This conversation delves into the rich history of hang gliding, exploring the personal journeys of the early pioneers of free flight. It highlights the evolution of hang gliding, the DIY spirit of early glider construction, and the influential eccentric figures who shaped the hang gliding community. The discussion also touches on the challenges faced in the sport, the importance of safety, and the role of photography in documenting this unique culture. Through personal anecdotes and reflections, the conversation captures the essence of what it means to be part of the hang gliding world. Bill Liscomb shares his journey through the world of hang gliding and sailplanes, reflecting on the early days of the sport, the creation of the incredible documentary ‘Big Blue Sky‘, and the impact of tragedy on the aviation community. He discusses his personal experiences in soaring and the lighter side of hang gliding, while also offering valuable advice for future aviators.
Takeaways
Flying has been a constant theme in Bill’s life. Bill’s father was a decorated WWII veteran and pilot. The first hang glider flight was in 1971 at the Lilienthal meet. DIY hang gliders were made from everyday materials. The community played a significant role in the sport’s growth. Safety concerns increased with the advent of thermaling. Photography captured the essence of hang gliding’s early days. Bill’s mother was a prominent photographer in the hang gliding scene. The evolution of glider designs was influenced by experimentation. The camaraderie among pilots fostered a unique culture. Bill’s early experiences in hang gliding were filled with adventure and learning. The transition from hang gliding to sailplanes was a significant shift in Bill’s flying career. Creating ‘Big Blue Sky’ was a labor of love that took nearly five years to complete. Soaring in sailplanes offers unique experiences with nature and the environment. Tragedies in the hang gliding community led to important safety improvements. Survival in aviation often comes down to cautious decision-making and learning from others’ mistakes. Humor and camaraderie are essential aspects of the hang gliding community. Bill’s musical background adds a unique dimension to his storytelling. Advice for young aviators includes being cautious and learning from experienced pilots. The spirit of adventure and pursuit of dreams is a central theme in Bill’s life.
Sound Bites
“Flying has been a constant theme in Bill’s life.” “I always shared that love of aviation with my dad.” “The first hang glider flight was in 1971.” “We made the hang gliders out of bamboo and duct tape.” “Safety concerns increased with the advent of thermaling.” “The camaraderie among pilots fostered a unique culture.” “She was into that and she came to that first Lilienthal meet.” “I did the big deep stall and recovery.” “She was all over the map, man.” “No helicopter parenting going on here.” “I think flying RC gliders may have saved my life.” “I lived to fly for about 12 years in sailplanes.” “I think I didn’t want to be the first to do a 360.” “We lampooned everybody and everything in Hang Gliding.”
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Journey of Flight 03:08 The Early Days of Hang Gliding 05:54 Pioneering the Sport: The First Meets 09:07 Building the Dream: DIY Hang Gliders 12:01 The Evolution of Hang Gliding Designs 15:00 Influential Figures in Hang Gliding History 17:51 The Community and Culture of Hang Gliding 20:59 Challenges and Safety in Hang Gliding 24:13 The Role of Photography in Hang Gliding 27:00 Personal Stories and Anecdotes 30:04 Reflections on the Future of Hang Gliding 35:05 The Early Days of Hang Gliding 39:30 Transitioning to Sailplanes 47:06 Creating ‘Big Blue Sky’ 51:02 Experiences in Soaring 57:19 The Impact of Tragedy on the Community 01:01:34 Survival and Safety in Aviation 01:09:31 The Lighter Side of Hang Gliding 01:11:03 Reflections and Advice for the Future
Bill sent me this story on his beginnings. It’s an amazing and highly recommended read:
BEGINNINGS
1971-2
My goal in life, at the age of twenty-one, was to first get all of my aircraft repair certificates, and then acquire pilot ratings. I was attending San Bernardino Valley College, and in my first semester studied repair and maintenance of aircraft structures, among other subjects. One day, a fellow student handed me a newsletter that changed my life. It was called “Low and Slow,” and was about hang gliders. I was vaguely aware of hang gliders, having seen them in some of the aviation history books in my library. They were ancient, frail machines, abandoned with the advent of the powered aircraft. This newsletter touted the upcoming Otto Lillienthal hang gliding meet in Newport, and supplied the address for the “Hang Loose” plans.
I lived in Riverside, California and had several friends that attended University of California Riverside. We were into riding our ten-speed bikes en-masse at great speed in the darkness of night. My Hang Loose plans came, and work on the airframe progressed slowly until a carpenter friend of mine came to visit and helped provide the energy to finish the flying machine. I built the craft in my sisters’ garage, and my cycling friends would stop by to check on my progress. At first they would marvel at this modern antique, then retreat in small groups in the corner and snicker and giggle among themselves. Some support. With the help of my brother-in-law the decision was made to adorn the polyethylene covering of the craft with the air signs of the zodiac; Libra, Aquarius and Gemini, applied with a can of spray paint.
