Control Line: Racing
Bill Lee
World Champs
I received the following from my "European correspondent" concerning the recently held World Championships at RAF Woodvale, England. His comments about TR at the champs and the future of the event proved to be good reading. I'll let you judge for yourself.
"The weather was mostly cool (about 75 degrees), windy, and sometimes wet. Maybe because of this all four semifinalists were under 4:00! The surprises were: two Australian teams in the semis and Prior/Georgiadis having the fastest time; all three U.K. teams in; no U.S. teams! Previously 'hot' teams not making the cut were Fontana/Amodio and Petersen/Geschwendtner. Six of the semifinalists used Nelson engines; the other three were Bugi, Cipolla (Italian Bugl copy), and FVM (Dutch Bugl copy). No retractable gear in the semis, only two in the contest. Fontana's system had a neat little pop-up spoiler behind the canopy. This worked to his disadvantage when he missed on a pit stop and had to tow around all the extra drag for another lap!
"Weights were down with Mau/Geschwendtner's at 361 grams! The lightweight planes attained racing speed in 1/2 to 3/4 lap! Really something to see. The three teams making the final arrived with some incident. Heaton/Ross did their 3:52 with one pit where Malcolm had to retrieve his model and run a segment backwards to restart. The gear was damaged on landing and stopped short of Ross! Derek Heaton did a super flying job to get the time! Mau/Geschwendtner cruised to their time with a 50-lap setting! The Metkemeyer brothers did their usual job to set a 3:44 heat record! Nothing apparently fancy—just competent pit work and very aggressive flying! You will never see such aggressive and aware piloting on this side of the Atlantic!
"The final got off after a minute's silent tribute to Paul Bugl who died a few weeks prior to the W/C. At the gun, all were off simultaneously and all cruised around with no one gaining an advantage. Metkemeyer/Metkemeyer were set to go 33 laps/tank, as were Heaton/Ross. Mau/Geschwendtner were set for 40 laps per tank, gambling that the three-up traffic would slow down the Metkemeyers and Heaton/Ross, so their one less pit would provide them a victory. A good theory but it died on the vine when Heaton/Ross had engine problems, many pit stops, and an eventual run-in to put them out of the race. With only two-up, the Metkemeyers could pass Mau/Geschwendtner, thereby negating their pitting advantage! So it wound down with Bert Metkemeyer pressing perhaps a little too much on the final tank (and probably unnecessarily). They won convincingly in a record time!
"What happened to the Yanks? Nelson/Dodge models were 150 grams overweight (30%). In spite of having more available power than anyone, the planes were just too slow. Albritton/Joy had slightly heavy planes and poor settings to slow them down. Jolly/Kusik suffered engine problems to prevent them from realizing their potential. They really could have made the semis but were just not consistent.
"So where do we go from here? The Nelson/Dodge engine, for sure! Nothing else on the horizon with this power! Lightweight models are necessary (350–400 grams) for rocket launches! Retractable gears aren't popular. You can look at the results to decide for yourself if 5–10 seconds per race is worth it. Everything else stays pretty much the same. Piloting is more important now that models are pushing 110 mph. I think you'll see some U.S. TR shake-ups as the realities of 'modern' racing sink in! I don't know what the others are doing, but I'm planning towards 1980 right now!"
U.S. Nats
While all this was going on in England, the U.S. Nats were being held in Lake Charles, Louisiana. TR at the Nats this year was decimated in number since so many of our top teams and many other fliers were in England at the same time. Nevertheless, overall performances were quite good with a new U.S. heat time being set by Stuart Willoughby, pitted by Bob Oge. The time was 3:58.9. Finalists were Willoughby/Oge, Mogi/Jolly, and Wallace/Wallace.
A couple of notes on each of these teams (a little that I know personally, not any sort of "interview" info). "Stoo" Willoughby left England a couple of years ago and brought a significant racing talent to this country with him. He normally teams with Al Kelly (of fiberglass propeller fame) but Al was one of those away at the World Champs. So "Stoo" picked up another quite capable CL racer, Bob Oge, to handle the pitting this year. The story goes that Bob had never ever touched a diesel before the Nats and that Stoo just said, 'Don't even try to understand, just do what I say!' Bob turned in some of the best pitting seen at the Nats. Bob is a very capable contestant in the other racing events and, in fact, ended up with a good fifth place finish in Open Rat later in the week.
