246. Soaring through History - Bill Liscomb

Hi

there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. We continue our legend series with this one with Bill Liscombe. And as we did with the Malcolm Jones show previously, Tom Pagini graciously offered to be the interviewer for this one again because he was there with Bill back in the day and back in the early 70s through this whole incredible journey. You're going to hear some of, of course, it would take us days to get the entire journey, but Bill was the mastermind behind the incredible documentary film, The Big Blue Sky. It's incredible that they had footage from back in those days, from the very first beginnings of hang gliding on all kinds of crazy contraptions to sort of fly back in the early 70s.

And the film is amazing. It took him five years to put together. His mother was a very famous photographer. They've got a lot of the still shots over the ages, many covers of hang gliding magazines around the world. But you're going to hear a lot of names in this one. Otto Lilienthal and Bill Bennett, Dave Kilbourn, Barry Palmer, Joe Faust, John Dickinson, Richard Miller, Terrace Cassano. Saniuk, Jr. and Sr., Jack Lambie and Mark and his brother, Mark Lambie, Dave Kronk, Danita Hall, the Wills brothers, of course, Peter Brock, Lloyd Licker, Balmer Jansen, Bob Tampano, Roy Haggard, Tom Price, Anthony Matthews, and

many, many more. This is really a walk back in time. As I've said many times, we stand on the shoulders of giants and Bill was certainly one. A lot of fascinating subjects here and great stories.

Again, if you haven't seen the film, you must. The link is up in the show notes. The Big Blue Sky, It'll Leave You Smiling. It's an incredible documentary, a work of passion for Bill and we're all very thankful for him putting that together because it does a great job of documenting the early days. And these guys going from just trying to make a movie to making a movie. Trying to make it down to learning how to thermal and learning how to go far. Enjoy this chat with Tom Pagini and Bill Liscombe. Cheers.

This is really special to me. Thank you guys for joining us on the mayhem this week because Bill, I was sent your film quite a long time ago by Hugh at XC Mag and said, you got to check this out. And I just was, it sucked me in. Right from the moment. Go. And it's just a beautiful film. The Big Blue Sky and the history is amazing. I've got this. I showed you guys this before we started recording. I just took note after note after note after note because it's just got, it's got all the names, Otto and Barry Palmer and Dave Kilmore and Joe Faust and John Dickinson. It goes on and on and on and on. And of course, Tom Pagini, you're, you're part of that list. And thank you again for doing this together.

And like we did with Malcolm, you're going to be the main interviewer here because you know so much of this history better than I do, but welcome both of you to the show. And I, I just can't wait to dive into this. Appreciate you guys.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

That's great. Bill, you and I have known each other for a long time. So I'm going to ask some questions to begin with from the start of your flying adventures. It seems that flying has been a constant theme in your life. And where did that come from? I don't know. You know, I have a picture of my sister and myself at the beach in Santa Monica in the very early fifties playing in the sand. And I got a cast metal jet fighter, you know, and, um, you know, at home I'd for, for entertainment, I'd get two chairs facing each other and put a cardboard box upside down between them and get up inside the box and draw instrument panels on the inside of the box.

And make believe I was flying airplanes, you know, and, um, my dad was a, uh, a decorated world war II veteran. He, uh, was a co-pilot on a B-24D and, uh, he was one of the survivors of the August 1st, 1943 Ploesti raid, the low level kamikaze run on the refineries there. And, uh, you know, you get the air metal and the DFC for flying that. And it was later, um, uh, they crashed. They did an emergency landing in Switzerland and he was interned for two years there. And, uh, you know, I've always shared that love of aviation with my dad, you know, we, we speak flying, you know, and, uh, um, I've, you know, I just

always loved everything flying. I remember, I believe when it came out, Ernest Gans, Fate is the Hunter came out in the early sixties. And I remember reading that when I was like 10 or 12 years old and just going. Wow, this is amazing stuff, you know, and, uh, um, you know, I got, uh, I just had the airplane bug, you know, somebody told me in high school about this. This is in 1967 or so mentioned the phrase radio controlled glider. And I was like, Ooh, I could, I could afford one of those. I need one of those. Where do I find one of those? In 1967, South shore, Massachusetts, South of Boston there. I went no radio control gliders.

I'll tell you, but, um, you know, that, that kind of got me on the path, you know, that's great. Well, we're going to, that's also been a constant theme in your life. We're going to get back to that a little later, but by, uh, August, 1972 issue of grounds camera, which I just looked at this morning, by the way, uh, you wrote in which grounds camera was the newsletter of the Southern California hang gliding association, which is the predecessor to the. And it, and it was after the Harvey harbor soaring society. Yeah.

Um, you, you wrote in saying that you were selling a lighter version of my cylindrical or Gallo called an area on, or area was your company. Um, when did you first fly or attempt to fly a hang glider? Um, actually photographic proof will show that it is May 23rd. 19. 71 at the first Lilienthal meet, but actually we had that hang loose and built in Riverside and near Mount Rubidoux and we finished it one night and crepe stood across, uh, university Ave to a empty field at about 11 o'clock at night and ran it down the slope.

And, um, I think I flew from where the hill kind of, you know, rolled into the sidewalk to the other side of the sidewalk, you know, and everybody. Fell down and skinned their ankles and knees or whatever, but the, the first real flight I had was that at the first Lilienthal meet, which is, which is really interesting. Cause the third question is you were present flying a hang loose biplane at the first auto meet in Riverside in 1971, Corona Delmar, Newport, not Riverside. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh, it was in, okay. It was in, and that was the first auto meet and that was on May 23rd. Do you say auto Lillian? Lillian Thal's birthday.

May 23rd. So, you know, it's, it's, it's.

In your, in your film bill, it was, uh, you guys started these, these meets started happening every weekend, right? I mean, it was.

Yes. To an extent. Yeah. Joe Faust was very instrumental in that. He had, uh, if after the first Lillian Thal meet, you know, there was a Montgomery meet, I think in August down in San Diego, but you know, they had, he had like the Turkey fly, the beach fly, you know, the photo fly with the, you know, everybody on the hillside out in Norco. And, uh, Joe was very, very instrumental in, in organizing those things.

That's amazing. How many, and how many were, you know, in a typical meet, how many people would show up?

Well, at the first Lillian Thal meet, there were about. About a dozen hang gliders there, roughly. And, um,

really, you

know, when I, when I moved to California in 1969, I ended up in Riverside, California, and I was just over the hill from Flay Bob airport, which is experimental aircraft association chapter one. And, uh, it was a hotbed of aviation whack jobs, you know, Art Scholl was the, uh, um, he was the aviation. He was in, uh, in charge of the aviation department at San Bernardino Valley college, where I was enrolled. And he also gave lessons there, aerobatic lessons. And, um, you know, Mack Riley was there. He, uh, had the sailplane operation at Elsinore. They used Howard DGAs for tow planes.

And, um, you know, just a whole raft of other people met Jack Lambie there before his hang gliding adventures. And, you know, it was, it was like. Old home week to go out to the first Lilienthal meet and see all, Hey, I know you, you know, and I'd see them building their stuff at the airport too, you know?

