellophane “window” in the top. The boss put it on display in the store’s show window, which faced south. On one hot Ohio summer day the P-40 melted into a bunch of nondescript plastic blobs. We were able to save and sell the engine.
Control-line airplane flying: the fine art of getting dizzy and making yourself barf while standing in one place on dry land - at considerable expense.
F-4 Corsair, Fly-by-wire (line) Had a Beauty of one. But we always like to ? Yep, first it was a larger prop, then discovered a need for larger Tires and or longer landing gear to accommodate prop. Then the bright light of WOW more power = faster. Well alright now hang a larger Horse on the nose. Yessiree it all went really well right up to the point where the Pilot (me) put er in that kind of a Dive that is too steep and with all that power and Weight( did I forget to mention adding all that stuff on an untested airframe) Well I ended up leaving the Flight area(school playground) with more Pieces than I started With.
I had the Stuka as a small kid (I guess it was mostly my Dad’s?) I remember the aircraft being black and the interior, including the pilot and rear gunner, being a bright red. The Stuka never flew right…later on, we got the P-40 Warhawk…
I remember the Warhawk’s great lines and the famous sharkmouth. It ran great until one day, it broke the fishing line tether and flew off into the sunset. It was a great sight to behold, but I never found my P-40…
Does anyone remember that Testors also had a few ‘U-control’ flying aircraft models? I also had a black German Albatros flying model that they made. It flew almost as good as the Stuka, but looked great.
Good memories all!
TAD
As I remember it, Cox used to have a good flying model that was not that scale, but had bigger, much thicker wings than the others. Fuselage reminded me of sort of a generic PT-22, but it was not the scale version of the PT 22.
I do not remember the Testors UC models. I do remember quite a few by Sterling. These were wooden kits. They had a version of the Ringmaster for half-A, forget which one- was it the Ringmaster Jr. or the Baby Ringmaster- that was a real good flyer, loops and just about any maneuver you could do with UC. I get confused between the Baby Ringmaster and the Ringmaster Jr. I think the Jr. may have been for .15s and the Baby may have been the half-A. Don’t remember my last half-A version, but I did have the .15 version in 1960 or 61.
I had one that i vaguely remember in the 60’s that was jet shaped and silver colored because someone took it from me after owning it for about 3 days.did cox have one like that?