In the early 80s, the synchronized flight squadron suddenly appeared. Sponsored by the tobacco company Reemtsma. The Stuyvesant squadron. It had never happened before: a model aircraft team as an advertising medium for Germany’s largest tobacco company. And with the best model airplane in the world at the time: Hanno Prettner’s Curare.
How it all began
A report by Helmut Wolf. In 1974, Rudi Krämer and Helmut Wolf flew two “Hai” ES model airplanes at the same time at the Modellflieger-Gruppe Bensheim e.V.. As one flew faster than the other, the two models approached each other and flew side by side for a while.
Both pilots liked this so much that they now tried to fly side by side in normal and inverted flight, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. This simple formation alone was the beginning of synchronized flying between the two pilots. The two then incorporated simple maneuvers such as loops, rolls and knife-edge turns into their flights. The better they got, the more difficult figures they practiced together.
Sometime in 1976, they attended the first flying days outside their own model flying site. So they both took heart and, together with Rudi Krämer’s wife and daughter, made the long journey to Nuremberg to the MFC Noris. The synchronized flight was well received at an American Army helicopter airfield and, unbeknownst to both pilots, all the flight demonstrations were judged by a jury. When they had already packed up their models and prepared for the journey home, the synchronized flight pilots were informed that they should wait for the award ceremony.
As it turned out, the two had taken first place with their small but fast low-wing aircraft (120cm wingspan, with 10cc engines) and won a large trophy.
However, the decisive moment for the later Stuyvesant relay team was the question from Michael Bosch, the German and European helicopter flying champion and son of Simprop CEO Fritz Bosch, after the award ceremony, as to whether we would like to perform at the air circus in Harsewinkel.
Harsewinkel – yes Harsewinkel! Our answer – only the aces and specialists fly there. Michael Bosch replied: “What you showed here today was something very special. I cordially invite you to the air circus in Harsewinkel.
So the next year, with some reservations about our small models, we went to the all too familiar “Luftzirkus”. On the training Saturday, we attracted the attention of the audience and the other pilots with our synchronized flight. We liked it so much that on Sunday afternoon we were only allowed to perform our synchronized flight alone, i.e. in pairs, in front of a large audience. Proud as punch, we drove home in the evening and made new plans. On the one hand, we visited other flying days in this year, and on the other, we had two other club colleagues who also wanted to take part in synchronized flying.
Then it was time to investigate the cause and a new machine had to be built.</strong
At some point in the year, an advertising agency appeared at our flying site in Bensheim and was looking for us synchronized pilots. It turned out that the Reemtsma company, based in Hamburg, was looking for model pilots to advertise the well-known cigarette brand “Peter Stuyvesant” in relay flights with several aircraft at air shows. As they were unable to find any model pilots in the Hamburg area, the advertising agency turned to the Simprop company in Harsewinkel, where a few synchronized pilots from the “Luftzirkus” happened to be known by name.
We quickly found an appointment for an air show in Hamburg in front of the cigarette manufacturer’s representatives and traveled the 500 km north in a rented VW bus. As our youngest Thomas Bierbaum was not yet 18 years old, he was unfortunately unable to take part in the event due to the Youth Protection Act. In typical northern German weather with gale-force winds and rain, the three of us who remained showed off our skills. Due to the strong gusts and the rain, our flight was so bad that we told ourselves that was it. But no way. The gentlemen were so enthusiastic that we were immediately invited to dinner and the concept was discussed. A deal was struck and it wasn’t long before we were able to select the model aircraft, remote control and drive from Simprop.
As we built and painted all our models ourselves, many weeks were characterized by balsa dust and painting. Everyone initially had 2 models in the pool, but certain events quickly made it necessary to build a 3rd Curare (per man).
In the first year we used the SIMPROP SSM as a remote control, later we used the SIMPROP SAM with all the additional modules.
Based on our previous experience, we used a 10cc OS engine for the first year, before using the Italian Super Tigre engines in the following years.
After completing the first 6 Curares, we started training and practicing almost every day.
The 60 Curare flew as if pulled by a string and made flying easy for us.
During the final training check on Good Friday before our first flying day, Rudi Krämer’s engine didn’t start and so Franz Stenzel and Helmut Wolf flew off in pairs.
After 3 maneuvers the inevitable happened: In a 4-times-roll both planes collided and only 2 piles of balsa wood remained.
This left 4 aircraft for 3 pilots – not good conditions.
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Disassembled fuselage of Franz Stenzel’s Curare after mid-air collision with Helmut Wolf’s Curare, which was already stowed in a “blue bag”
After all, the agreements made had to be adhered to.
This meant that 15 flying days per year had to be completed! So 2 new Curare were built, painted and flown in record time.
