2021 NAMBA Nats Race Program

want to know what happened to the 12 volt started), and there it was! A Prather Deep Vee. I purchased the deep vee, hatch cover, running hardware, K&B 7.5, Prather exhaust throttle, pipe, prop, fuel line, radio box, and a Futaba radio. It was all right there. I then walked over to K Mart and bought a dozen bungee cords. Bungee cords? Oh, I guess I didn't tell you. I traveled the 90 miles home on back roads with all of my new boating equipment strapped to a Honda Goldwing motorcycle. I was determined! For the beginner with little or no experience, the Prather/K&B setup was a good combination. The directions were easy to understand, and the photos definitely helped. The boat wasn't yet race ready, but I was on the water and running. I was jazzed! Three months had gone by building the boat and practicing. I was down at the pond on weekdays when nobody else was around. I did not want to embarrass myself any more than I had already. I would go to local San Diego Argonaut club meetings trying to fit in, and ask just enough questions hoping to learn something and yet not sound like a flake. Then I felt my time had come. I had the need to do something I had never done before. I wanted to race. It was October of 1989. The place was Las Vegas. A great place for my first gamble. I arrived Friday morning but there were no boaters from San Diego on site. I saw a group with Scottsdale Model Boaters on their shirts and asked them if they had seen Bill Bridge or Buzz Bussell. One fellow came up to me and said, "No Mon, dey not be here yet. Day always late even though dey leave early.” I later found out that he was Lenny Blake of “Rum Racing”. Little did I know that the first three people I ran in to at a pond would become lifelong friends. I felt the need to wait for the San Diego people to help me out. They eventually arrived and I asked Bill and Buzz about my boat. Buzz said I could have some fun but I was to understand that the faster I go, the more it would cost. I was in for the long haul. Buzz cut an inch of my tuned pipe, replaced my idle bar plugs with his plugs, raised the strut ¾ of an inch, and gave me some 50% nitro fuel rather than my 15%. He launched my boat and within 30 feet it flew and was upside down. I had never seen that kind of speed before. Needless to say the radio box was filled with water and I was done. Both servos, the receiver, and the battery pack were soaked. I had no radio response. Remember, I was new to model boating so I didn't understand about proper strength servos and radio box water proofing. Buzz offered me fuel, plugs, and anything else to get my boat running again. It was getting dark so I headed back to the motel. Taking apart the radio box, drying everything out, and replacing the servos took me until 3:30 am Saturday morning. Add to the fact that I was nervous about the next day's racing, (excuse me that day's racing), and I didn't sleep much that night. Upon arriving at the pond, I started setting up my equipment when Bill Bridge and Cathie Galbraith invited me to join them in their area. I really felt like part of the group. Bill obliged me It was 1988 and I was sitting in my 18 foot Tahiti with a 455 Olds Berkley jet on the Colorado River. I thought to myself, how about a radio controlled model boat to play with during down time. That is when I learned the most famous of questions. How much? How fast? And where can I get one? My girlfriend at the time and currently my wife of thirty years (Heather) for a Christmas present bought me the Dumas Miller American wood kit. She added a Picco 67, a Futaba radio with two S-29 servos, plenty of epoxy and CA. I spent 6 months in a spare bedroom with all of the wooden parts laid out on a table tennis table. One minor problem. Heather thought it was four or five parts to put together and go play and I knew nothing about boat building. Things were so bad that I thought the Lexan radio box cover was the motor mount and epoxied it right in to the tub. It took so long for epoxy to dry that I said to heck with that and used CA and kicker to build the rest of the boat. I was moving right along. Now it was time to paint. I did at least use rattle can primer after sealing the boat with polyester resin. However, I could tell that this project was not going to look like the Miller American pictures on the box. So I decided to get creative. I rattle can painted the entire boat black. Took the gold stars and ran them on the deck front to rear. Then I took the “M” in Miller and cut it to look like a “K”. The boat was as stealthy as a boat could look and was called “Killer American”. It took me almost two years to get that boat to finish one heat at a race. But I stuck with it. It ended a good run with a “Viking Funeral”. During the process of all of that, I discovered the San Diego Model Yacht Pond and checked it out. I ran across a fellow who had just trashed an engine but still spent the time to help me out with my many questions. His name was Bill Bridge (current NAMBA Inboard Chairman). He suggested that I start with something simpler like a Prather 7.5 Deep Vee. He left shortly thereafter and about that time a model boater pulled up in a red Ford Ranchero. Now this guy could tell some stories. I did not leave the pond until 10:30 that evening. His name was Gene “Nitro Buzz” Bussell. My first two acquaintances definitely laid out my future path in to model boating. A couple of weeks later, I was in Riverside, California at Hobby Shack buying a 24 volt Sullivan starter (you do not How It All Began For Me - By Al Waters 2021 NAMBA Nationals Page 36