Sig 1/6 clipped wing Cub and Citabria

Originally a Chuck Hollinger design ( Jan 1955 Air Trails ), I received a kit for Christmas ( 1987 ) or my birthday ( 1988 ), can't remember which.  I do remember sitting in class, reading model airplane magazines.  One of the planes that I really wanted, was not the Cub, but the Sig Citabria.  In any case, I tried to get the shop teacher to let me build the kit as my wood working project.  He had flown a real Cub, but he didn't go for it.  So, instead, I built a flight box.  Throughout high school, I flew this Cub.  It would fly for 45 minutes on a tank of fuel.  One day, I was doing touch and gos.  There was a senior club member who was waiting for the channel ( we used 72 Mhz back then ), unbeknownst to me.  Well, I guess he got frustrated and decided to "shoot me down" as I turned on to base ( this was the same guy that used to drive me to the meetings before I had a driver's licence and also one of the instructors who awarded me my wings! ).  The plane went out of control and spun into a heavily wooded area.  This other member had a big grin on his face when he said, "you finally lost one, eh?".  The Cub was found hanging in a tree, only lightly damaged, mostly to the wing.  So, it was rebuilt with a full span wing and sold to another club member.

Others witnessed the event and I guess word got back to Don Prentice, who must have felt sorry for me, because he gave me a Sig Citabria that he had built 20 years before, the same year I was born!
I proceeded to fly the Citabria for a few years and it doubled as a float plane.  It had a Webra 61 blackhead for an engine.

I don't have any photos of the model, but it was cream coloured, not unlike this one,

  It was originally designed by Maxey Hester with a symmetrical wing ( as pictured above ).  Then, they redesigned it with the proper NACA 4412 airfoil because of stall characteristics ( so they said ).

The irony here is that the airplane pictured on the box ( N9020L ) was actually a Decathlon ( Bellanca 8KCAB ) with a symmetrical wing! ( NACA 1412, not quite symmetrical, but close enough! ).

The real airplane crashed on Feb 18, 1971 and the pilot was killed.  Sig finally settled on the scheme we see today.

This plane did beautiful flat spins, with a little opposite aileron.  It took a good 3 turns to recover after centering the controls!  Well, one day, one of the wing struts let go and the wing folded just after takeoff, going into the first ( gentle ) turn.  Of course, Don witnessed the incident!  The engine went into another float plane ( a modified Bud Barkley Cessna 152 trainer ), which crashed when the elevator linkage failed.  The engine/firewall detached and sank to the bottom of the lake at Chippawa Creek Conservation Area, where the club used to have the float fly events.