Roostertail Talk

Episode 143: David Newton, Part 1

• David Newton • Season 7 • Episode 7

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What happens when the interviewer becomes the interviewee? In this special episode, the microphone flips as Don Mock of the Hydroplane Race Boat Museum sits down with host David Newton to uncover the story behind the voice of Roostertail Talk. Don asks David about his childhood and where the love of hydroplane racing began.  They talk about big hydros, small RC hydros and everything in between. Join us next week for part two of this revealing interview!

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Speaker 1:

Ruchetel Talk, the podcast dedicated to everything about the sport that we all love, Hydroplane racing. I am your host, david Newton, and it's time once again, so sit back, relax and welcome to Rooster Tail Talk.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Rooster Tail Talk. My name is Don Mock. I am sitting in for David Newton and we have a little bit of a different type of show for you today. David has done such an amazing job talking to everybody in the sport of hydro racing, from drivers and sponsors and crew people, in an effort to promote the sport. He's just been an amazing guy. But I don't think a lot of you know about him, so we had the idea let's put him behind the microphone. So David is sitting right in front of me, I'm in his chair, he's in my chair. My name is Don Mock. I'm with the High Des Plaines Race Boat Museum and I have raced RC boats with David's legendary dad, roger Newton, and have been involved with the museum for as long as it's been around. But the Newtons are a special breed of people and I want you to get to know David Newton because he is one talented kid. I call you a kid, but let's start with that very date how old are you and when were you born.

Speaker 1:

I just turned 40 last September. I was born September 2nd 1884.

Speaker 2:

So in 84. So I started racing in 85. So you were coming to those races when you were one or two years old. Oh yeah, I was born into it. Did you ever coming to those races when you were one or two years old?

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah, I was born into it. Did you ever hear about the mall, my birthday. Did you ever hear that story? Well, no, what story? Okay, so mall, as we raced for RC Unlimited for many years and my dad had a big part of that and raced there. It was actually Gold Cup Sunday when I was born there. It was actually gold cup sunday when I was born and back then rcn limiteds raced down in kent at the brown bowl at this little, what do you call that?

Speaker 2:

it was a rain, water runoff retention, retention pond yeah yeah.

Speaker 1:

So it was down in kent and my dad went down for the race and he had a beautiful griffin bud. He was racing and he knew it was my mom close, but it was race Sunday so he went down to the pond. I think after the first heat my grandpa came down and said hey, raj, it's time let's go to the hospital. Rocky Friedel, my dad's good friend, then took over driving. I think he did a heat. My dad went down to Bellevue Overlake, saw me be born, said you know, I did the hard part. I'm gonna go back to the race. He did and, yeah, he went down, finished the race. I think he only missed one, one section. He eats maybe two, oh my. And then he, yeah, he finished the race on. So I was born. Gold Cup Sunday 1984?

Speaker 2:

yeah, that's funny as hell. I didn't know that story. You guys lived, of course, in Renton, washington. You're in the same house. You had an older sister and your wonderful mom, marty. Your dad, of course, was a fireman for the city of Renton. What do you remember? First, he was already a racer by the time you were born. Being a fireman, that's pretty cool to have a dad that's a fireman, yeah, but was the house already full of trophies and boats, do you remember?

Speaker 1:

oh, yeah, my from young age my father. He built a room in the back of the house for his plan business and that was done, I think when I was like two, so I don't remember back that far, but I just run around the house. I always remember there being pictures of boats or VHS copies, you know, available to watch boat racing, get all the models. In his garage always had a Budweiser and Hawaii Kai out there and did the plan business in the back. So it's pretty much wherever I went around the house were hydros so you, just you, had no other reality.

Speaker 2:

It was hydros and a fireman for a dad. Yeah, Going to school out there in Renton where you lived right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so we actually lived in the Issaquah School District so it was right on the border there. But the middle school was bordered right against my house. I could walk to the elementary, middle or high school.

Speaker 2:

Do you have any recollection of the first time your dad dragged you down to the lake to actually see one of these things in person? You did.

Speaker 1:

I don't have like a vivid memory of like the first time seeing a hydro because I think I was always around and I have pictures of me I think like 85 I'm like less than a year old with Chip down at Seafair yeah, I think I'm in a little swaddle and he's got his mullet on and he's smiling with me. But I always remember going down to the old museum or Ken's shop. I remember we'd always go to Ken's shop because my dad in the 80s he was he worked for winston eagle for a little bit, yes, and I think it was a couple years he worked for them and then he got really into the hydroplane racial museum when that started off and, yes, did the restorations for the slow motions four and five. And I remember a lot of summers when my dad wasn't at the firehouse. He would be at the either the museum or ken shop and I would always just troll down with him, hang out in the shop.