And is there the, uh, Tom mentioned you had a company already at this point, but when I had Miguel Gutierrez on the show, you know, he would, they were kind of getting started around the same time also because of his father down in Mexico. And, you know, he talked about that. They were building these things from just junk. They were finding on the side of the road, you know, the rubber tires. Tires from bikes and bamboo poles. And, you know, was it, was it pretty ghetto like that? You're just, just putting these things together. Yeah. After that first

Lilienthal meet, um, a bunch of us dropped out of school and just made it our daily job to, to work on the hang glider in the parking lot of our apartment building and, uh, build new stuff, fix the old stuff and then go fly in the afternoon and party, dude. What else was there? You know, we made the hang gliders out of the first one. The first few regalos, you know, I had that hang loose at the, at the first, uh, Lilienthal meet. And it, when we left, it was in a 55 gallon barrel. It had been crashed so many times. There was nothing worth saving and, uh, too much plastic in the wreckage to start a fire with, you know, but, uh, Terrace Kucinich, his stuff flew good.

That batso flew great. So I called him up, went over and measured his batso. And, uh, you know, me and the crew, we'd get in the Volkswagen camper with some hacks. And drive around Riverside and go, look, a stand of bamboo. And we go over there and cut down the bamboo, tie it on the roof and trim it up and make the hang gliders out of it. Get the steel tubing to sleeve it at the muffler shop, you know, and plastic sheeting, bailing wire, duct tape, colored duct tape was pretty cool. I'll tell you.

Terrace. I've got, I've got him written down. He was the Icarus one. And the Icarus five. Yeah.

And his, his father was very, um. Uh, a big part of organizing the hang gliding too, you know, when it went from, you know, the South Bay hang gliding to, you know, SoCal hang gliding. Um, you know, I did get a phone call saying, would you like to be the, would you consider being the president of it? And I was out in Riverside and they're all over and, you know, Long Beach. I'm like, no, no, no, Billy, don't do that. You know, and, uh, but he was also the, our in-spirit Terrace senior was. He was the, he was the inspiration for our cylindrical leading edge truncated tip glider that we built under the banner of Imperial engine works and what we, how we built that was we found, um, an irrigation company called rain for rent, just South of Riverside on the 15 and it was two inch Oh five Oh tubing and the alloy of it.

It was like 50 hyphen question mark dash two question mark. You know, you get rust. Spots in it, you know, but it was like, you know, affordable, you know, it was like 25 cents a foot. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's a little loaded up boy. And, uh, you know, we got those cylindrical leading edges by marking it and, you know, every six inches or so. And we, we found that where we lived, there was a telephone pole with a stop sign next to it. And, you know, we get the thing and just kind of put dense in it every six inches until we got the shape. Right.

And, uh, you know, so that was, you know, that was probably the, you know, he gave me NASA reports that showed the benefits of cylindrical leading edges and truncated tips. And we're like, Oh, that's far out, man. Let's try that.

And, uh, Yeah. Most of the, uh, early experimenters had the same NASA reports because they had, uh, different aspects. Yeah. Yeah. They tested truncated tips in your glider at one time and truncated tips on it. Yeah. The first one. Yeah. And I, in 71, we had a truncated tip glider. Well, what was the biggest flight you had? It had a T-bar? An inverted T-bar, all cantilevered. Right. With a little prince post, not a king post, but a prince post because the aspect ratio was like one.

Square, yeah. It was, it was. 20 foot keel. Yeah, you know, so the keel is kind of.

Little two flexes. So what was your, what was your greatest flight you had? Um, we made it to the bottom of the hill a lot of times.

And we could, and we could turn and land into the wind and not have to nurse cracked ribs or broken glider, you know, land on your feet. Sometimes even, it was pretty exciting. I have to, I have to remind myself sometimes when we just get, uh, going to the beach, sinky flight that, Hey, remember there was a time in your life where you'd have talked about this for months. Right. Well, you know, the, the next glider we made after that.

We found some pole vault poles and we pre-tensioned the pole vault poles, you know, and everybody, you know, like Flay Bob's like, uh, pre-tension, that ain't good, you know, whoa, you know, we're like, well, it's really light, you know, and it, it may have had an aspect ratio of two, you know, geez, it was a hot rod, you know, and it had a regular control bar by then, but that was, uh, kind of a, kind of a cool thing. And there's a picture somewhere in my art, in my. Library of, uh, John Haven's flying that with a regular control bar on the ends of it, extended past the corners and were swept back. And he's like totally supplying zooming down the Hill. It's like, dude, this is going to be a thing.

So, uh, you, you knew all of the original California enthusiasts, like Jack Lambie, Richard Miller, Joe Faust, Bruce Carmichael. Yeah. Um, Dave Kronk, uh, do you have, do you have any precious anecdotes that you, we've only got an hour, Tom, but it's all right. We'll stretch it out. No, actually, you know, I, I will say that big blue sky is autobiographical. It's my life story. You know, I know I'm in that movie at least a dozen times and, you know, and I was there and I'm like Forrest Gump. I didn't, I didn't ever design anything famous. I didn't. I didn't, you know, have a big King glider company.

I never want to meet, but you know, I'm, I'm in a lot of those pictures, you know, just like Forrest Gump, you know, there, I was there. I know the people, I know them all, you know, when they did big blue sky, it was like, uh, every middle-aged man's dream of reliving his youth, going to visit everybody, you know? And, uh, you know, it was, it was really fun to do that. Yeah. That's, um, you know, I look back on it, you know, and I learned. I met Lloyd Leitcher, you know, and we're a bunch of hippies and Lloyd is like square, you know, and you know, he's, if, if I ever get a chance to grow up, I'd, I'd like to be like Lloyd Leitcher. Let me say that, you know, he's just a really fine

human being, you know, really nice man. He, uh, took the swing. Please elaborate about what he did, by the way, for our viewers. Yeah. Yeah. So Lloyd Leitcher was an aeronautical engineer who, um, he worked with the boys up there in the Sierras. Where they're doing the wave experiments and examined some of the wreckage after some of the planes got dissected by the wave. And, uh, he went on to become the editor of, and the director of the Soaring Society of America for 20 years. And over that 20 years, they averaged a new member a day. Wow. Think about that. And he, um, fortunately got in as the director of Yushka.

You know, I did States, so for SoCal and the United States hang gliding association, and it was just, you know, excellent about it. I asked him, you know, when I interview him, I said, how did, you know, your, your lifestyle is so different from people in early hang gliding, you know, what was that? Was, did that present any problems for you? You know, like if Dick Iper showed up tripping his brains out, you know, I mean, I didn't say that, but, you know, uh, you know, Lloyd's just so cool and kind. And, um, and collected, you know, and focused on his, you know, just his love of flight. He says, uh, no, you know, we just had a job to do. We had work to do and we did it, you know? Well, he also, uh, left the Soaring Society to pursue creating that.

