1973 DePue photo

[racingfan1]

I received this in a box of racing stuff I received. DePue 1973 . Front to back Stan Leavendusky , Todd Brinkman Sr , Pete Hellsten , Larry Latta and on the inside is Bob Murphy.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

That should become a classic photo Dale. Do you know who took it. Be interesting to check the results. A little bit of roostertail ahead of and looks between Stan and Bob, and somebody further ahead on the outside...maybe matching the position of the other unknown guy. Looks like maybe Stan and Bob are checking each other out, so maybe the ones ahead jumped the gun. Hope we can find out the results.

[racingfan1]

The name on the picture looks like Chamberlain. It really is a classic photo Wayne. To get that shot , using the equipment of the day , he must have been really good. I'd like to get something like that today. The overall winner of C service hydro in 73 was Larry Latta , Hal Tolford was 2nd and Henry Shakeshaft was 3rd. According to the article they had 2 elimination heats and could have used 3. I will have to dig into the totes to see if I have the heat results from 73.

[DeanFHobart]

Now there’s some racing history ..... all major names in our sport...... cool picture.

[racingfan1]

Here is another picture from that same lot. I may need help identifying them.

[racingfan1]

One more in the series of 1973 Lake DePue pictures.

[Al Lang]

I received this in a box of racing stuff I received. DePue 1973 . Front to back Stan Leavendusky , Todd Brinkman Sr , Pete Hellsten , Larry Latta and on the inside is Bob Murphy.

Looks like Pete Hellsten is running the Merc.

[JGOSMAN JR]

Doug Bindrim w/ Jim Werner running N-8 f konig
Bill Fales w/ Dick Scopininch N-77 . Looks like a 6 cross banger. Wonder where the six loop is?

[racingfan1]

This picture says Springfield 72.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Jim Schoch...Quincy Welding works driver. Good picture of Jim. He always seemed so calm and relaxed, but his record is that of a very fierce competitor.

[Chris Hellsten]

Doug Bindrim w/ Jim Werner running N-8 f konig
Bill Fales w/ Dick Scopininch N-77 . Looks like a 6 cross banger. Wonder where the six loop is?

Hi John! Actually Pete Hellsten riding with Doug Bindrum!

[JGOSMAN JR]

Hi Chris,
You are right , totally forgot your dad was deck rider for Doug.

[racingfan1]

There was no date on this pictue but it came from the same album as the others so definitely the same time frame.

[racingfan1]

Well lookie here , this guy is a regular contributor on this site , work that wheel Wayne. :cool: Maybe you can help me out Wayne but the background does not look like DePue. Unless it was a high water year the street is way to close to the lake. Even with the compression from a zoom lens it looks to close.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Dale you and I have discussed this previously after you sent me an email of this photo after you got it last year. I was able to enlarge the photo you sent and came up with several facts. First, this is a wood deck Marchetti....AND it is a BRAND NEW boat. How do I know this? We never raced with any solid wood Marchetti's except on the course where they were delivered, and that only happened twice. One was this time, and the other was the B class tunnel that Nick and Pat built for us. Bob Hering blew that tunnel over at Lakeland before we got there. Nick repaired it and delivered it back to us a Lakeland, Tennesse, but we didn't have it rigged and ready until DePue in 1970. It was a dangerous boat as Bob Hering warned me. Secondly, when you zoom in you can tell the numbers are taped on. It was one of the first wood deck hydro the Marchetti's built. In 1968 we picked up three cloth deck Marchetti's in DePue....an 11-4, a 12-4 and a 13-6. I think this is the 12-2 which we picked up in 1969. I have a picture from the 1969 Winternationals at Topock I need to find to check the deck, but I think this was one I picked up at DePue in 1969.