Speaker 2:

I mean roger was such a such a monster influencer guy, I wouldn't have been racing, I wouldn't have been involved in the museum. And there's dozens and dozens of guys with my same story that wouldn't have been involved in this, that haven't been for your dad I mean, he's obviously the core guy and then, especially in the museum, a deal. Well, so you get a little bit older and they hand you a transmitter. I remember you're. You're driving hawaii kai. Yeah, not racing, I think you were just practicing and dad had you between his legs or something. Did it get to you about driving RC boats? Or is it just because the folks wanted you to do it.

Speaker 1:

I don't remember. It was the early 90s and I remember one early recollection. I remember my dad was excited. He came home one day and he said I got you a membership for the boats. I don't know why, but back then RC Unlimited was a really high honor. I wanted to be a part of the club. That was my goal. It was the only club at the time. It was the only club at the time we spent so many weekends at the races. There were so many friends that my dad had and it was kind of extended part of the family, but anyways. But he said that yeah, I got this membership for you. You're gonna get like a monthly newsletter, all this fun stuff. And it was for urc, for the, the unlimited they had some like fan club.

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah, that you could join, and I was so disappointed because I wanted it to be rclimited for the RC boats, wow, yeah. But there was a lot of times where you take my mom's boat, the Hawaii Kai 1957, 1-8 scale of the Hawaii Kai 3. Yes, and I'd just kind of troll around. I remember going to Wildberry Lake once. Yeah, it was the 4th of July. Yeah, at your parents.

Speaker 2:

Firecracker 500. Yeah, your dad came up with that term. Yeah, yeah, that was a great time.

Speaker 1:

That was your dad's cabin, right? Uh-huh yeah, We'd go out there with Harry and whoever else. He drank with us and run some boats around and I don't think I really could tell what I was doing out there, but I was in between his legs so he would steer me around.

Speaker 2:

I didn't drive an RC boat until I was 35 years old and you're driving him at three. I mean it was four. Did you ever feel like he was pressuring you to do it? He wanted you so bad to be his partner in this.

Speaker 1:

There was definitely pressure I felt from him to be around him. I think I resented it a little bit when I was in kindergarten. But then something clicked for me. I don't know, Maybe I just saw how tight he was with it and how much fun he was having.

Speaker 2:

Did you have any other interests, hobbies, that you kind of wandered off to?

Speaker 1:

I remember being into comic books and some trading cards. I had some friends that were really into. There was a Star Wars trading cards game that we did back then, but it wasn't as big as the boats were.

Speaker 2:

So your dad had this wonderful business, and it was still called Newton Marine at the time. Right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And he started that. What early 70s he started? Well, I think he started right out of high school. He really, I mean, he grew up around the area and loved the hydroplanes and he went off to the air force and he, before he left, he started to build. I can't remember if it was a thunderbolt unlimited kit or something, yeah, and there wasn't. There was a few kits out at the time, but no, there wasn't any plans you could buy, no um. And he really wanted something bigger than the kits were providing. And so when he got back from the air force he started to draw up some plans to a sport 60 size, which he thought would be a good size at the time so he pretty much just came and said that this is the size 1 8 scale.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we'll just try one eight scale.

Speaker 1:

That should work and he drew it up as that and I think I think the first drawing, a half of his is from 74. You have the original drawing.

Speaker 2:

Or 73. So you've carried the torch, of course, and you still are Newton Marine and you still manage all his stuff. I'm sure it's overwhelming. I'd love to get into a conversation about how you're, Because the demand has spread out into the world of electric hydros and bigger sizes, smaller sizes, and people must ask you for photos. Your dad had a ridiculous amount of photographs archived and that's a model. Boater's dream is to get those Newton photos Right.

Speaker 1:

Well, the photo demand has actually gone down over the last few years. I think there's been so many photos available online that people kind of find what they need to nowadays. But I think also with the hobby things have changed. Now it's not as people aren't really as curious about the scale aspect anymore, they just kind of want to race.

Speaker 2:

They are yeah.

Speaker 1:

RC boats and they live in the Seattle area or Washington. They know that RC Unlimited is a pretty big club or ERCU and they want to go race and so they kind of join that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's definitely different and I'm sure that affects you. But what's going to happen with Newton Marine for you? I mean, that's not your work. I mean you're a teacher right. Tell us quickly about your what you do for real money.

Speaker 1:

Well, I mean, after my father passed that was actually one of the last things he said is got to keep the plan business going, cause he just loved the hobby so much and really wanted to keep that going, so I kept it going for I guess 17 years now it's been 17 years.

