Gary Anderson – Co-Modeler of the Year - 1989

Gary Anderson started flying with the Torrey Pines Gulls sometime in the mid-1980s with focus on slope flying at Torrey. For instance, at the TPG unlimited slope race on August 2, 1986, Gary placed first in a field of 11 flying his Midway Model Company Gnome polyhedral ship against others including Hobie Hawk, Spirit of 76, 4x4 and T-bird to name a few. This was for the “rudder class” rather than the “aileron class” which had the hot rods. The Gnome was no hot rod.

Sal Peluso – 1989 Co-Modeler of the Year

Gary lived in the south bay very close to Montgomery-Waller Park. At the time TPG thermal contests varied monthly between three fields – Hourglass Field in Mira Mesa, Bay Terraces Park near Paradise Hills/Bonita, and Montgomery-Waller Park in South Bay. Given the proximity, Gary started flying in TD contests in 1989 in both standard class and 2-meter. He volunteered to store winches and such and he was practicing regularly on the weekends even when there weren’t contests. Gary helped promote TPG’s use of that Montgomery-Waller Park. He started flying a Sisquoc, one of John Menard’s designs. Gary CD’ed the October 1989 TD contest at Montgomery-Waller Park, ending up in 3rd place at that event. Gary finished 1989 in 6th place overall in open class out of 32 pilots, and 5th overall in 2-meter out of 27.

Gnome 2M kit

Scale soaring was also on the rise at that time in the TPG and Gary Anderson took interest in models of early WWII training gliders. He had a ¼ scale model Taylorcraft TG-6 for a while that he flew at Torrey on occasion. It looked really good! Gary Anderson made considerable effort for the club and the membership voted to co-award the 1898 Modeler of the Year to both Sal Peluso (covered last month) and Gary Anderson. The trophy presentation was made at the February awards banquet meeting at 94th Aero Squadron in Kearney Mesa. Given there were two awardees it was agreed that Gary would keep the trophy for the first six months of 1990, then Sal for the latter half.

In 1991, Gary became TPG Contest Coordinator and he introduced some policies that improved the fun at contests. By the end of the year, more pilots were flying in contests and having a good time, in both thermal and slope. There was even a pizza party after the last contest of the year. Eventually Gary Anderson left the area, I believe to the Pacific Northwest, and continued his passion for RC soaring.