Excerpts from "Memories of Muncie"
By Roy and Sally Smith.

........and .while we were packing up, Roy had spotted Brad’s plane flying straight down field, then hooking into a "boomer” and circling upwards. He watched for fifteen to twenty minutes through his binoculars as the large plane dwindled to an ever tinier dot and finally disappeared from view altogether. This was Brad’s seventh max, but the plane appeared to be long gone. There had been no sign of the DT operating. Brad, Ruth Ann and Joe, together with the tracker, jumped into the Bane’s van and set off in hot pursuit. We kept in touch be cell phone and eventually received the good news that the plane had descended and been recovered from a bean field seventeen miles or so away!
Now the race really began! Brad’s nearest rival, Dan Berry, had eight maxes and had missed the ninth by ten seconds. Brad needed two more maxes to win!
The trio arrived back at the field with twenty five minutes to spare. There was no time to change out the DT timer; so, Brad sprayed it with fuel and tested it on the ground.
As it seemed to be working, he put up his flight, an eighth max!! By the time the plane had been retrieved, there was only five minutes left. No time to wait for the best air.
Brad readied the machine, the pit crew nodded, and he launched. Inexplicably, the engine run was a mere 2.73 seconds instead of the allowed 4 seconds!
Everyone held their breath. The ship floated gently around the field, not one hundred feet up! It trembled in some good air, lost it and came down again, then wobbled into some more lift as we watched with bated breath! Finally, at about twenty five feet off the ground the DT popped and we knew he had his max!! Brad had won a very close-fought ‘C’ Classic Power event by 10 seconds in a 1,200 second total!!! ............... Roy and Sally Smith