One night, it was completed. My cycling friends assembled to admire the finished product, and after some speculation and serious thought, we decided to take the glider to a field a couple of blocks away for some taxi trials. It was quite a sight, on a cool spring night, to see this throw-back carried tail-high across an overpass to the field. The field was bisected by a rarely used road, complete with sidewalks and curbs. Six or eight of us picked up the glider and trotted along in the damp evening air, expecting the magic of flight to carry me away. No such luck. We simply backed up further and ran harder. On the third try, we could not stop before encountering the slight drop, the sidewalk, curb and street. I was aware of tumbling bodies around me, and I must have flown fifteen or twenty feet before grinding to a halt on the asphalt. The flight resembled a trajectory more than it involved the usual forces associated with flight. The glider escaped any injury, and our minor abrasions were tended to back at the hanger. The only problem remaining was getting the fragile machine from Riverside to Newport. The roof of a car or an open trailer would probably destroy it. My brother-in-law saved the day by renting a large truck for me.
At 7 a.m., on the morning of May 23, 1971, I woke up under the gray overcast common to Southern California in the spring, also known as June Gloom. Dick and I had breakfast and assembled the glider as more pilots arrived. At the pilots meeting, the owner of the property introduced himself, and told us the land was reserved for use as a cemetery, casually adding that the mortuary was just over the hill, in case any of its special services might be needed. Hang gliding was lunatic fringe before it even got off the ground. It seems so strange that in fulfilling one of man’s oldest dreams, to fly like a bird, he is judged to be less than competent by his peers. This was something I never quite understood or got used to. These people of quick verbal jabs had not dreamed of airplanes during their childhood, content to walk along never looking up, both in spirit and in body.
By late morning, the overcast burned off and the wind began to freshen. I had visions of soaring for hours over the gentle, grassy slope. My friends and I carried the craft up the hill and gave it one last check. With helpers on the wings and tail, I was ready. We started the takeoff run. The glider began to tug me skyward by my armpits, and just as my feet lost traction, the main spar failed. My first flight was a very short entry in a logbook.
The glider was only slightly damaged from its’ tumble. I had not brought any tools or materials to repair the glider with, I mean after all it would soar for hours on the first flight. We did manage to round up a 2X4 and some wire. We used a hammer and a screwdriver to split the 2X4 into 1X2 (approx.) spar splints. We nailed these to both sides of the breaks and then wrapped the splice with wire. Field repair circa 1880. We had lunch and gave it another try. I climbed in the cockpit and this time the glider held my weight. The glider was slightly out of trim in pitch, which, coupled with my light weight, caused it to pitch up sharply to an alarming altitude of maybe ten feet. It wasn’t a flight of an hour, but I had flown. We adjusted the surfaces of the glider as best we could and tried again. I concentrated on keeping my weight as far forward as possible and ran down the hill. The glider pitched up sharply again, but quite as bad as the first time. More adjustments with the same results for flight number three. A meeting of the minds determined that the cg was too far aft and we needed a pilot that weighed more than 135 lbs. Dick weighed 165 and was the next choice. As the old saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Dick also pitched up, not as sharply, his flight resembling the trajectory of an artillery shell. His impact knocked off the helmet he was wearing. More weight. My brother in law weighed 180 lbs, and we figured that he would either hit the ground really hard or the glider would actually fly properly. On his third flight he made it to the bottom of the hill! His landing was also an aerobatic maneuver previously unknown to man. As his rear touched the ground (gear up landing) he let go of the glider. He did a half-roll and the glider did a half-loop.
The day was over in what seemed to be a few minutes. My friends and I wore out the airframe of that first glider in one afternoon and left it in a garbage can at the end of the day. The plastic covering had been stretched, torn and taped, the airframe repaired by so many splints that it probably gained ten pounds. My armpits were bruised, my buttocks punctured by wild thistles, and my legs were tired, but what a day. That day changed my life. The next day my picture was in the LA Times.
We were impressed with the consistent flights another group was getting out of their “Batso” bamboo Rogallo. The following weekend we drove to Pasadena to measure the craft so we could build one. Bamboo spliced together with exhaust tubing. Bailing wire and duct tape and fiberglass filament tape. Foam padding on the hang tubes. Hardware store bolts and nuts. Black polyethylene. We measured it and a week later had our own.
Without any idea of where we could fly our new soaring machine, we followed up on rumors of nice sand dunes near Palm Springs. We found the sand dunes late in the afternoon, and the wind was already up. A perfect dune eluded us, but a nice sandy slope was found. Don Carlin won the draw to fly, and the rest of us manned the tow rope as we had seen Taras and his friends do a few weeks before. As soon as the glider lifted Don airborne, the drag of the wing in the air began to drag us across the sand. The glider locked out just about the time we could not hang on any longer, and Dons’ injuries consisted of a very sore shoulder and side. Some of the launch crew had some pretty good rope burns on their hands.
Now that we slowed down a little, a good deal of driving found a nice hill in Norco that was perfect for flying and nearby. The Batso was light and could be carried on top of a VW Bug. Most importantly, it did make it to the bottom of the hill on most flights. Well, it did need a little help in the form of a rope assisted takeoff. Three people would get on the downhill end of the rope. These three were good runners and in line to fly. If you wanted to fly the glider you had to tow it. The uphill end of the rope was wrapped once around the front spreader for the hang tubes, then the loose end was held under the thumb of the pilot on the hang tube. The runners were at the top of the slope and the glider was on top of the hill. When everybody would start to run the pilot didn’t have to hold up the glider or run very far with three people now running down a moderately steep hill. The pilot would usually release the line when directly over the launch crew. This would sometimes result in all three launch engines going ass over tea kettle at full tilt. Part of the pilots post launch checklist was to observe the launch crew after line release. There were usually at least six or eight of us at the hill on a regular basis, so there was plenty of help carrying the glider back up the hill. The time between flights wasn’t too long and you could also take a break.
