This young woman is now close to 90 years old, but she is shown here, on the cover of QST for August 1940, inspecting a radio controlled aircraft. The accompanying article by Clarence E. Bohnenblust, W9PEP, (probably her father) describes the radio controls. He was approached some time earlier by one C.H. Siegfried, who designed and constructed the gasoline-powered airplane, with a request to design radio control gear. For a transmitter, a 20-watt five meter unit was used. Onboard the aircraft, the superregenerative receiver shown here was used, and could reliably pick up the signal a mile away.

It was determined that four controls were necessary: rudder left and right, elevators up and down, motor speed high or low, and motor shut off. This was accomplished with an elaborate system of cams, operated by a pulsed signal from the transmitter. For pulses, an ordinary telephone dial was used. Each pulse moved the cams one notch, and they were held in place as long as the carrier was received. When the carrier was cut, it reset to a neutral position, ready fpr the next command.

The magazine notes that the airplane was successfully demonstrated at the ARRL Midwest Division Convention in Wichita in April, and was going to be seen again at the ARRL National Convention in Chicago later that year.