Duke Horn

IN THE SUMMER of 1969 while trying to get back into competition flying, I was trimming one Sunday afternoon in our old Mesquite Hobby Park (home of a lot of southwestern contests), when I ran into a gym-short clad character who was flying an incredibly fast 1/2A ship. Noticing that he had a multitude of expertise necessary for the sport, I introduced myself as a recycled free-flighter and started asking a lot of everyday questions, like what is it, and how good is it? He filled me in on a few salient details of engine modification and structure design and then promptly jogged off into the field muttering something unintelligible about beginner's questions. As I was to find out later this little 1/2A ship was the predecessor of The Free Spirit and several other successful airplanes that had taken their share of the hardware from the era '70-'73.