The RAREplanes Story - Part 2

Continued from Part 1

From the very first, I had initiated a newsletter that, combined with an order form, was included in each mailing carton. This proved extremely popular, certainly in the USA where news of the model trade world was rather scarce so I was able to give advance notice of upcoming releases because of many contacts at the London IPMS, always a hotbed of rumours and gossip with Bob iones and Bill Matthews in charge. One newsletter asked the reader to make three suggestions for future vacform releases but whilst a few neatly complied, most of the many papers were covered in 50 and even 100 aircraft names including the monster Hughes Hercules. But it did give an idea of what was urgently wanted and the survey guided my choice of subjects for the future ( and the good fairy granted the three wishes as requested.

During the early months I traded letters with numbers of the more interesting customers and found good friends in all parts of the world, a very few of whom are still around - but forty years older. It was a period of great satisfaction because I was able to give pleasure to the modelling community and run a model aircraft company as a job - no one could ask for more. Nevertheless, there were some quite sticky times such as the 1973 3-Day Week, a period when Britains’ electric was cut to a few brief hours each day. I remember the frustration of waiting in darkness at my machine for the whole factory to come alive with light and power for a couple of hours and thinking - so many orders to fill and so little time - will my business survive? And then came the Oil Crisis where,overnight, the price of oil shot up twice as much and the cost of styrene sheet, which is an oil-based product, went sky-high. Perhaps the most worrying was the Postal Strike in the UK where, for some three months, no mail was delivered. All businesses hit the wall, especially those reliant on mail order, as I was. We were reduced to a very few pounds in the bank and facing disaster when a trickle and then a wave of backed-up mail piled up on the doormat. Saved once more!

Another problem that developed a few years later was of a more serious matter, that of having my designs and moulded shapes copied by Veeday/Merlin, a one-man operation who blatantly bought a new RAREplane, cut out the various components and used them to directly manufacture an injection master mould. What took me months to complete was his in minutes. Call it the magic of a slick wizard, but to me it was industrial theft and I took the rogue to court where a ruling was made that gave me some protection. Already five of my kits had been cloned and you could see the panel line detail from my moulds clearly transferred on to his, quite apart from the main shapes being totally identical. For a while the copying stopped but some months later - after Vagn came out of gaol for making credit cards - my designs were often used to produce his kits. I could not take him to court each time so, since my kits were selling well, I ignored him and the terrible reputation his products had in the model world (you had to be a magician to make one up). As a footnote to this episode, a shoebox arrived one day in the post, full of RAREplane components all neatly trimmed out and accompanied by a note from the gentlemans ex-partner which said they had all been used to make Merlin moulds and that I might wish to use them in any future action. It was tempting, but I thought it better to move on. The High Courts in London are very expensive and often quite toothless. And then Vagn got up and died.

Of course, my products were not the only ones copied and Merlin used old Frog Penguin plastic kits, Aeroclub, Skybirds,Formaplane and Roseplane vacs (the lovely Joe Chubbock, RIP) and anything that came to hand. I saw my Curtiss A-8 and A-12 Shrike attack planes, the P-35, Beech 17 and Vindicator cloned under the Beechnut and Meicraft labels, Pegasus had a Junkers D-1 that exhibited the same hand-etched wavy corrugations as my Warbird but nobody looked too closely or made comparisons and so they got away with it. I believe it still goes on today where an injection-moulding company is using vacforms, mine included, to produce quite large aircraft kits, (not always successfully). In fact, my master moulds were used by quite a lot of manufacturers, but legitimately. Soon after RAREplanes was sold, I intended a quiet retirement in the Malvern Hills doing the occasional mould for Nigel ,the new owner, and I did him some nice big ones such as the Martin Mariner, Ai-1 Savage, Convair PB2Y-3 Coronado, Lockheed TR-1 and a number of smaller craft. But before long, I had a call from young Densil at Welsh Models who badly needed expertise in producing masters and the actual moulds. It ended up with me explaining the methods but I was persuaded to do the whole thing on a new 1/144 scale airliner kit to help him out. In the coming months he called on me again and again, so he got a Vulcan, Victor, Argosy, Nimrod, Belfast and Shackleton amongst others. Then I got to do some 14 mouthwatering experimentals for Peter of Maintrack Models whose line, called Project X, included both US and UK designs so I was let loose to construct moulds for the SR.177, the XF-84H Thunderceptor and XF-91 Thunderscreech, etc. In 1994 we collaborated on the ‘cheap and simple’ starter range of vacs named Boxkites, so called because the kit was moulded into a box shape with a clear plastic lid bearing the logo and two formed cockpit covers. Only 3 planes were made, the Miles M.20, Pterodactyl MkIV and Northrop XFT-1 fighter before Maintrack decided to concentrate on resin model production. But I was very proud with my neat, strong, smart and innovative product/pack as being a design classic, though few people ever saw them.