With 6 planes, they traveled in a converted VW bus sponsored by the cigarette manufacturer to their first gig in Fritzlar in Hesse. The first flight went smoothly, except for the landing, when Helmut Wolf’s plane stopped responding and simply crashed during the landing phase.
Panic ensued in the Wolf household.
The replacement aircraft was used for the next flight and again what should not have happened, happened: This time, Rudi Krämer and Franz Stenzel collided in the air, resulting in one plane making an emergency landing and the other crashing.
Conclusion: It couldn’t go on like this! A simple trick was used to reduce the risk of the models colliding in future – more distance between the machines.
It no longer looked quite so spectacular, but that didn’t detract from the synchronicity.
During the following 14 flying days of the 1979 season, everything went smoothly without any collisions or other incidents. We received great encouragement and recognition at every event.
From today’s perspective, some flying days and places are particularly memorable.
In Harsewinkel we did not appear at the “Luftzirkus” for the first time, but now for the first time as a Stuyvesant squadron with the models and remote controls of the local company Simprop. Managing Director Fritz Bosch was very satisfied with what he was presented with and was full of praise.
So we were “allowed” to take part in the spectacle again in the following years. Last year, in 1982, the Ikarus Club organized the “International German Synchronized Flying Championships” at the Luftzirkus in cooperation with the DMFV. In the predetermined flight program, we were only just ahead of the teams from the Swiss Simprop relay teams, but we were able to extend our lead in the free program and win the championship title in synchronized flying.
Sweetened by generous prizes from Simprop, we, like all the show pilots, enjoyed the subsequent party with dinner and dancing in a large converted barn at the end of the show flight day.
At the Kaiserstuhl near Freiburg at the club of the then German Scale Glider Champion Alex Hofmann, our functional aerobatic models already looked a little pale next to the many scale models parked there, which we also noticed when we set up our 3 Curare with somewhat disdainful looks from the spectators. This changed abruptly when we took off close together on the not too wide runway and climbed up for the first turn. The required throttle burst during the turn was so synchronized that it sounded like a single engine. There was spontaneous applause at every figure and turn. The audience enjoyed the demonstrations so much that the organizers kept getting requests asking when we would fly again, so we had to take to the air almost every hour.
At the airshow at the American Ramstein Airbase, almost 750,000 spectators stood along the 4 km long runway. Therefore, we could only be seen properly in the middle at a distance of approx. 600 m. During our performance, we had to turn the 3 Curare aircraft around again just before the huge runway, as the “Red Arrows” escort aircraft, a “C131 Herkules”, was approaching for a short time and then touched down approx. 30 m next to our Curare aircraft. After the transport aircraft had flown away, we were able to carry out our program within a tight and militarily precise framework. However, the end of the air show was terrible, when the 3/4 million spectators all flocked to their cars and drove off. Unlike the fat American road cruisers, our VW bus had no air conditioning at the time and in the enormous summer heat we only had the option of suffocating in the bus from the heat or opening the windows and then dying from the exhaust fumes of the air-conditioned road cruisers! It took us two and a half hours to reach the airport exit.
In Büchen near Hamburg, the weather was rainy and northern German for once. Nevertheless, many spectators came to the air show thanks to the live radio report from nearby Hamburg. Walter Extra, now managed by the same agency as us, also flew his Pitts there in breathtaking style. I gratefully declined his suggestion to hold a parasol on the runway until he wanted to knock it over with the wing. Maybe Walter was just joking.
In Oostkerke, Belgium, Helmut Wolf had to perform with his comrades at the “Golden Wings” one day after the birth of his son. However, the pain of separating from his newborn was somewhat sweetened by his 1st place in the skydiving competition.
The performance at the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin almost fell through, as one of the team members was unable to travel through the former GDR due to a military security level. So a couple friend of ours drove the Stuyvesant bus to Berlin, while we were allowed to fly with “PanAm” from Frankfurt to Berlin.
Berlin Tempelhof, Stuyvesant relay in standing formation
It was a sublime feeling to fly our models at such a historic airport. The club representatives were a little irritated when our manager told them that we could only show our demonstrations until 15:30 because we had to get to Tegel Airport in time so as not to miss our flight back.
In Austria, we were invited to Hanno Prettner’s home airfield.
The accommodation in Klagenfurt in the Prettners’ guesthouse with a tour of Hanno’s trophy room and his workshop was a profound experience for us.
The Prettners’ hospitality left nothing to be desired. Hanno was a little angry with us at the end of the flying day there, because he said that we had received more applause than him with our synchronized flights.
One sentence in particular stuck in my mind at IFM Munich. “Please do not fly over the institute” </strong
As it turned out, it was an experimental nuclear reactor.
