The dictionary defines the word“legion” as a great number or a

multitude.That is one of the bestdefinitions of the numbers offriends and contacts that RayMalmström could count as his closeassociates.The ancient Romansincluded up to 6,000 soldiers intheir military legions.The modernarmy of aeromodellers whoremember Ray must be that ancientmilitary number with a good few000’s added.

Ray was a man of many things tomany people. He has been variouslydescribed as a genius, an elderlyyouth somewhere between 15 and50, a nice old man, a character andeven by some as a bit eccentric.Tothose who knew him all thedescriptions probably fit. But to

those who knew him really well hewas a true friend and adviser,always ready to give a helping handand a pat on the back as a welldone for a new modelling effortand an encouragement to reach foreven higher levels.

Ray was the first to admit that hedisliked office work and recordkeeping – so the exact total ofmodels he designed is unlikely everto be known. But the total runsinto hundreds and covers allaspects of aeromodelling from thefrankly ridiculous to the superb. Allhis designs had one common factor– they all flew well in the hands oftheir builders of any ability.

His model designs were oftencaricatures in the true meaning ofthe word and had, as he onceexplained,“characteristic traitsexaggerated in a ludicrous way”.You might say some of the modelslooked a bit odd. He did this tosuch good effect that mostaeromodellers have built one ormore of his designs at sometime orother. Ray’s designs were simple, yetdifferent and were aimed mainly atthe younger modellers.Themajority of them could be builtfrom the scraps left over frombuilding conventional models – thusthe cost never suppressed thedesire to construct a Malmströmdesign.

The first of the many

One of Ray’s earliest publishedplans was of the Pee Wee babyindoor duration model of eight inch

wingspan and appeared in the pagesof Aeromodeller during August1940. Other plans followed quicklyand they appeared at a time whenindoor flying had really taken off, assometimes outdoor flying wasdifficult during the war years. Manyof Ray’s models were aimed at RTP(Round the Pole) flying which wasimmensely popular amongaeromodelling club members of theday, because it could be enjoyed ina restricted area. One of his mostpopular outdoor models of theperiod was the twin-engine and

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The man of a million modelsHave you ever seen a square wheel? No, well they are around somewhere and were inventedby Ray Malmström it seems believe it or not. Among his many amusing claims was,“Any foolcan make round wheels, but it takes a genius like me to make square wheels that work”.Whatmodesty but typical of Ray, who many people believe really was a genius in his own field ofaeromodelling – the small, cheap to build, ingenious and even bizarre models which all flew wellindoors and outside.What sort of person was Ray really like? Here Peter Hoskison who was aclose friend of Ray for many years tells us something about him.

Mountie Mk II. Also appeared in aSolarbo balsa advert in Aeromodeller.

Round-the-pole flying was hugelypopular among Club members. Ray’searly design – pusher type model.

Ray’s first published plan. Full size appearson page 15.The first of hundreds of designs.

twin fuselage Kestrel which wascapable of high speed flights inexcess of half a minute.This wasfollowed soon afterwards by hispopular Merlin Mk l a twin enginefighter bomber along the lines ofsome of the legendary full sizeaircraft of the day.

Ray wrote in describing thismodel,“an attempt to create amodel that follows, without being acopy, the general layout of anaircraft that has won battlehonours in every field of war. Ibelieve that future development andresearch, eventually will be directedto the production of models thatare in real truth model aircraft”.How right Ray was and hepredicted all those years ago,

today’s great growth of interest inscale modelling.

During the late 1940’s and early1950’s Ray’s inventive genius sawhim producing dozens more designs– almost a case of “You name it, I’lldesign it”.With the astonishinggrowth of model flying around theBritish Isles during the late 1940’sand the 1950’s he widened hisdesign portfolio to include powerfree flight models, control-line andcompetition rubber models. Hesteadfastly refused to designanything for radio control – asection of the hobby he declaredloudly to be “unnatural”. Althoughhe had a brief flirtation with dieselengines – he never touched “thosemessy old glo-plugs” – and neverstopped using rubber power,because of its simplistic appeal tobeginners at whom so many of hisdesigns were aimed.

A bit crowded

Another practice that Raydeveloped in the plans published byaeromodelling magazines aroundthe world was to show importantparts full size, despite theconstraints imposed by the smallarea of some of the magazinepages. His layouts in the restrictedpages of magazines aremasterpieces of this art. But he wasnot happy sometimes with havingto crowd so much on to a smallpage. He once remarked to someof his Club colleagues that he

would not like having to build fromplans which were crammed into asmall page area.“If I don’t likebuilding from those plans, whatmust the poor old beginnersthink?” was his frequently voicedcomment.

