Look what I got! Vintage Cox warbird

[firemanbill]

Ok so it's not Electric, nor is it even RC but it's cool as can be! Saw this on Craigslist this morning and just had to get it. It's a 70's era Control line Cox Miss America Mustang. A nice addition to the collection for sure!

This has never been taken out of the box. All the hardware is still in the bag inside the box as is the Manual, New product brochure, and warranty card!

Way cool!

[WayfaringDreamer]

I like it!

[xmech2k]

Cool!

[Army Dad]

Saw Howie and his Miss America P-51 several times at the Reno Air Races.

[kenchiroalpha]

Hi Bill
Congratulations on the new bird
I have a few myself.
Take care dear friend
Yours Hank

[stuart]

i had one of those cox c-line birds in the 60's .of coarse it only flew twice as hard plastic crashes hard. i remember screwing the glow motor to a board and running it for the fun of just hearing it whine wot. fun yes,dizzying ..oh yeah.


bill and hank,those old birds sure are purdy!

[rcers]

Great snag! I remember those U control days well...

[Chucksolo69]

I had them all, but my favorites were the P-40 Warhawk and the Ju87 Stuka. I could loop and fly those things all day. My brother and I had an electric starter we hooked to his truck battery and we used to go through quarts of that Cox glow fuel; no sore fingers or cuts for us. They were great fun.

[JetPlaneFlyer]

I bet those things are pretty collectable these days and must bring a good price if pristine.

When it comes to flying seems to me there may be some rose tinted nostalgia being applied. Personally I recall they flew like bricks and pretty much had to be dragged around by the control lines. Way overweight and underpowered.

At least those are my recollections, maybe the ones I flew were bad examples?

[Chucksolo69]

No, I could actually hover my P-40 when flying into the wind. They were very nimble, especially the P-51 which was a speedy little bugger. Many of the guys I saw try to fly these things didn't know how to tune them.

[JetPlaneFlyer]

Originally Posted by Chucksolo69

No, I could actually hover my P-40 when flying into the wind. They were very nimble, especially the P-51 which was a speedy little bugger. Many of the guys I saw try to fly these things didn't know how to tune them.

Oh, i know how to tune a cox .049.. I was running glow engines since I was old enough to walk and still have a big collection of them (and lets face it they aren't hard to tune, they only have one mixture needle). Maybe it was just poor in comparison to the balsa combat and stunt planes I was flying at the time but I do recall them as being very heavy and not very fast.
Possibly genuine Cox fuel helped as it was a very high nitro blend. They were never my own models because ready made plastic models didn't really appeal at the time, I built my own. They were always models that friends took along for me to show them how to fly, and fly they did, just not especially well in my recollection but it was a long time ago.

[tr4252]

Nice score, firemanbill.

I remember them well. They were clunkers, but they were fun, and more or less state of the RTF art at the time. A home made balsa plane would've flown better, but it was a thrill to own something that could actually fly at all. They were heavy. I had the Cox P-40 and the Wen Mack Corsair. The Wen Mack planes were hotter as I recall.

I noticed in one of Hank's photos that he has the blue and yellow Cox Trainer, which was held together with rubber bands and resisted destruction pretty well. I had one of those too, and flew it until the engine was too bashed to run. They flew a little better than the warbirds, I thought.

Tom