Never will forget the conversations with Windy Urtnowski...
What an amazingly gifted CLPA flyer who Spitfire was one of the very finest stunt machine that I had ever seen....plus his flying was 2nd to none...(well maybe our Paul Walker and a few other folks with rooms filled with awards and hardware. Windy's flying was always WAAAY ABOVE the rest of so many of us Walker Wanna bee's.
The last bit is the most important part - Windy was/is one of the best to ever fly this event. It was very unfortunate that he wasn't able to appreciate his remarkably good record because he never actually won the thing. There are *plenty* of people who have tried their best and never made the flyoff at all, much less won. He made it year after year after year. Most people can only dream of that. Truth be told, most people can only dream of *qualifying* at the NATs.
But it was clear that he was sometimes miserable on those Saturday mornings because he seemed to be absolutely convinced that he was beaten already. He more-or-less admitted to me that he came in with a chip on his shoulder from his earlier life experiences and he just never got around the idea that people were against him - and that led him to doing things and saying things that pissed everybody off. Some of his "buddies" took up the same attitude and certainly did him no favors, either. None of it was ever necessary. He worked as hard as anyone ever has to succeed (maybe harder than he needed to), and aside from the one thing, he did succeed.
Brett