<p>It is with much regret that West London Model Aeroplane Club announces the sad loss of its Life President Lloyd Ressler, who passed away peacefully at home on 20th April with his wife Pat at his side, at his side. Lloyd was our club’s Life President for many years, after stepping down as Chairman and was instrumental in its original development at Stockley Park when the club was the West Drayton MAC, the later relocation of the club to Springwell Lane back in the 80’s and its renaming to West London MAC. He was a proactive and supportive member of the club through the many changes that followed and it cannot be underestimated how much the club is indebted to his efforts over the years. He was an extremely talented and successful aero-modeller and continued with this until he stepped back to pursue his many other pastimes including golf and building model boats.</p>
<p>He will be sorely missed by his Wife Pat, his 4 children, 8 grandchildren, family and friends.</p>
<p>Mathew Dawson WLMAC Chairman</p>
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<p><strong>The following reminiscence is from Bob Howard, a WLMAC member that knew Lloyd well and when he was in his prime.</strong></p>
<p>I first met Lloyd Ressler in the early 1980s, when I applied to join what was then West Drayton MAC. Lloyd had taken over the club from its founder, Terry Melleny. The club was flying on land owned by Drinkwater Sabey.<br /> <br /> When the land was scheduled to be redeveloped to create Stockley Park Business Estate, Lloyd worked tirelessly to find us a new site. By this time I was working with Lloyd on the club committee, and we were all mightily relieved when he found our present site. I understand that Lloyd bought shares in the company to help us secure the rights to fly there.<br /> <br /> Lloyd was by this time already interested in large scale models, including a Boeing P26 Peashooter, a Piper J3 Cub and the famous “Mr. Mulligan”, a Howard DGA-6 racing aircraft from the 1930s. Many of his models had Zenoah or similar petrol power, but he also had a very rare Kalt, one of the first four-stroke engines available to model flyers.<br /> <br /> Lloyd was very active within the LMA, and on several occasions he invited me along to their events, including a static show at the Hendon RAF Museum.<br /> <br /> Lloyd was a skilled engineer. He already knew Neil “Mr Laser Engines” Tidey, and had several Laser engines. When he decided to build a large Cessna 310, he decided that a flat twin was the best way to go, but Laser Engines only produced V-Twins. Lloyd sourced a number of Laser components from Neil, and built his own flat twins, making his own camshafts, double throw crankshafts, and crankcases. The engines worked so well that he then build an in-line 4 cylinder engine for his Tiger Moth, again using Laser pistons, cylinders and cylinder heads. All of these engines required con-rods with removable end caps, as per full-size practice.<br /> <br /> In later years, he tended towards vintage models. In 1989, he scaled up the<br /> 1940 “Spook” from 48” to 96” for Laser four-stroke power, the plans for which were published in RCM&E. Not content with this, in 2002 he scaled it back down to 40” for electric power.<br /> <br /> His contribution to our club, and to model flying in general, is beyond measure.</p>
