E-Boats were both thick and thin for Pateros. Thin because Dave Cloud passed, but thick because Will Paramore was getting good results from the hydro conversion and with Fred Saxby had generated a second class at 48 volts.This worked great for Will and Fred because they were more interested in solving puzzles than heroics. Fred was on and off because pretty frequently hed get bored and let something he was working on go once hed mastered it. Will though would dig in on a project, setting and re-setting goals. In 48v E-boats his initial goal was to complete racing heats without getting lapped. He wasnt going to accomplish that with blinding speed, the 144 guys had three times the power and were more than twice as fast, but within a few races hed accomplish that goal and much more. Out front racing that weekend was mostly between Norm Boddy and Don Crabtree. Don was down on power to Norm by about 25%, but was making up the difference with careful set-up and with a trick unique to the Jet engine starter he used. It was rated at 24v but he ran it at 108, and hed added a rheostat to the field circuit. When you weaken field power motor RPM and top speed climb enormously. In racing that weekend Dons speed was much higher than Norms but there were offsetting costs to his plan. One was that Dons hydro was running much faster than Norms but hed lose all hed gained at the turn because his speed was more than the fin could deal with, so hed run huge sideways arcs that let Norm regain the ground hed lost to Don. The other problem was that field weakening was burning amps at such a huge rate that Dons Pack was drained coming off the final turn and both Will and Fred caught and passed him before the Columbia could drift him past the finish line. So results were Norm, Fred, Will on Saturday then Norm, Will, Fred on Sunday. Pics here are pretty iffy. Throughout 94 and 95 I was mostly in the den-mother mode, making everybody play nice and keeping them out of the officials hair. Fallout from mother hen duties was that I had to limit myself to whatever was easily portable...Most of the first couple years was in 16mm.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 09:11:45 +0000
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