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Thread: Dave Craig's Wood Wings
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03-26-2006, 03:34 PM #1
Dave Craig's Wood Wings
We spent some time with Dave Craig yesterday, before we went to Mt Dora. For those of you that knew him, I am happy to report he is doing great..He looks just like he always did, with gray hair. Still has a great sense of humor and he and his lovely wife are enjoying life. He was gracious enough to loan me some pictures to post of the three wood wings he owned..We really enjoyed swapping old stories, but I couldn't get him to Mt Dora because of prior commitments.
Butch
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03-26-2006, 03:37 PM #2
more pictures
The Vee wing was used for short courses..it has been shown before with a different wind screen. The vee was made to cut down on lift.Last edited by lilabner; 03-26-2006 at 03:45 PM.
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03-26-2006, 03:42 PM #3
Dave thinks this wing went to the Mercury Museum
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03-26-2006, 03:51 PM #4
Gold Coast
The start of the Gold Coast Marathon..year unknown, probably 1964, and if Danny looks real hard, he can find a Powercat Hydro.
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03-26-2006, 04:01 PM #5
This was his first Wing..and the one that set the record at Lake X..probably wing number two..I originally thought the U4, that was in the race, set the record, but there were two wings there..This one did not race in the six hour..
Last edited by lilabner; 03-26-2006 at 04:04 PM.
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08-30-2006, 06:00 PM #65000 RPM
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The demise of the U-1 wing - - -
Hope I don't screw this up. I have been meaning to post this for quite some time. I owned the U1 wing at one time, bought it from Mercury for a hundred bucks! They were going to burn it. This was about 1970 or so. Bought it from Wayne Meyer - it was in the weeds by the Fond du Lac race shop on Water Street - now Mr. Marine's marine dealership.
Rebuilt it and ran it with a pair of 1250 BP's that Dan Donovan found in Illinois - seems OMC had these for some reason - until I scared myself bad enough to get rid of it - lauched it off a roller at around 95 MPH one day on Lake Winnebago in 1970 or 71, it came down right side up and hence the for sale sign. The rest is history: I did locate and get a quote from the fellow I sold it to, who will remain nameless at this time.
"The subject "Wing" currently resides in the Cass County, North Dakota land fill site circa 1973. It was one of two that were destroyed because people did not believe me when I told them that in order to run best at top end "Wings" needed negative tuck. Positive tuck results in extra close views of the moon which they found out the hard way. What was really funny, yes even hilarious, is that it took two boats for them to be finally convinced. The Spellmen boat met the same fate at the hands of the same idiots shortly after your boat went 30 ft. into the sky. Both boats were destroyed at the hands of "Fighter Jocks" of the ND Air National Guard. Seems their theory was that if the nose started getting a little high you should simply kick in a little flap and things would be fine. Seeing I am not a trained aerodynamics guy I can't be sure but a little flap probably made things worse. Luckily nobody got killed.
They destroyed your boat all by themselves but I got to see the 8 mm film. The morning the Spellmen boat blew over I was out screwing around with it. I could tell that something was not right so I brought it back and declined any further seat time until the set up was changed. Their answer was to through in a little more fuel and through in a superbly trained, by the US Air Force, fighter pilot. The Spellmen boat also resides in the same landfill.
I could have sworn that in witnessing the blow-over I heard a lengthy wail identical to that made by "Goofy" while he was skiing down a shear vertical in an old Disney cartoon. The wail was most pronounced at the top of the arc."
Attached are photos from when I picked the wing up and as I ran it - thanks to Sam C. for shrinking them for me. Will have to add another post to get them all in.
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08-30-2006, 06:13 PM #75000 RPM
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The demise of the U-1 wing - - continued
I had one of the original canopies when I got the boat - it was severly cracked though and I threw it away! Boat had dual straight rack Ride Guide steering. I had a brake lever out of Volkswagon to operate the airleron. It also has an airspeed indicator. With the 1250's it would accellerate like a Corvette. Best I remember was around 98 on the airspeed. I added the two round cowls ahead of the seats. The fun was to put someone in the other seat and take it out and nail it - the other person would slowly disappear under the cowlinf from fright.
This note was from Rick Connolly:
There were two Miss Skyways. Dave Craig ran them both. The one you had was the first Miss Skyway named after the marina Dave owned at the time. Dave called it his short course boat. It was ~ 16 something feet long and turned well unlike most wings. I talked to Dave Switzer and they made two of these wings which he called the "inverted V" wing. I'm not positive, but I think the inverted V wing was the boat Dave won the 1963 Gold Coast Marathon in. He can't remember which Miss Skyway he was running in the race. Some of the pictures he sent me indicate it was.
Anyway when Dave Craig got the second Miss Skyway he sold~gave the V wing to Jan Schoonover. Jan had Frustration written on the side of the boat because he said it was a frustrating to drive. This can be seen in the one picture you sent me as you indicated previously. Another comment he made was the V wing with 1250BP's on it would have been a real handful to drive. Jan also confirmed he sold it Bill Anderson. Bill is dead and I talked to his son who doesn't remember the boat. He is mailing me some boat racing 8MM film that he had converted to video and is checking his moms photo albums for pictures of the boat.
So, the long and short of it is you owned one of the three most famous Switzer wings there ever were in my humble opinion. Ironically no one seemed to know much about it and miss-took it for non Switzer wing. At any rate your ass was riding in the seat that two of top wood wing drivers sat in. - Rick
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08-30-2006, 07:21 PM #8
U1
I had been working for Dave just before he got this Wing..we were out testing at a lake we all used and he asked me to drive it so he could see the attitude it ran...I don't think it had a flap at that time. It had 800's on it and would only run about 80.. It crow hopped pretty bad until it got around 70..but it did turn pretty well..left turns were much safer than right as there were a lot of other pleasure boats on the small lake also..
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12-29-2011, 08:23 PM #9Registered User
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hay butch,dave had badest of the wings every day i went to work i thought about jumping in it and going for a spin. johnny.
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12-30-2011, 02:56 PM #105000 RPM
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Brings back a ton of memories, Great stuff
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12-30-2011, 05:56 PM #11
So what does the flap do? Bernoulli's principle? Speed up the air back there and reduce lift in the stern?
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12-30-2011, 10:04 PM #12
Increases camber of the wing. Air on top then must travel further than air on bottom of wing and yet get to trailing edge at same time. Intensifies low pressure above wing. Nature abhors a vacuum. Wing "lifts" into low pressure area to fill vacuum......Creation of lift. It's MAGIC.
Last edited by seeroy; 12-30-2011 at 10:07 PM.
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12-31-2011, 08:25 AM #13
I think the wing theory on the Switzer wing goes pretty far, however, what is the explanation that the same wing flies inverted?
I think Brownie cooked up a tunnel flap for Scott Layman's 28' Skater that we built for him when he was racing (just the flap). The bow would rise substantially coming off waves and with the flap deployed it would "Fly" level.
Dosn't a 28 Skater have a big cockpit above the tunnel which would make the air flow knarley before it could flow to the stern?
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12-31-2011, 09:22 AM #14
hey guys so according to this if i cut my center section back on tunnel entry i would loose lift as i got to much lift as it is now
??
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12-31-2011, 10:01 AM #15
Instead of loosing bow lift, add a flap and get "High"!!!!!
Last edited by Mini Max; 12-31-2011 at 10:03 AM.