I am positive that this is DePue and is way down toward the end of the pits toward the first turn and past the discharge pipes. The reason I say this is because I can only remember picking up boats from Nick and Pat at DePue and Lakeland, Florida, plus the one time deal at Lakeland, Tennessee with the tunnel. I have racked my brain trying to rmember some of the other race courses, but I can't recall the pits. From the ones I remember, this is none of them. The time frame has to be between 1969 and 1971, and there are some confusing elements here also. Up until 1969 we either wore sleeveless white Baldwin Racing Team shirts or CB racing team windbreakers. In 1972 and beyond it was always Master Oil Racing Team uniforms. 1969 through 1971 I raced with no shirt on. Also by blowing up the photo, I discovered that this motor had Nydahl ignition installed. In the blowup you can see the cast aluminum plate on the exhaust side where the coils were mounted. Up until this photo, I remembered that we only ran the Nydahl ignition in our "lost year" of 1970. But then, in 1970 we ran ZAK Stacks on every Konig except the 2 cylinder A. This motor clearly has expansion chambers. At the 1969 Winternationals early in the year, the 4 cylinder Konig motors were equipped with cans. I thought we went straight from cans to ZAK Staks, then to expansion chambers in 1971. I do not recall when the expansion chambers were first introduced, but I have a Konig spec sheet of pipe dimensions with the date 1969 on it. So this boat could be a replacement B hydro for the 1968 cloth deck boat that Ashley Lawrence ran over and cut in half at the 2nd half of the NOA World Champions in our front yard in 1968. If that's the case, then this would be the 11-4 Marchetti with 4 single expansion chambers what were fixed. It was very fast, but the weight hanging off the back made it handle poor in the turns, and we ran that configuration only a few times. The black "B" Zak stacks never really worked for us, so that could be B hydro at DePue. The water at DePue in 1969 was very smooth and it was hot. This picture looks more like 1969, because the finals in 1970 was rough. That was the race when the battery came loose and was shocking me through the metal Bowden cable and battery acid was getting in a cut on my foot. So this photo could be prior to race day. I'm going to go back to your email Dale and see if I can see what kind of throttle cable I had.

We only raced in DePue four times. 1969..1970..1972..1774. The C hydro that I think this is is the one I blew over in 1972 at DePue. I qualified 1st and 2nd in all my qualifying heats except C hydro which I blew over, and as a result of my injuries, was not able to compete in the finals. In that race though, we had scrapped the Nydahl ignition two years earlier, so this race had to be either 1969 or 1970, and I am convinced it is DePue because of all the other evidence. I could be what is called foreshortening of a long telephoto lens Dale, but I bet if you had a long shot from the picture taking boat of more of the pits, you could tell exactly where in the pits it was. Also since the photos came from Clyde and Charlotte Queen, I think that ups the odds that it was DePue. It's been interesting trying to figure out because the inconsistencies made me bust my brain going back over all those fun times.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I have solved the mystery Dale, but before I post it, I will wait to see if anyone out there might want to comment on a few my so called facts before I add what I discovered. I don't want to influence anyone's opinion, because unless you can blow up the photo like I was able to do, you can not look around in detail at the pits, motor, boats, etc.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Don't need confirmation from anyone else now Dale. It is the Pro Nationals at DePue in 1970. In 1970 a young photojournalist wrote a book about daring sports entitled "This Sporting Life....That Sporting Death". In 1970 John Kiely traveled across the U.S. covering 9 sporting events including aerobatics with planes, cart racing , grand prix racing rodeos, skydiving motorcross, polo, wild water, and boat racing. John was about our age with longish hair and a mustache and he hung out with us and our pit crew. In his book is a picture of that brand new 11-6 Marchetti B hydro with a wooden deck. The numbers are taped on. You can see the four single stationary pipes on that B Konig. I remembered this photo on the way to Corpus Christi this morning after my previous post. It is the clincher. The photo you posted to start this part of your story Dale is the only other one I have seen of this boat motor combination and had to have been taken during testing when the water was calm.