Landings were as exciting as the takeoffs. During these two critical phases of flight, once in a while, the pilot would find him/herself in a situation that required the craft be vacated in a hurry. The hang tube pilot suspension system let the pilot “bail out” in a hurry. We found it was better to bail out at a low altitude after loss of control while crosswind than to ride it in downwind and really eat it. One of our gang bailed out too soon at too much altitude and broke his foot. It didn’t stop him from flying, it only slowed him down. Friends would come out with us and watch, then want to try it. They would usually end their only day of flying with bruises and abrasions.
On August 22, 1971 there was another hang glider meet in San Diego at the Otay Mesa memorial to John J. Montgomery. This was the site of Montgomery’s 1883 flight in his hang glider. I had built another Hang Loose and we also brought the Batso. I had improved the Hang Loose by installing a steering system. I removed the locking ratchet from two window shades and mounted them vertically next to the outer leading edge strut. I had a string go directly to the cocpit with a tennis ball on the end for the pilot to deploy the window shade. It didn’t work very well. We got much better flights with the Batso. Taras had the Icarus by then and we got to see it fly. On a good flight we could get to the bottom of the hill, and Taras was worried about flying into the trailer park across the street.
We had become air junkies without knowing it. Our entire lives centered around flying off hills. We all lived in the same apartment complex and ate together, discussing the flights to come over breakfast or the flights of the day during dinner. Most of us quit college to fly full time. We worked on our gliders in the driveway in the morning and fantasized craft to come after dinner. Cyndi cooked dinner for us most of the time. She was a secretary and had the distinction of making the first three-point landing in a hang glider. She got turned downwind and landed on her nose and boobs. Skinned ’em up pretty good. The afternoons were the payoff. Flying. Just like in a dream. Slow, about the cruising speed of a ten-speed bike, the wind sizzling through your hair and ears. Time altered from the instant you start to run until the glider stops. A new realization of this new environment on each flight. An increased awareness of the gliders’ capabilities, and weaknesses. Poof! The hardest part of flying is always the ground. Or maybe reality.
The limitations of a machine are soon realized with daily use and modification. We were encouraged by a gentleman of great knowledge to experiment with different planforms. He showed us some NASA reports on the Rogallo wing. We decided that the new glider we would build would have cylindrical leading edges and truncated tips. We built this glider out of aluminum tubing used for irrigation purposes. Alloy-unknown, (perhaps 5050 T0) tiny rust spots were not uncommon in this untempered tubing. The diameter was two inches and the wall thickness was .050. We lacked a proper tubing bender and wouldn’t have recognized one if it had run us over. We did find that the stop sign and a telephone pole at the corner by our house were just the right distance apart for bending our leading edges. Bending isn’t quite the proper word to describe what happened to the tubing, but they were symmetrical. For bracing, we used smaller tubing that resulted in a strut braced frame. The control bar was an inverted “T” with the struts anchored to the bottom. The seat, or harness, was the lap belt from a W.W.II vintage aircraft. We sat on the belt, with the buckle facing downward. A lanyard was attached to the release to enable the pilot to “bail out” in an emergency. We unanimously voted to retain this valuable feature. Another belt was sewn to the main one to fasten it to the pilot during the takeoff run. I still have this scary device in my garage and I pucker up and shiver at the sight of it and the potential for disaster it had. The good Lord looks after fools, drunks and Irishmen. It helps to be all three.
The cylindrical/truncated glider was a real hot rod compared to the bamboo bomber. The new ship had an airspeed indicator we found at a bike shop and also a real tow release make from a modified parachute buckle. The sail was polyethylene, but to control the stretching, we laid the plastic on a tile floor and, using the tiles for reference, placed lengths of fiberglass strapping tape nine inches apart, resulting in a grid of fiberglass tape. It would stretch a little, then stop. The glider was lighter and more responsive, and it looked really cool. This was important. The bailout harness worked better in our imaginations than in reality. The release lanyard was hard to find in moments of extreme duress. It was seldom used, and sometimes needed. I did crack a couple of ribs in the process of rolling the glider into a ball one afternoon. As a result of that impact, I had some second thoughts about the whole idea of flying. I did recover, however, now, in my middle age, my knees and ankles could have belonged to a football player.
We attended all of the hang glider events in Southern California, and the most memorable of all was at Torrance Beach. We thought we were pretty hot stuff with our bamboo bomber making it all the way to the surf, even if the salt water ruined it. We were proud of the technological breakthroughs represented in the cylindrical/truncated tip glider. Taras Kiceniuk popped our bubble with his Icarus flying wing biplane. As the breeze picked up to the speed we needed to fly, Taras ran off the cliff, turned left and started to climb. He flew south down the ridge for a few hundred yards, turned around and came back. He flew directly over our heads at 20-50 feet above the cliff, looked down at us and waved. I was in shock. We were demoralized, and awestruck. It was totally amazing. We rode back to Riverside in silence.