Speaker 1:

Yeah about that. Yeah, I mean the demand's gone down. I've noticed that. But I still have all of his plans. I drew a couple more boats up. I don't quite have the time to add to the inventory that he had, but there's still hundreds of plans available and I still sell them. I used to. His machine was a dinosaur when he passed away. It was an old ammonia diazo light transfer machine and so you have to get the special product paper that comes and it's yellow, and then you turn the machine on and it smells like ammonia. It's a terrible smell, and you put it through and it's yellow. And then you turn the machine on and it smells like ammonia. It's a terrible smell, and you put it through and it would be a light transfer, a one-to-one copy of it. But that machine died this past year and so I got a brand-new plotter printer and so I'm starting to slowly go through and scan the old archives and I have hundreds of plans. How do you do?

Speaker 2:

that I mean. How do you scan a full-size H-scale?

Speaker 1:

Ideally I'd have my own scanner, but that's like three or four grand and I don't have the funding. So I found a few copy machine places that I can go down and do it for about $10 a sheet and just digitalize the archive. And I'm just kind of doing it on what the demand is right now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, once you get those all digitized, that would be goldmine. I mean just to have them saved like that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but I do that in my spare time and you're like. You asked me what my day job is. I'm a teacher. I teach for Risdon Middle School out in Renton School District, and they are located in Newcastle, the northern part of the Renton School District, and it's right up from 405 where the Seahawks training facility is, if you know where that is yeah very well, and this year I teach language arts in one section of PE and then also the school newspaper.

Speaker 2:

That's a lot to have on your plate. You've got family, you've got a business and you've got a. I don't know how many clubs you're in, but you race RC boats.

Speaker 2:

I know you've narrowed that down, but we'll get into that because you have pulled off some pretty amazing racing. I don't think people realize that your dad was a great racer. I mean the coolest, I mean Roger Newton racing against him, but you'd kick his butt unfortunately, I hate to say that, and he would be smiling, I'm sure he would he never had the consistency and the smarts that you've displayed. When I've watched you race in this last year, god, I'm getting tears in my eyes just thinking about how amazing you did, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So school teacher trying to manage a family. So school teacher trying to manage a family, yeah. And then you have this inherent interest in the sport of hydroplane racing yeah, and you know it's not perfect and you want to help. And what can you do? So well, I could talk to people, so you come up with Rooster Tail. Talk, yeah, how many episodes ago.

Speaker 1:

So this recording. We have 136 episodes that have aired and they started back in 2019.

Speaker 2:

And the idea was just to interview people and get a take on what they think about the sport.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because at the time it was back in 2019. I was a little late to the game but I was getting into podcasts 2019, I was a little late to the game, but I was getting into podcasts. I'm really into horror movies and I found some really cool ones on that, but, as you said, I have this passion for hydroplane racing. There's nothing out there for it. Of course, you can watch old race footage on YouTube and old interviews on YouTube, but there was no podcast back then.

Speaker 2:

Nothing live nothing current.

Speaker 1:

Nothing live, nothing current. I was talking to people. I said you know, this would be so great to have. I think it's a resource that's not tapped. Everyone agreed and said, yeah, go do it. Everyone told me well, go do it then.

Speaker 2:

You figured it out, you've done God. I don't even want you to try to list all the people, but is there anybody left that you haven't gotten to talk to yet, that you?

Speaker 1:

I mean there's a lot of people I still want to talk to. I mean, one person I'm trying to reach out to right now is jeff neff. I'm having a hard time getting a hold of him, but he had a big influence on the sport. Fortunately, the ravages of time have hindered some. I was prepared to talk to Scott Pierce right before he passed. Unfortunately, he went in the hospital and passed away, same with Pat O'Day. He passed away before I could. Really, with a podcast, I want to talk to every corner of the sport that we have and I talk to fans and crew members and owners and racers. Basically, anyone has a story to tell about hydroplane racing.

Speaker 2:

I want to talk to them. Well, let's dive right into that. You're the clearinghouse now of all this information. Where is specifically unlimited hydroplane racing with the three, four or five I don't even know how many boats? Now we're in the middle of a chaotic. Yeah, it's transition, there's a and uh, you're an optimist, so you're, you're hoping for the best, but you, but I think you put better than anybody understands just the difficulty of this sport now. Yeah, um, where's it headed? What do you? What do you? What have you learned that you could pass along that?

Speaker 1:

could help. I think Steve David said it best when everyone loves sausages until they learned how it's made, I don't know I think a lot about that where the future of the sport is. I think as long as we have people that are building the boats and working on the boats, we'll still have a sport. Because you look back at the history of the sport, I think people even into the 90s said the sport's dead. And it's a reoccurring thing that we hear about the sport. Is that the sport's dead? This is it. This is the last year. We lose sponsors, we lose TV broadcasting, we lose race sites, teams, but the sport's still here.