As I mentioned earlier, we ran Zak Staks on all the 4 cylinder Konigs except the B. It wasn't any faster than the cans, which we kept stationary as well. The four single pipes were much faster, but so much weight and leverage hanging behind the motor made the handling bad through the turns. We tested the Marchetti "tunnel boat" several times at this race, but we could not get a good setup. In fact, it was dangerous to drive. The sponsons were flat and ran from the bow to the stern and pounded the water hard. You could run it in choppy water, but you take a pounding. The real problem though was when you set up for a turn, it tried to hook very badly. There was no sponson fin and relied on getting the sponsons in the water to turn. I found that it turned best if you lean your weight away from the throttle and it was a smoother turn and less likely to hook. It also meant you were already heading toward being thrown out of the cockpit in a turn, and not being able to handle the steering wheel or throttle as well.

I ran the boat in the pictures in qualifying, but did not make the finals. I have posted this story some years before, but some newer members may not have seen it. This is what happened during qualifying. I had lost lots of right foot tennis shoes from flipping and had about 9 pair of lefts, thinking someday I would loose a left so I would have plenty to replace it. I never did, and around 1969 I started racing barefoot. I don't recall a rule against it in those days, but if so it was never enforced against me. The weekend prior to leaving for DePue my pit crew and myself went to Padre Island to go surfing. I was being chased down by the surf by a couple of the pit crew and went down when I stepped on a conch shell washed up at the waterline. a few pieces of the pointy part of the shell broke off in my left instep. I dug out all but a little piece I couldn't get ahold of.

We load up and make it to DePue on Wednesday. The next day we get spotted and unloaded in our pit area. We spent some time testing. At some point I figured I better put a bag over my foot because it was starting to get red and it hurt a little. As I also mentioned earlier, we had been having serious problems with our Nydahl ignition system. It was a so called 50,000 volt CD ignition system with Champion polar gap plugs. It was very inconsistent. We would be running good, then it would start cutting out, and didn't matter which engine. If you would even whisper the word "water" the engine might just shut off completely. I learned a lot during that year about avoiding roostertails. It wasn't just water though, and we tried everything to make that system work. We even got rid of the 12 volt Honda motorcycle battery for that new B hydro and installed a 12 volt aircraft battery that was twice as heavy and would maintain a charge very much longer. It was with this setup that we ran our elimination heat for the 1970 B Hydro Nationals.

The water had gotten choppy and the transom would slap the waves hard....especially with the extra weight of the battery and 4 pipes hanging off the back. Everything was Okay during that first lap, but the battery didn't fit the slot for the Honda battery and so started moving around and loosening the rope we had it tied down with. Going through the number one turn on lap two, the battery leaned over and make contact with our steel Bowden cable. I got a real shock through the throttle. I didn't know what was happening at first. It was only momentary and as I was going down the back straight everything was fine. Going through the bottom turn, the battery tilted again and I got another huge shock. By then, I figured it was the battery making contact with the throttle cable and I jerked the steering wheel to the right to upright it. Had to take the turn wide. So the next turn I was ready for it and eased as much as I could so the battery would stay in place, but with all the bouncing around I still got a shock. By now I was gun shy of going into a turn, so I slowed down until I got back to the back straight and got back on the throttle. Half way down the back straight it felt like a three inch yellow jacket or hornet stung my foot where the cut was a the bag long gone. Now What? I wanted to rub my instep against something to make the hurt go away, but I couldn't do anything but concentrate on the next, and last turn I had to get through. Can't remember if I got shocked that last time or not, but I took the very wide slow circle back to the pits. When I got the boat stopped I looked back and saw that all the tops but maybe one or two were broken off the vent caps of the battery. The slapping at the transom that caused the battery to come loose was also causing lead weights in the vent caps to jump around like Mexican jumping beans. They were heavy and designed to seal off vents if an airplane flew upside down. We had never considered that would happen. I didn't qualify, but the good news was the acid must have killed any infection in my foot that was starting to develop. So that's the story behind this boat Dale. And it was in DePue 1970.

[Chris Hellsten]

Ok Wayne, I want to throw a monkey wrench into the year of the picture. The C Service Hydro picture further up in the thread has my Dad racing his Merc on an 11'3" Byers (You can see pipe puller on throttle for 73 FA Konig). He bought that boat in January or February of 1973. I remember as a 7 year old kid driving from Long Island to Ohio with my Dad on a road trip with Dad to pick it up. It was the first time I stayed in a hotel as we couldn't take the Camper on the truck because the boat was going to be there on the way home!