When the owner of Airmodel died suddenly, his partner in production the amiable Jim Wood, an ex- Pan American airlines captain, came to me and asked if I would produce a number of moulds for a proposed new line of vacforms featuring vintage American military planes which he knew I loved. At the time my cup runneth over and I was working flat-out again to please several vacformers so, tempting as the concept was, I reluctantly turned him down. A couple of years later he had his very successful line of Esoteric US Navy vacform subjects in 1/72 scale and, again, asked if I could help with some more modern stuff such as the Mercator, Guardian, BTD-1 Destroyer and XF1OF-1 Jaguar swing-wing as he knew that I enjoyed creating slippery,curvy aerodynamic shapes. By now he had taken on a number of ex-RAREplane moulds which fitted with his scheme of things and it was as if my old company had been reborn. So I put him on the list; I got to create some satisfying airplanes such as the Sikorsky S-38, Douglas Dolphin, Vought Corsair biplane and the Douglas PD-i flying boat. Jim worked like a trojan and his kits had tasty decals, metal bits, struts and stylish instruction sheets - he seemed absolutely unstoppable. Unfortunately at his peak, cancer touched him and the model world lost one marvellous entrepreneur, enthusiast and all-round good guy. Jims’ wife, Christine, staunchly carried on a programme of new releases and several enthusiast helpers including myself rallied to keep the Esoteric brand afloat; we tried for year or so and then it all ran out of steam. A great shame.

Others I worked for included Britavia Models, Western Models, Contrail! Sutcliffe (reworked the Overstand/Sidestrand) and the great Dynavector vacforms by Taro Tominari where I carved all the wooden masters for the beautiful Sea Vixen in 1/48 scale and formed the plastic for him to etch in the exquisite detailing. We got together again on his other productions including the impressive A2D Skyshark where he asked me to supply detailed working drawings. His kits were the ultimate and it was an honour to be asked to help. Whilst on the subject of working for others, early on in my vacform career I became known for my prowess in forming plastic and people asked me to produce formings for them in the ‘RAREplane’ style by which they meant clean, sharp and detailed every time. So, unwilling to turn down work, I machined big warship hulls, 0-gauge railroad cars and cabooses, medical teaching aids such as intestines and brains in 3-D, small lifeboat accessories, flying model and slot-car bodies - the list was extensive and entertaining. I also vaguely recollect a pile of relief mouldings of Elvis that were quite recognisable and another pile of formed airplane kits for an American company that were sent to the USA in bulk for sale over there. It was quite tricky work experimenting with the process, hoping for the best and sweating next to a 4kw heater during the summer months whilst expecting to be electrocuted any minute; churning Out formed sheets of plastic was not exactly fun, but it could be quite satisfying when things went right - and it paid the bills. After renting a big old commercial machine for 10 years and then employing a neighbour to work sparetime, in the end I decided to buy a machine myself and had it set up in my garage so it could be used anytime I needed for prototypes or production.

