american special

[W J Pearce]

Re: american special

Race #33 was a Cessna 340 that was owned by F-1 racer Phil Fogg.

Great Moments in AAFO history....

On May 16th at 14:52 Pacific time, Bill Pearce was right, and Speeddemon Brad was not. Does this mean I am now a Geek? Or was this some anomaly because it dealt with, well, an anomaly?

Great Moments in AAFO history is brought to you by Dasher's and Victor's thong underwear.


TSOG, thanks for the info!

Neal, et all, I hope no one took my post as negative against anyone's opinions or using the word controversy. Wayne's always bring up how Parker is crusty or salty and I know some people have huge issues with him because of his attempts at the Unlimited ranks.

But, I remember a time when he was working on a F1, while the Furias guys were in the shop fixing the chunk out of their tail, and DG's people were on the mill working on their prop. All at the same time. That is a hell of a support center and I know a tremendous number of people respect him a great deal.

Sorry if I confused the issue. No harm intended.

[BillRo]

Re: american special

Just noticed this thread and I am working on a definitive response to correct some misconceptions.

BillRo

[number17fan]

Re: american special

4.1 Minimum of 66 square feet of wing area must be used including the area displaced by the fuselage, but not including fillets or stall strips. A fillet is any deviation from the basic platform that starts inboard of 25 percent semispan.

The old rule only required 66 sq ft wing area.

My opinion is that it was a great idea, it met the requirements, it went fast and looked cool.

Sport Biplanes are pushing the rules farther than Wild Turkey ever did!
My $0.02

[Leo]

Re: american special

Was'nt it Phil Fogg who was involved in the ramp collision with another racer during the start? I remember his tail got sawed off and he got out of that racer REAL fast, even before it stopped moving. Almost looked like he grabbed it and kept it from continueing toward the crowd.
Lear offered hinm space and resources to repair it as I remember.
I thank John Parker for some of the better races I've seen in all the years, and his battles with Darryl have been legendary.

[BillRo]

Re: american special

Ok guys, here are my recollections of the facts, with some reference to contemporary documents.

Formula One management fell into the hands of sport flyers (no offence intended) as opposed to racers. It’s easy to tell them apart - a sport flyer is someone who would rather win the Silver than be last in the Gold. They proceeded on the assumption that fast racers were cheating and set out to find discrepancies. Oil samples were taken at MJA '75, analyzed at a lab and "irregularities" were found. In Parker's case 1.6% Butyl Alcohol was found in the oil. Allegedly that could migrate past the rings and provide a power increase. Cote had phosphate ester chemicals in his sample. Team Turkey had no answer for this since we had added nothing and the sample we had tested showed no alcohol, but luckily one of the “good guys”, Don Beck, also had this substance. Cote obtained a statement from his oil supplier that the product in his oil were part of the normal additive package. They also X-rayed the aircraft looking for Nitrous tanks after a rumor started that people had them hidden in the oil tank or engine case! Eventually these charges went away, but you get the climate

At Reno ‘75 Parker was DSQ at pre-race tech for too few ccs in the combustion chamber (now days we require people to bring their aircraft into compliance) and was banned from racing for two years. After post-race inspections questions were raised about the degree of polishing on Cote’s carburetor, but the Violation Review Board found it legal on a split vote, which included Cote! Cote was banned for one year after the Mojave race in 1976 (can’t remember why) and neither Cote or Parker raced at Reno or Mexicali in ‘76.

The split in Formula One began when both Cote and Parker were disqualified for long periods. At the time Air Racing was under USARA with 2 reps from each of the four classes (UL, T6, Bipes, and F1), in addition there was a Tech Director (Art Williams) and a Membership Director (Ken Haas, I think) We appealed the sentence to this body but unfortunately it had an even number of Directors and it split evenly with ULs, T6 and the Membership Director siding with Cote/ Parker. This impasse caused the disintegration of USARA. In 1977 Ward Garland called a meeting in Fullerton for the unhappy racers and IXL was established. He managed to negotiate the 1977 Reno race away from F1 (Reno liked to ferment discontent amongst the classes). The F1 technical rules were written to clarify them by providing dimensions and properties that could be measured and to avoid the blatant conflicts of interest present in the inspection process when competitors were in charge of inspections. At that time the wing area rule was clarified to define a fillet as a planform change occurring inside of 25% semi-span - which Wild Turkey just happened to meet.

The Wild Turkey was designed by a Brit, John Cook who was designing and building a four-place Cherokee replacement at the Torrance Airport, home of the DeLuca, Wagner and Parker race teams. John Cook had never seen a race and just read the rules where the 66 sq.ft. wing area (excluding fillets) included area within the fuselage. We felt that noone could conclude that a multi taper wing like that was a skinny wing with huge fillets. It was legal the old F1 rules as far as I am concerned, but did not race until ‘77 under IXL with Bob Drew as pilot. It is still legal and was never banned for that reason. John Parker won with it in 1979 and 1980 but by then the rules were being changed again to embrace the Europeans and the remnants of USARA.

John was interested in a free-er world and decided to go cross-country racing with it, by adding a long belly tank behind the oil tank. There were also some compromises made with the control system that caused wear. Flying over the mountains in a temperamental F1 turned out to be not much fun and John donated the plane to the EAA Museum.