I took some power lessons at FlaBob airport near Riverside, California in January and February of 1972. I bought some block time in a Piper PA-11, an eighty-five horsepower Cub. It didn’t have a self-starter and was close to being run out, so it was more than a little difficult to start it early in the morning. More than once my instructor and I were a little sweaty when it finally started. My instructor was an American Indian named John E. Rogers and he weighed about two-hundred pounds. I vividly remember being startled how well the Cub climbed without him in the back seat the first time I soloed. I also learned how to be an airport bum at Flabob, and met some unforgetable people and saw some wild things.
Mac Riley had a hanger at the airport, and he built a wire-braced monoplane hang glider for the first Lilienthal meet in Laguna. Mac was a big fellow and always wore knee-socks. I first saw him when I took my first ride in a sailplane, and he was running the operation at the time. I think it was at Perris, California. He used Howard DGAs for tow planes. There is a picture of him trying to get his glider off the ground and accidentally running over George Uveges, a famous sailplane photographer. I was always welcome at Macs’ hanger. Charlie was a friend of Mac and did some drawings for plans of the glider I wanted to sell. He had two cats that had been neutered, a male and a female. He called them He-she and She-it.
Flabob was a hotbed of homebuilt/experimental aircraft in those days. Jack Lambie flew a replica of the Wright Flyer there. His replica sported a T-Tail and metal frame in addition to the Honda motorcycle engine and small wheels. I just happened to be making my rounds the day he flew it. After the appropriate pre-flight ceremonies were observed, the aircraft was taken to the active runway. The most unusual aspect of watching the take-off was hearing an airplane shift gears as the large counter-rotating propellers gained speed. He broke ground in third gear and climbed to the West and the small crowd went nuts, screaming and yelling. As the craft began a gentle turn to the left, it descended rapidly, coming safely to rest in a field. We all ran there and everything was allright. There was a picture of all of us lifting the Flyer over the barbed wire fence that separated the field from the airport in the local paper. I called my sister, who lived nearby, and she brought her camera and shot a roll of black and white film of the whole episode.
We had a long spell of the doldurms, and I had read an ancient Scottish witches’ incantation in a book that was supposed to bring on the wind. We went to the hill and slapped a wet rag on a rock while reciting the verse. Nothing happened, so we drank wine and sunned ourselves on the hillside. At two o’clock the next morning, the Santa Ana started blowing about 60 miles an hour and it blew for three days. We never repeated that again.
At this time we were invited to several meeting in the Los Angeles area for the Southern California Hang Gliding Association. Lloyd Licher, Taras Kicienuc Sr. and Jr, Dick Eipper, George Uveges, and many others were there. We listened and commented, it was a long drive for us, and we refrained from taking part. I held off from joining the club for a year or two and still have number 310.
John Havens was the first person I watched fly off of a mountain. We drove the glider up Box Canyon on the east side of town one morning and scouted a suitable launch area. There was plenty of room to land below, and soon John was smoking another Camel, trying to control his shaking knees. I was scared just looking at the glider and the altitude we were at. It was probably about a thousand feet from launch to landing. John picked up the glider and ran off. It was a perfect flight, and as he landed, a surprised motorcycle rider bit the dirt as he came over a rise and saw the landing glider. A massive celebration followed.
The next glider we built was made from four fiberglass pole-vault poles. The leading edges were tensioned into a cylindrical shape by wire. People that knew a lot more than we did questioned the wisdom of pre-loading the structure, but it never broke, so it didn’t bother us. This glider had a conventional control bar, but the base tube was extended past the downtubes and bent back, like handlebars on a bicycle. This arrangement, along with a swing seat harness, allowed the pilot to fly in the low drag supine position. I did not get much airtime on this glider, but it did show some promise of performance gain over the irrigation tubing glider.
At this time a local businessman saw an article about us in the local paper and wanted to sponsor our flying efforts. He owned a plastics retail business and since our glider was almost all plastic, decided that we could help his business. We made some work benches in back of his store and proceeded to build hang gliders there. Of the four of us in the partnership, two of us had really long hair and, while this didn’t bother the proprietor, our traipsing through the store barefoot was not looked upon in good light. After hearing this, George, with the longest hair and a beautiful ZZ Top beard, went into the store, got some large rubber gloves and used them for shoes. Everything seemed to go downhill from there. The general partnership among the four of us dissolved and we owed the plastic store some money.
By summer of 1972 I had modified the cylindrical/trunc tip glider. It was now cable braced with a regular control bar. God only knows what these gliders were stressed for, and I wouldn’t bet a cent on their pitch stability. It was a good thing none of us were altitude hungry then.
This is really special to me. Thank you guys for joining us on the mayhem this week because Bill, I was sent your film quite a long time ago by Hugh at at XC Mag and said, you got to check this out. And I just was, it sucked me in right from the.
moment go and it's just a beautiful film Big Blue Sky and the history is amazing. I've got this I showed you guys this before we started recording I just took note after note after note after note because it's just got it's got all the names Otto and Barry Palmer and Dave Kilmore and Joe Faust and John Dickinson it goes on and on and on and on and of course Tom Pagini you're you're part of that list and thank you again for doing this together and
like we did with Malcolm, you're gonna be the main interviewer here, because you know so much of this history better than I do, but welcome both of you to the show, and I just can't wait to dive into this. Appreciate you guys.
