56 inch , on ' William ' Simons . Believe you knew the guy.
Hi Matt: Yup, I knew Bill very well. I'm going to paste in here a section of my probably never to be finished autobiography that contains some stories about Bill Simons. He was an under appreciated soul...
Bill was also a very prolific designer, with a number of original designs to his credit that have become classics over the years. Many of Bill’s originals were published in Flying Models magazine in the 1970s. His first published designed was his P-39 Airacobra. That one appeared in print in the August 1968 issue of Flying Models. Bill’s next published design was the Shoestring which was designed in 1968 and flown at the Nats and many other contests in 1969. It was not published in Flying Models until September of 1971, but since it was designed prior to the Classic Stunt deadline of December 31, 1969, and actually flown at the 1969 Nats in Willow Grove we know that it qualifies for Classic.
Bill designed a number of other airplanes that were never published that were great looking and great flying ships. I’m going to insert here a piece that I wrote for my Genesis Saga book. It explains the transition that Bill made from 35-size ships to the larger ST 46-size airplanes. In my opinion he gets the credit for establishing a whole new design trend, especially for those of us on the East Coast.
For the next part of the Genesis story we need to retrace our steps a bit back to 1970. After Bill Werwage’s appearance at the 1969 Nats and his subsequent successes with the ST 46 powered USA-1 at the 1969 Team Trials and his Gold Medal winning performance at the 1970 World Championships, a number of stunt fliers began thinking about designing larger ships and utilizing the seemingly abundant, smooth and tamable power of the Super Tigre.46 engine.
Bob Lampione decided to go “big” for 1970 and designed and built a larger version of his 1969 Nats winning F-86 Sabre Jet. He opted to start his big model experiments around a foam Shark 45 wing, and he used a Fox .59 for power. His decision to use the Fox 59 instead of the ST 46 came about because of Larry Scarinzi’s success with the Fox 59 in his famous Blue Angel design. With that ship Larry placed third at the 1964 Nats in Dallas.
Unfortunately the Fox just didn’t make the kind of power required to haul the somewhat heavy F-86 around properly. Add to that the fact that Bob was never able to achieve a proper “stunt run” with that engine and the result was less than desirable. It was good enough, however, to garner a fine fourth place finish at the 1970 Nats in Glenview, Illinois.
Bill Simons had decided to go big at about that same time, but he opted to use the ST 46 for power as Bill Werwage had. He really didn’t want to use any existing design technology and so he set off on his own to come up with a totally new ship using the “blank sheet of paper” approach.
The first decision that Bill had to make was what wing to use. Again he shunned any existing airfoils and came up with a set of his own. I remember being in his shop and asking him how one designs an original airfoil. He literally put a piece of plywood on the floor and then put his foot down on the plywood and drew around the curve of the sole of his shoe! “There,” he said, “It’s a Florsheim Special!” Obviously he tweaked that curve more than just a bit before he was done designing, but that really was how he initially started the development of that airfoil set.
Bill designed a ship with twin rudders and appropriately named it Gemini. I cut the foam wing for that ship and it had more than 720 square inches of wing area. It was the biggest thing he’d ever built, and as it began to take shape in his diminutive bedroom workshop, I wasn’t too sure that he’d be able to get it out the door when it was finished. Okay, that’s an exaggeration… but not much of one!
In typical Bill Simons’ fashion, the finish on the Gemini was outstanding. Unfortunately, however, the projected finished weight was exceeded by quite a few ounces and the ship tilted the scales at 67 ounces! We were used to the 35 ships coming in at 39 to 45 ounces, so this was a shock. So much so that Bill decided to not even attempt flying the new ship. He just hung it on his workshop wall. And there it stayed for almost three years just gathering balsa dust and serving as an example of a good idea gone wrong.
I tried to get Bill to fly the Gemini, if only to see what it looked like in the air, but he was having none of it. It was a “Hangar Queen” to him and that was that. Bill could be stubborn.
Okay, now let’s fast forward to 1973. Just a couple of days before Bill was scheduled to leave for the Oshkosh Nats he was out practicing with his Gambit model. This ship was a slightly larger than normal 35-size design, but it was very light and it flew very well. It was powered by an OS Max 35S engine. Bill had been practicing hard with this ship and he was looking more than ready to make a serious assault on the Walker Trophy that year. That’s what we all thought right up to the point where, on one of the last practice flights before packing to leave, he neglected to walk backwards while performing a triangle loop in dead calm conditions. You guessed it; the model hit its own wake turbulence and knife-edged in towards Bill. He couldn’t gain line tension quickly enough to save the model and it smashed to bits against the asphalt.