That's right. Hang gliding association. That's very important. After trying to, to bring the two together because he thought that there was so much knowledge that could be shared with hang gliding to make it safer. Yeah. And, uh, and they didn't, the people at SSA didn't buy it and, uh, and, uh, yeah, left to, uh, to pursue, to pursue useful, which was really great. That was a big sacrifice. He saw hang gliding as a perfect gateway drug to sailplanes. And, you know, he's absolutely right. When I was flying sailplanes in the early two thousands, I go to Warner Springs and 60%. And of the people there were my buddies from Torrey Pines, you know, dudes from Elsinore, but he's flying sailplanes, you know, so he is very, he

was on it, you know, what

grabs me so much bill from the movie that just made me smile endlessly was the, you know, we always say we're standing on the shoulders of giants and, you know, we, these days you wouldn't go out for what you guys were doing. You know, you're getting more on a glide on your very beginning ENA paraglider. And you guys were on these hang gliders and, you know, like you said, it was such a big deal to just make it down to the bottom of the hill and be able to turn into the wind. But, you know, you could just see that these week weekend meets, the stoke was through the roof. I mean, you were, you were doing what Da Vinci had surmised was possible. And, uh, but the, I don't, I don't even have a question here, but I mean, the, the, the, the stoke and the drive.

And, uh, it seemed like the community too, was, was driving this pioneering this, uh, new sport, but you were, uh, I don't know, uh, comment on that. Just the, the, uh, the, the,

sure, sure. Yeah. That's, you know, the, when Joe Faust had those first beats, you know, in, in 71, um, I think it was in the fall. Uh, we went to Torrance beach.

And, you know, George French, one of our crew at Imperial engine works made it to like where the sand was freshly wet. And we're like, dude, see how far he went. And then, you know, like an hour or so later, we're sitting there and this terrace shows up with the Icarus one takes off right

to left, goes down a couple hundred yards. And he does a soaring turn and comes back. And he's like. 20 to 50 feet above us. You know, he's flying with the hang tubes and his feet up in front of him. And he just looks over at us and goes, we're just like, he's soaring. Oh my God. You know, yeah, we just, you know, we were.

Minds blown.

Blown away. But yeah, you know, it was, it was like that. You go see stuff, you know, and there's some real crackpot gizmos that people were trying to fly with. And, um, you know, some were successful. Some were hilarious, you know, like look at the outtakes in, um, big blue sky, the whack attack, you know, says it all. And, uh.

So, um, you were present also at Joe Faust's iconic photo fly photo session. It was really, I think it was the first color photo of hang gliders that was distributed other than, uh, National Geographic went. And, uh, and every. Everyone, all the experimenters at the time were there. And so you knew Vollmer Jensen and, uh, all the others. Yeah. Oh yeah. It was, you know, like we knew everybody, you know, Vollmer did not like the flexible wings.

And, you know, we're a bunch of hippies. He's a little scary. He had this hat he wore that was a little, maybe

it leaned one way that we didn't lean, you know. And, uh. Um, you know, everybody there, you know, Lloyd Leitcher was there, Joe Faust. I worked for Joe Faust one day, it is a publishing suite over there in Venice, I believe. And, uh, you know, uh, Richard Miller, um, in later years, you know, he lived in my neck of the woods in San Diego County and I'd stop by and see him all the time. And then it was always like, you know, yes, master go in there. And what are we doing? I'm. I tried to interview him for big blue sky. I had an RV and, you know, all the video equipment, my son's with me. We're on a road trip.

We get up to, um, Santa Cruz and he's, uh, doing like kinesiology analysis of customers there, you know? And so I'm like, Hey, Richard, this is great. I showed him a, a little model. I had an electric model with carbon D tube on it. You know, he's like, oh, this is fascinating. This is unbelievable. You know, and, uh, Richard, can we do this is, and I would do it later with other important things here, hold, sit down knees to knee and hold my hands, you know, and told me what supplements I need to take, you know, just, just like, okay, that's what we got, you know? And, and indeed it's kind of better that he's wasn't interviewed just kind of that he can remain the, uh, the mystic, you know, the

ascended master of spiritual faith. And you know, he just had so many wonderful concepts like in the sixties, in his book, uh, without visible means of support, he was talking about parachutes and says, you know, I can see some day where these things can actually glide and people will use them to do cross country flights, you know, you read that. And it's like, okay, he's, he's not a crackpot. He just really is a visionary, you know? He was really into the, the place where our dreams are. made you know, so for people who don't know, Richard Miller was, uh, really one of the great inspirations of free flight, starting with hang gliding and his book, Without Visible Means of Support.

It's full of the anecdotes from the perilous and poignant past that are very as he turned it, but it really can even good contemporary, you know, it still, still gets the meaning of flight in this, the spirit of it, literally, yes, yeah. And here's the editor of Soaring magazine, and with Jack Lamby, did a very interesting article about, uh, called Project Thistledown, that really, uh, saw, foresaw, uh, planes like Archaeopteryx and the swift rigid wing with, uh, high school kids bungee launching their friends from Montana grassy slopes, and things just really true, true vision.

And you know, he and, um, uh, Richard Miller, Joe Faust, Jack Lamby, his brother Mark Lamby, um, you know, I'm sure I'm missing a couple of people, there were the, were the the people who the organizers for the first Lilienthal meet and um, you know, it was just kind of, I was going to college and I got a in an airframe maintenance repair class, got a little booklet that somebody had made up and it was called Low and Slow Volume One: Plans Hang Gliders. I know what hang gliders are. Oh, there's going to be a meet, I should get these plans and build something for it.

And um, you know, we got to the meet and there's hundreds of people, there's a lot of people, there cars and the cops show up and a helicopter comes flying overhead. I'm standing next to Jack Lamby and the helicopter says, "Well, the organizers of this meet, please report to the police cars at the bottom of the hill." And Jack Lamby, right on cue, goes, "Oh, somebody organized this."

Classic. Okay, guys, just don't start any fires, okay? And and if you need it, this is, uh, owned by a cemetery, you know, over the hill, you know. Look us up and we'll see you next time. If you have any problems, you know...

So, uh, my first soaring ocean soaring flight was with you at Tory Pines. I believe it was in early—what was—in May 1974, after the auto meet that was held up at Silmar that year. And you're flying a, uh, an hyper standard, but it had a camber cut sail made by Tom Albatross Sail. Yeah, Albatross Sail, right? And that, uh, that began a long friendship and collaboration between you two. I'd like to think that I'm alive because of Tom Price. You know, he's an aeronautical engineer; he worked for McDonald Douglas, worked on the designing the wing for the DC 9 and 10, burned out on that, on the AV, on the aerospace industry, and went to work at North Sails.

Saw

A hang glider, and you know, he had the fuel pack right there, you know? And um, yeah, I spent a lot of time with Tom, you know, worked on, uh, um, you know, in 1976 at Telluride, we had Hang Glider Manufacturers Association meeting, and they had been pretty active, but this in '76, they elected, uh, Peter Brock to be the president, and I was the treasurer, and we got it in gear, you know? Glider started getting certified, you know? Everybody started, all the manufacturers started working on the certification prog, you know, things.

And, you know, I worked with Tom. I did airspeed calibration. I flew with an anemometer and lowered it 50 feet below the glider and had another one on the control bar. So, we calibrated the, you know, the pressure wave, creating the different airspeeds and stuff like that. And right after, I kind of burned out on hang gliding and played music for a while. And right about then is when he and the real Jim Walker put a platform on top of a travel all. And I think there's some footage around. You can see the young Tom Pagini just about get killed with those things bucking and jumping around and pitch excursions. Not tied in, no helmet, no shirt, no pants. Just a pair of shorts, 40 miles an hour down a country road.

