Written by MA staff (12/2010); Reformatted by JS (12/2010)
Dick Hansen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1932. He was eight years old when he purchased his first Comet kit, a PT-17. Dick recalled, “With two wings, I thought it was twice as good as a monoplane.”
Dick’s love of biplanes, World War I aiplanes, and aircraft of the Golden Age is still strong 70 years later.
In 1941, Dick moved to Portland, Oregon, and joined the Portland Grasshoppers Free Flight Club. He studied technical aviation and in 1949, as a junior in high school, joined the US Naval Reserves and earned his private pilot’s license.
Dick served two years of active duty at Anacostia Naval Air Station (NAS), then four years in the reserves with Patrol Squadron VP-891 at Sand Point NAS in Seattle, Washington. He continued enjoying both full-scale and model airplanes and built a Mac II transmitter and Lorenz twin-tube receiver in the late 1950s.
Dick was a founder and first treasurer of the Portland SkyKnights R/C Club. In 1966, he drew plans for a Curtiss JN-4D Jenny that was featured in the January 1968 issue of American Aircraft Modeler.
In 1989, Dick won the Precision Scale Nats with his Nieuport 11 and placed second at the 1992 AMA Invitational Scale Shootout in Muncie, Indiana. Beginning in 1986, he has qualified and competed in 24 consecutive US Scale Masters Championships. He was awarded the Harris Lee Lifetime Achievement Award by the US Scale Masters in 2009.
Between 1993 and 1995, he worked with movie director Ben Burt, coordinating and flying World War I models for The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Attack of the Hawkmen, a made-for-TV movie released in 1995.
Dick is perhaps best known in the Northeast as the originator of Hansen Scale Aviation Videos, the most popular access show in Clackamas County, Oregon. The show airs six times a week and potentially reaches a half- million viewers. It also airs weekly in Portland and Multnomah County. The show is down-to-earth, fun to watch, and Dick’s narration personifies the character of model aviation.
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