Conex History

Does the above photo ring a bell? It should...that's former club president Bob Lippman working on the mural featured on the club's Conex box, a project Bob promised to the club many years ago...and one he certainly delivered! 

This page is dedicated to Bob's incredible effort to transform what was a rusty old storage box, into a lasting addition to the North Country Flying Tigers airfield. Let's begin with the photos that inspired it all...

And now the story behind the Conex restoration project, as told by Bob Lippman, himself...

"The Club obtained the Conex in 2017, if memory serves.  I probably have the meeting minutes in my spiral binder still!  I was advocated for this with Brian Rozell, as we needed more storage space.  There was pushback at the meeting over it being ugly.  I said “if we buy it, I will paint a flying tigers mural on it and make it look great.”  This was at a meeting in the winter of 2017, held at the Chase Center (before we moved our meetings to Pizzeria Uno so we could all have dinner during off-seasons meetings).

The big Shark Mouth facing the road was done first, and completed in time for the 2017 Fun Fly, and featured in the August 2017 Model Aviation Magazine “District 2 News” section.

Inspired by this, I began the field facing P-40 in the fall of 2017.  I had some graphic design classes and some mechanical drafting background, and did the initial outline by making a grid, using chalk.  I kept working all day on the first “draft”, finishing the outline in black paint by my car’s headlights.  I went back about 20 more times to add details over the course of 2017 and the summer of 2018, so it would look like it does now, in time for our 2018 FunFly.  The P-40 was also featured in “District 2 News”, in a very nice overview of our Club.  Somehow I don’t know the date of the second feature, but I probably have the actual magazine in my workshop somewhere with a Post-It note stuck to it…

When the box originally arrived it was (if I recall) dark blue and quite rusty.  Jon Tessier was a big help to me in scraping off the rust, and he is responsible for putting in side vents and building the interior wooden shelving! Nick Glorioso was our Club’s Field Marshall in 2017, and also helped with scraping the rust off so that I could prime the box, using an airbrush and DTM latex paint."

Wow...what a project! Thank you, Bob, for an incredible effort, and timeless addition to the club's airfield! To view the Conex box and the photos the murals were based on, check our special Gallery feature, 'Portrait of an Artist' right on this site.