What could go wrong? Yeah. Dead. With a negative pitch stability glider, you know, trying to throw you off

the back.

Yeah, so Tom Price, you know, working there was just, that was a lot of fun. I did the wiring and final assembled a lot of ASG-21s. And, unfortunately, I had to test fly them. You know, you put it together, you test fly it, you know.

Bill, why did you get burned out on hang gliding?

I think I was just scared,

you know. Was

this around when, because in the movie there's this real shift from, you know, there's weekend meets, everybody's flying down the hill, it's a big party, bunch of hippies, others, you know, there's the airspace, there's all these, this combination of kind of the right people, it seems like, come together. Everybody, you know, even now this community is so eccentric. You know, you've just got people from so many different backgrounds, just one of the things I love about it. But you had this right combination. And then, I guess it's Terrace Jr. who's the first person to thermal and things really shift there, right? There's a real shift and accidents start going through the roof. Was that part of it?

Yeah. I mean, that was 74 when Terrace saw it. The first time. That was at the Annie Green Springs. You know, he took off and he's just like, up over the back of the hill. It's like, and then he came back, you know, and I was scared flying there. I was flying on the coast and smooth air and, you know, it was a little bumpy in there at Selmar.

And, you know, by then I had seen what happens to quote unquote standard regalos at low angles of attack. You know, you ever been on a sailboat and you come, you tack, you get that angle too low and.

Locked in irons. Yeah. Or, you know, it just full off dive, you know, I'd seen it, you know, I hadn't experienced it firsthand, but, you know, that's a, that's a sound I'll never forget as long as I live. You know, every time I hear a truck go down the road with a big flag on the back, I can hear it. You know, it sounds just like it. Was that one of the reasons why you switched over to. Yeah. You were an early. I am. I mean, you had a quick. Exactly right. That is exactly right. You know, I saw that. Let's see. Now, when Boeing makes an airplane, they put in, they put the company on the line, you know, that it's going to be successful. They have a tail. It's in the back. I'll take one of those. There. And you, you.

I did. I flew the cheapers out of that poor thing.

How much knowledge back then too was being the cool picture.

That's it. Uh,

there, how much knowledge then is, cause it also talks about Mr. Smooth in the movie, uh, Dave Cronk. And, and the, the first. World championship in 75, which Tom, you did too, right? Yeah. Over in, over in coast and amazing site. Uh, they just flew quite a few 300 plus FAIs out of there the other day on paragliders. I don't know if you guys saw that epic day in Europe. Uh, but it, you know, this is, these pockets are happening. I mean, it wasn't just you guys, you know, it was happening in other parts of the world, uh, around the same time. It's. But it's a lot of that knowledge being shared or you guys kind of in a bubble

Knowledge about. Well, just

design thermaling, uh, going place, starting to go places.

Ms. MD monkey see monkey do, you know, and it's like, it's like hot rodding. It's like surfing, you know, I can go faster than that. What's this. Yeah.

I, I can do better than that. You know, it's just, you know, nature of humanity. mankind you know that uh you know there was um you know the get it but the getting together at the meets and stuff is where you'd get that information you know by seeing it you know um

Your mother, Patina Gray, aka Batty White, was, uh, one of the three top photographers—three or four, uh—in hang gliding. What was her background, along with Bill Allen and, uh, Steve McCarroll and George? Yes, yeah, Patina, Patina White, you know, many covers of Hang Gliding magazine. And she, she wasn't a camp follower, but she did go to a lot of the, uh, she would drive up in her Mercedes, uh, saloon, and, uh, it was present at a lot of the meets. Could you tell us more about her? All right, she was the daughter of a, um, automotive industrialist. A little over 100 years ago, she'd be, uh, she'd be 110.

She was born in 1915 and, and, you know, uh, got into acting, you know, debutante and all that old-school Boston Brahman stuff, you know. And, uh, um, had my sister in 1941 and, um, me in '49.

And uh, she was interested in flying, you know? We moved to Florida and she took flying lessons down there, and I got to backseat a few of those, you know? And my stepdad, who she met down there, was a pilot. I don't know if he was licensed or not, but he'd rent airplanes and fly places. He was a real certified crazy, my kind of guy, I'll just say that, you know? And uh, so you know, she was into that, and she came to that first Lilienthal meet, you know, her first hang gliding pictures are of the first auto, 052371. And she took them with an Instamatic 110.

And my first flight, the hang tubes that you hung on to broke out of the glider and spilled me verily onto the earth. So we duct tape, bailing wire, screwdriver, hammer, you know, rigged the thing back up and then did the big flight where I did the big deep stall and recovery. So she, you know, there's pictures of that thing coming back down the hill, upside down and broken. You know, I was having lunch and then we went on to fly. A year or two later, my sister gave her a Nikormat camera for Christmas. And I guess the rest is history from there. You know, she really enjoyed.

Going to all the meets like the Owens Valley, you know, world's meets, you know, in Japan and the masters at grandfathers, you know, she was all, she was all over the map, man.

Bettina, how Bettina, how are you? I'm wonderful.

Beautiful. She also one of the, one

of the ways you got so much footage. Was she taking video as well?

No, she wasn't that footage I have of the first Lilienthal meet. Um, was taken by my sister Bettina Bancroft, she was there with a super eight, she's wearing, um, a black top and white shorts and of some of those shots at the first Lilienthal meet, like of me taking off when that segment of the film starts, that's me, you know, it's in super eight and then the zoom in is 16 millimeter that was digitized and, you know, there's several flights. I think Richard Miller's really long flight with the conduit conduit. We were, where the guys duck under the bat. So Terrace and his crew duck, you know, and Bill got it's Richard that there's like three or four different camera angles on that from people who shot the same thing, you know?

So that was pretty cool to get, get all those different angles at the same shot. Um, Oh God, who did a playground in the sky?

Hmm.

Yeah. Banish. Yeah. Was there, was there Bill, did your mom's going to all these meets and shooting all this stuff? Did you guys ever get it? Talking to, I mean, was there ever any, uh, you know, listen, Bill, this, you need to slow it down here. She was just gung-ho. That is awesome. No, no. No helicopter parenting going on here.

No, no. Get out of the way. Here's an example of a conversation between us. Torrey Pines, it's crack, it's cracking, you know, and there's a bunch of gliders lined up to go. And I'm about five or six in the line. I'm walking down to launch to get in line. And my mom's down there. And I'd yell out, Hey, somebody get that old bat out of the launch area.

She's like, Oh, Bill. And guys were like, Hey, that's Bettina. You watch her. You talk to my mom back off.

We have, she is, she was into having fun. I'll tell you that. That is awesome. Yeah. Didn't she have you modeled when you were a child? Yeah. Well, not her. But this girl had a crush on me and talked my mom into getting horseback riding lessons. So I'd go out and horseback ride lessons with this girl. I had a crush on me. And this girl was tied up with the Kalo model agency in Palm beach, Florida. And I was redheaded kid, you know, and. Like Billy mummy. And, uh, pretty soon I'm in an L and M cigarette ad. It was both still and on TV and Buick automobiles, Studebaker. Lark fashion shows, those, those were the worst you're 12 years old.

