Dave Robelen has passed away.
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Dave Robelen has passed away.
I thought I would post on this forum that Dave passed away awhile back after some serious heart problems. My son-in-law, RVator, was selected as one of his pall bearers by his wife. We had the honor of knowing him and flying with him occaisionally and he was my instructor till I my solo flight. He was retired from NASA, Hampton Va. He did many things for NASA but spent most of his career testing flight design and himself designed a wind tunnel to test for spin characteristics. His ability and knowledge of micro flight was well know and he wrote articles for several mags including the AMA mag. He was inducted into the AMA Hall of Fame a couple years ago and they contacted his wife to see if he still had some particular models that he had designed thirty or forty years ago. They want them for the AMA Museum. His wife contacted RVator last week and said she wanted everyone of his friends that had flown with him to come and pick out a model Dave had built and then she was going to sell everything. Since it was, after all, his hobby. Most every thing in his shop is ready for flight as is the model I chose for myself. It's a scale of the BD4. It's fully complete and ready to fly. I didn't weigh it but it couldn't weigh more than a couple ounces. The prop is plastic but the wheel pants are balsa as well as the spinner. It has proportional micro servos and lipo battery. It was in the Janurary '07 edition of the AMA mag. For all of you interested in micro flight, this plane is built from documentation and I found the web pages that he printed out of the full scale plane. I hope to go back and get all of that. Here are a couple of pics I took tonight of it.
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RE: Dave Robelen has passed away.
I knew Dave from my RC flying in Newport News, VA. back in the late 60's. We hooked up again a couple of years ago. Although I'm not into micro planes he was more than helpful in getting me started in e-planes. I have built a series of planes based on his "Projectile" design. One was featured in Model Aviation November 2006, Focal Point. He was incredibly knowledgeable and had infinite patience. I'll miss him terribly.
#5
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I thought I would post on this forum that Dave passed away awhile back after some serious heart problems. My son-in-law, RVator, was selected as one of his pall bearers by his wife. We had the honor of knowing him and flying with him occaisionally and he was my instructor till I my solo flight. He was retired from NASA, Hampton Va. He did many things for NASA but spent most of his career testing flight design and himself designed a wind tunnel to test for spin characteristics. His ability and knowledge of micro flight was well know and he wrote articles for several mags including the AMA mag. He was inducted into the AMA Hall of Fame a couple years ago and they contacted his wife to see if he still had some particular models that he had designed thirty or forty years ago. They want them for the AMA Museum. His wife contacted RVator last week and said she wanted everyone of his friends that had flown with him to come and pick out a model Dave had built and then she was going to sell everything. Since it was, after all, his hobby. Most every thing in his shop is ready for flight as is the model I chose for myself. It's a scale of the BD4. It's fully complete and ready to fly. I didn't weigh it but it couldn't weigh more than a couple ounces. The prop is plastic but the wheel pants are balsa as well as the spinner. It has proportional micro servos and lipo battery. It was in the Janurary '07 edition of the AMA mag. For all of you interested in micro flight, this plane is built from documentation and I found the web pages that he printed out of the full scale plane. I hope to go back and get all of that. Here are a couple of pics I took tonight of it.
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mgnostic (12-08-2023)