A. J. Aircraft Factory Pilgrimage

The American Junior Classics website has a video of a 1961 TV documentary about the A. J. Aircraft Company in which the address of the factory is mentioned: 1201 SE 3rd Street, Portland, Oregon. (The video is worth a look; here's a direct link.) So when my wife Leela and I were in Portland a couple of weeks ago, I decided to check out the address to see what had become of the place. No telling what would be there now: A parking lot? A skate park? A highway off-ramp? Well, it turned out the building is still standing -- and looking quite spiffy at that. It now houses the Pratt & Larson Tile Company, a maker of elegant decorator ceramics.

Then and now: The top picture is from the American Junior Classics website. The lower picture I took two weeks ago.

I viewed the building from different angles trying to discern some trace of its former tenant. The only clue even remotely linking the place to its illustrious past was a model sailboat seen in a second-floor office window.

From this scant evidence I drew hope. Then I looked into the window below and spied Leela signaling to me from within. She had penetrated the premises! I joined her and was not surprised to find that the place was given over to the glorification of ceramic décor, with nary a nod to its august history.

Leela was delighted, but I was frustrated. Surely there must be some scrap, some remnant, however slight or inadvertent, of the fabled past. (Yes, I did check under the white skirts on those chairs!) I was just about to give up all hope when...

We entered an un-air-conditioned area of remnants and factory seconds. Well, this is better, I thought. And, yes, beyond the bins of miscellaneous sale tiles, I espied the factory floor looking much as it did in the 1961 documentary. Indeed, when I squinted my eyes and held my nose just right, I could almost smell the balsa dust. I raised my camera, and just as I snapped the following photo, a burley fellow grabbed me by the collar and hustled me out of there.

Blurry shot of Pratt & Larson factory floor looking much as it did in the 1961 A. J. factory-tour documentary.

At home I subjected the photo to sophisticated computer analysis. Note the dark area on the left side. In the lower corner, there's just the slightest hint of red. After magnifying and enhancing this area, I was rewarded with an image that all rougers will surely recognize...

Note enlarged area showing clear evidence of "Jim Walker" signature rudder with distinctive blue scalloped trim. Is it a fortuitous bit of tile? Or is it the real thing? We may never know the answer.

~Austin Bruce Hallock

North Pacific Advertisement Inspires Wonder

I promise this will be my next-to-the-last post about North Pacific -- for a while.  (I still have one more NP-related post in mind.)  Anyway, I found this on the RC Groups' "Sleek Streek" discussion thread without much accompanying explanation:

Click on image to enlarge.

It appears to be from a hobby catalog or some such.  It's dated 1966.  I clearly remember all the planes in the right column, as well as the Space Flyer, but the others I can't say I ever saw in the flesh.  That 21-inch span ROG'r looks especially interesting.  Also curious is the 10¢ Space Flyer (12" wingspan) vs. the 10¢ Stunt Flyer (13½" span).  I clearly remember both of these nearly identical gliders, but I didn't realize they'd been marketed simultaneously for the same price.
~Austin Bruce Hallock

Zombie Sleek Streeks and Corporate Vampires

The story of the North Pacific company is one of triumph and tragedy. The triumph was the well-deserved commercial success of their best products. The tragedy was the downward spiral in the quality of those brilliant products, brought on by changing social and economic conditions.

Over the years, NP offered a wide array of flying toys, some more successful than others. But the company was probably best known for its premier line of little gliders and stick gerpers -- the ones with the red plastic wing clips -- the Strato, the Skeeter, the Sleek Streek, and the Star Flyer, plus a few variations on these basic themes. What began as inexpensive, simple, well-crafted, good-performing model planes morphed, over the decades, into perverted caricatures of themselves.

The company founders apparently knew and loved model airplanes and cared about quality. But when the company fell on hard times in the 1980s, it was sold -- more than once. The airplanes continued to be produced under other brand names, but the manufacturing was sent overseas. Poor materials were used. The die cutting and plastic parts were faulty. The day the words "BEND OREGON" disappeared from the tails of these planes was the day the Sleek Streek died.  Although the Korean-made Zombie Streeks managed to glide for a while, buoyed only by NP's former reputation, they soon fell from the scene completely. No one wanted a warped-winged, soft-fuselaged ghost of a gerper with a backwards (this is true!) freewheeling ratchet. The corporate vampires who had acquired the original NP designs had sucked the life out of line.

The NP story has more twists and turns than I've described here, but that's the gist of it. For an interesting visual comparison between the original Sleek Streek and the later Comet (Korean-made) version, see this RC Group's discussion post [LINK]. Warning -- it's not pretty! (Click on his individual thumbnails to view them enlarged.)

Desperately Seeking Sleek Streeks

Google "Sleek Streek" and you'll find legions of old guys pining away for the good old days of simple, reliable stick gerpers with real balsa wings. Sadly the little clip-together models can no longer be found at corner stores, and we must now either build our own or pay eBay sellers huge sums to satisfy our longings. Even good information about these planes and the North Pacific Products Company that originally produced the Sleek Streek, the Skeeter, the Star Flier, and the Strato is hard to come by. That’s why I was delighted to run across this blog post. More interesting than the post itself is the accompanying November 13, 2009, comment by Nancy Cleveland, daughter of one of the NP Company's founders. She talks about her father, NP co-founder Charles H. Cleveland, and provides some interesting details on the history of the company and the manufacturing techniques that helped make the planes so special.

American Junior Aircraft Remembered

Gary Stokes started an e-mail conversation the other day by drawing attention to this website: American Junior Classics.

The site contains a wealth of history and information on legendary aeromodeler Jim Walker and his creations and exploits.  Of course anyone who flew model planes in the 50s and 60s was aware of Walker's American Junior Aircraft Company.  His influence was pervasive.  AJ products ranged from simple gliders and gerpers to sophisticated u-cons.  But the two AJ planes with which rougers were most intimate were the Junior Hornet and the Pursuit (respectively designated by the JAC as the AJ-1 and the AJ-2).  These were formidable machines in their day.  In the early 1960s, Dave Smith was the first to use a Pursuit as a rouer, and many of us remember the victory spree that ensued as he chewed through dozens of his Sleek Streek class opponents.  AJ parts were also widely cannibalized and used on Jungolian designs.

The AJ Pursuit went through a series of design changes over its long production run.  This photo shows the version most familiar to rougers of the 1960s.  I think we typically loaded at least twice the amount of gerp shown here on these things when we roued with them.  Looking at this photo, I can almost smell the treated balsa and gerp.  It had a very distinctive odor as it came fresh out of the box.  (Click on photo to enlarge.)

As for the smaller AJ-1 Junior Hornet, I have a long history with this plane.

This studio portrait of me was taken in 1952 when I was 5 years old.  Note itchy winding finger.  (Click on photo to enlarge.)

I grew up with a Junior Hornet in my hands.  Within a couple of years of this photo, I was modifying Hornets into biplanes, Tri-Pacers, and canards.  I'd love to hear about more Hornet and Pursuit memories.  Comments welcome.

~ Austin Bruce Hallock