Ray not only contributed to manymagazines world-wide, he producedfour books for the Eagle comicsorganisation dealing with modelaircraft, model boats, model carsand model spacecraft. He alsoproduced a number of independentbooks. All these are much sortafter by collectors nowadays – andfetch quite substantial prices in thespecialist bookshops. Ray did all thewriting, photography and drawingsfor these publications at the sametime as keeping up a stream of newdesigns.

His space age contributions led toa series of models printed in colouron the back of an internationalbreakfast cereal company’sproducts. Even today his daughterElizabeth remembers,“He used todrag us around Tesco and the Co-op every weekend to admirehis handiwork. We had so manycereals in the kitchen at home”.

In addition to his design outputRay drew scores of cartoons toillustrate magazine articles – and topoint the readers’ eyes to these heinvented Fliar Phil a cheeky littlechappy who turned up seemingly

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Coaxair. A pusher-puller rubber powered model with propellors. A bit of a handfulto wind both motors, model flew well, particularly in breezy conditions.

Mandy, control line model, Mills .75.Picture taken by Terry King in 1949.

everywhere and went on tobecome Ray’s most famous world-wide trade mark.

Many of Ray’s models sported athree crowns motif on their wingslike the Swedish national full sizeaircraft roundels.This was inremembrance of his Scandinavianbackground.

Ray’s a laugh

As well as being one of the world’sbest known aeromodellers, Ray wasa dedicated joker, humorist andspeechmaker – often difficult to gethim going but much harder to gethim to stop! Building and flying tohim was a serious business. SeeingRay’s delight when a new modelperformed well and his depressionwhen it gave difficulties then youcould not doubt that models wereall important to him. He was notselfish with that pleasure ordepression as he was alwaysdelighted to see one of his designsgoing well for someone else andmortified when they did not do so.

Ray’s models may be easy to fly –but his name was not always easyfor a newcomer to get to grips

with. He often laughed that he hadbeen called – among other things –Mr Milestone, Mr Millstone and MrMacalmstrone. His grandfather wasa Swedish bootmaker who marriedan English wife and set up abusiness in London. Ray’s father wasalso business minded and startedup a small toy shop in the Southseaarea of Portsmouth. During the1920’s he stocked a range of flyingtoys including some card modelaircraft. It was the sight of thesebrightly boxed models that caughtRay’s eye and started him into whatwas to become a life long love ofmodel flying. Ray eventually went toart school where he continued hismodel building – and soon histhoughts turned to full size aviation.

A fascinating aspect of his earlymodelling, which showed a businesslike approach inherited from father,was his offer to the pilots of theairline operators flying between theIsle of Wight and the ChannelIslands. He made and sold to thepilots models of their Wessex, FoxMoth, DH 84 Dragon andMonospar aircraft.With the moneyhe raised he took flying lessons onGipsy Moths with the PortsmouthAero Club.

Bang on

When Second World War brokeout in 1939 Ray joined the AuxiliaryFire Service. It was during this

period he designed his Pee Weeindoor model which was test flownin the fire station grounds.Thedesign was later published by theAeromodeller magazine, to becomethe first of literally hundreds ofpublished designs.

After graduating from art collegehe became a junior art teacher atKendal Grammar School. Hestarted an active model club at theschool – but his tenure there wascut short when he was conscripted

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One of the few pictures taken of Ray with a radio controlled model – an Imp designedby Terry King. Ray attempted radio only once, flying a Dandy built by Alan Hunter. Raythrew the transmitter to the ground after two minutes declaring, “It ain’t natural”.

1940. In the RAF, proud father with Annie.Ray soon had another armful – as agunnery expert on Hawker Hurricanes.

Ray readies one of his rare freeflightrubber contest designs at a club contestmeeting.

into the Royal Air Force where helearned to be an armourer. Heremembers fondly an incidentwhich occurred while he wasstationed at North Weald, workingon a Hurricane 11C armed withfour Hispano cannons.

An Air Ministry photographervisiting the station to record somemorale boosting pictures wasallowed to sit in the pilot’s cockpitof the Hurricane. Ray lingerednearby while the photographerlined up his camera and accidentallycaught some of his photographicequipment around the controlcolumn and pressed the gun firingbutton.The cannons went off with aresounding roar, only inches awayfrom Ray’s ears leaving him stonedeaf for three days. He, like QueenVictoria, was not amused.

