[MikeNoun]

Originally Posted by Steve Barcak

How many remember these things? Gosh, I had so much fun and great memories flying these control line planes from Cox. Had at least a few PT-19 trainers, a Corsair, Stuka and a Mustang, maybe more. Having a paper route, mowing lawns and dealing inbike parts allowed me to have some play money to buy stuff over the years as a kid. Also have the Vega funny car too. Always wanted the slingshot dragster but, never did. At least I have a real one now .
My understanding is this is a page from the Sears Christmas catalog 1969.

I sure remember those. I had the Stuka, a Fokker D7, and a P-51. The P-51 had an "landing" setting, which was a sleeve around the air intake on the .049. When you were flying, you could snap you're wrist down, and the engine would go about 1/4 throttle, and you could do a touch-and-go landing, then snap it back and it went full throttle.

The Stuka had a bright red plastic bomb underneath, and the fuselage had a slot. If you did it just right, you could dive the plane, and the bomb would drop. That worked once as I recall, before my dad ended up accidentally crashing it. I never got to fly that thing. I remember the Stuka was a shiny black, and it was an absolute bear to start.

I loved the Fokker D7 too. I remember I was disappointed I wasn't going to be the first to fly it. My dad allowed my older brother, who had never flown one of these fly-by-wire planes before in his whole life, to do the honors. He fly it about 1/2 a circle, and crashed it so hard the whole thing flew apart. I was ticked...

The P-51 was my favorite. I took the original sticker off the nose (it came with a generic name on the plane, just a sticker), and using rub-on lettering, I carefully lettered my P-51, and gave it a new name. It was called "Stairway To Heaven".

Soon after, I progressed into R/C electric 1/12 scale cars (road race style), just as the R/C electric cars were coming out of the .049 gas era, around 1978.