Some old Reno pics

[wingman]

It's also the only time I ever saw Frank Sanders race. He was flying Dread when the failure happened. He then switched and raced 924 for the weekend. Frank was apparently blind in one eye, and didn't generally race because of this. I have no idea why he decided to race this weekend.

[wingman]

I really thought thr Bear looked good in white. It did show the dirt, though...

[wingman]

Bakersfield, Saturday fast heat. Strega looked really good out there.

[SpinB]

I really thought thr Bear looked good in white. It did show the dirt, though...

..when she deploys the claws, she gets a little mussed.....'fight's on!-fight's on'!!

[BellCobraIV]

Continued through the slide collection some more today and found a series of slides from Reno 1974 taken from the pylon right as the racers entered the home stretch. Lyle making his last turn onto the straight followed close by Bob Love engine already failing making that same turn, both of them by the way a full lap ahead of Ken Burnstine in third place. But I digress...the pictures were given to us by the late Buddy Childers. If you have never seen any of his pictures he was excellent!


John

[BellCobraIV]

I really thought thr Bear looked good in white. It did show the dirt, though...

I loved the Polar Bear paint job. Hard to keep clean. We were trying to figure out where we were going teamwise.

[wingman]

Continued through the slide collection some more today and found a series of slides from Reno 1974 taken from the pylon right as the racers entered the home stretch. Lyle making his last turn onto the straight followed close by Bob Love engine already failing making that same turn, both of them by the way a full lap ahead of Ken Burnstine in third place. But I digress...the pictures were given to us by the late Buddy Childers. If you have never seen any of his pictures he was excellent!


John

John -- do you know if those are original slides, or duplicates? Buddy really was a fine photographer, and I understand that little of his stuff survives other than in magazines. I remember stories of all his stuff being destroyed during an angry divorce. I only met him a couple of times, but he was memorable. A fine jazz musician, too.

Neal

[wingman]

Bakersfield was a very big deal for Dwight Thorn. This was his first real shot at the Gold in a decade. My question is: Was this an Allison rod Mouse motor? I've asked this in the past and nobody has seemed sure.

It ran really well, and finished the Gold Race. Stiletto ran equally well, for 6 laps, but apparently ran out of fluids doing so. Birch Matthews says Skip reported seeing 140 inches of manifold pressure during that race -- 110 inches is about what you'd see at Reno altitude with a high rpm Packard rod motor like Stiletto's.

So was Strega's Bakersfield motor a Mouse motor?

[wingman]

Dwight on the wingtip...

[BellCobraIV]

John -- do you know if those are original slides, or duplicates? Buddy really was a fine photographer, and I understand that little of his stuff survives other than in magazines. I remember stories of all his stuff being destroyed during an angry divorce. I only met him a couple of times, but he was memorable. A fine jazz musician, too.

Neal

Yes, they are original slides that Buddy gave to us. Buddy had stored his stuff with someone that got rid of them. The true anger of Buddy Childers life wasn't the divorce, that was two people who were destroyed by Andrea running away from home. They lost touch with Andrea and unbeknownst to them she was a victim of the Green River killer in April 1983. It was a few years later that they. learned the truth. I had dinner with Buddy when he was with Frank Sinatra at Reno. We talked about the demise of his pictures and Andrea. It was very sad.

Fine jazz musician is really an understatement at 16 years old he was hired by Stan Kenton to be lead trumpet....yes, lead. We went to a couple of his New Years Eve parties. He'd put champagne bottles floating in his swimming pool with giant blocks of ice. He and Jo would spend a couple of days making Italian food for the party. And all kinds of jazz greats would drop by around 11:00 to ring the New Year in musically.

McCarthyism screwed Buddy but good.

Buddy was another magic man.

[Jukka]

Sorry I found this in the web.....any more of her.....Crazy Horse ?

[BellCobraIV]

Sorry I found this in the web.....any more of her.....Crazy Horse ?

