Great video of the 78 Nats

[KEITH McCRARY]

See the ancient flyers of years gone by. See the pilots you have only heard of. Behold , the 1978 Nationals!

[Joe Ed Pederson]

Keith,

Thank you so much for drawing our attention to this video.

It was good to put names to faces.  The thing I noticed the most (I'm 66 years old) was how many of the fliers must have been in their 20's and thirties.

The first flight in the video of Bill Werwage flying Juno appeared to me to be pretty small diameter turns in the squares (I can't even complete the Beginner pattern yet).  I wonder how they compare to today's turn diameter.  Maybe one of the expert flyers could comment on the turn diameters.

Loved to see all the semi-scale models.

Joe Ed Pederson

[frank williams]

Jim didn't make the 78 Nats ....... the Rabe Bearcat is mine, damn I was skinny then.   My first Nats.

Frank Williams

[Les McDonald]

How cool is this!
Myself, Rabe, Hunt and The Bear were in England but it looks like everyone else was there.
What a bunch of great people.

[Bob Hunt]

Fantastic video! Boy, was everyone thin back then!

One correction: At 2:05 the person identified as Bill Simons is not Bill. Bill and I were best friends (he was the best man at my wedding...) for many years, so I'm very certain that's not him. He is identified correctly later in the video where he is flying his I-Beam version of his original design Scorpio.

Ah memories...  As Les pointed out, he, Bear, Al, and I were "vacationing" in sunny, warm, and calm (yeah, right...) England at the time.

Thanks again for posting this - Bob Hunt

[Steve Dwyer]

Bob,

I so much appreciated watching this video. In as much as I had left the hobby in 65 for 40 years, I truly enjoyed placing faces to the names that are still supportive enthusiasts today. What would the hobby have become without them? So cool seeing the classics perform and with their distinguished paint schemes as originally designed and built. Can't go without saying I couldn't help from noticing the 70s haircuts, VW busses and Chevy Chase shorts many wore.

Thanks much,

Steve

[Curt D Contrata]

An incredible video. I was there, Ron’s P-40 was awesome.
Enjoyed the entire recording, including that it was on film. And maybe more special that the fliers were my hero’s at the time who later became friends.

Thank you for sharing,

Curt

[wwwarbird]

 Great video, thanks! Where was this one held? Really like that P-40, with a throttle it looks like it could've easily won Scale.

[Doug Stout]

Held in Lake Charles, LA.

[Ken Culbertson]

The first flight in the video of Bill Werwage flying Juno appeared to me to be pretty small diameter turns in the squares (I can't even complete the Beginner pattern yet).  I wonder how they compare to today's turn diameter.  Maybe one of the expert flyers could comment on the turn diameters.

It was fascinating to watch the maneuvers.  Brought back a lot of memories.  As to your question, here is my take.   There were two camps back then and both seemed to score equally well.     One camp was very corner and elevation conscious, shapes suffered. Corners were tighter (around 10-12') and maneuvers at 45.  Another camp was very shape conscious and flew beautiful maneuvers around 50-60 degrees with corners closer to 15'.   Some, like Werwedge combined large with tight corners which made for some remarkable square maneuvers.     Dallas was a battle ground for both styles.  You had Gieseke and Rabe giving us the best of both styles.  It was a fun time, probably our Golden Era.

Today's patterns are much closer to the rule book and IMHO about 25-50 points better at all levels, mostly due to the equipment.

Others will probably disagree but we all tend to see things different even when we are looking at the same thing!

ken