T&A Hobby Lobby's Month-Long Farewell!

Yippie on display in balsa wood-form at T&A Hobby Lobby. The late Tony LeVier and others from the Lockheed pilots contingent were frequent visitors to T&A in the 1960s and 1970s, before CALAC shut down and Lockheed moved its Headquarters to Georgia.

Electric flyers of the modern era of RC Flying. Addie indicates she prefers electric over the old, sticky gasoline engines and glow fuels of the past. A trio of Farman monoplanes grace the ceiling at T&A, two with tissue fabric, the third covered with silk. Though approximately three feet in length and span, each weighs in at less than one pound, and all are ideal for electric power.

And then everyone started pouring to the front with kits they picked up on the West Wall.

Tony at work in the Balsa Jungle that is the East Wall at T&A. Well stocked, T&A Hobby Lobby is going to be missed at its physical location on Victory and Hollywood Way in Burbank, California, but will return online before the year is out with a store and a nostalgia section devoted to the 55 years spent in the San Fernando Valley area.

According to Tony, a large number of Lockheed Engineers would come in to work on balsa designs before proceeding to the Draftsman's Table to design a Lockheed or its components. Lockheed has built a number of aircraft in Burbank, including the P-38, Constellation, Constitution, JetStar prototype, P-2V Neptune, P-3 Orion and F-117A Nighthawk.

A Mig 15/F-86 Sabrejet combo on display at the front counter entrance of T&A Hobby Lobby.

Classic kits on the East Wall behind the front counter at T&A Hobby Lobby in Burbank. A Classic Eindecker model can be seen to the right.

Some of the new era RC and Electric kits on display at the front of the store.

After purchsing a series of kits from Tony, this customer went to work helping Tony re-organize the displays with kits that were examined off the shelf by customers.

A view of the Collection hanging from the ceiling at the store in Burbank. Addie has lost count of the number of models she has built, and has indicated @ three a week over a 55 year period, and the ability to build one kit in a night, minus coverings. That equates to approximately 8,580 flying kits over five and a half decades, and she still has other works underway...

Tony and Addie in 1946, five years before the T&A Hobby Lobby was founded.

Hard to find Curtiss and Loening aircraft model kits await their buyers at T&A. And these are new makes!