I have absolutely no idea who might have owned that truck -- I just remember thinking it looked cool there. Acess was pretty relaxed back then. During qualifying many of us just drove up the ramp and parked somewhere.
I love these expansive shots with massive detail. I don't have many of them -- a lot of things have to come together to do one and if the light is bad so is the photo. Here is one from somebody's trailer in 1985. Great variety of airplanes -- Skyraider, Sea Fury, C-47 and a whole bunch of those long nose things. All those round engines, and only one airplane being worked on with cowlings off. Mustang guys were ALWAYS working on their airplanes.
The Sport hangar was the Learfan hangar in those days. If you look close you'll see the Learfan sitting in front of the hangar. John Penney was test pilot for Lear at the time -- that's part of how he connected with Lyle and became part of the Rare Bear program.
The Sea Fury was flown by a Hollywood kind of guy named Rick Drury -- that's him on the wing. Rick was a Viet Nam Skyraider pilot and had written a fairly successful book about the experience. He had a VERY glossy (and quite nice) wife and an entourage of his wife's friends as crew. She is the lady with long blond hair to the right of the airplane. Race 43 became a 2 seat t.20 as Jerry Janes' "Cottonmouth".
I'm going to load this one quite large. If you click once you get a new window. Then click again and you should get a big version with slider thingies to move around.
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