The airplane had several innovative features apart from the wing. It was all aluminum with cowling and wheel pants hand beaten by Mickey Mahoney, Lee Mahoney’s dad, and builder of Sorceress. The fuselage was a pure monocoque made of two pieces of curved aluminum riveted to formers, the longeron was the return flange on the lower fuselage skin. I know this well since being the smallest members of the team, my son and I had to crawl in and hold the bucking bars while John shot the rivets. The fuselage was very small with the mid wing lined up with the engine cylinders. The carburetor and oil tank were faired in outside the basic mold line. The width was such that normal pilots had to fly side-saddle with small longeron extrusions digging into their shoulders. It flew very well but was difficult to land because the huge center section blanketed the tail once it came down on the runway. Bob Drew was a test pilot with Douglas on the A4D Skyray and did the initial races while John flew the Shoestring “Top Turkey”

At Reno in “77 a wheel pant hung up and tore off on take off causing the plane to pitch down and strike the prop, but Bob got it up and back. The plane qualified and raced without wheel pants. At another time he had difficulty on rollout and went off the runway damaging the gear. Bob’s other incident was as a result of a flutter problem; I was responsible for building the wing and tail tips and after a couple of flights the plane came back missing the horizontal tips - clearly we had some kind of vibration. I added an angle between the fuselage and tail skins to stiffen it but that was apparently insufficient when the main tail spar failed at top speed on the back of the course. After the loud bang Bob gently pulled up and landed. The tail flopped up and down about 4 inches, held on by the angles and the elevator controls alone. Reno ‘78? We built a bullet proof tail and slid it into the fuselage to solve the problem.

John Parker did not seem to have as much trouble landing the plane, and he took it over winning at Reno in ‘79 and ‘80. John did most of the work including the engines with the help of the rest of the Team Turkey “cast of thousands”, Bill Rogers, Tom Webb, Rick Mutascio, Tom Jackson, pilots Bob Drew and Tom Dobrenz and our respective wives and girlfriends - not to forget team Lawyer Mike Klarfeld. This year is the 30th anniversary of John’s first F1 Reno Championship.

BillRo

[Leo]

Re: american special

WOW!
Thank you!

[W J Pearce]

Re: american special

Yes, thank you very much Bill. I appreciate all the past history.

[Tosg]

Re: american special

Was'nt it Phil Fogg who was involved in the ramp collision with another racer during the start? I remember his tail got sawed off and he got out of that racer REAL fast, even before it stopped moving.

Right airplane, wrong pilot. Gary Wilson was racing "Aloha" in 1980 when the tail was sawed off at the start of a race by Bobby Budde in "El Bandito". The race had just been launched from the east end (back in the days when the ramp was being used for race-horse starts), when about 75 yards down the ramp, Bobby had a brake lock and veered sharply, straight into "Aloha". Fortunately, Gary was slightly ahead of Bobby, so the impact was into the tail, not the cockpit.

Gary Wilson was a resident of Hawaii who purchased the #71 Owl racer "Lil' Quickie" from builder Vince DeLuca. Gary renamed and repainted the racer as "Aloha", in tribute to the 1920's Dole Race entrant of the same name.

I think Goss found a photo of Phil's 'Unlimted Owl' racer on one of the photo sites. Can't remember what/where...but was always a bit disappointed that it never reached the 'fly' stage. Would have looked cool in the Aloha paint scheme.

The "Unlimited Owl" racer shown in the referenced photo was a project of Ralph Wise, not Phil Fogg. Ralph had built two Owl F-1 racers in collaboration with George Owl, the "unlimited sport" racer was a project built up after George had passed away.

[Race5]

Re: american special

Bill, would you happen to have any photos of the build process, or just some inside detail shots you could share? I would love to see more of this thing!

[Leo]

Re: american special

Right airplane, wrong pilot.

Thanks!

[wingman]

Re: american special

Many thanks to Bill Rogers for this.. There is really not much written about that era, especially outside the Unlimiteds. Many complain about the number of misconceptions about some of these events, without being willing to make any atttempts to set the record straight. Bill was there and was part of the events and for me at least bits of history like this are indispensable.

So another question for Bill : Other than the metal propeller, would #3 be legal today under today's rules and interpretations of same??

And here's a Gold Race lineup that shoould make Goss happy. #3 actually looked very nice from the side and with paint.

Quiz question, since we have a couple of knowledgable Formula 1 historians here -- name the event and year...

Neal

[Shawn Aro]

Re: american special

browb field san deigo 1980 Shawn

[BillRo]

Re: american special

1980 was the only year #3 was painted properly; that's not Reno, Texas was flat and there are no Corvallis pine trees, so Shawn is correct.

A couple of other #3 items of interest. The wing planform was determined in part not by aerodynamics but the California trailer laws. We needed to trailer the plane and the outer wings were screwed on through the spars and skins with #10 bolts; the plane sat on it's wheels so the overall width, less outer wings, had to be less than 96 in. It would still be legal today but needs a few engine changes, a Steve Hill prop and smaller wheels and wheel pants to be competitive. Another reason that it was successful is that it was only a little over 500 lbs empty without paint or wheel pants.

Weight is absolutely critical with standing start races, something that the home-made composite builders seem to have forgotten or are unable to match compared with aluminum or even the best wood/tube/fabric Cassutts. Industry-built aircraft using autoclaves and vacuum bagging techniques to squeeze out excess resin from the graphite are better than the older designs. Composites allow more complex shapes and should provide better aerodynamics, but you won't win from 3-4 seconds back.

I thought I had some construction pix, but they may have gone with the set of plans John sold to a guy in England.

BillRo

[BillRo]

Re: american special

Two history questions: in what F1 race did we have 3 Shoestrings on the front row? In what race did Parker have the #3 and the #93 Shoestring, flown by Tom Dobrenz, in the same race? Wingman probably has pix, unless it was Bill Mollet or Bruce Treadway; now there are some race photog names you have not heard in while.

BillRo

[wingman]

Re: american special

Now Shawn -- how did you know that was Brown Field 1980? I wouldn't have known without the date on the slide and I was there...

Neal