ON A SAD NOTE: 
Leo Vanden Berg, crew chief on the three time National Champion and Gold Cup winning Miss Bardahl (63,64,65) passed away Sunday October 24th. 

Unlimited hydroplane racing has lost one of its keenest students of the sport. Born June 9, 1929 in Ithaca, NY, E.K. Muller passed away Friday morning, October 15th, 2004 after succumbing to inoperable lung cancer and associated difficulties. His initials stood for Enrique Keutsch Ekay, aka Stanley Terraplane. He graduated from U.C. Cal-Berkley and came to Seattle to work for Boeing in the late 1950's. Three TV stations broadcast the races live in those days and E.K. saw the then-new cabover THRIFTWAY TOO. For his trained engineer's eye, it was "love at first sight" with the Unlimited hydros. E.K. was a fixture at Unlimited races for several decades. He was the reporter with the pork-pie hat, a camera, an always-in-use pocket notebook, an insatiable curiosity about the boats and the people who raced them and an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the sport. E.K. was also a collector of records and CDs from popular music's Golden Age, the swing years. He’d also assembled an extensive library, specializing in books on railroading, sailing, movies and World War II. E.K. was a contributing photographer for the Madison, Indiana Courier, a charter member of Unlimiteds Unanimous, a member of the Seafair Boat Club, and a tour guide at Seafair for many years. He was the inspiration and guiding light for the UNLIMITED NEWS JOURNAL. At E.K.’s request, memorial gifts in his honor should be made to the Boeing Employees Community Fund, PO Box 3707, Mail Stop 17-MR, Seattle, WA 98124-2207 or the American Lung Association. Cards and notes can be mailed to: The E.K. Muller family attention: Joan Smith 714 Lakeside Ave. S.#407  Seattle, WA 98144
 
God Speed to our friends E.K. Muller and Leo Vanden Berg from the APBA Vintage family. 
  
  
BOB SILVA’S WEST COAST REPORT:
THE DADDY OF THE ERR’S
In 1911, at the age of 15, Willard Russell “Bill” Campbell built his first speedboat; at 18 he began to experiment with rear-engine powered hulls using V-Drives, and by the age of 54 he would become known as “The Daddy of the E Racing Runabouts.”
Henry Dickson, Hal White and Bill Campbell where taken aback. While locating their step-bottom hull’s balance point, for a big 6-cylinder engine, they’d come to an abrupt realization. Their 20 foot, homemade, rear-engine speedboat was going to require a V-Drive AND they were almost broke. So, the three inventive young men set about designing and building their own V-Drive unit. The finished boat reached 42 mph and was raced during the 1912-13 seasons. Encouraged by their success, they built another V-Drive boat that ran 50 mph. Unfortunately, the partnership ended following a test crash that left their boat on the bottom of Oregon’s Willamette River. Thirty years would pass before Campbell returned to designing and building speedboats.
The plumbing trade had brought the now married Campbell to Southern California. He’d also become a proficient wood worker, having built 80 Sabot sailing dinghies. It was after attending a Long Beach race, won by a smooth running, rear-engine 225 hydroplane called MISS ARCADIA, 3-F, driven by famed boat racer Dorothy “Dot” Munson, that Campbell went back to his shop and began to build speedboats, once again.
Bill’s 18 ft, rear-engine hull, GINGER resembled the sleek lines of Dot’s step-hydro 3-F but was built to the APBA rules for an E Racing Runabout and featured his own, homemade V-Drive. Returning to the drawing table many times, the ingenious Campbell refined his E boat design. His belief in “letting the lines build the boat until everything sort of flowed together” resulted in a lighter, smaller and sleeker rear-engine 16 foot V-Drive runabout. It was very different from the conventional designs of the time. Racing mechanics had found more horsepower for the 245 cubic inch Ford and Chevy six cylinder as-well-as the Ford and Mercury Flathead V-8’s used in the ERR class which helped develop Campbell’s other idea. “Motor power, a better balanced hull, along with stronger props is the answer to higher speeds”, he’d stated. His boats were prop-riding front runners, prone to leaping and jumping but were stable in rough water. They rarely flipped and Campbell even posted a “Hell-Drivers” trophy, awarded to any driver that would get one upside down. Top California drivers like Roy Skaggs, Ollie Prather, Stan Schmidt, Dale Brown and Loren Pennington were in the driver’s seats, too. The spectators loved the high-flying antics of the ERR’s and nicknamed them, “The Ladies from Hell.”
In 1946 Brown’s DUZ set a new 1-mile class record of 60.082 mph, 1-year- later, Pennington’s COPPERHEAD upped it to 70.245 mph and the East Coast contingent really began to take notice of Campbell’s designs.
The 1950 season found COPPERHEAD being sold to Lakeland, Florida’s Al Lodiwick to be joined later by another Campbell record holder, PIRATE which sold to Alabama’s J.C. Parker. The boats were very competitive, but the times and designs were-a-changing. Designer Pop Glazier’s front engine, low-slung beauties couldn’t handle the rough water as well, but still, they quickly became the hottest record breakers. E.C. Gundstorm’s THE FOX, Sherm Crichfield’s HELL’S ANGEL and Jud Tanner’s PUZZLER ran smooth and clean compared to the Campbell hulls... and records began to topple. 
Out West, notice was served when the Glenn Dale designed, early fiberglass, PLASTICO grabbed the record. Another V-Drive pioneer, Joe Mandella unveiled a new, rear-engine design of his own called, DONALD DUCK. The temper mental DUCK flew, too - with a new 1-mile record of 72.828 mph. The Pop Glazier hulls kept kicking the records up, including Willis Mitchell’s HONEY BEE TOO which destroyed the ERR competition record at 65.598 mph in 1952 (later, it too was destroyed in a Long Beach crash). 
The class was getting crazy! The boys were tipping the nitro cans for record runs; the hot Mercury Flatheads were being replaced with hotter Hemi-Dodge Red Rams and fuel injection was being added. The ERR’s really were “the Ladies from Hell”, now. It would be 25 years before a runabout class got this wild and crazy again ... and they’d be called, K Racing Runabouts (for more on the post ’52 ERR’s see Propeller Sept/98).
If Bill Campbell had lived long enough, surely he would have been involved with the blown, fuel-burning, KRR designs. Let’s remember him as “The Daddy of the E Racing Runabouts.”