I got to know Bob (RJ, Alpha Dog, Whitely,) early on in my competitive stunt career, even though I am a Midwesterner, through stories and such from Chris McMillin after he relocated to St. Louis in the mid to late 1980's I think it was. I had certainly read about him and seen his pictures in the magazines, and McMillin filled in a lot also. I think I met him in person on my first trip to VSC around 1990 or so. Chris arranged for me to fly out on an E ticket with TWA, and I built a model box for my airplane. In those early years, VSC was like a stunt flyers dream of a place to meet the legands and heros of the event, and I am really grateful to Chris for talking me into going! No real specific memories of that trip, as it went so fast. The contest was only 2 days long back then and it seemed like it was over in two hours!!
I was on a rotation of going to VSC about every other year back then. I had introduced a new flier, Mark Hughes, to the hobby about the same time and we would all get together to fly quite often back then. In late 1993, Chris had the idea of us all building Shark .45's and going to VSC. the short story of that is Chris wound up restoring his Dad's 1968 model that was a modified Shark 45 into a jet styling type configuration. Mark liked that a lot when he saw it, so decided to do a replica of that airplane, and I built a scratch built Jetco Shark.45 by copying a kit. Mark and I decided on the then new ST.G51 for power. I got mine done in time for some trim flights, but in true contest fashion, Mark finished his the night before we left in my van to drive out there, and the paint dried in the van on the 24 hour straight through drive.
We hit the field at Silver Bell Park the first afternoon and set up to put the maiden flights on Mark's model. Mark somehow built a warp in the wing, but was determined to fly the airplane like it was!! The first flight was almost a disaster, as right on take off the model was flying with the outboard to way up due to the warp. Whitely and Jim Armour were standing next to me and when Mark landed and I retrieved the model, Whitley told him to wind up his lines and follow him. They went off to the grass circles with flight boxes and tools ands such, and were gone about an hour. I did see him put a flight or two in but didn't pay attention. I just didn't think that there was any way they were going to trim that model out.
They came back to the same circle, and when Mark's turn came up I could see all the cutting and tweaking that Bob and Jim had done on the wing. Mark them proceeded to really burn in a flight! When he landed, Whitely told him to go again. On that flight, he really laid in another one. By this time we had attracted quite a crowd, and some one asked, "Who is this guy?" and I told him "Mark Hughes, he came with me." Bob just stood there with his arms folded and watched. I think Mark put in about 6 straight flights and after each one, Whitely and Jim made another teak or two and Bob gave him some coaching. The crowd remained the whole time just watching!
The end result was that Mark wound up placing second or third against some of the top guys in the country at that time. After the awards presentation, we stopped at McDonalds to eat, and Ted Fancher, Frank McMillan, Gary McClellan who was chief judge or ED at the NATS around that time and maybe a few others were there. We said hello, got our food and sat down. Then, Ted just couldn't contain himself any more and asked " Mark, where have you been hiding!???" I offered up to Ted, "You want to know something that will make you sick? It has only been three years since I got a phone call from Mark asking me how to set the needle valve on a Fox.35! And that model he's flying is only about the third or fourth stunt model he has ever built!! That whole trip was such a success because of the time and help that RJ and Jim Armour gave both Mark and myself.
The details of the next adventure are a little more foggy. Somehow or another, I ended up with Whitely's model transport box in my garage. It was the box he used to transport his FAI Team model ( I think it was his "Showtime Laser" ??) to the world champs in Australia Chris used it to transport a model to St. Louis on the airline and since he lived in an apartment, he had no way to store it. Along that time period, at about NATS time, Bob was driving his '57 Chevy to the NATS, and Chris checked in with me to see if Bob could stop at my house to service the car, change the oil and such, because I think he had just recently finished it and the engine was really low time. I said sure, and when he showed up, I got to show him my shop, collections of kits, magazines and such. He may have picked up the model box on his return trip back west. It was a huge box because the model was pretty big, but you gotta remember cars had big cabins and big trunks back then!! Every trip I made to the NATS and VSC always included an enjoyable BS session with RJ. I was pleasantly surprised to see him at the Paducah contest one year, probably the year that Brett mentioned, where he was traveling with some one else in their airplane and hitting a lot of contests ( I just can't pull the name out of my head right now) Bob was flying his Hawker Hunter model, which I understand was a modified Jetco Shark, and it was pretty much just like Brett said. Some of the Expert class pilots had not ever seen him before, and he was flying the Hunter in both Classic and Expert, so they had the expectation that he might be easy pickins against the current crop of piped airplanes. Well, that got settled in pretty short order!!That was great fun seeing him in his element again!!
There was a NATS at Lawrencville that had some interesting events also with RJ at his finest! I'll have to think about that one a bit, maybe confer with Chris to get my facts straight as he was there, and it involved a curfew on flying practice at the airport ramp. I'll fill in the details on that one after I get the story straight, or maybe Chris can jump in with it if he likes, but in revolved around whether or not we could practice or not one evening and a typical Alpha Dog response!!!
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Topic: Our best times with Whitely! (Read 3952 times)