Tom Peghiny (01:12.623)
Thank you very much.
Bill Liscomb (01:13.518)
Thank you, Gavin.
Tom Peghiny (01:16.712)
Bill, you and I have known each other for a long time, so I'm going to ask some questions to begin with from the start of your flying adventures. It seems that flying has been a constant theme in your life, and where did that come from?
Bill Liscomb (01:34.402)
I don't know. I have a picture of my sister and myself at the beach in Santa Monica in the very early 50s playing in the sand. And I got a cast metal jet fighter, you know? at home, for entertainment, I'd get two chairs facing each other and put a cardboard box upside down between them and get up inside the box and draw instrument panels on the inside of the box, make believe I was flying airplanes, you know?
My dad was a decorated World War II veteran. He was a co-pilot on a B-24D, and he was one of the survivors of the August 1st, 1943 Ploesti raid, the low-level kamikaze run on the refineries there. And you get the air medal and the DFC for flying that. And it was later, they crashed.
did an emergency landing in Switzerland and he was interned for two years there. you know, I always shared that love of aviation with my dad. You know, we speak flying, you know, and...
I've, you know, I just always loved everything flying. I remember, I believe when it came out, Ernest Gann's Fate Is The Hunter came out in the early 60s. And I remember reading that when I was like 10 or 12 years old and just going, wow, this is amazing stuff, you know.
Bill Liscomb (03:08.43)
You know, got, I just had the airplane bug. know, somebody told me in high school about this thing, was in 1967 or so, mentioned the phrase radio controlled glider. And I was like, oh, I could afford one of those. I need one of those. Where do I find one of those? 1967 South Shore, Massachusetts, South of Boston, there went no radio.
Bill Liscomb (03:37.314)
You know, that kind of got me on the path.
Tom Peghiny (03:40.805)
Okay, that's also been a constant theme in your life and we're gonna get back to that a little later. But by August 1972 issue of Ground Skimmer, which I just looked at this morning, by the way, you wrote in, Ground Skimmer was the newsletter of the Southern California Hang gliding association, which is the predecessor to the United States Hang gliding association.
Bill Liscomb (03:46.946)
Yes.
Bill Liscomb (04:03.726)
And it was after the harbor-soaring society, yeah.
Tom Peghiny (04:07.556)
You wrote in saying that you were selling a lighter version of my cylindrical regalo called an Arian or Arioid was your company. When did you first fly or attempt to fly a hang glider?
Bill Liscomb (04:27.214)
Um, actually, photographic proof will show that it is May 23rd, 1971 at the first Lilienthal meet. But actually, we had that hang loose and built in Riverside near Mount Rubidaux. And we finished it one night and crepested across University Ave to a empty field at about 11 o'clock at night.
and ran it down the slope. And I think I flew from where the hill kind of rolled into the sidewalk to the other side of the sidewalk, and everybody fell down and skinned their ankles and knees or whatever. But the first real flight I had was that at the first Lillienthal Meet.
Tom Peghiny (05:15.33)
Which is really interesting because the third question is, you were present flying a hang loose biplane at the first auto meet in Riverside in 1971.
Bill Liscomb (05:24.75)
Corona Del Mar, Newport, not Riverside.
Tom Peghiny (05:27.876)
Okay, it was in Corona-Domar, Newport. And that was the first auto meet and that was on May 23rd.
Bill Liscomb (05:35.918)
19- auto Lilienthal's birthday.
Gavin McClurg (05:39.218)
you
Tom Peghiny (05:39.704)
May 23rd, yeah.
Bill Liscomb (05:42.401)
So you know, it's it.
Gavin McClurg (05:42.44)
In your film, was, you guys started these, these meets started happening every weekend, right? I mean, it was.
Bill Liscomb (05:54.026)
Yes, to an extent. Yeah, Joe Faust was very instrumental in that. had, after the first Lilienthal meat, you know, there was a Montgomery meat, I think in August down in San Diego, but, you know, they had, he had like the turkey fly, the beach fly, you know, the photo fly with, you know, everybody on the hillside out in Norco. And Joe was very, very instrumental in organizing those things.
Gavin McClurg (06:20.358)
That's amazing. How many were, you know, in a typical meet, how many people would show up?
Bill Liscomb (06:25.87)
Well, at the first Lilienthal meet, there were about about a dozen hang gliders there, roughly. And, you know, when I I moved to California in 1969, I ended up in Riverside, California, and I was just over the hill from Flay Bob Airport, which is Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter one. And it was a hotbed of aviation whack jobs, know. Art Scholl was the
Gavin McClurg (06:31.067)
Really? Wow.
Bill Liscomb (06:56.206)
He was the aviation, was in charge of the aviation department at San Bernardino Valley College where I was enrolled. And he also gave lessons there, aerobatic lessons. you know, Mack Riley was there. He had this sailplane operation at El Sonor. They used Howard DGAs for tow planes and, you know, just a whole raft of other people. Met Jack Lambi there.
for his hang-lagging adventures. you know, it was like old home week to go out to the first Lilienthal meet and see all, hey, I know you, you know, and I'd see them building their stuff at the airport too, you know.