Have I mentioned the great influence pre-war Frog Penguin and Skybird kits had on my youth and modelling activities even though, as a nine-year-old, I could never afford them? The local toy shop had a great display and I was so fascinated by the exciting little models that I often had to be forcibly removed. Both ranges standardised on 1/72 scale (or 6 feet to one inch) a convenient size for our small British houses where a fighter model would span no more than six inches. Aircraft 3-views published in magazines adhered to that same scale and commercial wooden kits followed on. But in the USA,from early times, a kit was made to fit the box and damn the scale, though there were some exceptions that favoured 1/48 scale (or 4 feet to one inch) or larger. This mentality dictated the first American plastic aeroplane kits - they were made to fit certain box dimensions, but if you were lucky,the ideal was for 1/48. Surprisingly few vacforms have appeared in that scale (or larger) and mainly from American sources, but mostly the overwhelming volume from 20 different nations stuck to the popular 1/72 scale, as I did. The ‘inventor’ of that scale was the famous aviation writer and artist James Hay Stevens who was the force behind the iconic Skybird kits that first appeared in the early 1930s. He drew the 3-views, designed the kit components, wrote many books and magazine articles and masterminded an entire membership of modellers from Britain and overseas into active clubs - and all inside the few brief years before WW2 broke out. Being mad about aeroplanes and with a similar name - Gordon James Stevens - I naturally followed all his tremendous efforts and, though not related to him, always wondered if maybe a little of his magic did not rub off on me with RAREplanes.

Perhaps the most exciting job I ever attempted was commisssioned by an injection-moulding firm to produce 8 plastic master patterns for miniature civil airliner kits to be included in packets of a well- known breakfast cereal. It had to be completed in a month- and- a- half, including casting some 90 resin moulds, which was going some! I sent the wife and kids on holiday and took over the kitchen to meet this frightening deadline, made a lot of mess in doing it it but saw my work translated into the most attractive and accurate tiny ‘kits’ no more than 2 inches in wingspan. There was, I seem to remember,an AW Atalanta, Short C-Class flying boat, a Viking, Viscount, Comet, Boeing 314 and 747, and finally, the Concorde; they were beautifully moulded in various coloured plastic (even making an exhibit at the IPMS nationals) and I was delighted to have had a hand in making them. Today, the kits are displayed on the Airfix Tribute Forum on the internet and are attributed to Tom Good of ‘The Good Life’ TV show who was the novelty gift designer gone rural. Can’t win ‘em all, I suppose? Having slipped into other facets of my working life with odd stories of hot plastic fabrication, I think it time to mention the kindness of modellers who freely and generously supplied reference material for new kits - drawings, photos galore, books and magazines were given, anything that would help to ensure an accurate model. My American friends such as Tommy Thomason, Bob Archer, Paul Boyer of Fine Scale Modeler, Al Lloyd at Boeing and the historian Bob Cavanagh amongst many others, sent me invaluable stuff, in fact their input made it like Christmas every day! Which brings me to one of the most important aspects of any company, the public relations department and I often, cynically and unashamedly, courted magazine editors so that a constant stream of publicity went to the model press. That giant of them all, Alan Hall, originally championed his friend at Airmodel, then I began to send him vacforms ready cut out and dry-fitted so he could construct them easily for review, from that moment on he featured my kits front and centre every time in all his influential publications. One time he was desperate to fill 3 pages in his new magazine, so I quickly obliged with a vacform Ventura build and Alan responded with an article about me. Chris Ellis was also very generous and recycled my pictures and articles in every book or journal he touched - I owed him much. Then came Bruce Quarrie of Airfix and the stalwart Ron Firth of PAM News who had a soft spot for my kits which inspired his own line of vacforms: and I do not forget the young Ray Rimmell of Scale Models who wrote fine articles on my Warbirds kits, the first WW1 types to be made by the vacform process; they do say that the thin plastic is the ideal medium to emulate the lightness of flimsy old biplanes. My six hefty scrapbooks display comment from many foreign editors and publications, but I cannot say that I fully understand all of them and I find the Swedish, Italian and Japanese reviews still elude me though I think them benign. As long as RAREplanes got good publicity, whatever the language, it would survive.