Speaker 1:

It's not as glamorous as it was I don't know when you can go look back at the heyday of it but it doesn't have that gleam and glimmer it had back in the 80s and 90s, I guess you could say, but it's still here. One thing I mean there's so many problems I could point out, but one thing you look around in the pits and the average age of the crew members has gone up. It's not going down. Team count is down, race sites are down. Everything's in apparel with being able to afford insurance and race site fees. It's sad.

Speaker 2:

I think it's a motorsports problem all the way around. It is a motorsports problem all the way around. It's a new world order, and in a lot of ways you could say they're doing pretty good keeping boats on the water, even given the downside and these race sites. You know they're trying to get other entertainment Right, Like the vintage boats, for one. Yeah, they love having us out there to try to stir up trouble. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Airplanes a lot of. But if you look at the positives, it's a great product they're putting out. Now, if you watch the YouTube live stream on the racing Fabulous, there's fabulous racing. I mean you go back and look at. I was watching the other day seafair in like 88 yeah, and the they're coming down for the start and the boats are like 20 lanes apart from each other. It's four boats and they're taking up 40 lanes and they're all spread apart. But now they're they're one lane stack. They're stacked on top of each other and it's you don't know who's in the win before the end of the race and they're faster than hell.

Speaker 2:

I mean the boats are going. Yeah, it's a remarkable thing to see even today I still marvel at a start and how those guys get things through the turns. Is there any gossip that we should know about? Is there any new ideas that people have hinted to you? Like they want to try a nuclear engine or they want to I don't know what.

Speaker 1:

Well, there's interest out there. I think the issue is funding. But Mark, in one of the last episodes Mark Evans talked about how he's got an automotive power plant. He wants to put in a hydro and he almost had a deal with Elstrom but Elstrom wouldn't sell the boat to him and the people behind the motor said if you don't have a boat, we're not going to move forward with the project. So he's got I think he has a motor without a boat. He's trying to figure that out. But there was also that power plant that Kevin Ellsworth was trying to push down in San Diego. They had a V12 engine that was purpose for boat racing and I think again there's lacking funding for someone to try it. It's a shame to have it.

Speaker 2:

So, David, all this running around with model boats, did your dad ever talk to you about throwing you in a little J-stock hydro or an inboard or bigger? Did you ever have aspirations?

Speaker 1:

My dad never really pushed that. He never really wanted me to race a real boat. I think he was always concerned about safety. I wanted to play football in middle school and high school and my parents said no, Really. Yeah, they said they wouldn't sign the waiver to let me do it and I think they knew how dangerous that could be Good. So they said no to that. But I got the desire.

Speaker 1:

In high school I think, I saw Jesse Robertson. He raced in RC Unlimited and had a great RC career and he decided to sell his boat and he went and got an inboard and he's a fabulous racer, whatever it could be, and he did really well right off the bat. And I think I saw that and wanted to try that out. And I can't remember if I was a junior or senior in high school but I had a friend named ryan johnson who's racing outboards the Seattle Outboard Association. I knew him from playing soccer as a kid and he went to high school not too far from me. So I went out to Yelm one summer and I tested, I guess, Sea Hydro. Oh good, and it was a small little boat. It only did about 50 miles an hour. That's fast enough, yeah. So it gave me a good taste of it. I went out there and I thought it was hanging the boat out and just got a really good sense of how running a hydroplane feels uncontrollable. Yeah, Just doesn't feel it's not like a car when you're tracking, yeah Right, You're not level, it's just bouncing. You could feel the air push the bow up and you'd hang and I'm sure I thought I was really loose but I'm sure people on the shore thought I was going really slow. But I remember coming in and with outboards you gotta kneel down and try to get underneath the windshield and all that. And I thought it was kneeling down and my dad was laughing at me getting soaked. Well, my dad was laughing at me when I came in and I was like I, I didn't hit any buoys, I didn't cut any buoys, I didn't get anyone's way, I was able to get up on plane. He was just laughing because he said I looked like Andre the Giant out there because it looked like I was standing up in the boat. Funny, Another friend of my father's, Tony Perman.

Speaker 1:

Him and his son were racing outboards. He let me run his runabout and I loved that. That felt really controllable because it's not like a hydro. It doesn't hang out there and it's. It's just always in the water and had a lot of fun with that. And my father actually got to test drive gw meyers d stock hydro. Your dad did, yeah, so that was that's the one where you you lay down, oh, and you're like looking up. You know that was that was. It was interesting to see him get in and out of that, but we went out at the same time and I got to see him on the outside of me. That was kind of fun. I never saw him pick up, but we came in from that.