Gavin McClurg (07:38.557)
And is there the Tom.
mentioned you had a company already at this point, when I had Miguel Gutierrez on the show, they were kind of getting started around the same time, also because of his father down in Mexico. And he talked about that they were building these things from just junk they were finding on the side of the road. They rubber tires from bikes and bamboo poles. was it pretty ghetto like that? You're just putting these things together from pictures and.
Bill Liscomb (08:08.674)
Yeah, after that first Lilienthal meat, a bunch of us dropped out of school and just made it our daily job to work on the hang glider in the parking lot of our apartment building and build new stuff, fix the old stuff, and then go fly in the afternoon and party, dude. What else was there, you know? And we made the hang gliders out of the first ones, the first few regalos. You know, I had that hang loose at the at the first Lilienthal meat, knit
When we left, it was in a 55 gallon barrel. It had been crashed so many times, there was nothing worth saving. And too much plastic in the wreckage to start a fire with, know. But, Teres Kacenek, his stuff flew good. That batso flew great. So I called him up, went over and measured his batso. And, you me and the crew, we'd get in the Volkswagen camper with some hacksaws and drive around Riverside and go, look, a stand of bamboo.
Go over there and cut down the bamboo, tie it on the roof and trim it up and make the hang gliders out of it. Get the steel tubing to sleeve it at the muffler shop, know, and plastic sheeting, baling wire, duct tape. Colored duct tape was pretty cool, I'll tell you.
Gavin McClurg (09:22.856)
Terris, I've got him written down. He was the Icarus one and then the Icarus two.
Bill Liscomb (09:28.918)
And the Icarus Five, yeah, and his father was very a big part of organizing the hang gliding too, you know, and it went from, you know, the South Bay hang gliding to, know, SoCal hang gliding. You know, I did get a phone call saying, would you like to be the would you consider being the president of it? And I was out in Riverside and they're all over in Long Beach. I'm like, no, no, Billy, don't do that, you know.
Tom Peghiny (09:29.934)
for having me.
Bill Liscomb (09:59.118)
And but he was also our inspiration. Terrace Senior was the inspiration for our cylindrical leading edge truncated tip glider that we built under the banner of Imperial Engine Works. And what we how we built that was we found an irrigation company called Rain for Rent just south of Riverside on the 15 and it was two inch 050 tubing. And the alloy of it was like
50 hyphen question mark dash two question mark, you you get rust spots in it, know, but it was like, you know, Affordable, you know, it's like 25 cents a foot. Yeah. Okay Yeah, load it up boy. And you know, we got those cylindrical leading edges by marking it and You every six inches or so and we we found that where we lived there was a telephone pole with a stop sign next to it and you know, we
Gavin McClurg (10:33.339)
Yeah
Tom Peghiny (10:41.732)
And it's aluminum.
Bill Liscomb (10:58.668)
get the thing and just kind of put dents in it every six inches until we got the shape right. And, you know, so that was, you know, that was probably the he gave me NASA reports that showed the benefits of cylindrical leading edges and truncated tips. And we're like, that's far out, man. Let's try that. And.
Tom Peghiny (11:21.252)
Most of the early experimenters had the same NASA reports because they had different aspect ratios that they tested. Truncated tips in your glider at one time had truncated tips on it too in addition to...
Bill Liscomb (11:30.036)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that first one. in 1971 we had a truncated tip glider.
Tom Peghiny (11:39.202)
What was the biggest flight you had? It had a T-bar first? Right.
Bill Liscomb (11:42.378)
an inverted t-bar, all cantilevered, with little prints posts, not a king poet, but a prints post, the aspect ratio was like one.
Tom Peghiny (11:52.942)
was a square, yeah. 20 foot keel or something.
Bill Liscomb (11:53.358)
Yeah, you know, so the keel is kind of... A little too flexed.
Tom Peghiny (12:01.252)
So what was your greatest flight you had with that?
Bill Liscomb (12:04.27)
gee, we made it to the bottom of the hill a lot of times. And, and, and we could, and we could turn and land into the wind and not have to nurse cracked ribs or broken glider, you know, land on your feet sometimes even. was pretty exciting.
Tom Peghiny (12:09.668)
That's big. That's big. That's big.
Gavin McClurg (12:14.641)
A win!
Tom Peghiny (12:25.516)
I have to remind myself sometimes when we just get going to the beach sinkie flight that, hey, remember there was a time in your life where you'd have talked about this for months?
Bill Liscomb (12:36.322)
Right, right. Well, you know, the next glider we made after that, we found some pole vault poles and we pre-tensioned the pole vault poles. know, and everybody, know, like, Flabob's like, pre-tensioned, that ain't good. You know, whoa. You know, we're like, well, it's really light. You know, it may have had an aspect ratio of two, you know. Geez, it was a hot rod, you know. And it had a regular control bar by then, but that was kind of a
Kind of a cool thing. And there's a picture somewhere in my library of John Havens flying that with a regular control bar on the ends of it extended past the corners and were swept back. And he's like totally supplying zooming down the hill. It's like, dude, this is going to be a thing.
Tom Peghiny (13:28.056)
So you knew all of the California enthusiasts like Jack Lambie, Richard Miller, Joe Faust, Bruce Carmichael, Dick Eibhart, Dave Kronk. Do you have any precious anecdotes that you remember about them?
