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Bill Van, Wayne and Smitty
Thanks for the great story, Bill Van. Suddenly, “Ding Dong Daddy” takes on new meaning. I recall going up to that motel in Dumas to eat breakfast, but I was happy to be sleeping in the camper down in the pits (and not in a Falcon station wagon). And thanks Wayne for the photo! I didn’t know it existed, but do recognize several people. That is Johnny Dortch in the red coveralls and white hat, right? Well, I spent a couple hours going through boxes up in the attic. I was looking for pictures or clippings that might tweak my memory regarding races and places from ’74 to ’76, but didn’t come up with much, other than more photos of our Marchetti, “Cool Cat” that I’ll write about in due course. However, I did find my Three Stooges Official Membership Card! I’ve been looking for it for fifty years!
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For the boat racing aviators, I ran across the Ketzer & Wendel Bamboo Bomber (Wendel left, Steve right), and Dad’s sketchbook of possible paint schemes (you can see how he arrived at yellow with blue trim for the boats). Also, with this lull, I’m going to tell a couple stories about homebuilt aircraft, since Smitty the Welder emailed me a great story about homebuilts—said he didn’t want to mess up or interrupt the Ketzer Racing Team thread.
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Inspectors new to the FAA, usually at the GS-12 grade, cut their teeth on general aviation (GA) before being assigned to air carrier certificates. The GA work typically involved overseeing pilot schools, mechanic schools, small air taxi operations, small repair stations, inspecting and dealing with A&Ps and IAs, inspecting GA aircraft, approving homebuilt or kit airplanes, and such. With a few years under the belt as a GS-13, an inspector moved on to air carrier work. A sad state of affairs putting GA at a disadvantage, but that’s the way it worked. To put that GS (General Service) business in perspective, I was an inspector for 21 years, and not a bad one. I retired as a GS-14. During the blue dress incident with Monica Lewinsky, while she and Linda Trip were trying to decide how they could parlay it into a promotion, they turned up their noses at a GS-15 position. That being said, I’m glad I didn’t reach the 15 level.
Actually, working with air carriers was easier, because they knew and understood the regulations, whether or not they always agreed and followed them; whereas, from the GA side, you could sometimes expect arguments and anger, such as, “Where does it say I can’t put a NAPA alternator on my Cessna!” Or, “Where does it say I have to have my torque wrench, cable tensiometer, and Fluke calibrated!” Or, “Where does it say I have to show you my certificate!” And, if you offered, “Let me see your Regs, and I’ll show you,” you’d more than likely follow with the rhetorical, “And you don’t have a copy of the Regs? Hmm.”
Thus, homebuilt or experimental aircraft. In addition to being cheaper and fun, there was much less government intrusion, fewer rules and regulations. Basically, the builder/pilot accepted the responsibility, liability, and danger. Still, the Feds monitored the building, inspected the finished product, and if all looked fairly normal, issued a Special Airworthiness Certificate, handed them a pamphlet on flight testing, and said, “Good luck, buddy.” During the inspection process, if the builder wasn’t an A&P, you might run into Standard Practice problems, reversed safety wire and so on, but mostly they did good work, and some designs, like Rutan’s, went above and beyond and over the heads of most FAA Inspectors. Oh, and during the inspection, you made sure that if you rolled in left aileron, their little bird could be expected to bank to the left, and not the right. Cross-rigging has happened after major repairs. The pilot takes off, rolls the wheel to the left, and the plane banks right. So he rolls it harder to the left, the plane banks steeper to the right, et cetera, until flown into the ground.
But anyway, the first kit plane I certificated was built by a guy in his 70s who had flown small Cessnas many years earlier, but wasn’t current. I’ve forgotten the make, but it was a little tricycle gear, single seat, high wing, all aluminum tubing and fabric, with a Rotax pusher engine. He did pretty good work. On the weekend after I issued the airworthiness certificate, I got a call from one of my FAA compadres who was on accident standby: “Hey, Ketzer, you know that kit plane you approved last week?” Oh, crap! Well, the guy had hauled it out to the airport and on the shorter runway had intended to do some high speed taxi and grasshopper moves—lifting it off, letting it settle back down—just to get a feel for it and see if he needed to tweak the flight control trim tabs. So he puts the power to it, and the little plane fairly leaps into the air. Instead of chopping the power, he freaks and tries to fly it. But the engine had beaucoup torque, and instead of kicking in some rudder and a little aileron, he let it fly him, “Smack!” right into a snow bank—fortunately, there were snow banks. Other than a bump on the nose, only his pride was hurt; well, and his airplane.
The first true homebuilt I put a certificate on was, basically, a Super Cub lookalike with a Mazda rotary engine. During the building process, I called to check status one day and was told, “Kinda had a setback…burned up the first engine.” What? Well, he failed to cut a hole in the cowling for airflow to the radiator, so the Mazda engine cooked itself during ground runs. When he got another engine in, I figured I better go out and watch him run it. So I headed out to his house that was located near one of those dirt landing strips that can be found all over Alaska. I walked around the plane and noticed he had the tail wheel rope-tied to a birch tree. I figured, well, an extra measure of safety, not a bad idea. He says, “Are you ready?” I say, you bet, and I’m thinking we’re going to get in there together, or at least he is, but he walks up to the plane, reaches in the window, and fires it up (car engines don’t require all the priming and stuff). He’s all grinning and proud when he looks back at me, then he reaches back inside and shoves in the throttle. The tail wheel jumps off the ground, the engine is roaring, the plane is shaking, the birch tree is trembling, and I’m waving my arms and shouting, “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” But he eventually got it all put together, the wrinkles ironed out, and flew it for many hours while hangar bums no doubt looked up and thought, “That is the strangest sounding Super Cub I’ve ever heard.”
With any luck, I’ll be back to boat racing in the next post—this was all Smitty’s fault..
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I Raced with the Unlimiteds
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Thanks, Stuart. We have troops fighting as we speak. Well, I wouldn’t know how to act in an inboard. You guys were probably required to drive with Flight Attendants. My dad, Uncle Ed and I loaded up in the camper and went to Owensboro in 1973 to watch the unlimiteds run—that was a busy summer. But, wow, those unlimited hydros! I’ll never forget the sound and the roostertails that went all the way to Argentina. We got pit badges and got to watch them prepare the boats and crane them into the water. We stayed in a campground on the other side of the river, a great area to watch the races. When we pulled into the campground, holy cow, outboards with modified Mercs lined the bank! They were holding outboard races as a warm-up for the unlimiteds. Dad said, “Crap, we could have brought our boats.” And I said, “Yeah, and then we could have said, I raced with the unlimiteds.”