Speaker 1:

Well, I remember going out for that last run and the person who was ever in charge of the event noticed I wasn't the boat owner, right, it was someone different. And they said, do you have insurance? And I was like APB insurance. He's like, yeah, we got it. And they said, well, give me your card when you get back. And so we went out, did our run, we came back and we had the same insurance at that time for our RC boats and so we showed them the card and they said it showed RC, Unlimited RC boats. And they didn't like that. They got mad about that. So I think we got Tony Perman and JW Myers in some trouble. But I think the next day was the race and that same boat my dad tested JW crashed the Swanson and fell off the next morning. So luckily that didn't happen to my dad when he was out there, but anyways. So I was interested and we went to that.

Speaker 1:

Same summer they had a national event over in Moses Lake and I think we were racing in Wenatchee. The club was yeah, RC Unlimited was racing in Wenatchee or Soap Lake somewhere nearby. Yeah. So we went out and we watched it and it was just so chaotic because the starts were so different from what I knew on Unlimiteds and RC boats. Yeah, they had like some score up the way out to the left there. You couldn't pass it at a certain time but boats were just kind of circling like donuts before it. And then we're watching and my dad knew some of the people there and it was fun to talk with him about it. But there was a big crash during the day and someone got hit. They went through the engine wall or the sidewall and he broke some ribs. And then a week or two later there was an outboard event where someone died, I think back east.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, hit and hit, get thrown out in a skid fin or an engine propeller. That's the big fear, I think, with those little things.

Speaker 1:

So after that happened I just thought about it and said no, I can't.

Speaker 2:

I didn't know. You got that close. I'm proud of you. So you've been on the water. So now that gives you the real perspective for guys like me. I drove a Paul Gillard's little one liter, oh, as fast as it could go, yeah, on lake chelan. I thought I was flying and I saw the video and I was putting along at 50 miles an hour. But yeah, it's uh, it it's uh, and I've ridden in the vintage boats and it's a. But when you race from the shore and you grow up, like you and I did, watching boats from the shore, you develop a talent for the boat ride that the driver can't have. I have talked to Chip many times about the feel of the boat and there's so much of it that's invisible to him because he's in it and on the shore.

Speaker 2:

it's like why Jim Lucero would film every test run back in the Blue Blaster days and his, all his boats. They were always close up films, setting every little splash, everything and uh. So I think RC people like you, you know, understand hydroplane racing from a different viewpoint, but probably almost a more important viewpoint Boat ride you can see what it's doing. You can't have the perspective of racing next to a guy or something. But you started racing in RC. Let's get this straight RC Unlimited is the obviously biggest club in the world of 1.8 scale racing. It's fanned out now to some other class sizes. Right Now I have FE Electric's 8 scale. What is it? 1.6 scale gas?

Speaker 1:

They call it gas scale. It's like 1.6.66 or something. It's some weird size. But yeah it's a bigger size.

Speaker 2:

And then the other club that your dad was instrumental in was the offshoot of RCU, the ERCU.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, which he actually helped develop one-tenth scale racing. He was one of the first people that did one-tenth scales and they started a club called Classic Thunder in 1994. And I started to run a little bit with that. Back then. The technology was so much different than what we have today. It was really heavy NICAD batteries and brushed motors. They were lucky if they could get four or five laps out of a boat. We started racing tent scales back then. I remember taking turns with my dad racing his model theaikai. Yeah, no, no, no. The first boat he made was the miss wahoo and then we ended up painting up as the shanty and that's actually down at the museum right now. That tent scale. Um, he's that there's a shanty. And who drove the shanty? That was, oh, it wasn't rush slay, was it rush slay, rush Plumber, yep, and he's got a little plumber's helper in his hand.

Speaker 2:

So that's down at the museum. Did your dad ever drag you out in the garage there and make you sand and paint as you were getting older?

Speaker 1:

I think there were some times he pushed me out there At some point. I mean, I started racing Ursa Unlimited in 96 and I got Dallas Cooks Tempest. I ran that for a year and then my dad we ended up selling that to John Gatchens and my dad built a new Budweiser and so he wanted to be a Budweiser team but at that time he was so busy with the museum and Ken's boat that we just our RC program was terrible. There's a lot of DNFs and DNS with it and I think at some point I started getting really frustrated with it and I tried to just figure out what's going on in the boat.

