Re: [VAL] Wally's original plans built trailers

["Fred Coldwell" <agrijeep@xxxxxxxxx>]

Royce:

     Forrest and I both, perhaps unintentionally, may have been looking 
for long ago published trailer plans that DIDN'T work. Remember, the 
first trailer plans Wally published (as a publisher) produced a howl of 
protest from people who tried to build a kit designed by an incompetent. 
Those very first plans did not work.  It was only after Wally tried to 
build that trailer himself that he fully realized the plans needed to be 
revised. Did Wally ever publish the revised plans in a magazine?  I 
don't recall, but I had no luck in finding any.  I think these very 
first plans were published in the 1920s in some unnamed (and long 
forgotten) magazine that Wally then owned.

     Years later, Wally eventually produced a set of trailer plans that 
worked but he sold them by mail order.  Those are the plans Dr. Holman, 
Sr. bought and used to built his Torpedo in the 1930s.  So I think the 
plans you are interested in never were published in a magazine.  Only 
small ads for those plans ever appeared, offering plans for sale for 
around $5.00.  Torpedos and other Airstreams were also being built in 
the factory by 1934.

     Today's Wally made a strong point with exclusivity.  Perhaps Dr. 
Holman, Jr., feels it would diminish his father's legacy to have another 
Torpedo around, and therefore keeps the plans under a tight wrap.  I 
requested a set of plans for the VAC Archives over 5 years ago, when Dr. 
Holman, Sr. was alive, but they never arrived at my doorstep.  It also 
would be awkward and damaging to have them unframed and copied on a 
large blueprint copier, as it would likely crumble the fragile paper.

Fred Coldwell