The King Cobras looked like natural born racing planes. The first time I saw this airplane was with my Dad at Long Beach Airport. We had dropped by Pylon-Air to see Vern and Don. I saw that airplane and was just in love with it. I asked Lyle if he thought Larry would trade it for the Bearcat. Lyle thought it was just bullet waiting to be fired. Lyle had gone over to Phoenix and looked at Darryl's group of P-63s, I think this one was one of those. It was stunning the last time we saw it all white and sitting in the sun on the ramp.

In later years Lefty told me that the nose would move over about 3/4" at full power and that Larry's rebuild of the fuselage could have addressed that with the whole structural change on the top.

Very cool racing plane. I've always been partial to the Cobras.

[wingman]

The King Cobras looked like natural born racing planes. The first time I saw this airplane was with my Dad at Long Beach Airport. We had dropped by Pylon-Air to see Vern and Don. I saw that airplane and was just in love with it. I asked Lyle if he thought Larry would trade it for the Bearcat. Lyle thought it was just bullet waiting to be fired. Lyle had gone over to Phoenix and looked at Darryl's group of P-63s, I think this one was one of those. It was stunning the last time we saw it all white and sitting in the sun on the ramp.

In later years Lefty told me that the nose would move over about 3/4" at full power and that Larry's rebuild of the fuselage could have addressed that with the whole structural change on the top.

Very cool racing plane. I've always been partial to the Cobras.

So how did you get the username BellCobraIV, John?

[Jan]

Yes, they are original slides that Buddy gave to us. Buddy had stored his stuff with someone that got rid of them. The true anger of Buddy Childers life wasn't the divorce, that was two people who were destroyed by Andrea running away from home. They lost touch with Andrea and unbeknownst to them she was a victim of the Green River killer in April 1983. It was a few years later that they. learned the truth. I had dinner with Buddy when he was with Frank Sinatra at Reno. We talked about the demise of his pictures and Andrea. It was very sad.

Fine jazz musician is really an understatement at 16 years old he was hired by Stan Kenton to be lead trumpet....yes, lead. We went to a couple of his New Years Eve parties. He'd put champagne bottles floating in his swimming pool with giant blocks of ice. He and Jo would spend a couple of days making Italian food for the party. And all kinds of jazz greats would drop by around 11:00 to ring the New Year in musically.

McCarthyism screwed Buddy but good.

Buddy was another magic man.

When you join Air Racing to jazz.... both of you know who that leads directly to.

Dad, of course, knew Buddy and Jo as well. Buddy also featured with the Woody Herman, Les Brown, Charlie Barnet and Tommy Dorsey bands. He did a ton of studio work in LA as well for TV, movies and commercials music and played with a huge list of other well known jazz players.

Buddy was a guest on Dad's syndicated jazz radio program, Jazz Straight Ahead, several times over the years. There's a lot more I could say but most of it's to do with jazz which isn't really the interest for most folks here.

[BellCobraIV]

So how did you get the username BellCobraIV, John?

I was in conversations with a man who said that he had access to some Russian P-63 wrecks. In exchange for a certain amount of work and making of fixtures he was willing to trade a wing and center section for the work accomplished. I told him that I would not need any of the doors or upper structure as in my mind modifying a P-63 to use a Merlin and the fuselage forward of the wing needing a complete make-over structurally negated a lot of those parts. I had done a reasonable search and had found other parts in strange places. So I thought I could sell my soul and build a racer. Even though it would be a P-63 and not a P-39 I decided to name it Cobra IV if I could ever make it happen.

For a couple of years I was in contact with the man with the Russian connections and thought it could happen. But then one day I woke up and realized that finding an old crashed warbird and putting it together with all volunteers had already been done. In the end I'd just be the motor guy trying to tell the stick how to run the plane. That would be a monumental clash of egos and who needs that. In the meantime I had taken the name BellCobraIV and run with it. I liked it, so it stuck.

The man with the Russian connections disappeared and I never saw anything other than the pictures of P-63 airframes sitting in a warehouse.

I'm better off.


John