RFJ

Helen - Good to hear that Stuart came through for you and sent some interesting stuff. I didn't know he had sold his model/radio collection. Below is a shot of just part of his radio collection. Perhaps he might consider posting here as I'm sure he would have some interesting memories to share.

Pity about the DVD - hope you can find a way to play it. The regional code system (and incompatable TV picture formats) are a real nuisance when trying to play DVDs from different countries.

Ray

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

Impressive.....and really neat. Can you correspond with him about posting?

Duane

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

Follow up

Helen Brett is now on the list to receive the electronic version of the SPA newsletter, (until she makes me stop sending it to her) When sending her the e-mail, I commented that I feel this thread is probably "officially over", although that is in fact never the case...people who happen across this thread can always add their own comments, photos, or recollections.

Helen responded back, and I'd like to post her response:

...As for the thread ending,I can't thank you enough for all of the compassion and effort you have put forth. I am grateful for the opportunity to honor Tom in this manner, and appreciate all of the kind remarks from followers. Special thanks to Ray and FreeBird. Hope to hear how FreeBird and Perigee turn out. He really did a fine job.

Thanks very much Helen, and it is my hope as well that Free Bird and others will continue to give us flight updates.

Until then...
Duane

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

Hello Brett fans...

Each year around July 4th, we travel up to Michigan to visit family. Last year on July 4th, I met Helen Brett for the first time which was the inspiration for this thread. We explored Tom Brett's R/C career, and his airplane designs in detail. Now, anyone wanting to know more about Tom will have a good source of information. Having first person commentary from Helen herself along the way made it more interesting and informative for everyone.

I wanted to let people know we just got back from our annual trip, where I was again able to have a visit with Helen...this time with my wife and two Australian Terriers. It was a great visit where I was again able to "visit" Toms' planes...but more importantly, have a detailed look at the family scrapbook that documents so well much of what Tom did during his 8-10 years in R/C.

Helen allowed me to photograph many of the pages in the scrapbook for the purpose of sharing on this thread; I hope you will enjoy them.

Duane

Free Bird

Hi Duane!

Glad to know that you had another visit with Helen. I'm really looking toward seeing more photos of Tom's modeling history. Please post away!

My Perigee is still waiting for its maiden flight. Work and home has left very little time for modeling. Right now I'm looking at the end of July or early August to get airborne. I'll post pics and a flight report in this thread when it happens.

Duane, would you please contact me off line. Thanks!

FB

CHARLES WINTER

Hi Duane, I have been in contact with Helen by email and it's great that you got to visit her again. My updated movie is still IN PROGRESS. I just received my first DVD of the copied 8mm film Helen sent me. I had to edit over 1 hour of 8mm film to extract short segments that I feel will be interesting about Tom's flying and genius. AGAIN If you have some good pictures or information I can use in the updated movie, please send them to me. Col. Chuck Winter

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

We are going to be leafing through Helen's scrapbook pretty much in chronological order...I decided to photograph items that I felt would be of general interest to fans of this thread.

You can see from these photos that R/C pattern competition during the early days was very much a tightly-knit community of mature, established, and generally well-heeled pilots...most of them in their 30s and 40s. The equipment was expensive, and everyone needed to have not only excellent flying skills, (with reeds), but also excellent building skills. Flying smoothly with an unnatura, (toggle) flying system such as reeds was harder than the later-vintage proportional units, and building was an important part of the hobby. Many pilots were engineers, and employed their skills in the hobby to full advatage.

One of these pictures from the scrapbook is from a newspaper clipping in a major Detroit newspaper. Both of them are great photos. One show Kaz shortly after winning the FAI world championship in 1960 making a low pass or his taildragger Orion. Great camera angle. The second shows Tom with his Nimbus 1 posing with two of the early greats of modeling. Nimbus 1 was Tom's answer to Ed's Orion.

Duane

pimmnz

This is all great stuff Duane...any chance of recording it and saving it in some 'user friendly' format so that future explorers don't have to go down the tortuous path we all had to negotiate?
Evan.

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

I thought you enjoyed the "tortuous path" on RC Universe. Now that you mention it, I think I can send all the original pictures to Chuck Winter for the possible inclusion in his expanded video. What do you think Chuck?

Duane

pimmnz

Well, yeah, I guess it was fun, but not something that should be done more than once per model/modeller. Love the two other 'Orion' variants next to Toms' 'Nimbus'. I'm only guessing, but seems it would have been difficult to spot a 'standard' Orion even back in the day. Time seems to sharpen our focus on the 'original/definitive' versions of these models, when in all likelyhood it was a pretty fluid situation, and this weeks 'definitive' version was forgotten when next weeks 'new, improved' model turned up. We are extraordinarily lucky to have the original, preserved models of the more influential variants still around to compare with our percieved history. Which makes the preservation of Toms' models and plans something to thought about, yes?
Evan.

Michaelj2k

Found this in the June-July 1964 issue of Radio control Modeler magazine Contest Calendar. "May 23 - 24 AA R/C contest, Tom Brett 21718 Arrowhead, St. Clair Shores, Michigan. AMA sanction".

Anyone familiar with this contest?

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

If you are from Michigan, AA, (or A-squared) usually refers to the city of Ann Arbor...still I would have thought they'd spell it out.

That was an early address for Tom before moving to the address where Helen lives now.