Bill Liscomb (13:47.01)
We've only got an hour, Tom, please. Now, actually, you know, I will say that Big Blue Sky is...
Gavin McClurg (13:50.866)
All right, we'll stretch it out.
Bill Liscomb (13:57.164)
autobiographical. It's my life story. You know, I know I'm in that movie at least a dozen times. And you know, and I was there and I'm like Forrest Gump. I didn't I didn't ever design anything famous. I didn't, you know, have a big hang glider company. I never want to meet, but you know, I'm in a lot of those pictures, you just like Forrest Gump. You know, there I was there. I know the people I know. The mall.
You know, when they did Big Blue Sky, was like every middle-aged man's dream of reliving his youth, going to visit everybody, you know? And, you know, it was really fun to do that. But yeah, that's, you know, I look back on it, you know, and I learn I met Lloyd Leicher, you know, and we're a bunch of hippies, and Lloyd is like square, you know, and, you know, he's...
If I ever get a chance to grow up, I'd like to be like Lloyd Leitcher. Let me say that.
Fine human being, really nice man. He took the string.
Tom Peghiny (15:04.504)
Please elaborate about what he did, by the way, for our viewers who don't know that.
Bill Liscomb (15:07.818)
Yeah, yeah. So Lloyd Leitrow is an aeronautical engineer who he worked with the boys up there in the Sierras where they're doing the wave experiments and examined some of the wreckage after some of the planes got dissected by the wave. And he went on to become the editor of and the director of the Soaring Society of America for 20 years. And over that 20 years, they averaged a new member a day.
Wow, think about that. And he fortunately got in as the director of USHCA, United States First SoCal in the United States Hang gliding association. And it was just excellent about it. I asked him, you know when I interview him, I said.
Gavin McClurg (15:39.185)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (15:56.022)
How did you know your lifestyle is so different from people and really hang gliding? know, what was that? Was did that present any problems for you? You know, like if Dick Iber showed up tripping his brains out, you know, I mean, I didn't say that, but, know, know, Lloyd is just so cool and calm and collected, you know, and focused on his, you know, just his love of flight. He says, no, you know, we just had a job to do. We had work to do and we did it.
Tom Peghiny (16:26.82)
Well, he also left the Soaring Society to pursue creating the United States Hang Gliding Association after trying to bring the two together because he thought that there was so much knowledge that could be shared with hang gliding to make it safer. And they didn't, the people at SSA didn't buy it. And...
Bill Liscomb (16:34.828)
That's right. Yep. That's very important.
Yeah, yeah.
Bill Liscomb (16:45.858)
Yeah.
Tom Peghiny (16:56.104)
And he left to pursue pursue Yushpo, which was really great. That was a big sacrifice on his part.
Bill Liscomb (16:58.925)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (17:05.07)
He saw hang gliding as a gateway drug to sailplanes. And you know, he's absolutely right. When I was flying sailplanes in the early 2000s, I go to Warner Springs and 60 % of the people there were my buddies from Torrey Pines, dudes from Elsinore, everybody's flying sailplanes. He was on it.
Gavin McClurg (17:30.813)
grabs me so much, Bill, from the movie that just made me smile endlessly was the, you know, we always say we're standing on the shoulders of giants. you know, these days you wouldn't go out for...
what you guys were doing. You're getting more on a glide on your very beginning ENA paraglider than you guys were on these hang gliders. And like you said, it was such a big deal to just make it down to the bottom of the hill, be able to turn into the wind. But you could just see that these weekend meets, the stoke was through the roof. mean, you were doing...
Bill Liscomb (17:51.886)
you
Bill Liscomb (18:08.13)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (18:10.184)
what Da Vinci had surmised was possible. I don't even have a question here, but the stoke and the drive and it seemed like the community too was driving this, pioneering this new sport. you were, I don't know, comment on that, just the...
Bill Liscomb (18:36.814)
Sure, sure, yeah, that's.
You know, when Joe Faust had those first beats, you know, in 71, I think it was in the fall, we went to Torrance Beach and, you know, George French, one of our crew at Imperial Engine Works made it to like where the sand was freshly wet. we're like, dude, see how far he went? And then, you know, like an hour or so later, we're sitting there and this,
Harris shows up with the Icarus One, takes off.
Bill Liscomb (19:17.964)
right to left, goes down a couple hundred yards and he does a soaring turn and comes back. And he's like 20 to 50 feet above us, know, he's flying with the hang tubes and his feet up in front of him. And he just looks over at us and goes, and wiggles his finger at us, and we're just like, he's soaring. my God. Yeah, we just, you know, we were blown away.
Gavin McClurg (19:39.56)
Possibility
Gavin McClurg (19:43.442)
Mind's blown.
Bill Liscomb (19:44.386)
But yeah, it was like that. You go see stuff, and there's some real crackpot gizmos that people were trying to...
fly with and you know some are successful some are hilarious you know like look at the outtakes in Big Blue Sky the whack attack you know it says it all
Tom Peghiny (20:09.622)
So you were present also at Joe Faust's iconic photo fly photo session. It was really, I think it was the first color photo of hang gliders that was distributed other than National Geographic. And everyone, all the experimenters at the time were there. So you knew Vollmer Jensen and all the others that were there.
