suitcase

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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.

andrewtexas123

Sorry to hear about this, sounds like a great guy and a person who will be remembered. That looks like a nice plane! Im jelouse[]

FERNDALE AIR FORCE

Suitcase, I read earlier that he was sick. Sadly, I never met Dave. My condolences to you and to his family. Tim George

tWestie

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.

revens104

David was one of the best people i knew. I grew up with the family, as time went on we drifted. Me and Dan were childhood friends. I learned alot from David(aka Mr.Robelen to me). He would take us into the (NASA) wind tunnels and let us watch the testing every now and then....i remember when he built the spin tunnel. I wished i had been able to thank him for all i learned from him. Alot of his knowledge was irreplaceable, and his passed on knowledge helped me out through life as a pilot,a mechanic,an engineer quite a few times. Think back to those days often, like today. He was one if a kind. God bless to the family and his friends i didn't know.