Both Tom Brett and Ed Kazmirski got into RC about the same time, made significant names for themselves in RC circles about the same time, and disappeared from the RC scene the same year...1965 was the last year each of them were nationally active. The pictures below show each of them at the 1965 NATS.

Tom went on to fly full size aircraft with Helen as she got her own license. He worked on building a "Pitts" down the basement. There is a picture of him sitting in the cockpit of the Pitts frame...I can't remember if I took a picture of that one or not to share here.

CHARLES WINTER

Hi Duane, I'm ready for as many pictures of Tom and his airplanes that you have. I can edit out the ones that I feel are not needed. I PARTICULARLY want the picture you recently posted of Helen in front of her large Scrap Book. That picture is DYNAMIC. Col. Chuck Winter

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

Helen is pretty dynamic...that's true, and since I took the picture, doesn't that make me DYNAMIC too (kind of)

Duane

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

Well, I stand corrected. Helen is following the thread and responded to set me straight. Here is her response:

Hi Duane. In response to the contest calendar, I believe Tom was the contest director for that meet. He was flying Cirrus at that time and not competing. He ran a couple meets in 1964 and 1965. It would have been held at our field and I believe AA was code for the type of meet it was. I used to file all the papers for the AMA sanctioned contests in the role of secretary of RCCD. That was three months before we moved to this home.

Thanks Helen[8D]

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

OK. I have some fascinating documents to show you concerning Tom's first pattern design Nimbus-1. First you see what appears to be the first magazine write-up of Nimbus 1, the second picture shows the rest of the page, and the date. The last photo shows a copy of the first article written by Tom for "American Modeler." Nimbus-1 was Tom's advanced answer to Ed Kazmirski's Orion. Notice the attention to detail in everything Tom did.

pimmnz

And you will notice Duane, that even with all that info, the magazine still got the wing span wrong...
Evan.

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

OK...I've been preoccupied with the Simla project, now lets get back to the topic and hand. In regard to the article about Nimbus 1 shown above, Helen e-mailed me with some extra information about it:

In regards to the photo of Nimbus from the scrapbook It was in Aero Modeler, a magazine from England, I think. Ed Johnson owns a big hobby emporium in London and was here on a tour of America. I think he was at the meet mentioned in the article where Tom won first place and was impressed with the way the plane looked and performed. Tom had prints made for him to take back and that is how Stuart was able to build his first Nimbus. By the time we got to the Internationals there was a Nimbus in the contesst flown by a young P Louis. It is the original Nimbus, the one that got Tom on the team in Philly and the one that crashed shortly after returning home, hence Nimbus II.

As always thanks for the eye-witness clarification.

Duane

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

Now for four of my favorite pictures, seen for the first time by me a year ago, and described earlier in this thread, but now you can see them as well. These actual calendar entries in the scrapbook once again show Tom's attention to the smallest detail, and the novel way he documents everything that was done. It also shows he worked his "tail" off for over two months to get Apogee ready for its first flight. You can see the methodical day-by-day description of exactly what went on during construction. For any "pattern historian" and Brett fan this is "too cool".

The fourth picture shows the first successful flight of Apogee in April, a little over a month after the first flight off the ice and snow, (vividly described by Tom), ended in radio failure after takeoff, which in turn resulted in the "funeral pictures" seen in post 266 on page 12

RFJ

As mentioned by Helen, this is P Louis with his Nimbus at the 1962 WCs where he placed 16th.

Ray

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

Chuck,

I finally made the time to go through all of the photos I took during BOTH of my visits with Helen, making sure they were properly edited in Paint Shop Pro, etc etc, and put them on a DVD for you, along with still pictures I have of the 1965 Detroit Invitational. In other words, just about everything I have about Tom, and the photos I've shared, (and will share in the future), on this thread. I've been working on them all afternoon, but they are finally done. I'll mail a DVD to you Monday. I forgot to include Ed's Simla photos, but I hope I have already sent those to you at one point or another.

Especially the photos from Helen's scrapbook are truly tremendous if you are into pattern history, and are a fan of Tom's, (which of course we all are here). I'm looking forward to all this material making its way into your upcoming video. As good as those photos, and other documents of Helen's are in the scrapbook, it would be so great to get them out of there and "artfully" into the hands of Helen, her daughter Sheryl, and her grandchildren, so they can each have their own collection of Brett RC history.

I'm sorry it took as long as it did for me to get to it.

CHARLES WINTER

HI DUANE, Sounds GREAT. I have the 8mm film back from the laboratory that Helen sent me. It is now on Magnetic Tape so I can put it into my I-Mac computer and re-edit it. I hope to get about 5 minutes of interesting footage. I also have British Movietone Digital Newsreel Archives of Tom flying in England (1962) with Helen looking on. The pictures you have will help make this an interesting segment in the "Golden Era of R/C Flying" Chuck Winter

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

It's in the mail.

If you want the personal Kazmirski Simla pictures from his estate, I can send them as well. Enclosed are a couple. There are 7.

The Simla prototype is about ready for covering

CHARLES WINTER

Hi Duane, The "Simla" pictures sound great. The more I put in this updated movie the more future pilot's and historians will have to look at.

ChuckWinter

kingaltair

My Feedback: (4)

Is the resolution in the pictures above good enough, or do you need me to "snail-mail" you the originals?