Didn't Jimmy hurt his hand or something? I seem to remember part of the reason he quit flying was a damaged hand (or something).
Yep - the year before he left the hobby, he got his fingers caught in a carbon fiber three-blade. And yes, it did quite a number on his hand ... and when you're a professional musician - who plays saxophone and flute, among other instruments - that certainly wasn't a good thing.
He was back to flying at the Nats the next year, so it certainly wasn't the only reason he stopped flying. But I think it was a contributing reason.
Anyone looking for a "smoking gun" as to why he left the hobby - well, there wasn't one. The incident with the carbon prop was probably one. But there were a slew of other reasons as well.
The 1991 Nats (which was the last one he flew in) was like a country western song for him. He lost his job with the band he was in (which was partly due to the fact he wanted to take time off in the summer - their "busy season") to fly at the Nats. He got dumped by his girlfriend at the time. His wallet got stolen at the Nats as well. And while flying at the Nats, he discovered that the plane he'd been flying - which he'd rebuilt from a crash - had a pretty significant warp in the wing.
There was also the matter of the tuned pipe, which had just come onto the scene as a dominant force. It wasn't like it is now - there were a few people with excellent pipe set-ups (Paul Walker, Ted Fancher, Billy Werwage, and Bob Hunt), but a lot of people were struggling with them. It wasn't the plug-and-play set-ups that you see now. Jimmy felt that if he was going to be competitive, he needed a pipe set-up as good as those. And finding that set-up was going to take an investment of time and money that - given everything else happening around then - he didn't want to make.
About the only reason that I've heard that's patently wrong is the notion of "well, the judges at the Nats are biased towards the West Coast fliers". Not. True. In fact, Jimmy took his win at the 1989 Nats in Washington as a validation that the idea of "Nats bias" was a myth.
In reading Les McDonald's articles for Stunt News lately, I saw a lot of parallels between Les and Jimmy - namely, that they were there to
win, and doing so became an all-consuming force in their lives, that didn't always have the best of consequences. It's why I don't think you'll ever see Jimmy at the handle ever again. I don't see him just building a Caprice to compete for fun at VSC or a local contest, or building a Thunder Gazer to see if he could be in the Top 10 at the Nats. If he got back into the hobby, he'd be back in it to try and win the whole thing again ... and I don't think he'd want to commit to that level of all-consuming intensity again.