And these, these women who are ancient, God, they must've been 40 or something. You know, come up too much perfume and big bosoms giving you, Oh, you're so cute. And it's like, run, but yeah, I did that part of my experience. And, uh, you were a very early convert to flying advanced rigid wing gliders, like the ATOS and the axis. No, no, I was kind of. Yeah. Um, I got out of my focus in flying, went from hang gliding to sailplanes in the nineties. And when I sold my last hang glider of that era, it was a, uh,

uh, seed wings sensor. Five, 10 ABC, D E F whatever the heck. I don't know the remember that. Yeah, they really were. You know, I had the opportunity at Torrey pines before I bought my last sensor of flying Bob tramp and O's sensor against Steve Pearson and Steve Pearson's HP and swapping gliders. So I'd fly the designer in his glider, you know, versus the other designers glider against him. And it was a really, really wonderful comparison. And, and I would say if, um, you know, my decision was that for, for coastal flying for mild, milder thermals, the sensor just kicked ass. You know, as you could skate it sideways, you find the core, you kind of throw your.

Feet and push and the thing would start just track and core up for the, but the, the Wills Wing was a lot. It made you feel a lot safer with a, with a more pointy nose. You know, um,

you

then started flying sailplanes in Southern California, but actually before that, do you think that flying RC gliders may have been a key in keeping you from doing a lot of stupid stuff? Yeah. Other. People I've, I've, I've credit that for saving my life. A lot of people do.

I, we hear that a lot on the show. That seems to be an excellent precursor, maybe kayaking, sailing. There's some other sports too, that seem to really help us understand the invisible, but RC seems to be the key one there. Right.

Right. Yeah. Before that first Lillienthal meet, I'd flown RCs for at least a year. I'd, um, soloed, uh, uh. Cubs special at Flay Bob and, um, I'd been up in sailplanes at Elsinore, you know, with Mack. That's great. Great. So, you know, I had, I knew how to fly. Basically. I understood how the whole thing worked rather than like, Oh, look, an airplane.

Um, so then, then you became a sailplane pilot and really. Yeah. Yeah. In the, um, in the early eighties is when I got my sailplane license. I built a Moni. By Moni aircraft. I built a little single seat motor glider called the Moni and, um, you know, got my license so I can fly it whenever I wanted to. And, um, you know, I got, I flew it. I registered it as a motor glider, so I could fly it with a glider rating. So I didn't have to go through all that talk on the radio and navigate crap. I just wanted to fly, you know? And, um, that's where I got my license. So I got my license up at, uh, Hemet Ryan. And, uh, Galen Fisher, who was a hang glider pilot, RC pilot was my instructor and, you know, held my hand through the whole process of up and through the check ride.

And, uh, you know, that kind of laid dormant for another 10 years and, um, I ended up in the mid nineties, 96, 97, buying a Russia AC-4C, a little single seat, 13 meter, 13 and a half meter sailplane. And, uh, you know, started, you know. Started flying sailplanes and, you know, it was just, um, it took a while because the thermaling, you know, my inner ear just circling 40 degree bank, 30 degree bank endlessly is kind of took a little getting used to, but, you know, that kind of, uh, I really, really enjoyed that. All my hang gliding experience really, really helped me transition into that, you know, aside from the.

Physiological issue, but, uh, you know, I just really, you know, that was my dream, you know, I, I was getting soaring magazine in 1970, you know, and I'd seen the SW 12 and just, wow, wow, look at that. Oh my God. You know, and, um, you know, I, I lived to fly for about 12 years in sailplanes. I had the Russia and I'd, um, got rid of. That and had a, um, HPH three Oh four CZ 17 made for me, you know, plug in interchangeable wing tips would be 15 meters or 17.4. And, um, another opportunity presented itself and I got a, the first Diana two, um,

15 meter racer in the United States. And that's all carbon. The wings are hollow. There's a partition down the middle of the inside of the wing. So that you can have front and rear water tanks, the whole wing fills up with water and, um, uh, close to 50 to one L over D the first glider, Richard Johnson tested that when they loaded it up with water, it went faster. So the Reynolds number was higher drag went down and the L over D actually increased. Most of the time, the polar just shifts over, you know, 10, 15 miles an hour when you add water. So, uh, you know, that was, that thing was just an. Amazing is like the starship enterprise, you know, and, um,

you know, 50 to one, you're 15,000 feet over big bear Lake Warner Springs is 50 miles, 50, 55 miles away. You can't see it because of the mountains and the curvature of the earth and you got it punched it in on the flight computer. And it's like, oh, you'll arrive there with over 9,000 feet of altitude. It's like, and the thing would just. You could, you know, a lot of the sailplane pilots talk about the dolphin flying where you slow down and lift and then speed up before you get the edge of it and race off to the next bump. It didn't take too strong a day to do that with the Diana because of the debt, because of the, uh, the low sink rate, you know, they right around 90 feet of set or a minute.

And, um, you know, 50 to 48 to 50 to one L over D, you know, I'd take off from Warner Springs and go. To, uh, San Jacinto, 35 miles away, take off at, you know, 3,800 feet and go to almost 11,000 and I can just kind of bump fly over there in the previous sailplanes. You have to stop and climb and glide and stop, you know, people take off after me. Where are you, Bill? I go, oh, they don't want to hear this. I'm at San Jack.

They're looking for their second thermal, you know, it's just like, oh, that, uh, you know, I really, really enjoyed. I got my diamond badge at Warner Springs and, um, you know, it was like a dream come true. You know, it was just, just fantastic experiences flying that thing.

So, uh, what, what was your motivation and what did you think of making Big Blue Sky? Well, when Bettina passed away, she gave all of her photos to, um, Vertigo Inc, Roy Haggard's company. She really had a crush. She had a crush on Dave Kronk in her, in her final chapter of life. And God bless me. It was such a gentleman, you know, I'd send her cars, dear Bettina, thank you so much for your card and note, you know? And so they ended up with all the stuff and they called me up and said, dude, we, we don't know what to do with this stuff. We're going to throw it out. You want it? You know, like three or four filing cabinets. Unfortunately, all the black and white negatives had been in her garage in Rancho Santa Fe, which was neither heated nor air conditioned.

And it was in a dark room with plumbing and it got really moist and it destroyed all the, um, the negatives. They all got, uh, all the emulsion came out of the color slides and all the black and whites, you know, look like a dry lake bed. So it was kind of, you know, picking shoes. I was going, oh man, this is a nightmare. When is like 50,000 pictures here for God? Who gave this woman a camera? Jesus. And I'm walking by those one day. To go to my little recording studio in the garage. And I just had this epiphany and it's like, Bill, you must make the movie and tell the story. And it was just like, I was just vibrating with that.

And I went, yeah, you know, I know all the people I have footage. I know who has the footage, you know, I, I, this, it'd be easy. It'd be so easy, you know, to do it. And so I didn't, it wasn't easy. No. For five years. It was almost five years.

Yeah. I would have guessed that. Yeah. There's a lot going on. Stops and

starts. Yeah. You time out, go fly the cell phone. Yeah. Get aired out. And editing's brutal. And

it's an important story. I imagine you were very passionate about getting it right. Cause it clearly comes through.