Speaker 2:

Well, there is the father-son transition, where you started to see your way to do things and you were picking up on what other people are doing. Yeah, it was inevitable. Your dad loved it, but you could see it. You could see this transition happening. Yeah, you could see you kind of taking charge. A few years goes by and then you're the guy you know your dad was obviously loved it. He didn't care. But uh, so you started. You hit the budweiser team. You guys looked great. You had those cool boats.

Speaker 1:

You had the Budweiser team. You guys looked great. You had those cool boats. You had uniforms yeah, you guys were. Yeah, my dad painted the table red and had some Budweiser logos on the table too.

Speaker 2:

It was you guys were yeah, roger and Budweiser and his relationship with Bernie Little was pretty cool, yeah, and every driver I mean it was.

Speaker 1:

Did he ever tell you why he started racing Budweiser?

Speaker 2:

I guess, I don't know.

Speaker 1:

He started the club. Was it 74? Yes, so in the Seattle area in 1974, rc Unlimited was formed. But in 77 or 78, maybe it was 76, I can't remember One of the late 70s RC Unlimited had a couple of years where they put demonstrations on down at Seafair yes, in that little lagoon area right by the pits. And Bernie came over one year and he had the big name and the big budget behind him and my dad had got to know him and I think my dad started making some models for his corporate office and whatnot. And yes, he came over and said Raj, where's the Budweiser? He looked around and no one had a model of the Budweiser. My dad felt actually embarrassed for the club. Really he wanted to make sure that the biggest name in URC was represented in RCU the next year. He said I'm going to build the latest Budweiser. I'll just always build the latest model of Budweiser. So from that point on he always had a Budweiser.

Speaker 2:

He sure did yeah. So such an important image of the club was it, and getting the sponsorship money from Budweiser was just massive.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, him and Bob Brackett. Yeah, I think the mid-80s, shortly after you joined the club. Yeah, bob Brackett, I think mid-80s shortly after you joined the club they went out to Berne and got a pretty good-sized budget from Budweiser for this little RC club.

Speaker 2:

It was incredible. So tell us about learning to drive the things. I can visualize you and your dad driving home from races and going back and talking out out the the race and oh so. And so cut me off. And I made this mistake, we picked the wrong prop, we did this I I just because that's natural. Yeah, I would love to mic'd all that, oh yeah, you guys, I'd love to hear that, but did that too. So when you started winning Budweiser first, right, you're the butter, did you?

Speaker 1:

Well, in one eight scale. But my first one was with my Budweiser and that was like 2003,. But it so it took. So I started in 96. So that was a good seven, eight years before I got my first win, and back then it was it was hard to get in the final heats Cause you win, and back then it was it was hard to get in the final heats because you I mean you'd have to. If you dropped a heat I don't think you'd be in the final heat and there was for a long time. Well, I remember my first year I got into. I ran into rich mackin. Actually I ran him over because I was just driving over my head, didn't know what I was doing. My dad told me, punch it. And I punched a throttle and I punched his boat too, but I felt terrible about it. So I think after that for a year or two I was just kind of putzing around the course, yeah, and my dad I remember being pretty aggravated about that?

Speaker 2:

Did he potentially try to calm you down? Slow the boat down. No, he just said Words of wisdom.

Speaker 1:

No, he just said just go back out there and you'll be fine. Words of wisdom, that no, I just said just go back out there and you'll be fine, just do it again. That's great, but but I just like no, I'm not comfortable with it, and I just kind of backed off for a while did you have words of wisdom for him? Dad, maybe, maybe give me some more support or something.

Speaker 2:

But you better tape on your radio box lids. Oh gosh, stuff like that.

Speaker 1:

Well, yeah, we always. Yeah, he was always notorious for having waterproof or water cooled radios. Yeah, and at that time, none of the radios were waterproof. And yeah, we had quite a few boats at the beach.

Speaker 2:

You guys have a really good one, two type, finish anywhere or close to that where you both were in the final and you went home there was.

Speaker 1:

I mean, back then we had the same channel.

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah frequency or saw the radio. So we would always. We wouldn't race each other until unless we were in the same connie or final heat, and that didn't happen very often, right, but there was one time it was 2006 we both went down to san diego because back then san diego had a rc club that raced when eight scale hydroplanes and I ran my model of the mr pringles and my dad had a budweiser. He just converted over to formula boats and actually went down there and he, his boat, was all in red. He didn't have graphics for it, yeah, and mike mcknight, I had it sent to the hotel and that Friday night we put all the decals on his boat. But we raced down in that little pond, that narrow saltwater pond, and his radio actually caught fire the first day because it got saltwater in it. But we got it fixed and we both made the final. I won the final and he got third place, so that was probably our best finish together.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, so you had a lot of experience with the 10th scale of electrics, so you, way more than me. I had my 10-year retirement from the nitro world when I came back to RCU. All this new stuff had happened, including electrics world. When I came back to rcu, this, all this new stuff that happened, including electrics yeah, and I just in speaking of rich mack and he's the one that kind of did, kind of dragged me into it with the idea yeah, and so I.

