The Vintage Hydroplanes

Wonderful listening to Ted Jones talk about the SloMoShun back in the day.

The 2020 monthly calendars are posted (well, the first four months are posted).
Since 2005 I have been making monthly calendars. I print off each one and hang it in my office (and usually I am scribbling stuff all over them).
As usual, once the APBA V&H group gives me the 2020 Schedule of Events, I will add them to these calendars.

Rudy Nielson sent in a few more photos of the neat Wickens he raced back in the early 1960s to his webpage. Included with those pics is also a news article on the race in Tonawanda on July 1967, some hydro race tidbits, and more pics of his other hydro he campaigned after the Wickens

Rudy’s family posted their home movies and you can watch the Wickens and other hydros running back in the 60s.

Bob Schroeder and his F-188 hydro winning the Southland Sweepstakes 266 class.
(Thanks to Brent McLean for sharing!)

8 Ton Sledge: Gar Wood’s 7,000hp Miss America X Boat Owned The World In ’32 and ’33 (Video)

Some good tidbits of information (and a good refresher) on towing a trailer with electric brakes.

Bill DeGlopper send in a couple pics from his family’s long tradition of boat racing.
Above photo is from the 1947 CNE races in Toronto. N-39 returning to the pits. N-39 is my Dad’s hydro being driven my his brother Ray DeGlopper. The boat leaving the pits is Bob Chalmers carrying the N-1 number (US class champion).

This is how Dad traveled to the races.  He raced at the Canadian Exhibition in Toronto.

John O’Mara (of New York) built this radical design for this hydroplane in the late 1940s in Dayton, Ohio. The boat was built using magnesium sheeting over a wood frame design.  We don’t know where the idea for this design came from. It could have well been one of those ideas that got started on a the back of a bar room napkin. The boat registered in the A modified class in the A.P.B.A. to campaign under the name / number Red Witch A-56.  The boat’s design entails having the driver to lay flat on the bottom of the boat and steering with his feet. Read more here.