I had a couple of long phone conversations with Bill Kerchenfaut over the last couple of days. I thought his admirers here would like to know that he's doing OK. He's almost certainly not going to Reno this year as he'd have nothing to do and says he'd probably just get more depressed. This will be the first Reno he's not been at since he started crewing for Conquest 1 and Darryl back in the 1960s.
Bill's stories are wonderful -- a conversation with him is always a delight. We talked about how much Crocker loved his airplane and refused to ever change it, and Bill's ideas about ways it could have been made faster. We talked about how Kerch would spend every weekend working on Strega in the early 1990s, and how on Mondays Tiger would be secretly selling Kerch's ideas and innovations to Price's Dago guys. There was an awful lot of Bill Kerchenfaut in Dago long before he ever touched that airplane. We talked about Darryl, and Bruce Boland, and Pete Law, and Ray Poe, and Kenny Burstine, and Skip Holm, and Wiley Sanders. We talked about the great Jim Larsen, who also goes back to Reno's beginning, and how Jim has stopped going to Reno. We wondered about who in RARA might have pissed Jim off enough to drive him away. We talked about the conversation with Dwight Thorn after Dwight found Bill a job in California when Bill left Minnesota, where the two of them had the Eureka moment when they realized that an Allison connecting rod could work in a Merlin. Dwight thought it was an unlikely idea, and Bill said "Well, do you have an Allison rod? Go get it!" They laid the rods side by side on the kitchen table and saw that this really could be done. It took 10 years, but that moment in the 1970s is when it all started.
Kerch is a National Treasure. Fifty years of memories of life on the inside of the Sport.
I wish him well in his life without Air Racing.
Neal
Bill's stories are wonderful -- a conversation with him is always a delight. We talked about how much Crocker loved his airplane and refused to ever change it, and Bill's ideas about ways it could have been made faster. We talked about how Kerch would spend every weekend working on Strega in the early 1990s, and how on Mondays Tiger would be secretly selling Kerch's ideas and innovations to Price's Dago guys. There was an awful lot of Bill Kerchenfaut in Dago long before he ever touched that airplane. We talked about Darryl, and Bruce Boland, and Pete Law, and Ray Poe, and Kenny Burstine, and Skip Holm, and Wiley Sanders. We talked about the great Jim Larsen, who also goes back to Reno's beginning, and how Jim has stopped going to Reno. We wondered about who in RARA might have pissed Jim off enough to drive him away. We talked about the conversation with Dwight Thorn after Dwight found Bill a job in California when Bill left Minnesota, where the two of them had the Eureka moment when they realized that an Allison connecting rod could work in a Merlin. Dwight thought it was an unlikely idea, and Bill said "Well, do you have an Allison rod? Go get it!" They laid the rods side by side on the kitchen table and saw that this really could be done. It took 10 years, but that moment in the 1970s is when it all started.
Kerch is a National Treasure. Fifty years of memories of life on the inside of the Sport.
I wish him well in his life without Air Racing.
Neal
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