Meet Nick Ziroli Sr.

The Other Side of the Treeline

Rachelle Haughn Interviews Nick Ziroli Sr. 

As seen in the Winter 2013 issue of Park Pilot.

There isn’t a modeling genre that Nick Ziroli Sr. hasn’t mastered—Control Line (CL), RC, Free Flight (FF), and helicopters—he’s flown it all. However, it’s more likely that Nick is better-known to you for what he has designed, rather than what he has flown.

He founded Nick Ziroli Plans in the 1970s, and pilots who have built their airplanes from Ziroli plans have placed well in competitions such as Top Gun, the U.S. Scale Masters, and the Nats. Nick also built and flew the giant-scale Fokker Dr.I triplane models for the 1981 motion picture Neighbors, starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.

Nick took a breather before the Scale Masters qualifier to speak with Rachelle Haughn.

Rachelle Haughn: What were the first models you built and flew?

Nick Ziroli Sr.: I was seven or eight years old, and they were little Comet stick models with cardboard formers. You couldn’t get glue or balsa then, but my father was a carpenter and would bring home pine strips and other woods for my models. That was my life and the models I flew during World War II—anything that would fly. 

(Left): This is Nick Ziroli Sr. with his first Giant Scale model, a 93-inch wingspan F4U Corsair. The photograph was taken in the late 1970s. Nick said the model was a “real monster.” His bent-wing fighter was powered by an O.S. .60 on a Du-Bro reduction drive, and later by one of the first Quadra 35cc gasoline engines. Nick still sells the popular Corsair plans through his plans service. (Right): Hamming it up in 1943, Nick shows off with a pair of 25¢ Comet stick-and-tissue kit models. Era-appropriate, Nick’s P-47 is on the six of the Fw 190.

RH: What about Major Model and Manufacturing Co.?

NZ: I had a lot of designs published in Flying Models magazine. My first one was back in the late ’50s, when Don McGovern was the editor. I had articles in Model Airplane News and Model Aviation, and had published a couple of World War I model designs—a 40-size Fokker Eindecker and a French Morane-Saulnier. They were really good airplanes, and they were popular. I tried kitting them, hand-cutting each one of the kits in my basement.

I started making kits full time. I soon outgrew the basement and built a garage in my back yard on the island (Long Island, New York). That’s when the Rhinebeck WW I Jamboree started in upstate New York. My kits were very popular at Rhinebeck.

In the late 1970s, I got out of the hobby business and more into the industrial business, creating feasibility models for Grumman, Republic, NASA, and other aviation and aerospace companies.

When my son, Nick Jr., got out of high school, he started doing the kits. That got him really into the plastics business, making parts for vacuum-formed packaging, and displays for the cosmetic industries.

RH: How did your involvement in the Neighbors movie project come about?

NZ: The producers were looking for a model for that movie. They contacted Walt Schroder, editor of Model Airplane News, and he told them about me. I built and flew two 1/4-scale Fokker triplanes for them. Neighbors was filmed on Staten Island, New York. I met John Belushi.

In the scene that I flew in, Dan carried the model in the back of his vehicle, then was out flying it. I had to do some loops around some fake power lines. The model crashed and got stuck in the fake power lines, but in the movie, it ended up crashing into Dan’s house and burning the house down.

I still sell the plans for the Fokker Dr.1 triplane. The model has a 63-inch wingspan. That’s big enough to be a Giant Scale airplane, so I added it to my plans list.

RH: What was the first contest you competed in, and when was it?

NZ: Most likely a FF contest when I lived in Connecticut. I probably was 15 or 16 then. I still fly in competition, and usually fly in the U.S. Scale Masters. I wanted to compete in the Scale Masters qualifier this weekend, but I couldn’t. I just had some work done on my eyes. I will be flying Top Gun, for sure. I’ve flown in almost every one.

Now, I just compete in Giant Scale and Scale. I used to do CL—everything, you name it. I learned to fly helicopters on a Du-Bro Whirlybird 505, one of the first RC helicopters ever produced in the US.

RH: What inspired you to start your company,  Nick Ziroli Plans?

NZ: Nick Ziroli Plans was an ongoing thing from my first model business, Major Model and Manufacturing Company. Of course, the Corsair was the first one I produced. That was during the time when I was doing both the feasibility work and developing my plans service, but the plans business is the one that stuck. When I look back at some of my earlier plans, I often wonder how I did it all. I’m 77 now. That slows you down, but I always have a new design on my drawing board that I’m working on.

RH: Who operates Nick Ziroli Plans now?

NZ: My son runs the business now, although we always go to the shows together. I enjoy meeting the people who build models that I’ve designed, and I’m there to help answer questions.

Nick Sr. and Jr. attend key hobby shows, including the Weak Signals Toledo Show: R/C Model Expo in Toledo, Ohio, and the WRAM Show (shown here) in New Jersey.

RH: Do you still design any of the models and draw the plans?

NZ: Yes. I still design the models, but not as many as I used to. The most recent one was a 100-inch wingspan Spitfire Mk. V. I still design and build all of the models, and draw the plans. Then I send them to my son.

Nick and his latest design, a 100-inch Supermarine Spitfire Mk-V, were at the 2012 U.S. Scale Masters qualifier in Sarasota, Florida. The inset image is Nick’s Fokker Dr.I triplane from the movie Neighbors. Plans for both of these outstanding examples are available through Nick Ziroli Plans.

RH: How are you spending your time these days? Are you retired?

NZ: I don’t call myself retired; I’m “sorta” retired. I don’t have an eight-hour, paid job, although

I do consulting, currently on drone airplanes in Baltimore. I’ll never be not doing something.

RH: Is there anything else you would like people to know about you?

NZ: This hobby has been my whole life, and it’s been a good life. It really has.

I have a picture of Neil Armstrong hanging on my wall of him with my late wife at the 1996 Celebration of Eagles at AMA Headquarters in Muncie, Indiana. I did an interview with Robert “Hoot” Gibson at the Galveston, Texas, air races, and I have a CD of me doing an interview with Hoot and altitude-record-holder Bruce Bohannon.

If there was any one important thing that I’d want people to know about me, it’s that I’m among the few who have made their hobby their business. It’s been great. There’s hardly a day that goes by that I’m not carving, sanding or painting balsa wood.