Bill did not have another model to use as a backup… except the un-flown, heavy, balsa dust-covered Gemini. I reminded him about that model shortly after he picked up all the pieces of the shattered Gambit.
Bill took the Gemini off the wall and cleaned off the three-year accumulation of dust and paint overspray. Under that mess was still a beautiful, brand-new stunt model. It was still heavy, however, and Bill didn’t hold out too much hope that it would fly well, if at all. He’s a trouper, however and proceeded to purchase and prepare a brand new set of .018 cables on which to fly the ship (neither he nor I had flown a model on such “thick” lines before).
Bill, Bill Eybers, and I went out to the field the next day to test fly the Gemini. Bill test ran the engine on the ground and then rolled out the .018 “chains.” He fired up the ST .46 and set the needle. We were all amazed at the “throat” of the sound made by this engine. He looked at me and smiled a bit, raised his eyebrows in a sort of “Here goes nothing” look, walked to the center of the circle and picked up the handle. He signaled for launch and I remember thinking as the big Gemini accelerated away that this was a bit like christening a new Navy ship and seeing it slide down the dry dock ways!
The Gemini settled into very stable-looking level flight at about a 5.5 second lap time. It looked slow on the long lines (at least they were longer than we were used to!). As I remember they were 65-foot long lines. So the actual length from the center of the plane to the center of the handle was in the 67-foot range.
The moment of truth had arrived and I was surprised to see Bill pull right up into a Reverse Wingover! I thought he might at least do a few loops or lazy eights before starting a pattern. What followed was an epiphany for all of us. The big ship flew awesomely well, and Bill looked good with it immediately.
When he landed we both broke out in unbridled laughter. He was obviously more than a little happy with the performance of the new/old ship and just could not believe that something so big and heavy could perform so well. (inside he just had to be kicking himself…)
Bill did a very few trim adjustments and flew the ship four or five more times and then declared it the best flying thing he’d ever owned. He offered me a flight on the ship, and even though it was the only plane he had that he could compete with the following week at the Nats, I took him up on it. I was told, however, to take it easy and not do the entire pattern with it. That seemed fair.
The Gemini felt great to me right away and had a sort of “slow motion” characteristic to it. The long lines and the powerful engine combined to yield an airplane that was amazingly easy to fly at 45 degrees. It was also extremely easy to scribe round and square shapes with that model. The vertical line tension was the best I’d ever felt up to that point from a stunt model. I knew that Bill had a serious weapon here, and I wanted one too!
For the record, Bill flew the Gemini to a fifth place finish at the 1973 Nats. That’s not bad for a brand new model with but a small handful of practice flights on it. The weather at Oshkosh that year was very windy and Bill’s big model went through it with obvious ease. Bill’s Gemini kicked the door open for a number of us to make the transition to larger airplane and take advantage of the more powerful engines that were emerging. And while Bill didn’t publish the Gemini, he did use all the data he collected with that ship to design and build what has become perhaps one of his best known models, the Scorpio. Bill flew that ship to a fourth place finish at the 1974 Nats against some of the toughest competition ever seen at a Nats. That Scorpio was the first in a long series of Scorpios, and it was published in Flying Models magazine. Two years later Bill showed up at the 1976 Nats flying an 800 square inch version of the Scorpio and finished in a very credible fifth place. That plane had the very best corner of any model I have ever seen no matter what the time frame. And, in fact, all the models built around Bill’s original set of “numbers” for the Gemini/Scorpio series were noted by everyone of the era for their amazingly tight and smooth corners.
Bill lost his number one airplane just a few weeks before the 1980 Nats. He called me and asked if I had any spare components lying around that he might steal to make a quick model so he could compete at that Nats. I did have a new wing, tail, and fuselage crutch assembly with the top and bottom blocks attached and ready for carving on the boards, and I gave them to Bill. He finished up the building and finishing and produced what was to be his last published design, the Rogue.
Although known as very quiet person for the most part, Bill had this really great and offbeat sense of humor. One good example of this is when Gene Schaffer showed up at the Garden State Circle Burners field in early 1970 with his brand new twin rudder design. In those days Gene rarely named his stunt models. On this particular model Gene had emblazoned the left wing with a large “USA” and the left wing with an equally large “AMA.” Gene sat the model in the pit area and we all gathered around to admire it. After a minute or so, Bill asked Gene in a very deadpan manner what the name meant. Perplexed, Gene said that it didn’t have a name. “It sure does”, smirked Bill, “U-S-A A-M-A, Oosa-Amma!” That got a huge laugh from the group standing around the plane. Gene hated that name, but it stuck, and after a while even Gene began calling it the Oosa-Amma.