That being said look above the spray in your picture on the shore line. The trailer box with the white outline is my Dad's trailer. The white deck boat to the left sitting on the low saw horses is the '73 Byers. My Dad ran AOH and C Service on that boat till we later picked up a 10' 6" Byers for the Service class. Our first trip to Depue was 1973. I had a light blue T-shirt with red lettering for about 30 years commemorating that trip!

So my question is.....Are you sure its not 1973?

Great Stuff! Chris

[Master Oil Racing Team]

First off Chris, I want to thank you for your post. Your family has been very important to Pro racing over the years. Now to the reality. Yes it was 1970. As I mentioned above we ran the four stationary pipes at DePue and at Alex in 1970. The taped numbers and unpainted deck are proof that we took possession at DePue and raced it there for the first time. If you said it was a 69 Byers I would get confused all over again, but not 1973. I started wearing uniforms in 1972. We took possession of our first Butts Aerowing at Alex in 1972. It was a CDF hydro we named "Hookin Bull" My Dad wanted Tim to build us a B hydro, but he refused. He had his own, and he had built B's for Johnny Dortch, Dick Scopinich, and I think somebody else. He wanted to prove to the boat racing public that just because he ran A and B Hydro, that he was able to build competitive boats for C, D and F classes. My Dad agreed and so had him build the first one with the understanding that he also built us hydros for A and B classes, which he did during the 72-73 winter break. If this was a 1973 photo, I would have been wearing a Hinchman uniform, I would have been in a Butts Aerowing, and there would have been a pipe puller in front of the throttle.

Here's the final clincher on 1973. NOA had collapsed and that took all the air out of Carl Rylee because that meant no championship Pro racing at Alex in 1973. My Dad had been researching UIM and had talked with Carl about putting the races on at Alex. Carl had agreed, and my Dad had filed for all UIM O classes before NOA went down. OA, OD and OF were granted to the United States in 1972 for the 1973 racing year. Carl wondered about calling it the World Championships when all the other classes including runabouts were not awarded. My Dad was in touch with Charlie Strang, and I have the letter he sent my Dad telling him that all classes run in North America could be considered World Championship races and run under APBA rules, as there were no other countries racing runabouts such as we have so they could be World Champions same as NOA. The UIM classes awarded, however, must run 4 heats with two hours between heats. So Carl was happy and the event went off as scheduled one week after the PRO Nationals at DePue.

Because this was the first time for UIM in the U.S. in a long time, my Dad and Carl wanted to make sure there were no mixups, the rules were known by all officials and everything would be first class, we got to Alex early in the week. My Dad decided that we could not race at DePue and get back to Alex in time to make sure everything was perfect. We had a couple of foreign teams that didn't show, but Leif Ahlborg and Leif Lindell from Sweden came, and they were happy with the way things were run. So yes Chris....I am totally sure the picture was not 1973. And be sure to keep posting. Put pictures up too if you can. Would like to see some of your Mom and Dad, and you kids in the pits back in the day.

[racingfan1]

If i can add my two cents here , the pictures I have been posting came from a box I received from Nancy Rahnert who is Clyde Queen's step-daughter. Some of the pictures have dates on them and some don't. So the C Service picture of your dad Chris is definitely 1973 as it is on the picture. However the picture of Wayne is undated. As i said above I am just not sure that picture of Wayne is DePue, the houses in the background don't look right and unless it was a flood year , the water is to close to the street. However , I would have been 8 at the time so i can't say for sure.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I don't know that there was a flood Dale, but I know in 1972 the lake was shallow because I got stuck in the mud, and in 1974 the race course had to be plumbed for the bottom, and stakes marked the perimeter on the backside and turns. You have to remember, 1970 was 48 years ago. Maybe the trees and other changes make things look different. I remember in 1972 a bulldozer was running up and down in the pits in the area where Denny Henderson and I had a rock skipping contest. Denny wasn't there in 1970, but when he was there in 1972, we pitted close to where I think the background in the photo is.

