Pioneers of aeromodelling progress-James Hayes Stevens.

wonwinglo

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To know a little about how James Hayes Stevens started we need to go back a long way,1936 in fact when the flying pulp magazines were starting to come onto the news stands,remember these were the heady days of the golden years of flying and people wanted to build scale models of the machines they saw flying overhead,there were few plans and kits available and those that were available were expensive,check out any of the prices of contemporary models and compare them with the weekly wages at that time and see what I mean !

Anyway getting back to JHS,as a young keen lad still at school he hit lucky,having sent along some drawings to a chap called Halliday he was requested to do some more plans for the kits he was making under the banner of 'Skybirds' these wewre pre shaped sets of parts with metal fittings that were sold in beautifully strung sets,at the same time JHS was having plans published monthly in one of those pulp mags called 'Air Stories' the magazine was a typical mix of gripping yarns of flying world war 1 biplanes,with tales of aces with jammed guns outflying th hun ! and a mix of aeromodelling items at the rear of the mag,a first class inspirational mix of aeronautical material.

As JHS became more skillful and in fact became an aeronautical engineeer of some note his activities extended into visiting the French aircraft industry,this is were he started to write articles for a magazine called 'Air Reserve gazette' which was the house magazine of the Air League of the British empire,the magazine later evolved into its more well known title 'Air Pictorial' where James Hayes Stevens continued to write first class articles on contemporary aviation.

However he never forgot his true roots and how he started ie making model aeroplanes,to this end he would often mention his earlier luck in his involvment with Hallidays famous Skybirds models.

One more thing that I would like to record here is that later on when he was reaping the rewards of his labours he acquired a fleet of vintage aircraft,a De Havilland Dragon,Leopard Moth and a Percival Proctor,these machines were leased from his company Aerial Enterrises (JHS) to a company called Chrisair,in the true spirit of the way he started himself these aircraft were used to introduce thousands of people to their very first flight,if you were at the Phwelli holiday camp during the 1960's you could have been one of those very people ?

So we have another pioneer for our hall of fame here,and a very worthy one at that.
 
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