SAM 27 and The Great Jimmie Allen Mystery

For fifteen or sixteen years there’s been a Jimmie Allen postal contest that Sam 27 has participated in, with entries from far and wide in the US and sometimes the rest of the world.

Then suddenly, this year, the entries disappeared – just like that.

Jimmie Allen was a radio adventure hero in the 1930s. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Air_Adventures_of_Jimmie_Allen)

The oil companies that sponsored the show, like Skelly and Richfield, ran promotional tie-ins at their gas stations, offering plans for a selection of rubber freeflight models specially designed for the show.

Among them are a few really good fliers – the Skokie, Bluebird, Jimmie Allen Special and BA Parasol. Plans are kits are freely available, and most of us SAM 27 members that fly rubber have one or two Jimmie Allens. (Most of us fly Skokies using 1/8inch rubber - either 24" x 8 strands, or 30" x 6 strands, or somewhere in between. On the 8 strand motors, Skokies climb almost vertically!).

We met at Lakeville in September for the annual SAM 27 event organized by Jerry Rocha. After a slow start the weather improved dramatically with hardly any wind and a cloudless sky.

There were 10 or so entrants and at one stage there were five Skokies way up there - all breaking the magic two-minute barrier. Overall we recorded some of the best combined times ever, and eagerly awaited our competitor’s results. They never came.

I guess we’ll win if there are no other entries, but it’s a hollow victory.

So please, if there’s a club out there with an interest in some of the best flying models around, take a look at these photos, think about building a Jimmie Allen, watch for details, and see if you can go postal next year.

The photo featuring the three highest scoring contestants, Jerry & Tom & Jerry, is used courtesy of our friend and photographer Roberto Soncin Gerometta – take a look at his super work at http://www.robertosoncingerometta.com/photography1.html

　Tom Whitworth

Jerry Long, Tom Whitworth and Jerry Rocha

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