SledDawg Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 Recently someone posted the attached amazing photo of the late, great rockstar Roy Orbison on an Airfix Facebook page. He's apparently accepting a big gift pile of Airfix aircraft kits including the then-new B-17, the Wellington, Lancaster and others. An attractive "bird" is is handing them to him. All but one of those models is 1/72 scale, which was not widely adopted in the U.S. at the time. I think those would be pretty rare and expensive import kits back home, and it's obvious that he is very happy to get them! (I wonder what the customs duty was?)Obviously a publicity photo, I wonder what the circumstances of this photo were? I suspect that that this happened while he was in the U.K. for the May-June1963 tour with then-rising Beatles. Someone posted that this this photo was published in a 1963 issue of the Airfix magazine, but I have looked through all of them on the Internet Archive site(See sample here: https://archive.org/details/airfix-magazine-apr-63/ and I do not see it.It's of course well known that Roy was an expert, enthusiastic aircraft historian and modeler. There's an interview with him in some fan mag in the '60s where he holds forth on the Martin Baker M.B. 5 as his favorite plane! Who but a fanatic would have even known about it back then?I wonder what happened to his collection. Man, I would love to have a model airplane built by Roy Orbison. Wow.https://www.modelaviationdigital.com/modelaviation/november_2018/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1433640#articleId1433640Can anyone shed light on this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilbert_H Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 Comes from an old Airfix Magazine, 1960's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilbert_H Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 Airfix Magazine December 1964 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailorman Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 Roy Orbison was in the UK in June 1963, July 1972 and March 1977. The packaging for the Flying Fortress is an early type and I doubt Airfix would have presented that in '72 or '77.I've looked through my 1963 magazines for June, July and August '63 and I didn't come across that photo. I'll try to have another look later.Patrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peebeep Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 The photo is the occasion of the Official Roy Orbison Fan Club UK presenting him with a bundle of kits as a gift from all his fans in the UK. Date was early sixties, somewhere in my loft archive I still have a copy of the Airfix Magazine in which it was published. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailorman Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 Found it! It's the December 1964 issue. I'll post a pic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailorman Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 Here's the piece. Right click on the image and then click on "open in a new tab." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailorman Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 Wish I'd seen you post earlier Gilbert! It would have saved me rummaging through my old Airfix Mags .........Still that's something I enjoy doing anyway! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilbert_H Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 Patrick, I went through at least 30 Airfix Mags, only to find the Roy Orbison article on my PC in a PDF scan…Every time I rummage through these old Airfix magazines, I am surprised by the wealth of information they contain. A real joy !Gilbert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SledDawg Posted February 4, 2022 Author Share Posted February 4, 2022 Sailorman,Wow - that's great! Thank you so much. I didn't go far enough in the collection to see that. And it's good to confirm that this was while he was there on the Beatles tour!I think I will share it on that FB page - there are probably folks there who are not on this site.Thanks again!Dave G. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogsbody Posted February 5, 2022 Share Posted February 5, 2022 Lots of old Airfix mags here: https://archive.org/search.php?query=airfix+magazine&and%5B%5D=subject%3A%22airfix+magazine%22&sort=titleSorter&form=MY01SV&OCID=MY01SVChris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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