The team of Wallace/Wallace is a new combination this year. Gary Wallace used to be teamed with Mike Johnson, but Mike's other responsibilities knocked him out this year. So Gary enlisted the aid of his brother, Milo, to handle the pit work. Gary and Milo had an interesting arrangement worked out using some very low-power, small C.B. radios arranged so that the two can talk to each other easily during flight. While I'm sure this is not original with Wallace/Wallace, Gary recommended it as a very good way to form a team. If you need a pit man or a pilot but you can't find some other nut who wants to join you, the radio allows you to teach a newcomer easily until he acquires the 'ear' necessary to either handle the pitting or the piloting chores.
Ken Mogi and Jim Jolly have been teamed up for a couple of years. Ken owns/runs a transmission shop in Riverside, CA, site of the Nats in '77. When I first ran into him at Lake Charles, he looked as if he had just come out of the shop, grease from one end to the other. As it turned out, Ken's truck had blown a throw-out bearing in New Mexico and they had to drive all the way in to Lake Charles before they could get it fixed. Then Ken dropped the transmission right there on the field.
Jim Jolly is the father of Larry Jolly, the "J" half of the Jolly/Kusik team that was in England. Jim and Ken competed last year at the team selection in Riverside and, except for some very unusual, unfortunate bad luck, would have been on the team this year.
In the finals, Willoughby/Oge were far and away the quickest with beautiful pits, that is until the last pit when Bob had the misfortune of having the model hit his knee on takeoff and run into the circle, causing the team to be disqualified. Wallace/Wallace never quite got it together in the finals, eventually discovering a fuel line that had been cut inside the fuel shut-off. Mogi/Jolly motored on to an 8:42.15 for first place.
The Two Big Ones
I had the opportunity this summer to attend the two big contests for CL Racing, Bill Pardue's AAAA contest at Winston-Salem, and then the Nats in Lake Charles. The entry level was about the same in the Racing events at both contests, at least as far as Open contestants were concerned. In fact, TR was better attended at Winston-Salem due to the World Champs conflict for the Nats. I competed at Winston-Salem but was working as CL category director at the Nats and could only stand and watch. The one item that really stands out after these contests is the overall performance level of the contestants in Goodyear.
This is the first year where the use of any tuned pipe, other than a mini-pipe, was not allowed in the racing events. This affected Goodyear more than any other event since the megaphone was the apparent "hot" setup. Some of us never thought that the pipe was worth the effort. It seems this contention was proved since the Goodyears are running faster this year than ever. All of a sudden, all the performance that had been hiding inside the inconsistency of the pipe just burst onto the scene!
A year ago, a Goodyear running in the 15's was a very good airplane. This year, there are at least a couple that are dipping into the 14's! The ten finalists at the Nats qualified with times under 3:00! Last year, if memory serves, there were only two times under 3:00.
Rat at both contests was still at the same performance plateau that it has been at for several years. Both contests were won by the Lamorets, Dick and his father, Harold, with times in the low 4:50's. This corresponds to last year's two-pit time of about 4:40, a level that has been the norm for four or five years. Rat isn't getting faster, although I feel that the potential is there if someone can really put it all together. I have witnessed a 4:36 three-stop time this year here in Houston, turned by Dick Ritch, and Tim Gillott turned a 4:39 in Eugene, Oregon this summer. These races were no flukes, but the bugs keep jumping up to keep the times from being consistently better.
And the Nashville Rats still reign as the Kings of Slow Rat, winning handily at both the Winston-Salem and Lake Charles contests. Times this year at the Nats were quite a bit better than last, even with the burden of an additional pit stop in the finals. The big question left unanswered in this event is the inadequately defined infamous "production" engine rule that leaves Contest/Event Directors in a quandary. The AMA's Control Line Contest Board is going to have to supply some answers on this one!
Bill Lee 3522 Tamarisk Lane Missouri City, TX 77459
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