Yeah. I looked at, at different ways to do it as, you know, I got the project. I started writing the script and, um, you know, getting the story out. I got the story line laid out in my head and everything. And, you know, I thought, ah, yeah, PBS, this'd be great on PBS. And they said, well, here's the first loophole you have to jump through. And then you can do this, but you can't do that. And you can do this and do that. And then you have to, and I'm like, nope, I think I'm paying for this one. This one's on me, boys. This is the way it has to be told, you know? And, uh, I heard one filmmaker somewhere in a talk somewhere or something say, you know, the, uh, the best way, my advice to people who are, who want to be, filmmakers is, you know, if you want to, if you want to be a successful filmmaker,

you have to be willing to do everything it takes to do the film, whatever's next. And holy mackerel, some of those next things are backbreaking. There's this,

there's this scene in the, in the film. I forget who the pilots were, but I mean, sorry for the language here, but it's just batshit to me. I couldn't believe it. But these guys launch. Into Bryce Canyon, uh, it doesn't look like there's any place to land. It's, it's beautiful. It's amazing. But I, there's, it strikes the question of, you know, what, what's the most amazing thing you've seen in these decades and decades of free flight? I

think soaring in the sailplanes, you know, just cause they're so dynamic. You know, I mean, it's, it's just, there's just been some amazing experiences with birds and weather and, uh, at Torrey Pines and, and some of the inland sites and in hang gliding, but with a sail plane, I mean, you know, you fly through a bunch of different, um, air masses, you know, like you have the Gulf of Mexico air mass coming up and they have the Anza Brego air mass and they have the on shore breeze. Then you have the other, you know, and. Just the vastness of the earth, you know, and seeing these gigantic swifts at 14,000 feet flying the same speed I'm flying, you know, and a long sighting of them is like three seconds, you know, and

again, it really just get a sense of just being a grain of sand, you know, at the bottom of the ocean, you know, it's just, yeah, yeah, really. And just the awe and the beauty of nature, you know,

Tom's got a Wills Wing. T-shirt on and, uh, about halfway down our list of all these amazing people are the, the Will's brothers, Peter Brock, Danita Hall. Tell us a story about this, this gang.

Oh man. Well, you know, it was kind of like, it was like surfing dude, you know, everybody had their spot and their crew, you know, and that was like a Torrey rat. And, uh, you know, we were like, I was aligned with the hyper guy. You know, so I knew them and I don't know if you want any of those stories, but Tom, I think Tom went there, uh, and, um, you know, so that was, that was Dave mills van. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, you know, the Will's guys, you know, they're just kind of like these straight cut dudes, you know, and they had their crew. They had that, that cowboy that drove that light blue pickup truck up and down the mountain at escape.

Country and, uh, you know, so it didn't really have much interaction with them, you know, or kind of, you're always kind of doing your thing. And, um, Danita and Dave moved down to San Diego, you know, what, in the eighties, I think, and, uh, got to fly with them a lot and they were really fun. You know, Danita's just kick ass, get out of the way, you know, and, uh, Dave was a lot of fun. I went, flew with him, took me for a ride in his long Yeezy. Um, you know, and some of these other Peter Brock, Peter Brock, yep. Did a lot of flying with him. He was there in 1973 down at Pio Pico park in San Diego. And, uh, we watched a Whitney Porta wing full luff in that, that flapping in the breeze flag sound that triggers my PTSD.

I will tell you standing there talking to Peter and all this is guy like bounced. At least one, maybe two, it's like, oh, and, uh, you know, that was pretty terrifying. I showed up next day. I had, you know, had, had both his hands in a cast. Like he's holding the control bar. It was kind of like, oops, but, uh, flew Peter a lot. You know, he, um, it's interesting. My, my sister's first husband, Michael Goth raced cars and the guys who were his engineers and mechanics were, um, Bruce Burness and Trevor Harris. Who later worked for Peter Brock and made Brock racing enterprises where they raced a little dust and five tens in two forties that made, they were the core of that, you know?

So I didn't, I just found that out recently, you know, and, uh, a little good time with the Peter, you know, it was really special getting to interview him. And, uh, you were, uh, you're inducted into the, uh, Regalo hall of fame.

No, I thought you were. And well, you were definitely. Uh, made a presentation to Smithsonian. Yeah. Yeah. Via, um, uh, Gary Fogle put that together, you know, um, the Smith, the national air and space museum had the, uh, general electric aviation, general aviation lecture series. And, um, I got in, I got K and I got flown back to DC and put up for a couple of nights and had a catered dinner in the, uh, in the right. Brothers room. Um, gallery with, uh, you know, the president, the, the head curator who is, uh, ex Marine general. And I was kind of thinking, boy, it's 10 hood and a flat top.

And the guy was just like us, you know, oh man, age, you go down and see this stuff, you know, and just airplane junkie, you know, and it was really fun. So that was, that was very exciting to get to do that, you know, to bring hang gliding downtown, you know, to the mall, baby. And, uh, so, you know, hang glider pilots, you know? Yeah. Geez, we're not, not real high on the hierarchy of glamorous aviators, you know, it's just like whack jobs, you know, in America anyway, you know, here it was like, you know, suicidal tendencies, you know, dusty bums. And, uh, I went to Germany with Larry Newman in 1976 and we said, oh, you were an American. You are an American hangs on a pilot. You will sit with us and we will buy you beer, you know, and you're setting up your hang glider.

There's a Lufthansa 747. One pilot here. And in front of you is some nuclear physicist, you know, and they're all like, oh, American hang glider pilot, you know, and they get back home and say, out of the way, dirtbag, you know, but they paid a lot of money for my equipment.

You're in the, in the film, you talk about, uh, that Anthony Matthews, uh, the musician, his steamboat Springs, his death really struck hard. And then of course the two wheels. Those brothers, Eric and Bob, uh, you know, there, there were some, there's some pretty heavy carnage going on when things started going up with hang gliders. What did that do to the community? What, you know, we, we talk about now that we really need cheap mistakes to what we want is cheap mistakes to learn. These were not cheap mistakes. They were the worst kind of mistakes, obviously. But, uh, I imagine they were quite instrumental. I mean, safety and the future, but also these are hard knocks.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, you know, like Danita said there, you know, it was just so hard to comprehend, you know, it was like, you know, we've got some bad stuff in it's mixed with fentanyl and somebody OD'd, you know, won't happen to me. You know, it can do is he says, yeah, it's safe. It's safe. Come on. What's the problem? You're fine. You know, but, you know, it was a real. Dichotomy there, you know, between, you know, I, I've got to go do this, you know, Anthony Matthews and, um, Peter Brock, son hall, they both died almost on, there was like three weeks there where, you know, they went in, those two went in and then Jack Schroeder is paralyzed up at a point Furman. And I just, you know, I just went, man, I think maybe I'm going to do

something else for a little while here and digest this. But. You know, that.

The goodness. Is everybody took note of it and was well aware of what they did wrong and strove to, um, not repeat the same mistake and develop the, the aircraft a lot better, you know, and that goes back to getting them certified. That really helped a lot. And the, the parachute, those are, those were just like, uh, epic events, you know,

big, huge shifts in the sport. Yeah.

