Interview with Wild Bill

[RC Storick]

[RC Storick]

Let's at least get the name correct... It's Netzeband...


Bob

NO ONE SENT ME THE RIGHT SPELLING UNTIL NOW

[Howard Rush]

Cool. Thanks.

He talks like he writes.

[Brett Buck]

Cool. Thanks.

He talks like he writes.

   As I mentioned before, talking to him was a real privilege and he understood things on a level far beyond what came across in his articles. I thought what happened when he wrote for SN to be embarrassing and a blight on the event, frankly.

     Brett

[Ted Fancher]

   As I mentioned before, talking to him was a real privilege and he understood things on a level far beyond what came across in his articles. I thought what happened when he wrote for SN to be embarrassing and a blight on the event, frankly.

     Brett

That's a fascinating comment, Brett.  Do you have the dates of Wild Bill's SN articles?  If I've got 'em I'd love to reread them as my old timer's memory appears to have a blank spot in it.  My mostly intact collection of SN goes back only to 1989, however.

Ted

[Ted Fancher]

Great stuff, Sparky.  Who did the interview, by the way??

Ted

[RC Storick]

Great stuff, Sparky.  Who did the interview, by the way??

Ted

Ted no disrespect intended but I can't tell you. They are on this forum and following this thread so If they choose to disclose themselves they can. Sorry. BTW I got the camera thanks for your help

[Brett Buck]

That's a fascinating comment, Brett.  Do you have the dates of Wild Bill's SN articles?  If I've got 'em I'd love to reread them as my old timer's memory appears to have a blank spot in it.  My mostly intact collection of SN goes back only to 1989, however.

  I want to say early 2000's, but it could have been late 90's. The articles themselves are not the issues to look at, it's the reaction in later issues that you should look at. Stuff like "I didn't join to get a math lecture!" and various snide and/or mocking comments of the type you frequently see here. More pictures of guys posing with airplanes!  I was embarrassed for the group.

     I knew then I didn't want to post that sort of stuff any more, and I still get a "well, now that I got a headache from all that math" after something from junior high science class, or stuff of the general class of "bunch of stupid eggheads, everybody knows x...." Happens here *all the time*, I usually don't even bother anymore, even when the answer is very simple.

   He wrote one last article, about how someone from another planet and just looking at the rule book would approach stunt, and it was one long F U to the stunt community, although he would never have put it that way himself. 

      I think he really didn't like stunt all that much, just because you *can't* approach it as a strictly engineering exercise. You can see what he was interested in on the video, and he knew *far* more about it than you would ever get talking to him about it. At least partly because he was guarded against getting too enthusiastic or too deep because of the reactions he got. 

   I didn't know him all that well, we only talked in person at a few LA contests between flights, but it was really great to have that. As I mentioned in the other thread, we were drawing things in the dirt with a stick for a while. It doesn't get any better than that.

      Brett

[TigreST]

Thanks Sparky for posting.  Very interesting for sure.  My brother had a WenMac Banshee (aka, Douglas Dauntless/ Army A-24) with the bomb drop feature.  I don't remember that it every ran long enough to fly, but it was a big beast as I recall. 

Fast forward to the early 1970's and we were buying Testors Series 21 35's to put in our Sterling balsa kits for power, when Fox 35's were not available at the airbase PX (post exchange).  They ran great when you could get them to start...put starting was somewhat problematic for us.
 Ran one as power for the Guillows Profile Trainer 3..great beginer combo.

I remember seeing the 1/32 scale warbirds Bill speaks of, but continued to steer clear of most of the Testor flying model stuff after my first ownship of Cox products. 

Who would have thought that so much effort and development was put into the testors .049 motor system.  Wow.

[Randy Cuberly]

Thanks for posting the Video Sparky.  I was fortunate to know Bill when I was a kid in the middle and late 1950's when he lived in Independence Missouri.  I lived in Kansas City only about three miles from where he lived.  I saw him at all the local contests and being the very nice man that he was, he always answered my incessant questions very patiently and thouroughly.
Many conversations with him and my general interest in mechanics and math is what actually led to my becoming an Engineer.  Unfortunately He moved away to California and I moved to Chicago and I lost track of him until much later in life!  I did of course read all of his articles and was a life long FAN.

He was indeed a brilliant man and unfortunately was treated with far less respect than he deserved by some parts of the Stunt Community...In my opinion of course!

Randy Cuberly

[RC Storick]

Part 2 is now rendering and should be up in an hour. Stay tuned

[RC Storick]

[Trostle]

That's a fascinating comment, Brett.  Do you have the dates of Wild Bill's SN articles?  If I've got 'em I'd love to reread them as my old timer's memory appears to have a blank spot in it.  My mostly intact collection of SN goes back only to 1989, however.

Ted

Ted, 

I went through the last 24 years of Stunt News and could not find Netzeband's articles listed in any of the indices.  I will check again with emphasis on  the mid 2000's which is when I think those columns were published.  (I want to find them for my own interest.  I have a notebook with most of the magazine articles that he wrote including the columns he did for Model Airplane News and American Modeler.

Keith

Keith

[Ted Fancher]

Ted, 

I went through the last 24 years of Stunt News and could not find Netzeband's articles listed in any of the indices.  I will check again with emphasis on  the mid 2000's which is when I think those columns were published.  (I want to find them for my own interest.  I have a notebook with most of the magazine articles that he wrote including the columns he did for Model Airplane News and American Modeler.

Keith

Keith

Gee, Keith, I'm shocked...shocked I say...to hear you may have the articles in your library.  

I'll look forward to the results of your search.

Ted

[De Hill]

Ted Fancher Great stuff, Sparky.  Who did the interview, by the way??

Hi Ted,

I did the interview with Wild Bill on Feb. 16, 1990.

He was living in San Diego at that time.

[Ted Fancher]

Ted Fancher Great stuff, Sparky.  Who did the interview, by the way??

Hi Ted,

I did the interview with Wild Bill on Feb. 16, 1990.

He was living in San Diego at that time.

Thanks Dee.  We had pretty much guessed it was you but didn't want to embarrass anyone in case we were wrong.  You did a fine service for the stunt community.  It's great to hear him talk about the sort of things he wrote about which were, at times, difficult to digest unless one had a pretty firm foundation in stuff aerodynamic to start with.  Seeing the airplanes and listening to Bill's casual chatter about them give us a mental picture of the things he experimented with.  Don't know how many times over my, alas now dormant, affair with stunt I went back to Control Aerodynamics Made Painless for a refresher.

Thanks to you for making the tapes and thanks to Sparky for making them available to us.  I'm going through them in 15 or so minute chunks and still find myself hearing things that make me think, rewind, re-run and think again.

Ted

[De Hill]

Thanks, Ted.

[Jim Kraft]

De, you never cease to amaze me. How you happen to do the right thing at the right time and support control line in so many ways. A big THANK YOU.

[De Hill]

Thanks for the kind words, Jim.

Unfortunately, I occasionally do the wrong things at the wrong time!

[GERALD WIMMER]

Thank-you Sparky and De
I found it was a very informative interview . 
Regards Gerald   

[De Hill]

Thanks, Gerald!