Old Formula 1 Video

[dwc1]

After the last flood that my grandparents experienced, I recovered a few old VHS cassettes from their house. They sat around for some time before I played one and saw that it was video from an early (mid '80s) Speedworld (PHX) Form-1 race. In fact, I think the club was called Pro-Flyers at the time. I asked a friend to transfer the VHS to digital format, and he posted on Youtube. There is some great footage of Form-1 racing in its prime. They were just braking the 1:10 mark at the time. Lots of names of some gone by, and some still competing. There are 2 parts to the video. The end of the first and in to the second part gets in to some really good footage on the line. Lots of cool looking airplanes, including Davidson's Polecat, VonDerHey"s Denight, and Helsel's classic Toni. Really cool to see Bruce Richmond hucking Jett's denight. He used to launch so hard, the airplane would have to catch up.

Hope you enjoy, here are the links to the videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KW-Oq1kS7M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2eOMiRtUjA

[G.Freeman Jr.]

VERY COOL!!!

Thank you for sharing..

[Speedfreak1]

Thank you so much for sharing! It gives us that missed that era, but still have the love for Formula 1 a chance to see what it was like! Beautiful built aircraft, and the smell of high nitro burnin straight pipes! Whew! Love it!!:) Kurt Beachler

[Sparky]

Ear plugs being offered to the spectators..... LOL.
Some of you guys were a lot younger then.....
Very pretty airplanes that look vaguely like a full size airplane.
Sparky

[jima]

Dennis, thanks for getting these videos posted. Very very cool.

The first February F1 race held at the Pro-Flyers was in 1988. The '86 and '87 Feb races were held at a flying site in Mesa, on the east side of Phoenix. Based on several clues, the race in the video may have been the first one at the Pro-Flyers (now Speedworld) site in '88.

When we hosted the '89 F1 Champ race, the launch pad had to be made bigger so the course could be flipped. In the video, it was the original size, prior to mid '89. Of course, those of you who have been coming here in the last 33 years, will recognize that the course did get turned around after that Champ race at some point and it's largely pointed toward the South since.

Jim Allen

[vonderhey]

I have many photos from that 1988 contest. Mike DelPonte was the CD.
Bob Smith won the contest.
Yours truly finished second and got fast time.
Keith Davidson won best of show.
Darwin Berry supplied the trophies. They were Az. copper license plates. They were stamped 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. fast 1,
Pretty 1.
That’s all I know without spending hours looking through old photos.

[Kurt Bozarth]

Is this “Mike Delponte” you speak of related to the father and son team of Dom and Gino Delponte I keep hearing about?

[DHG]

Kurt,

Mike is the dad in that duo. Gino was knee-high to a dresser drawer in 1988. He's grown a bit since then.

Von der Hey hasn't changed his color scheme in 33 years ... nice to know there's someone even more hidebound than I am!

Cheers,
Duane (Gall)