Another Czar Memory...

I met Roger Newton in the summer of 1973 at the NAMBA Nationals held on Green Lake in Seattle. I had already built a Dumas Miss Unlimited Kit and fitted it with a Super Tiger 60 airplane engine and the Graupner proportional R/C gear I purchased wile in the Army in Germany, and went down to the lake to watch the 60 Hydro race and see how I stacked up. What I saw there astonished me. Most of the boats looked like the old tether boats but there was a beautiful Slo-Mo-Shun IV, a Slo-Mo-Shun V, a Miss Wahoo, a Miss Thriftway and a checkerboard Miss Bardahl. They not only looked like the real Unlimiteds but looked that way when they ran too. I decided then and there that I had to do that and spoke to this tall blond guy who seemed eager to talk about the scale boats. That was Roger. A year later with Roger’s help and guidance, I was out there with my 1/8 scale Wildroot Charlie having time of my young life. Thirty years later, I was sitting in a row boat on Shady Lake and Roger looked up from his buoy weight tying, grinned and said “you know, I’ve been doing this for nearly 50 years now, I used to bring my Miss Thriftway down here and turn it loose, get on my bike and pick it up on the other side of lake.” I did similar stuff when I was a kid too. Great fun and great memories, fair winds and following seas my friend.

- Ron Daum