Hi
Here is an old TV ad for the Remco Voice Control Kennedy Airport playset. A playmat with buildings, and planes. A record player in the control tower gives instructions to you over a set of headphones, and you follow the directions to take off or land.
Then we have the Schaper U-Fly-It, in which you control a Piper Seneca twin-engined plane on a line, and land it on the runway.
This one has more detail on the U-Fly-It range. There were sets with the Seneca, an old biplane Barnstormer set - complete with barn, and an aircraft carrier set based on the carrier USS Enterprise, on which you attempted to land an F-4 Phantom II jet. This is even shown on the US Johnny Carson show. An updated version was still available at the time this video was made, but the Phantom carried the markings of the Thunderbirds, which was the USAF, not Navy, aerobatic team. Why would an Air Force jet be landing on a Navy carrier ? Great history lesson.
Finally, the Airfix Flight Deck set, in which you have to land a Royal Navy Phantom on a carrier deck, which I assume is meant to be HMS Ark Royal (she was the only British carrier with Phantoms).. The black and yellow tail markings look vaguely like the bird markings of 767 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm, which was the RN Phantom training unit. But the numbers on the fuselage seem too low, 126, while the real Phantoms of 767 had numbers from about 150 up to about 159 judging from photos - or am I being far too pedantic again ?
The Airfix Super Flight Deck set has a Phantom in 892 Squadron markings, which was the operational unit assigned to the Ark Royal, but the plane is bright yellow !!! I really do think that deserves three exclamation marks. I have no idea what the number 56 on the flight deck is meant to be - Ark Royal was R09.
I should not think too many of these toys would survive today, as the planes must have taken a real battering from rookie pilots.
Paul Adams from New Zealand
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