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In the evening, there was a relaxed atmosphere in the hotel restaurant together with the Simprop team Switzerland, members of Simprop and Hanno and Hans Prettner and the repeatedly quoted sentence “…don’t fly over the institute”.
In Leipheim, we made a guest appearance at a military airfield for a military show. Wolfgang Dallach, now also managed by the same manager, was sitting with us in the canteen at eating pea stew when he was asked to get ready for his performance at short notice.
However, as he still had half a plate of pea stew, he hurriedly gobbled it down and then, about 10 minutes later, went into inverted flight with his “Diabolo” immediately after take-off and flew a full inverted circle. The Bundeswehr jet pilots standing around us only said appreciatively “eyeballs out” when judging the inverted flight circle.
The last demonstrations of the Stuyvesant team took place in November 1982 in the Las Vegas desert. In order to bring the 6 Curares across the pond in 3 crates, the models had to be converted so that the horizontal stabilizers could be removed.
No problem for the trained toolmaker Rudi Krämer. However, the fact that team member Helmut Wolf was in hospital for five weeks before the flight to the USA put Krämer in a time crunch, as he now had to do all the work twice.
Stuyvesant team at the start of the synchronized flight in Las Vegas 1982
In the end, everything worked out and the transfer went smoothly. Only the American customs authorities showed their “best” side. The team’s toolboxes had to be opened and every, really every screw or spare part had to be entered individually in a list.
We could have sold the precious metric M3 screws for a lot of money in America! But this hurdle was also overcome and so we went to the airfield sponsored by Bill Bennet for the “Tournament of Champions 1982”. However, a problem arose during the training flights. Our 10cc engines, which had previously been running on methanol, did not really want to work with the synthetic fuel provided. There were several engine shutdowns.
Thankfully, Benito Bertolani, who had somehow brought fuel from Italy, helped us and gave us his hotel room key to get the fuel from there. Our engines thanked us and ran smoothly again. Nevertheless, Helmut Wolf’s Curare was caught out when an engine that had been throttled back too much stalled during the main program and he had to make a stopover.
The engine was up and running again and Wolf was able to fly right into the rest of the passing squadron. The demonstration continued with 3 models and the applause was recognition.
The invitation of all pilots and helpers to the dinner party of “Circus-Circus” hotel owner Bill Bennett was also impressive. We were picked up from the hotel in limousines and chauffeured to his estate.
Not only was it possible to take a look at his huge house, but also the various pavilions, where, for example, one pavilion was set up just for fitness, in another there were around 30 model aircraft hanging on the walls, each equipped with its own transmitter, not to mention the motorcycles and cars. An unforgettable experience.
With this air show in the USA, the Stuyvesant squadron ended its 4-year tour in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium and the USA.
The team could be seen at air shows in Bensheim (our club model airfield), Berlin (Tempelhof), Büchen near Hamburg, Colmar (France), Friedrichshafen (Messe), Fritzlar, Hameln, Harsewinkel (Luftzirkus), Heimerdingen, Hopsten (at JaboG 36), Kaiserstuhl (A. Hofmann), Carinthia (near Hanno), Kirberg, Lampertheim-Hofheim, Las Vegas (USA), Leipheim (military base), Leverkusen, Meinerzhagen, Munich (IFM), Nagold, Nordheim (Rhön), Nuremberg (military base), Oostkerke (Belgium), Ramstein (air base), Weilbach near Frankfurt and Weinheim (our alternative model airfield).
An average of 15 flying days were attended each year, countless hours were spent building the models and even more training sessions were completed in order to constantly improve precision and flight characteristics.
Especially the figure looping against each other, in which after the vertical upward passage the middle model separates from the other two with a half roll, in order to then start looping against each other after both sides have turned down, always gave us pilots a slight feeling of anxiety that everyone would stay in their flight path and there would be no collision. It always worked!
Sieglinde Krämer, the wife of squadron captain Rudi Krämer, was always helpful for the 3 pilots as she not only read out the sequence of figures, but also paid attention to the distances and speeds of the 3 models and announced them.
Several barrels, each containing 200 liters of methanol fuel with a 2% nitro content, were used in total. The Curare were painted in the original colors of the “Peter Stuyvesant” cigarette brand.
After priming, the wooden models from the Simprop Kato kit were covered with stretch paper, primed and then sprayed with a 2k car paint. The Simprop retractable undercarriages were retracted and extended in a fail-safe manner using 180° servos.
Even on uneven ground there were no problems. All in all, the “Curare” of multiple F3A world champion Hanno Prettner made a major contribution to the success of the “Stuyvesant Relay”.
Even today, all three pilots are still keen model builders and model pilots and meet up at least once a year to fly together, sometimes even with a new Curare with electric drive.
Text: Helmut Wolf
Photos: Helmut Wolf, Rudi Krämer, Franz Stenzel