Yeah. The, the, I remember in the nineties flying magazine. I had a article on, um, aviation safety is somebody who's really into researching it. That article is there and it showed the, um, fatalities per a hundred thousand hours and general aviation was at like 5.2 or 5.2 hang gliding was like 2.4. I'm like, dude, it's because we were offline with a parachute right here, hooked to the airframe, you know? And because of that, I always felt naked. I was naked going for a ride with, uh, some kid in his Ukrainian airplane with no parachute, you know, and, uh, you

know, that it's just such a boon, you know, to have that just right

there. There's a, there's actually a quote in the film is that reason a lot of people died is that they thought it was safe. This still surprises me. I mean, you will, you hear this now with, you know, beginners are when they get into. Into the sport, they're not told that, and it's not intrinsic, you know, I think it's, I think these things are very easy to fly and they're hard to fly well, but they're very easy to fly. And this is a weird one, isn't it? I mean, that we, that people still think it's safe. It's avi, it's not.

Well, I think that's kind of the sales pitch. Yeah.

100%. You know, because we're still dealing with this quote.

You know, back in the day. You know, it was like, ah, it's dangerous. Like it'll be another one died. Another one died. And that's true. You know, we've run out of fingers and toes counting our friends who perished. I mean, wow. And so when somebody asks you how safe it is, you know, I think for the pilots and the people actively doing it, it's, it's kind of a defensive thing to say, you know, well, it's as safe as you make it. You know, it's a, yeah, it's safe. I'm doing it. You know, what

do you chalk up your own survival to that? There are, you know, in this list, we're talking, we've got one sitting with us right now, Tom Pagini, but in this list, you know, a lot of these guys and girls still around. How did you thread that needle?

You

know, I think I didn't want to be the first to do a 360.

You know, they're in 72. Three, four. That was a big deal doing a 360 and people died. There's one of the scenes in whack attack is Lloyd short with the moon eyes kite taken out a big creosote Bush with his hang glider trying to 360 and blah, blah. It's hilarious. But, you know, people didn't know when you turn in an airplane, you have to increase the angle of attack to create more lift to keep the nose up. So you don't do a death spiral.

You know, and, um, you know, I think, you know, I was just very timid. I'd want to see people do stuff, you know, and, and like Tom said earlier, you know, it's like, well, do you, this regalos have an, a known issue with, you know, pitch instability, a tail. That seems pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Put it, get something with a tail. That's the ticket. And I did get back into hang gliding, by the way, after, um, I started getting, I started really scaring myself with the Diana too. With that much performance, with that amazing sync rate and spectacular glide ratio, I'd, I'd go a little farther up that Canyon, you know, I'd get a little lower, farther away, you know, I'd start doing, you know, get into situations and later go.

I was cutting it too close. That wasn't very conservative, you know, it was a little on the other side of the, of the risk line. And, um, you know, I just knew I, I started having vision problems. I started getting ophthalmic migraines where you'd get these, like a, um, prismatic thing in your, in your vision and you lose your peripheral vision and, and everything kind of looks like that. You know, you can see it, but you can't get the detail. And I thought, well, you know what? I go back into hang gliding. Is this stuff happening? Happens a lot slower. If I'm a slower, if I'm slope soaring at Torrey pines, where are you going to go? You know, where's in the sail plane. You know, if I get one of those events, I can't.

I can't look at my flight computer, which is, you know, screen that big, you know, to get me home, you know? So it's like, well, wait here until this passes, you know? So, uh, I got an Atos and a Freedom 170 and wow, both of those excellent choices. I would have to say that early Atos was the best thermal and glider I've ever flown. You know, you get it in at one of those Torrey pines, 300 foot a minute thermals and drifting back with the sea breeze. And it's like flying a Schweitzer 233. You bank it. You just push it out until the, the wing starts to rumble a little bit and you go way far back and play at home. So, uh, and then I, I pulled a muscle taking off in the, uh, uh, Freedom 170 one, one late afternoon.

And, uh, Hey Bill, maybe it's time to quit hang gliding. So, um, on a very light note, tell us about hang diving magazine and diver driver. Well, I

don't know if you guys ever noticed this, but like in the early days of hang gliding, there was a large percentage of the population of pilots were cynical, smart Alex.

Then the first one that was really fun to be around was rich Finley, who was a top gun, naval aviator. He may very well have been in the first generation of people to come through there in the early seventies. I met him like 73.

And I think that's about when top gun started. And I know he went on to be a, uh, an adversary instructor, but he, he had nicknames for everybody. You know, we'd be at a meet and he was just, we called him motor mouth. Cause he's just going all the time, but all this data and stuff you never knew you needed to know. And then somebody come in and go like hang glider and they'd try to be hitting the bullseye and they'd, he'd flare 20 feet above the bullseye. And, and Richard just say, well, you can park it there, but it won't taxi very well. You know, stuff like that. And, you know, we started nicknaming the, calling them hang divers, you know, and, and, uh, you know, that just kind of went on and on and on. And, and, uh, my friend Bill wrecker and I, uh, I think we excelled at that.

We had a natural born talent for that. And, uh, we did a, um, we, we talked Gil, Gil Dodgen at the editor of hang gliding magazine. To let us do an April fool's issue. And we did the hang diving magazine and it was towards the back of the magazine and it was upside down. And I mean, they got on us loose. Hey, you guys need to talk to your publisher. Hey, print this stuff upside down.

And, uh, you know, just, it lampooned everybody and everything in, in hang gliding, you know, and it was just absolutely hilarious. You know, we, we had mornings we get together in the morning and, you know, have breakfast and go up there and, and pork's dungeon. And start clicking the keys and, you know, more, we'd be holding our guts doubled up on the floor, you know, just laughing our butts off, you know? And, uh, so, so apparently Gil didn't think some of that stuff was very funny. He, he felt a little offended by some of it. I don't know if it was the, the picture of me with a hat and the, you know, the big nose and the glasses at the keyboard, you know, he's a pianist, a really good pianist, you know? And, uh, so it was a little finished. So they didn't want to do it again. Hmm. So, uh, my sister confronted us and we did our own hang diving with a yellow cover with George Worthington, his letter to the editor.

Dear editor, that was the best letter by George that I, George, have ever seen about George.

George B. Fossilton, you know, with the shaky signature.

And then, uh, pet names like Dennis Pagan was dense. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. The list.

I was, I was, uh, Thumb Pigs Weenie. I always had pet names for everyone. I didn't hook in at Torrey Pines and he had my Thumb Pigs Weenie and the Free Fallers with their new hit, the Gravitational Boogie. Nice. Yeah. That's how he wore that. And it's had nice pet names for everybody. Nobody escaped it.

Yes. You got to lampoon everybody.

And if he knew, if he knew, you know, you'd have the same thing with the World Cup. They do it a little bit with X-Men magazine on the last page. The World Cup, W-H-I-R-L-E-D, not the W-O-R. And then, uh, the centerfold with Mr. Bill goes hang diving. We had a little Mr., made a Mr. Bill doll and a little toy hang glider and, you know, oh, I'm getting drilled by the rotor, you know, and there's a quarter inch drill bit coming into the picture, you know, ending up in a crater with, you know, sluggo trying to give him a, a rotor noogie. Uh-huh. It's just too much fun.

