Ron Hill
01-04-2012, 11:57 AM
Ron;
I grew up in Denison, Texas and my father was a supervisor at the Yellow Jacket boat company. I spent a lot of time there as a kid because when a special boat was built for anyone my father and I were the ones who put the finishing touching on it and made sure everything was tip top shape.
Most of those was for Roy Rogers who was part owner in the Business. Helped design work on some of the later models until the plant closed in 1960. Don't know if you are familiar with Yellow Jackets but they held quite a few world records for outboards in their years.
After the plant closed there were quite a few hulls left so my dad and Mr Gaines started building Stinger boats for racing. More world records.
Mr Gaines died and my dad started making the same boat with a few improvements and called them Victor Boats. So you can see I grew up with boats and have always loved them. I raced for a few times but Uncle Sam need me to do some work in Vietnam for a few years as a Marine and when I finally got home there was one hull left so I set out to make my mark and turned out a boat that was three miles faster than the world record at the time. But,........First race was leading everyone and was having to work my way thru the back of the pack. Got cut off in a turn and barrel rolled at top speed. Destroyed the Boat! End of story!
I am in the process of building molds for scale models of all the years and types of the boats so I can reproduce some of the boats for all the fans.
I am going to use a vacuum forming process and should start very soon.
Would be glad to hear from anyone who races outboards.......Thanks
We raced on TV for 39 weeks s straight. The show was called Speedboat Rodeo, Roy Rogers was there many a weekend. He helped start a Skiing contest called "Sink the Champ". One of Roy's Yellow Jackets would pull two or three skiers, each had a toilet plunger. The skiers would knock each other off their skis. Great show between heats.
People could just sign up and ski. If you won, you came back the nexr week.
Roy was a very good friend of Elgin Gates. Elgin and my dad were best of friends. Elgin own, with partners, Seaboard Marine which was the west cost Mercury distributor.
Keep us posted with you RC boats.
I grew up in Denison, Texas and my father was a supervisor at the Yellow Jacket boat company. I spent a lot of time there as a kid because when a special boat was built for anyone my father and I were the ones who put the finishing touching on it and made sure everything was tip top shape.
Most of those was for Roy Rogers who was part owner in the Business. Helped design work on some of the later models until the plant closed in 1960. Don't know if you are familiar with Yellow Jackets but they held quite a few world records for outboards in their years.
After the plant closed there were quite a few hulls left so my dad and Mr Gaines started building Stinger boats for racing. More world records.
Mr Gaines died and my dad started making the same boat with a few improvements and called them Victor Boats. So you can see I grew up with boats and have always loved them. I raced for a few times but Uncle Sam need me to do some work in Vietnam for a few years as a Marine and when I finally got home there was one hull left so I set out to make my mark and turned out a boat that was three miles faster than the world record at the time. But,........First race was leading everyone and was having to work my way thru the back of the pack. Got cut off in a turn and barrel rolled at top speed. Destroyed the Boat! End of story!
I am in the process of building molds for scale models of all the years and types of the boats so I can reproduce some of the boats for all the fans.
I am going to use a vacuum forming process and should start very soon.
Would be glad to hear from anyone who races outboards.......Thanks
We raced on TV for 39 weeks s straight. The show was called Speedboat Rodeo, Roy Rogers was there many a weekend. He helped start a Skiing contest called "Sink the Champ". One of Roy's Yellow Jackets would pull two or three skiers, each had a toilet plunger. The skiers would knock each other off their skis. Great show between heats.
People could just sign up and ski. If you won, you came back the nexr week.
Roy was a very good friend of Elgin Gates. Elgin and my dad were best of friends. Elgin own, with partners, Seaboard Marine which was the west cost Mercury distributor.
Keep us posted with you RC boats.