A few months later the world ofaeromodelling nearly lost one of itsall time greats yet again. Ray andsome of his armourers crew wereloading small bombs into thefuselage bays of a Mosquito fighterbomber when one of the 25pounders became detached and fell– on top of Ray. He was onlybruised and later commented,“TheGermans were unable to kill meoff, but the RAF had two jolly goodtries”.

Friday at Impington

When the war finished Ray found ajob as a junior art teacher at

Impington Village College next toCambridge. He remained there formore than 40 years and eventuallyrose to be head of art studies atthe college.

It was here that his aeromodellingcareer as we know it today reallytook off. He founded a model flyingclub, rejoicing under the name ofModel Air Squadron – and Rayappointed himself as CommandingOfficer. He once recalled,“Wedecided to meet on Friday eveningsbecause the young members hadthe whole week-end to do their

college homework. Nobody had to get up in the morning so wecould fly until late in the evening.I charged them three pence (justunder 2p today) and put the moneyin an old OXO tin.When that wasfull I bought a tin of Cadbury’scocoa, drank it and put the threepenny pieces in there instead.Themoney helped to keep us in bits ofbalsa and tubes of cement”.

The club was eventually renamedas the Impington Village CollegeModel Aeroplane Club – a title itretains with pride to this very day.But the annual subscription is nowa good deal more than Ray’soriginal three penny piece! Rayreceived letters from all over theworld during his very longconnection with the club. Somewere from former pupils and manywere from people he had neverheard of but had built and enjoyedflying his designs. Occasionally hewould receive parcels from abroadcontaining kits of his designs. Mostof them were “pirated” versions,simply copied without anyone’spermission from Ray’s publishedplans. One such parcel came from aRussian modeller.

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Sir George Cayley’s man-carrying glider of 1853 presented the perfect challenge toRay to build yet another out of the rut design.The model flew for a short distance.

A happy snap of Ray with some of the Club members around the late 1960’s.They are,left to right, Dick Newling,Ted Gregg, Ray,Tom Collins, Derek Camps and Chris Hinson.

Ray related,“It was a darn greatbox that contained just a large slab of rock hard balsa wood.The instructions said anyone attempting to build the model – itwas one of my small indoorcreations – should cut the wood to suit from the block of balsa.I thought the whole thing was a bitof a cheek really, somebodypinching my design like that. Atleast they managed to spell myname correctly on the plan. Isuppose they found that bit easywith a name like mine”.

Fliar Phil’s story

When the Club celebrated its 40th anniversary in 1986, theAeromodeller magazine asked Fliar Phil to tell his story of hiscreator – and here it is. If you candetect the hand of The Masterhimself behind Fliar Phil’s writings,well you might not be far wrong!

I was about 12 years old when myfather, dear soul, succumbed to myrepeated onslaught and bought me myfirst aeroplane kit. And what a kit! Anall-cardboard affair, designed, I feel, bysomeone who had little aeronauticalknowledge, but made up for it by animmense touching faith in the gods! Itwas supposed to build up into afascinating little Wee Bee 1 Beardmoremonoplane! Gosh, that cardboardresembled good quality sheet iron!Only a particularly evil smellingvirulent variety of fish glue could holdit together.

My father, his sweat wreathing hisbald but noble napper, did indeed getthe fearsome airfoil section (?) to stick,but unfortunately, only to the backsideof his trousers – this act ofunquestioned dedication was achievedby accidentally sitting on it. The modelwas, in the light of subsequent efforts,a catastrophe that put World War 1,the Wall Street crash and the GeneralStrike rather in the shade. But bless itsreinforced cardboard heart, it set meout on our great hobby ofaeromodelling.

Early days included flying the firstWarneford spruce and silk jobs andthen on to that great design by dearmuch respected ‘RIP’, the Cruiser Pup,my model of which departed this life acouple of thousand feet up overPortsmouth Harbour, 12 minutes outof sight. Long flights with a BurdThermalider (cost of kit three bob –15p) with a machine or saw cut balsapropeller, an introduction to the joys ofscale with a Captain Page Racer, aComet kit from a shop in Blackpooland a monstrous five foot span rubberpowered Rearwin Speedster, anotherdreamboat from Burd. And it flew!

