William's Brothers La Jollita Vintage 1/4 Scale Pylon Racer

William's Brothers La Jollita Vintage (circa 1970) Pylon Racer Kit 

 

SPAN 45 INCHES
LENGTH 41 INCHES
AREA 460 SQ. INCHES
ENGINE 25-40

The La Jollita was a first of it kind. It's a "Rare large scale Pylon Racer for the Miniature Goodyear Event or sport flying". Miniature pylon racing was all the rage in the late 1960's - early 1970's; they were designed to be powered by a potent 40 size glow engine such as the OS MAX H 40 P. Other contemporary kit manufactures produced kits for this class, such as Goldberg's "Shoestring" Sig's "Minnow" and  Great Plane's "Cosmic Wind.  But the least popular and I never knew why, was the William's " La Jollita". These were truly 1/4 scale model airplanes that fact is hard to believe, when one considers that the wing spans were only 40 odd inches. The full scale airplanes themselves were very small; they were hardly bigger than what today we call Giant Scale models.

Full scale Rivets Midget Racer

The kit Contains select balsa and plywood, 29 hi-impact plastic parts: cheek cowls; wheel pants; all wing ribs; wing tips and turtle back.  Also included is a preformed aluminium landing gear, all hardware, clear scale canopy, pilot figure and more. As I recall after all these years, it was a very high quality kit and an easy build.

The sun came out here yesterday afternoon and I took the opportunity to go to the field with some of my electric planes;I flew the Beaver, Lightening and a Williams Brothers' Pylon racer that I made when I was 31 years old (46 years ago), while living in St. Louis, when I worked with McDonnell Aircraft. I kept it all those years and recently restored and converted it from glow to electric power witch in itself was no easy matter. You can't imagine what a thrill it was for me to see her perform yesterday, ripping around the field doing those bank and yank Pylon turns for 5 minutes plus. The perfect roll on landing to finish off the flight was particularly satisfying. I hope that she will survive a little while longer, so I can get more experience flying her. The next time I will try to have a flash card in my GoPro so that I will have a record to remind me of the experience.