ORIGINAL: Lou Melancon
Reading these posts about Rat Racing in Louisiana and Texas in the 60's brings back a lot of memories. In those years contests were a couple of weeks apart and they were held in Longview, Texas, Houston, Dallas, Lake Jackson, Shreveport, Louisiana, Alexandria, New Orleans, and other places, but those are the areas we went too. I was a teenager and built my combat planes and rat racers. My dad set up the engines. We mixed our own fuel in those days and used chemicals that today are known carcinogens (nitro benzine). If I remember correctly we ran 40% nitromethane, UCONN synthetic oil, and 8X9 Top Flite Power Props.
The airplanes in the early sixties were based on the Harter's speed pan but a profile design out of Houston used by Ron Eastman and John Locke pretty much took over in 64 or 65. We used variations on that design for a couple of years before returning to pan based racers and cowling the engines.
We used Super Tigre G-21 35s in combat and ringed 40s in Rat Race. The ringed engine would re-start much better than the lapped engines. I can remember going to contest in an un-airconditioned car with 4 others, 2 in the front, three in the back in the middle of night trying to get to the contest a just about day break. One of the guys in the back was usually doping a combat plane or doing repairs.
1964 was the last year I didn't have an air conditioned car. I was driving a 1960 Thunderbird that needed a compressor, but required some special (Japanese, perhaps?) one that cost a fortune. I bought a (used) Dodge that had a so-so A/C system, and had that part overhauled, making it good enough to freeze everyone inside rapidly on the hottest days. There were just club members only contests in San Antonio when I lived there (here, now), and some inter-club events between an Austin club and San Antonio.
I traveled to Lake Jackson, Longview, Houston, Lake Charles, and I think Baton Rouge. I may have been in Shreveport once. Dallas was a place my friends and I almost always had terrible luck competing at. Far too often in the early 60s, I would draw Riley or (damn, who designed the Big Iron?) another very tall, very good combat flier, but from Oklahoma, first round (OK, in edit, it was Carl berryman). If it wasn't me, it was one of the others with me. But for financial reasons, I only attended about half of the contests that were more or less "in range". We didn't include motel stays as part of what we expected to do to compete.
In Houston we flew against John and Ron, plus Dickie Ritch, Sherwood Buckstaff, all three of the Stubbefiels, Monica Garrison, Pat Willcox, Bill Estill and many others. In Baton Rouge we had my dad, Jim Bethea, Brian Froisy, Howard Williams, and Bill Stevens active in racing for several years.
The speeds of the racers, their line pull and the physical demands of racing led to a shortage of able pilots. Sometines a pilot would fly his own plane and that of several others in a day. There were times when the finalists could fly off because they were using the same pilot.
Those years, contests, airplanes, and people were very important to me growing up and I treasure the memories.
I was 24 in 1964, and was married, with a little baby at home, so I had responsibilities there, with only a moderate income with which to budget necessities plus hobbies. A couple of years later, I was divorced, and the sole parent to one toddler, and one infant. That limited my contest-going options, although I'd moved to Houston and had a much better job there, which put Lake Jackson and Houston contests in my back yard, so to speak, and my San Antonio model friends could come the afternoon before contests, and camp out in my living room (my job wasn't good enough, yet, to buy a house, so there was no guest room in my apartment for them to use).