Recall the days when it wasconsidered a sign of moral turpitude –not to say indecency – to turn up onone’s local flying patch with aWakefield that sported less than adozen sylph-like stringers, encasing itsstreamlined figure. Flew Copland’s GB3and Scott’s Flying Minutes withsuccess. Built Cahill’s Clodhopper, anugly brute, that tried ending its flightswith some decidedly unfriendlytelegraph wires which did absolutelynothing for its subsequent trim. Greatstreamlined days those – until DickKorda wrote ‘finis’ to the streamlinersyndrome with his slab-sidedmasterpiece.

About this time I helped to run thePortsmouth Model Airplane Club andfounded the Kendal Grammar School

Model Aircraft Club. There were lots ofkeen aerobods, but then yours trulyand some of his senior pupils gotmixed up with the RAF for a five year stint.

Head Master amused

Back in the teaching biz once more,founded the Impington Village CollegeModel Aeroplane Club in 1946 and

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A youthful-looking Ray Malmström poseswith his Sullivan’s 1938 Wakefield model.The original photo has no date on it butwas probably taken a short while beforeRay changed his model aircraft for thereal thing after joining the RAF.

Ray with two of his greatest friends, Doug McHard and Derek Camps. Ray isholding the model Doug built for Ray’s 80th birthday.The model is a twin engineAvenger – the plans of which were published in Aeromodeller during June 1943.

like the famous brand of whisky(thank you I don’t mind if I do), theIVCMAC is still going very strong.I managed to get aeromodelling intothe official curriculum and discoveredwhat a help it was to both the brightlads and particularly to those whomeducationists describe rather delicatelyas ‘the less able’. There was nothing‘less able’ about them when they gotthe feeling of balsa in their souls andthe lovely reek of dope up their‘hooters’. Even the headmaster smiledas their gliders glided and theircontrol-liners circulated and their freeflight jobs, washed out most of theglass in the greenhouse of thegardening section! Now some of thelads of those days and since, aredesigning and building better than the‘ole man’.

So, I was beaten often and that wasright and proper and gave me a lot ofsatisfaction. Good to see the youngergeneration taking up the challenge.Some say I can still give them a runfor their money. Perhaps, or maybethey are just angling for a cuppa atmy expense in the college commonroom!

Heck of a lot of memories –contests, meetings, rallies,demonstrations, static displays andabove all, the privilege of knowingsome of the greats – P. E. Norman,Pete Wright (high speed and headgears), Bill ‘Gipsy’ Dean, George Fuller(Dixielander aloft). Rushy, Houlberg,Evans, Boys, Towner and those stillprominently ‘in-the-vigour’, as theChinese used to describe their warriorsin battle. All of them aeromodellerswho set standards and technicalachievements for me and the rest ofus lesser mortals, who alas, I couldseldom, if ever, emulate but for whoseinfluence I have been eternally gratefuland indeed continue to be.

Smells of cement and dope

My cartoon period, not to be confusedwith Picasso and his Blue Period, forAeromodeller and Model Aircraft wasa lot of laughs. Cartoonists sometimessay they lack friends, but I never did acartoon of an aerobod without makinga new friend. This says a lot for thereal friendliness of the aeromodellingfraternity, for some of my efforts couldhardly be described as flattering.

The majority of Ray’s vast designoutput was created in the study ofhis large house at Harlton nearCambridge, which he shared withSheila his wife of more than 50years.

From the start of their long andhappy marriage Sheila became usedto the constant smell of balsacement and dope wafting throughevery room of the house. Also shesoon became used to the endlessphone calls and stacks of lettersfrom aeromodellers around theworld. She rarely complained. Sheilatook the line that no matter howmuch she or the family wouldcomplain, Ray would simply sitdown at the drawing board andstart designing another masterpiece.

In his late years his daily trips tofly his latest creation on the slopesof the large hill just across the roadfrom his home and his weekly 25mile round trip to Impington VillageCollege became too much for him– but he remained in close phonetouch with club members wantingto know how his creations wereperforming in their hands.

In the last few years of his life Rayand Sheila moved to Norwich to beclose to their family. It was therethat he died peacefully in his sleepjust before Christmas 2001 at theage of 87. He often joked about“going to that great flying field inthe sky”.There is no doubt that themoment he reached there, outcame his note book and pencil andhe began sketching yet anotherdesign. It is just as likely that he hasstarted a heavenly model flying club.

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A newly-built Cri Cri stands on the workbench in the study of the Malmströms’ homeat Harlton near Cambridge.The study saw the design, construction and even testflying of hundreds of Ray’s designs.

The Maestro, as many club memberscalled Ray, poses with his Hellstarequipped with a dropable “bomb”.