Speaker 2:

I had a, my nitro boats mothballed and there was my atlas that I'd built and my 84 atlas I'd built in about the 2002, 2003 years. So I just threw the stuff in that as a test bed, not thinking that boat would ever win a race or a championship or nine races in one season. So you had the chops of the electrics that nobody else did, because you guys came out of this other world, because you knew all about the batteries when I first came along and I had no clue tell me, where do you plug it in? And been pretty fun. So let's just go get right to the the meat of the story here.

Speaker 2:

When I I came back so I'm in 2019 yeah, besides running over you in one heat, I remember in your beautiful dad's budweiser, I felt so awful about that I guess I forgot about that one. Yeah, first race. But I did manage the championship that year and I thought I was and won the gold cup and I thought, wow, this is unbelievable. Yeah, but in that, even in that time since then to this last couple years, the, the level and speed of the boat's technology climbed. I mean, yeah, what you raced against last year was not what I raced against in 2019, although I had to race you, yeah, and I don't want to do that anymore.

Speaker 2:

You have a a knack of calmness, and maybe your dad did too, but that's what I really admire. I watched, with videos of your starts. You put the boat exactly at the same place. You just, you just have a a sense for it. I it's hard to explain some of the best driving I've ever seen, so david. So what you did is I, I for this. Last year you had not been racing in RCU. You'd kind of taken a little vacation from the club.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I kind of took a seat back. I think I just wanted to do some different things. My kid was getting grown up a little bit and I was more into the tent scales and I didn't really have a boat that was working well on each scale. I wanted to build a new boat, but just hadn't gotten around to it.

Speaker 2:

But in the tent scale club, the ERC, it seems like a pretty common practice for the older guys to let people drive their boats.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there was a few there. Yeah, like carrie jose, I raced for him. Yeah, quite often.

Speaker 2:

And you won a lot of races. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so you're, you're. You're a good, you know, guest driver I get. And so that fast forward to last year. You just out of the blue, came up to me and said you got a boat, I can drive. No, that's not how it happened. I don't remember how it happened. I just remember you just asking me. And I said yeah, I got a boat.

Speaker 1:

No, I was helping you with the 50-year RCU video and I came over here and I had boxes of pictures and tapes and I think I overwhelmed you with all the stuff.

Speaker 2:

I brought over Great stuff.

Speaker 1:

We were in your shop and I think you said something casually about the Atlas yeah, so that needs to go back out. Maybe you want to drive it. I thought you were joking, oh fuck. But then you kept poking about it and I said well, fine, yeah, I'll drive it. That was fabulous.

Speaker 2:

So David borrows my boat and he puts it in my stock setup. You didn't change much, right? I mean you got batteries.

Speaker 1:

I think I changed the batteries because I purchased some and then I put my radio on it and that was about it, and then I made some propellers for it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's some smarts there. You figured out your props. So David goes to the first race. I didn't go to the first race last year. Yeah, you skipped out, and I'm getting the updates from Rich Madkin Atlas won first heat. Atlas wins second heat. I go. I don't know he's gonna make the final.

Speaker 1:

Good for him, you know.

Speaker 2:

I hope he has fun, it's just cool. And then you win the damn race. I go God dang, what's going on? Okay, keep going, and then the next week. I don't know where you were. I didn't go to that one either.

Speaker 1:

I may have thought of that one. I think it was Ellensburg. I may have been there and I was behind you and you kicked my butt.

Speaker 2:

You win that one. Yeah, and I don't remember the streak. What was it? Did you win five, six in a? Row, I think the most I had last year was five in a row, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Because I think I won the first three and then I got really sick and had to miss a race Winning At FV class. There's some damn fast boats and some pretty good drivers. You had some competition, there was no doubt about it. The technology was improving daily. It seemed like these new motors were coming out, batteries were getting better and the speed controllers were improving. Next thing I know you're just crushing it with the points and I'm just amazed. I think everybody is, and it was so good for the club to have you back, especially in the 50th year anniversary. Yeah, it was fun, and so you had basically the Cinderella season After 11 races. After they look at the paper, it says that you won nine of the 11 races, including the Gold Cup. That's unheard of. I can't think of that ever being done in the Nitro class or any of the classes. It was just. Did anybody show any disapproval to you? Did you feel like you were the bad guy? Oh God, he's here. I don't want to.

