The Tip of the Ed-Berg
The Immaculate Ejection
This story originally appeared in the 89–2 edition of Second Wind, Dodgson Designs in-house newsletter. — Ed.
Gary Brokaw, perpetrator of the famous AFART (Automatic Flap Aileron Reflex Trim), the Automatic AFART etc. staged a real attention grabber, as he was getting boringly high in the standings at the 1989 AMA Nationals in Pasco, WA.
Gary, always the consummate showman and special effects wizard, rigged his Camano’s radio system so that at the apex of his well calculated zoom top-off, the receiver and batteries would eject from the glider and forever vanish into the atmosphere. All went as orchestrated by Gary — a perfect launch to great altitude, a powerful zoom and the perfect top-out. Then came the pay-off. The plane started doing the minuet in the air, gracefully swooping, looping and doing wingovers. Gary’s planning was perfect — right down to a perfect greased- in belly landing.
Needless to say, Gary’s careful work in allowing for windage etc. was rewarded with an outburst of spontaneous applause from the entire soaring assembly. With a knowing and defiant smile, the cool FX man took his bows and was last seen trying to rematerialize his vanished receiver and battery pack. One of his droll flying buddies was overheard saying “that’s what happens when you fly with AFART”!
Soon after Gary’s masterful performance and the much deserved recognition that he received, a lesser man tried to capture some of the glory. I am sad to say, this man was me. Thinking that Gary had gone a bit overboard, playing to the crowd, with receiver ejection etc, I thought that a more subtle approach was in order.
I set the stage by turning in a couple of perfect flights with perfect times. Now for my moment in the sun. I did a great zoom off of launch — and surprise, no control. I was trying to play the crowd now like the FX man had done so well before me, but alas, they all assumed that I just could not control my glider.
As I went off running down the field, after a rapidly disappearing and stalling glider, all I could hear ringing in my ears was “well, there he goes again”. Fortunately Bill Hanson found my plane for me. It was about half a mile away, lodged in an embankment, slightly damaged but still flyable.
Go figure. Here, I had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams — yes the receiver battery had come unplugged at the top of the launch and all had gone perfectly except that the crowd was not sophisticated enough for my subtle performance. They had all assumed that I had just screwed up again! I did learn one thing though, never follow Gary (he FX man) Brokaw when you are playing to an audience that has been standing out in the hot sun for several days!
Off the field, in an effort to mend my shattered ego, I thought that I would win back the crowd on an individual basis — using my wit and charm. That evening I went for a cooling dip in the pool at the Clover Island Inn. While I was the only one in the pool, at the time, I noticed that an animated group of about four people were bemusing themselves in the hot tub. After achieving my usual state of cool- down in the pool (Tom Brightbill just calls me ‘Numbnuts’) I sauntered over to the hot tub to get thawed out and to start my campaign to contain the damage done to my reputation by the unfortunate misinterpretation of my afternoons performance at the glider field.
I carefully sized up the group — a dark haired young man of about 30, and three fellows who looked to be of varying stages of pre- and early puberty. “Ah”, I said to myself, “easy prey!” In my most condescending and sincere sounding voice, I smoothly stuttered out: “I could not help but overhear you fellows talking about gliders”. I was putting out the bait so once I got them to bite, I would reveal who I am and they would naturally think how fine a fellow I am to talk to regular flyers, like themselves, and thus, they would become mine. “Are you guys sailplane flyers?” I went on. To this, the boys started tittering among themselves.
“I must have embarrassed them” I thought. “They probably do not fly very well and so do not know what to say”. In an attempt to ease their insecurities, I gave them a reprieve by asking “Where are you fellas from?” The reply was “California” and more tittering. For the first time, I was beginning to think that I might be losing them — and then to my horror, the man quietly and patiently said, “you know who I am, you just don’t recognize me — but that is all right, I didn’t recognize you either until I saw your plane pirouetting off into the sunset today.”
Then it hit me and I died right there; this semi submerged man before me was non other than Don Edberg and his sons (without the sun glasses, without the special hat and neck protector combo and without the ever present, telltale camera pouch at his side). This man had just won the F3B event and who has been famous in the world of soaring since his late teens!
Now you see one more reason why for me personally, the 1989 AMA Nationals became known as ‘The Port of Pasco Fiasco!’
©1989 Bob Dodgson
Read the collected works of Bob Dodgson in the New RCSD: see The Dodgson Anthology. Also, are you a fan of the retro Dodgson Designs logo? Otherwise, now read the next article in this issue, return to the previous article in this issue or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