I have to amend this post. I did get stuck in the mud in 1972, but it was in 1974 that Denny was there for the rock skipping contest with Denny and the bulldozer making pit area smoother. In 72 we were pitted down toward the launching ramp.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

The Cat was working below the pavilion. The area I think where the house or church was is to the left toward the end of the pits. I have included a photo of many times champion Denny Henderson competing in a rock skipping contest at DePue.

[racingfan1]

That is pretty good form on Denny but I will say to get a good skip he needs to have a little more back bend in order to be as close to parallel to water as possible and then spin the rock off the end of the finger. Overall . if I were judging , I would give a 9 out of 10 points. :cool::cool:. Who is that with your dad in the picture??

[racingfan1]

Here is a pit picture , on the back it says Chicago 69. I'm sure Bill Kurps can add more information on this when he sees it. Help us out Bill. I have to say I love the era of the open trailers and racks and racks of boat. Look at that Iowa trailer in the background , that has to be an 7 or 8 boat rack. Any idea who that is , X-73 is the number on the runabout??

[Master Oil Racing Team]

X 73 might be Barry Wilson. I will look it up Dale. I like the old trailers too. Enclosed are very nice, and we would have probably had one too if we continued racing, but when you are getting close to the area where you race, I think seeing these boats on the trailer helps attract locals to the race.

Denny has pretty good form and actually got some really long skips, but his release is way too high. That is Big Jim Bear Wrestler behind Denny collecting flat rocks for him. Jim Richardson raced C and D runabout out of Houston, Texas.

I'm not sure who the guy in brown on the left is Dale, but I'm pretty sure the next guy to the right is named Eddie. He was a former mayor of DePue and he was a huge fan of our team. To the right of my Dad is Joe Rome's first wife Doris.

Hope you got lots more pictures.

[racingfan1]

I'm not sure who the guy in brown on the left is Dale, but I'm pretty sure the next guy to the right is named Eddie.

Perhaps Ed and not Eddie , Ed Widmer was active in the Lake DePue Preservation Association which sponsered the races at that time.

[ProHydroRacer]

This is what I know from looking at this photo: The blond girl on the right is my sister Nancy, next to her is her future husband Tom. The garbage can looks like one from Chicago. If asked, I wouldn't have said this photo was from the race in Chicago. I lived in Chicago during this time period. I raced with Ray Hardy at three races in Chicago, 1st a Drag Race put on by I think the Chicago Park Board. I raced the second race boat that I built there. The second and third time we raced in Chicago was either 1969 and 1970 or 1970 and 1971 at the Turning Basin off the Chicago River. At these two races, I ran the boat shown in this photo, this is the third race boat that I built. My second and third boat designs had higher Cockpit Sides than were standard for the times. My first race boat (second boat that I ever built) was a Hall Kelly design which I kept falling out of in the turns. I figured I could design and build a boat as bad as his and still stay in the damn thing. The boat had a all wooden deck and a fiberglass front Nose Cowling. The reason I think this photo was from 1970 is that I have a copy of a check from Outboard Club of Chicago dated Aug 23, 1970, for $91.42. I placed 1st and 5th in "B" Hydro.
Bill Kurps

The first and second boats in the photo appears to be V-17 Clyde Queen boats, most likely "A" and class "B"

[racingfan1]

Chicago 69 is written on the back of this picture Bill.

[ProHydroRacer]

What I remember, I raced Saturday and Sunday the first time there and made some money. The second year I went Saturday but didn't go back Sunday because the water was worst the second year. I might be wrong, it was a long time ago.

[racingfan1]

Not sure of the year but definitely DePue.

[ProHydroRacer]

Looks like mid 50's. I see a lot of "C" service rigs. There is M-44, Brinkman V-88 & V-86, W-44 Mary Braun, Wearl(y?), and Madison Brass Work trailer - I wonder if that was my dad's friend from WWII Joe Maltba he was from Mendota, Wisconsin he ran "F" hydro. Second row left, looks like - Racing Hydroplane, James Walh(X?), Lima ?