Speaker 1:

I think after a couple of races. Well, I mean, I didn't know if you were going to let me run the whole year or just a race or two. But then when she said you got to go for the high points I'd never gotten high points before in RC Unlimited oh, that's incredible. And so I said, okay, well, I'll take it seriously then and go for the high points. And I think after a couple races people started to give me gruff if they were in my heat.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, you're a bad guy, oh God, yeah. So you score the most points anybody's ever scored for a season. You win nine races, which is crazy. I was thinking back to Nitro. Jesse never pulled up 9. Oh, really, oh, I don't think so. Dave Brandt, maybe 5 or 6. Nobody's ever strung that kind of winning streak. What's your secret? What did you figure out why you did so? Well, you can get in a heat and drive great and rise above what happened to me, or drive below my level, but you just seem to have it consistently, heat after heat.

Speaker 1:

Well, I mean, you gave me a really good boat that was set up so well, it's pretty easy to do.

Speaker 2:

You kept it on the water. I got it upside down many times. I really try to watch the attitude. It's pretty easy to do. You kept it on the water.

Speaker 1:

I got it upside down many times, yeah, yeah, I mean I just really try to watch the attitude of the boat. You know, as I go through every heat, I mean I try not to drive above its capabilities. I just get out in front and don't go anymore if I can, but just really meticulous about the maintenance with the boat. We were going through some props and I figured out kind of the the life expectancy of a prop wasn't much more beyond a weekend. Yeah, we're using, but we watched out for that, because I think the first race I broke the strut off. Yeah, yeah, cause I broke the prop and it I could continue to run it. I think that happened one more time in a heat, but I was able to stop it before it broke the strut, but I figured out after that when to pull the props and when to not.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, run them. But I have one of your props the one you lent me at chilan, yeah, and I noticed that you almost polished it. It's a weird aluminum alloy of some sort that comes from china. We all don't know what those things are made out of, but they're super lightweight and that particular brand, the one we're using, is fast. It's got a little kicker on the trailing edge. You had a GPS in the boat most of the time, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it wasn't always that accurate, but I think the best I got it was like 63. So you're racing at 63 miles an hour.

Speaker 2:

I never got a nitro boat, barely over 60 miles an hour, only in rare conditions by myself. And that's for the radar gun. Who knows how accurate that is? And consistently. Now our boats can kick up to 63. I think Mark got up to 64. Oh wow.

Speaker 1:

But it's your boat, it's your boat doing that. Nah, the prop.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the boat's not light. There's nothing special about it. So what's your plans? What are we going to do next year? I thought we were going to build you a brand new one.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I wanted to build a new boat. Life happens right. Yeah, my son is starting to have some interest. He's nine, He'll be 10 in March, so we're building him a one-tenth scale of island security systems, which his grandfather my wife's dad was a sponsor on the boat.

Speaker 2:

Okay, that's why you built an eighth scale of that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I did Before I destroyed it in the beach in Tri-Cities there. But he's starting to show some interest. He's kind of a little bit not so much, but I'm hoping I can get a bug planted in him. So we're trying to get that ready for this year to run that.

Speaker 2:

And I have. You donated your Atlas to me. No, that's your boat now. I mean, you cannot, it's all a race on that. You earned that boat. I'm so proud of it, proud of you. It's the coolest thing I've ever been able to do for anybody. Yeah thank you, but I understand if you want to move to another. Keep moving up. I might have a couple more in there. I might have to give you another one. I got some bullets in the chamber but I'm not sure I'm going to get to race or not.

Speaker 1:

Well, yeah, we'll get you back out there this year. Yeah, I'm anxious to at least test the things yeah. But I'm also trying to. I really want to push the podcast further, so I'm going to spend a lot of time on that this year as well.

Speaker 2:

That's great.

Speaker 1:

Well, my lap this year as well. That's great. Well thanks, don, but that's all the time we have for this week. Tune in next week as I hear Don mock and not myself as the host, but Don will finish his interview with me, david Newton. It was fun talking more about my background with Don. I had some people ask more about myself, where I've come from and why I have this passion of hydroplane racing, and Don really thought it'd be great to share that with you, the listener, just so you can get to know more about my story.

Speaker 1:

And, as I said, tune in next week, as you'll hear part two of Don's interview with me. Until then, don't forget to check us out on social media Run Facebook, instagram, also online at wwwruchateltalkcom, and on there you'll find lots of fun stuff from our archives, but there's also a great section of the site dedicated to our subscribers, called Ruchatel Talk Plus, where, for a monthly fee, you have access to a secluded part of the website that has photos, articles and other fun surprises. And, don't forget, you'll also get early access to all new episodes. That's all I have for today, so until next time, I hope to see you at the races.