Another example of Bill’s offbeat sense of humor (and, really I could relate dozens of them…) happened when we traveled together to a contest in New Bedford, Massachusetts around 1969. We estimated that the contest site was about four hours from the area in which we lived, but in fact we really didn’t know how long it would take us to get there (remember, we had no Google Maps in those days to tell us how long a drive time from place to place.). So, we decided to leave around midnight from Bill’s house just to be sure. We took my mother’s four door AMC sedan and packed two quite large (for the day at least) Stunt models in the back seat, and all our other gear in the trunk and headed out. At that time of night there was little to virtually no traffic, and the ride went quickly; so quickly in fact that we got to the parking lot adjacent to the contest field around three in the morning. The site for the contest was a field at the New Bedford Airport. So, we were a bit early in arriving…
Those of you who knew Bill will understand this next part. We had no money for a motel room, so we decided to sleep sitting up in the front seat of Mom’s car. It had a pretty spacious bench seat, but Bill had very long legs. He was around 6-foot, 5-inches tall. After only a very few minutes it became obvious that he could not get comfortable enough to get any sleep. For some reason - that I to this day cannot explain - I had packed a sleeping bag in the trunk of the car. We had parked just adjacent to the fence that surrounded the area that we were pretty sure would be the contest site, and just outside that fence there were a number of park-type benches. I think I volunteered to take the sleeping bag and sleep on one of the bench’s so Bill could stretch out across the front seat of the car, but then again Bill may have thrown me out; it’s been more than 50 years since this all happened, so my memory may be a bit clouded on that point.
It was pretty warm that night as I recall, but there were a lot of mosquitos buzzing around. I zipped the sleeping bag up around my head, leaving just enough open to get some air to breath and finally started to drift off to sleep. My first attempt at that was cut short when I heard the screeching tires of a car speeding around the turn into the parking lot. The car pulled right up to where I was cuddled up in the sleeping bag and I heard a door open and then slam shut. Then I was accosted by an irate man asking me where his daughter was (you cannot make this stuff up). I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about and that I had just arrived from New Jersey and was there to attend a model airplane contest. He was at first adamant that it was me who had picked up his daughter earlier that evening and he knew the the airport parking lot was the local “lover’s lane.” (Whew boy, I could write a book… Well, in fact, I am). I finally convinced the man that I was not the one who was out with his daughter and he left; offering no apology mind you. Through all of this my flying buddy, Bill - remember Bill? - stayed in the car, sleeping like a baby (he was never the type to interfere).
I was just about to drift off to sleep again when I felt something poking me in the ribs. I unzipped the sleeping bag to find a police officer standing there looking a bit puzzled. He asked me what I was doing sleeping on a public bench at that time of the morning (probably at that point around 4 o’clock). I told him, as I had the irate dad earlier, that I was waiting of a model airplane contest start. He wasn’t buying it. He wanted identification and I think he was about ready to run me in for vagrancy. Then it dawned on me to tell him to confirm my story with Bill, who was still snug asleep in the car. The officer went over to the car, which was about thirty feet away, and tapped on the passenger side window with his night stick. Bill rolled down the window and asked what the problem was. The officer asked if Bill knew me and could confirm my story. That’s when Bill said to the cop, “I’ve never seen him before in my life,” and rolled the window back up! Fortunately the officer had a great sense of humor and just started laughing; he knew a good prank when he saw it. But that story is absolutely true, and I think it serves to convey just how clever and quick Bill was with humor.
I’ll give just one more example of Bill’s humorous side. In December of 1973 I got married to Marianne (as I’m writing this portion of the book we are in our 50th year of marriage; yeah, she’s a saint). Bill was my Best Man, and I stayed at his house the night before the wedding. In the morning while I was taking a bath (he didn’t have a shower), he knocked on the bathroom door and came in with a bottle and two glasses. The bottle contained blackberry flavored brandy. He told me that I should probably have a few hits of the brandy as no one should do what I was about to do sober. I joined him in one short toast…
In closing this section on Bill - and I could write a very thick book about all our adventures together - I want to give him credit for the title of this saga.Whenever I got down, or depressed about not winning he would say to me, “Kid (he always called me kid), fly good enough, long enough, and they can’t keep it from you.”
Bill and I built and flew together for many years, and we became more than flying buddies, we were best friends. As I write this entry in 2023, Bill has been gone for several years. He was one of my all time heroes and certainly one of the best friends I ever had. He was helpful to anyone who asked for assistance, he had a great sense of humor, he was an amazing flier for a long period of time, he was one of the best builders and finishers the event has ever seen, and he was about as humble a person as I’ve ever known. Perhaps that is why he is still so revered and respected on the CL Stunt scene. I’ll never forget him.
Later - Bob
Topic: Just got a new toy! Here's something historic... (Read 14209 times)