Thanks to all that made this year's Fun Fly a success! There are a couple slide shows from the event.
Lakeland's History
(Thanks to our club's newsletter editor for the following information)
The following information is from one of our club members:
The club was founded, rather informally, in 1954. The original flying site was the Pabst Farm. There were no meetings at that time and the membership roster was unrecorded. Members just showed up at the field on Saturdays and Sundays and flew.
In 1956, the Club became more formal. There were 14 members on the roster. Post cards were sent out to the members when a meeting was scheduled. At that time, the Club did not have a formal meeting place, so the members took turns hosting the meetings in their homes.
In 1965, the Club began holding their meetings at the Guaranty Bank, which was located at 126th and Capitol Drive, Waukesha, WI. Some time between then and the mid-80's, the Club moved it's meeting place to the Equity Saving Bank at 145th and Capitol Drive. From there, we moved to our present location in March of 2002.
The Club logo was chosen from a choice of six entries by a membership vote.
In the mid-90's, an effort was made to change the Club's logo. A half dozen or so offerings were presented to the membership for consideration, and after several months of discussion, it was voted to retain our present logo, mostly because of it's simplicity.
The field itself had a paved runway which was shared with full-scale planes from the Waukesha Airport that occasionally used the strip for practicing touch-and-goes. At some point in the late 70's the club moved to it's present location at the Oconomowoc Airport.
The notes also included a clipping from an unidentified publication that documented some of the early modeling activity in the area. An article entitled "Waukesha's model airplane factory and first radio controlled model" reads in part: Going back to May 1941, we find a group of 16 year old Waukesha boys making the headlines, almost from coast to coast. The reason at this time was that they had a year's success behind them producing and marketing high quality model airplane kits under the name of "Supreme Model Supply Company".
Victor Italiano, then 19, and his brother Anthony, 18,
started the business with the help of a group of young 16-year-old boys
who cut out parts and assembled kits.
Wholesale outlets were established in many parts of the
country and the boys made quite a success until World War II curtailed
their efforts.