When I was a young lad saving up my pocket money to buy packs of balsa wood and balsa cement to create small chuck gliders my enthusiasm held no boundaries ! imagine my surprise one day when dad came in through the door with a huge yellow model aeroplane,well it looked big to me in those far flung days and it is only in the past few years that I found out what it really was ? the model was a target drone that was towed behind a full size aircraft probably a Westland Lysander or a Miles Martinet and then some trigger happy bod took pot shots at it ! on the side was written in large letters 'If any member of the public should find this then return to nearest police station' quite honestly if one of these things hit you then it would knock you out,it must have weighed a ton and was probably why my attempts to get it flying by hurling it from the bedroom window failed,it was my first lesson in high wing loadings ! these things were made by a company called 'Skyleader' manufacturers of rubber driven kits a lot lighter than this flying brick,they had obviously been sanctioned by the war office to produce these drones,the material was some sort of very hard plastic,probably bakelite or something similar ? if I had it today it would probably be a collectors item and command a lot of money.
Obviously it was just towed furiously into the air at speed hanging on the end of a tow rope,but it was a piece of history that came my way,in the fifties the army/navy stores were full of unusual things like this,radio aerial kites,salt water activated batteries,aircraft recognition models etc all going for a song.
I reckon the only chance of getting it flying would have been to launch it from a slope site in a gale force wind !
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