Brilliant. You've mentioned music a few times. You're a musician. Yeah.

Uh-huh. I have been known to do that. Yeah. You know, when I, when I stopped flying and in this hang gliding, you know, really dedicated in the, in the late seventies, I ended up in a, in a five piece country Western band. And, uh, that was very fun. You'd be surprised how many beer stinking honky tonks there are in San Diego, dude, you know, in the East County. It gets pretty cowboy out there did back in those days. And, uh, from there I played in the bluegrass band in the, um, early late eighties. I started playing bluegrass and that got disinterested in those same three gigs at the same three places every year and, uh, started a little coffee house trio. And we played for close to 10 years, you know, myself, another guy on electric guitar and a gal who played bass and saying, and we did that every weekend for a very long time.

It was. It was most fun ever.

Okay. We're going to, we're going to talk to Botry. Go for it.

I get a call one day and it's like, Hey Bill, this is Steve Wilson up here at IPER. Yeah. Hey Steve, what's up? Hey, uh, Kronk's out of town and we've got some, um, factory built Quicksilvers that need to be flight tested. Could you come up here and, and fly them for us, you know, test fly them so we can deliver them. Like, sure. He says, yeah, and we'll update your glider to the latest specs, put the latest cool stuff on it. I'm like, sure, let's do it. So I get up there up to Torrance beach. At about, you know, 738 is really, really Dan Fitzgerald was working there and, uh, he was the kid. I still am in touch with him and I come into the shop and there's all the people who work there. You know who they were? Their pupils are like really small. You have pupils in there with the, what's going on?

And everybody was tripping their brains out.

Oh, everybody's tripping. This is going to be an interesting day. They gave me a, they loaded up all the stuff on their truck and somebody drove us out there and they weren't tripping and I flew off, scared all the hell out, all the, all the peacocks, but you know, this is stuff like that. And they'd come down and, and party with us in San Diego. We went to Reggie Jones's one time and Dave Mule had sent all these UPS boxes to Reggie's house and we get there and open it up. It's all fireworks. It's like. Didn't know you could do that. Damn. And we get about this many fireworks, you know, for new years. And you know, all those guys are Vietnam vets, you know? So like about 10 minutes to midnight, you know, the pop bottle rocket war started out in front of the street and it was epic.

All I can is epic. And it's amazing. We didn't burn down lemon Grove that night. My God,

there's some cool guys. So it was a lot of fun. Partying with those guys and shrote Jack Schroeder. Give us a Jack Schroeder. Impersonation there, Tom. Uh, I just won the Kitty Hawk meet and then went out to Frankfurt, Michigan and, uh, and won that meet on consecutive weekends. And I was really a little punk kid. And he said, listen, you know, fricking dirt bag, we're going to take you out to tell you, right. But if you went out, I want to strangle you, you know, blank and strangle you fucking dirt bag. Yeah. Pardon me, Jack Schroeder.

Ah, some characters. Bob Trampano, you know, I was, when I was flying model airplanes and I built them, I'd really got into that quite a bit and I get a call. I had this, um, Michael Selig model, airplane airfoil, his thesis, you know, published it in the gut. It was just, you know, these airfoils he'd developed and, and Bob Trampano was just, you know, he's really wanted to use those airfoils on his hang letters. So I get phone calls. Hi, Bill. It's Bob Trampano. How are you doing? Hi, Bob. What's up? Well, I was wondering if you still have that book grant, you know, because he's hours, Bob, I'd never forget going up to his place and going to the bathroom. And there was one was B.

Cleban books, you know, never read anything bigger than your head. Ah, oh yeah. There's yeah. Yeah. So SD airfoils.

Sweet. Make it a little hand launch. So there's still use the same book I have in the basement, but. So. In the bathroom at, at, at Trampano's house is, you know, is the, um, the B. Cleban book. I should drag that one out someday. And there's really never read anything bigger than your head. You know, he did the cats, the real famous, very expressive cast. And there's one is all these cavemen sitting around. There's a little fire and, you know, rocks and stuff around. And, and one guy is just throwing his spear down and he's walking away in the caption for the thing is fuck this primitive shit.

And I was like the, the shop motto at seed wings, you know, and I performance at, at Dave Cronk's office, you know, there was, there was one, I think over the door, it said, doxor, you know, they had the flexi flyer over the door. It said, doxor, Dr. Flexi jerk off. And,

and then, you know, on his desk, it was gyro gear loose. You remember that Disney character? Yeah. Oh

God. Gotta love whack jobs. Real

whack jobs out there.

Thank God I'm excluded. Right.

Bill, I, uh, I asked Malcolm this and the answer was, was, was fantastic. So I got to ask you the same thing. Uh, if you could rewind the clock back to your 50 hour self, whatever that was teen somewhere, I imagine, uh, but you could magically transport yourself back to that bill and give him some advice. Yeah. And I'm not sure if it's, I'm not sure if you know what advice knowing what you know now, what would it be?

Yeah.

Maybe look into that advice of knowing when to keep your mouth shut.

This

is a good life one. Not necessarily fly. Good life one. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I thought you were going to say, don't eat those. Be real careful of that handful of pills. Yeah.

Roll down the window. Those in the van before you, they let you in? Yeah. Um, no, you know, I—I, as far as my flying goes, you know, I do think just being very cautious and, uh, you know, not trying to be the at the cutting at the bleeding edge of it. Don't be

chuck yeager you

know survival skills, you know, just, just, just real personal survival skills, you know? Keep doing that, Bill, that would be in my advice, you know? That's a good, a good attitude, you know? Let's, yeah, don't go first, you know? As we were flying with Al Adams, one of the old timers down in San Diego, helped me learn to fly, Tory, you know? He's 20 years older than me. We're at some place we'd bushwhacked, you know? We were just driving around on a Santa Ana day, always a good day to fly. Look, check out a new place, ripping out towards that's, no, don't do that, don't do that. Some advice there, and, uh, we found one place and Al called it, "You go first."

Nobody flew it. It looked good, looked really good.

Smart Bill, I... I, uh, your movie is incredible. It's so awesome. I'm so glad you made it. The entire community, I'm sure, is because it's just... it's... it's classic, and it has it all. It's all there, and it's... I'm so thankful to all the people who took the footage that you were able to assemble you so beautifully. That tells such a poignant, amazing story. Thank you very much. And yeah, Tom, thank you for making this happen. This is, uh, precious as always. I really appreciate... I really appreciate both. Thank you.

Yeah, well, thank you, you know, for me doing Big Blue Sky. Is it was like a, it's a, it's the story of the spirit of man, certainly.

is You know, the original,

the working title for the movie was dreams come true, you know, and it really is the story, you know, we had a dream. this is how we pursued it and we and we achieved it you

certainly did. That's it's it's incredible at some cost, at some cost. Yeah, of course. Yeah, sadly, things that are worth it are well done, boys. Thank you very much, I appreciate it, and uh, this has been a real pleasure. I'm I'm getting, I've just gotten a lot more wrinkles in my life, and I'm smiling so much the last hour. Thanks a lot, thank

you if

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