Wayne Baldwin, Remember This one?

Composite Specialties · 04-08-2005

Thanks Wayne for solving the mystery. I knew I was not going crazy with my memory, but who actually tested it down there? Either way, it sure was fun remembering that event. I was about 12 years old then but remember that well. Even then, all I wanted to do was design hydroplanes so I watched everything that Tim Butts made and I remember taking lots of pictures of your boats that day. I even remember when Tim Butts brought his first Aerowings to Depue. Do you remember what year that was?

Did you ever get one of those Butts laydowns with the bubble nose windshield? Mal Harden had one and I have some pictures of that one somewhere as well.

Just think, all of those years of watching all of the great boat designers, builders and racers finally led me to designing and building one of the fastest and lightest capsule boats around...

**Master Oil Racing Team** · 04-09-2005

That's a good looking boat Marc. Paint scheme reminds me of the Lone Star flag. I always wondered what it would be like to drive a capsule boat, especially a D.

Tim had an early version of his Aerowing at DePue in 1969 I think. We were pitted next to him and Marty Martinez. He had it turned upside down and I remember him showing us the S bottom. A lot of racers were skeptical back then at some of the features in his boat. It was a time of change though because horsepower increases were making motors too powerful for the size and lift characteristics of the boats were were running at that time.

Here is a photo of my laydown boat that Tim built. Man could that thing corner. This is a Rusty Rae photo.

**Dan M** · 04-09-2005

Marc,

I remember one of Tim's first Aerowings at DePue, somewhere in the early 70's. It was a "C" boat that he had built for someone, and the deal went south. He took a hole saw and cut lots of holes anywhere he could to lighten the boat so he could run his "B" on it. I think it even had the little "wing" gussets from the transon to the deck. There was a lot of "talk" about how that boat was "illegal" with the "extra" lifting members.

Dan

**Master Oil Racing Team** · 04-09-2005

Caught my own self in a lie. We took delivery of the boat in Lakeland 1974. We rigged it up & I borrowed Ray Yates' number to race with because it was hard to make a decent 3 with tape. We ran it at San Antonio also. It is the boat in the 2nd picture at the back with no MX-237 logo on the cowling. Note in the first picture how the deck is at the transom. You can compare the profile of David's picture with the one on the trailer. I guess Dan must have picked it up at Alexandria when the David and Marc took those pictures.

Composite Specialties · 04-09-2005

Wayne, did your Butts boat in the picture with the bubble windshield have three steps in the sponsons or two?

**Jeff Lytle** · 04-09-2005

Wayne:

Did you prefer the kneeler, or the laydown ride??

**Master Oil Racing Team** · 04-09-2005

Marc, I'm a little confused by your question. Got to look at a picture of Tim's "wasp" boat to see if there were steps on the sponson. I have a picture in my mind of a boat with steps on the sponson. It may have been my boat "TEX" that we shipped to Berlin to race in Europe. My boat "Vibora de Cascabel" had two sponsons, no steps on the sponsons.

Jeff, On the short courses with lots of traffic I like the kneel down. I like to lean into the turn, and it's easier to look around to see where everyone is. High speed (my favorite) I like the lay down. On wide sweeping turns you can really stay on the throttle I not have to hang on so hard to stay in. You just let your body drift up against the right side of the cockpit.

Composite Specialties · 04-09-2005

The Butts boat that Mal Harden had with the bubble windshield, had three steps on the bottom pad of the sponsons. All steps were in .25" increments. Most people use two steps today but I remember Butts being the first that I have ever seen to use the stepped sponsons.

**Master Oil Racing Team** · 04-09-2005

Marc, You asked the right question, but I didn't know Tim built other boats like that. After I quit he only came down once to test that radical new design. I really wanted to try it out, but................?

Tim designed a boat for me to race in Europe after Walt Blankenstein and I smuggled a calculator and plans from John Yale's picklefork into East Berlin for Bernie Danisch to copy. The Europeans saw what was happening in America and wanted to try out a picklefork. John had all the dimensions in inches. Bernie did all his work in metric, and Dieter thought he could get it done much quicker if he had a calculator to make the conversion. Unfortunately, communists didn't like civilians having things like calculators. I still remember going through Checkpoint Charlie with Walt. Dieter had to go through a different checkpoint because he was from West Berlin.

But back to the boat.

Having raced in Berlin a couple of times before, I knew it would be rough so we had Tim design a boat for rough water. It was the first boat I ever saw with steps in the sponson. I think two, and they were flat. Later on I thought maybe three, at angles may have been better.

We tested it several times during the winter of '77. We waited for a norther to blow in. It was always very rough. We could never race in that stuff over here but the boat went through it great. I started off slow and learned to drive it into the wind and through the turns in BAD conditions. At the end I could hammer it into the wind. Not fast enough to blow over, but fast enough to be competitive. But, in the end we learned that rough water was not the same as rough with swells, which is what you encounter in Europe on rivers with traffic. The steps worked good in water with a high wind and fairly uniform waves, but we did not consider the swells or have a way to test for that. Ralph Donald---Tell us about some of the race courses you ran in Europe.