Jim Walker's Ceiling Walker

Everyone remembers this wonderful and simple flying wonder, the Jim Walker Ceiling Walker. This model "helicopter" is similiar to the toy that inspired the Wright Brothers and issued the birth of aviation.

On the left is the first Ceiling Walker box, next is a later edition and the one on the right is
the Pactra version that was produced after Jim Walker's death in 1958.

 

At American Junior Classics we have the last unused original Ceiling Walker
parts from the factory, as you can see here, ready to build a few new models.

Detailed Ceiling Walker image from our stock of original parts. We will be building
some new Ceiling Walkers and videotaping them soon for you to see.

 

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The following short story appeared in the "Model of the Month" column
- Air Trails Magazine, May 1950

"Jim Walker is at it again! This time his A-J concern has a slick, inexpensive 'copter"

TWICE a year a circus comes to New York. One is for the kiddies. You can see that at Madison Square Garden, with elephants, three rings, trapeze artists, clowns, and all. The other, if you happen to be in the right business, is the annual toy show, held in a couple of the larger hotels which turn over numerous floors to exhibitors and buyers from all over America. Of the two shows, the zaniest things last year took place on the seventh floor of the New Yorker Hotel, for the toy show had Jim Walker, the fabulous presi-dent of American Junior Aircraft Co.

To be sure, other model plane manufacturers have been represented for years at the toy show, but they are kit producers who display with decorum and book orders with dignity. Walker, who specializes in ready-to-fly stuff, was a one-man indoor air show, performing impartially for friends, casual visitors, buyers, reporters, and press photographers of the metropolitan dailies who somehow had heard of his man-from-Mars helmet and the sonic glider that answered its master's voice. But the gimmick that stole the show was a mere balsa strip, a bent-wood prop at either end, and a rubber-band motor between to make it perk. This was the Ceiling Walker, a frustrated helicopter.

Its antics in trying to escape skyward through the ceiling are what make the kids whoop with joy. Spinning like a whirling dervish, the Ceiling Walker pops up to the ceiling in an instant, then stays there like a fly on an upside down stroll. It may "walk" all over the ceiling before it winds down. Outdoors it is a barrel of fun, especially if you get the anti-torque prop slightly out of position. Then the CW tears around like a blindfolded duck. For its slight power it shames an r.o.g. when flown as a kind off push-pull what-is-it. What makes it work?

Well, first of all, the accompanying picture is better than a thousand words of description. The prop at the lower end is the one that does the work, being connected by the usual bearing and shaft to the rubber loop. The prop at the top is what a Communist would describe as reactionary; attached firmly to the stick with a rubber band, it simply turns the opposite way. You wind the model, hold it out in front with the fixed prop pointing at the ceiling, and let it rip. As the factory assembles the thing, it wants to go straight up. But slide the dead prop along the stick and the Ceiling Walker is as much fun as a puss with catnip.

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