Jim Gager’s first modeling experience was at five years old, and he still has the scar to show for it. His older brother, who was twelve at the time, was into building gas-powered free flight airplanes, and his work area and tools were completely off limits. One day he forgot to lock the little room that he used as a shop, and while he was out Jim decided to build a little toss glider. Inexperience with using a very sharp Xacto knife led to a very deep cut to the left thumb as well as some profuse bleeding. No way to hide it. Jim had to show his mom and then off to the doctor for stitches. After a period of time, maybe months or a year of pestering his brother to show him how to work with modeling tools, he began to teach Jim how to build models safely. This is where Jim’s journey starts.

About 5 years later, one of the local grocery stores in a Chicago suburb (Harvey, IL) held a model building contest. There were several classes, and Jim fit into the 8-12 year old group. The store provided the model kit, most likely a Comet kit, of the stick and tissue fashion. The rules were pretty simple; other than using the kit and no adult help allowed, there were no rules. Jim built the kit and instead of using tissue as covering, he covered it with 1/32" sheet balsa and finished it with automotive lacquer borrowed from his brother's stash. He doesn’t recall how the winners were picked, but he won his class. Not without controversy though as some adults thought he had cheated by using balsa sheet instead of covering. None the less, he was awarded the first prize, a .35 powered U-Control kit called the Continental. He was ten years old and his only source of income was picking up discarded pop bottles along the highways. There was no way he could afford to build it, buy an engine or fuel for it, not to mention the support equipment to be able to fly it. Jim went down to the local hobby shop and managed to convince them to take the Continental in trade for a ready-to-fly Cox kit. This is where Jim moved on from static kits to flying, specifically U-Control flying. It's a good thing that Cox plane was plastic as it took a lot of abuse while he learned to fly. He continued to build U-Control until his mid-teens. At this point in his life other distractions prevented him from continuing with model aviation.

A number of years later now married, while on his way home from work, he noticed his younger brother and his friend in that same grocery parking lot attempting to fly a Cox model plane. Jim stopped to help, and that night the modeling bug bit again. That night he went to the hobby shop, bought a U-Control kit, and started building it on the kitchen table. Jim flew U-control for a number of years at the Chicago U-Liners field at the Kickapoo Forest Preserve field in Harvey. This would have been the mid-sixties at which time U-Control was falling from favor for R/C models.

At the south side of the forest preserve there was a small group of R/C pilots; he watched them over a period of time and took the plunge shortly thereafter. His first R/C unit was a used Orbit radio (big mistake, there was a reason it was used); the next mistake was the airplane choice. Jim bought a popular bi-plane kit, not a good choice to learn on. After getting it built and set up, he went out to the field to get some help in flying it. Nobody else showed up. Same thing the next time he went out. After hanging around awhile (bored), Jim thought he'd just fire it up, tune the engine, and taxi around a bit to check things out. Everything seemed fine until he gave it full throttle and it took off. It was magnificent! A beautiful takeoff, airplane climbing at a steep angle, throttle back to level off, and a stall into a spin. Jim had no idea as to how to get it out of the spin, and in the end watched it smash into the ground. A total wreck.

Shortly after that Jim moved to Kankakee, IL, but there was very little R/C activity. He built a trainer plane over the next couple of months. He talked the local park folks into allowing him to fly on part of the unused portion of the park. Jim taught himself to fly R/C. From then on Jim flew what were commonly called pattern planes and participated in some competition pattern flying. For fun he did also sport fly.

Early in the 1970s he watched .15 sized R/C racing getting started, and the bug bit hard. This is eventually what became Quarter Midget .15. His first pylon plane was a Rivets, from R/C Modeler magazine plans, and it was off to the races. Times were great, new more powerful engines, new airplane designs, fiberglass and foam short kits, the elimination of the required hands-off idle rule at the starting line…a fun time. Jim got tired of building and paying for other people’s airplane kits so he joined forces with his flying partner and best friend, Allen Booth. They decided to make their own airplane. With an awful lot of Al’s help (Allen carved the fuselage plug for the mold, designed the airfoil as well as taught Jim the skill of making molds and cutting foam wing cores). The first plane was the Estrellita. The plane was a success from the start and people started pressing Jim to sell kits. This is where Gager Aircraft Sales (“It’s a G.A.S.” was the slogan) started, a short kit business, i.e, glass fuselage, glass cowl, foam wing cores, pre-cut tail surfaces, plans, torque rods, elevator horn, and landing gear. The popularity of QM .15 was growing and with the demand for kits, he wound up making (9) nine different QM .15 kits over the ensuing next several years. It wasn’t uncommon for a local mid-west event to have 25 to 30 entries, and at a big event like Rough River or the Silver Cup, 40 or more entries happened on more than one occasion. In fact, one of the high-lights of his modeling career occurred at a Silver Cup race. There were 51 entries and 29 of them were from G.A.S. kits. With his visibility in racing and kitting, when an opening for a Pylon columnist opened up at Bill Northrop’s “Model Builder Magazine,” Bill contacted Jim at one of the Toledo Weak Signals shows and asked him to give writing the column a try. That was in the mid to the end of the 1970’s. Jim ended up writing the column for six years. Having burnt out on the constant monthly column deadlines, he decided to stop writing the column. After some time passed and he had recuperated somewhat, “Model Airplane News” came along and asked him to write some racing articles for them, which he did for the next couple of years. By this time racing was in another decline, and they wound up dropping the column.

Unfortunately, QM .15 had evolved to pretty much a one-engine event. Speeds had increased to the point that a lot of sport flyers weren’t comfortable with flying and a lot of the average grass fields weren’t suitable for the airplanes. Participation started to dwindle. At that point the governing board launched an effort to slow things down and make the planes, engine requirements, and noise levels more manageable for the average flyer and club fields. The suggestion was made to use the then-current Quickie 500 engines with their throttles and mufflers and make the planes a little larger than the then current Formula 1 rules. Jim built a mold and then a model for a test case and allowed it to be test flown by others at one of the Rough River contests. The airplane turned out to be slower than what we anticipated, so the airplane specs were reduced in size. With that, the QM .15 rules were modified to accommodate the new airplanes and Quarter .40 was born. This led to a whole bunch of new airplane designs, including two that Jim produced. During this time he also had expanded his kit business to include three sport scale models and one Formula 1 kit.

Jim also consulted with “Top Flight Models” for a couple of years assisting with designs and manufacturing processes and working with their ad agency on advertising copy. Jim continued modeling until about 2005 when he gave in to his long buried desire to work on old cars and trucks. With time for only one all-consuming hobby, model airplanes drew the short straw. Jim recently said, “One thing that continually surprises me is the parallels in modeling and old car/truck restoration. And actually, in life itself.”

Jim was a very skilled builder. In fact Jim often built and painted models for other pilots. He was always active and usually had inventory of kits and fully built or partially built models available for purchase. Jim’s contributions to the pylon community span 3 decades and have had significant impact on our sport. Gager Aircraft Sales changed the face of QM15 racing. Jim was a long standing member of the AMA contest board. When Jim agreed to change the rules and create Q40 it was not popular with the old guard. Jim and others leading the charge took some serious heat for the major rule change that was about to happen. He stood tall and strong and was able to work out the bugs. This foresight changed our sport.

Jim Gager In His Booth At A Trade Show

Jim Gager QM 15 Model

Jim Gager At The Races

Jim Gager And P51