Bill Liscomb (20:16.034)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Bill Liscomb (20:35.807)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, it was, you know, like, we knew everybody, you know, Volmer.
Did not like the flexible wings.
And, you know, we're a bunch of hippies. He was a little scary. had this hat he wore that was a little...
Maybe it leaned one way that we didn't lean, you know? Everybody there, Lloyd Leitcher was there, Joe Faust. I worked for Joe Faust one day. It is a publishing suite over there in Venice, I believe. Richard Miller.
In later years, you know, he lived in my neck of the woods in San Diego County and I'd stop by and see him all the time. And it was always like, you know, yes, my stuff. You know, go in there and what are we doing? I tried to interview him for Big Blue Sky. I had an RV and all the video equipment. My son's with me. We're on a road trip. We get up to Santa Cruz and he's doing like kinesiology analysis of
Bill Liscomb (21:52.92)
customers there, you know? And so I'm like, hey Richard, this is great. I showed him a little model I had, an electric model with carbon D tube on it. You know, he's like, this is fascinating. This is unbelievable. You know, and Richard, could we do this? He said, do it later. We have other important things here. Sit down, knees to knee and hold my hands, you know?
told me what supplements I need to take. It's just like, okay, that's what we got. And indeed it's kind of better that he wasn't interviewed to just kind of that he can remain the mystic.
Gavin McClurg (22:23.602)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (22:35.256)
ascended master of spiritual flight, you know, he just had so many wonderful concepts like in the 60s in his book, without visible means of support, he was talking about parachutes and says, you know, I can see someday where these things can actually glide and people will use them to do cross country flights, you know, you read that and it's like, OK, he's not a crackpot, he just really is a visionary, you know.
Gavin McClurg (22:57.714)
Amazing vision.
Gavin McClurg (23:04.017)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (23:05.312)
It was really into the place where our dreams are made, you know?
Tom Peghiny (23:09.698)
Well, he was also there.
Gavin McClurg (23:10.012)
Let's pause guys for one sec. There's some music or there's some kind of background sound somewhere. We've got to, let's shut off phones or anything that's gonna be hard to edit out.
Bill Liscomb (23:23.64)
This is the quietest house I've ever lived in. I'm in Marshfield, Massachusetts.
Gavin McClurg (23:27.335)
Where are you?
okay. Cool, thanks, Tom. So yeah, if you guys have phones, either put them in Do Not Disturb or just turn them off. Better to turn them off. No problem. It was very in the background. It's not gonna be a big deal.
Tom Peghiny (23:32.462)
What are you talking about? Yeah, I did. Sorry. Sorry.
Bill Liscomb (23:32.568)
There's all what we're on it.
Yeah, right. We're good. I'm good. Two points to Tom.
Tom Peghiny (23:42.373)
So for people who don't know, Richard Miller was really one of the great inspirations of free flight, starting with hang gliding and his book, Without Visible Means of Support. It's full of anecdotes from the perilous and poignant past that are very, as he termed it, that are really even good contemporary.
It still gets the meaning of flight. as Bill said, was a, yes. He was the editor of Soaring Magazine. And with Jack Lambie did a very interesting article about, called Project Thistle Down that really
Bill Liscomb (24:17.07)
The spirit of it, yeah, literally.
Tom Peghiny (24:40.822)
saw foresaw planes like Archaeopteryx and the Swift rigid wing with high school kids bungee launching their friends from Montana, grassy slopes and things just really true visionary.
Bill Liscomb (24:56.79)
Yeah, and you know, he and Rich Miller, Joe Faust, Jack Lambie, his brother Mark Lambie, you know, I'm sure I'm missing a couple of people there were the were the the people who the organizers for the first Lilienthal meet. you know, it's just kind of I was going to college and I got a in an air.
frame maintenance and repair class got a little booklet that somebody had made up and it was called Low and Slow, Volume One. Ooh, plans, hang gliders. I know what hang gliders are. there's going to be a meet. I should get these plans and build something for it. And, you know, we got to the meet and there's hundreds of people. There's a lot of people there. There's cars and the cops show up and a helicopter comes.
flying overhead, I'm standing next to Jack Lambie and the helicopter says, well, the organizers of this meet, please report to the police cars at the bottom of the hill. And Jack Lambie right on cue goes, somebody organized this. Classic. OK, guys, just don't start any fires, OK? And if you need it, this is owned by a cemetery over the hill. Look us up if you have any problems.
Tom Peghiny (26:27.332)
So my first soaring, ocean soaring flight was with you at Torrey Pines, I believe it was in early, well it was in May 1974 after the auto meet that was held up at Sylmar that year. And you're flying a, an Iper Standard, but it had a camber cut sail made by Tom Price. an Alcatraz sail, right. And that,
Bill Liscomb (26:50.772)
Albatross sale. Yeah, Albatross sale.
Tom Peghiny (26:56.066)
That began a long friendship and collaboration between you two.
Bill Liscomb (27:00.716)
Yeah, I like to think that I'm alive because of Tom Price. You know, he's an aeronautical engineer. He worked for McDonnell Douglas, worked on the designing the wing for the DC-9 and 10. Burned out on that on the aerospace industry and went to work at North Sails.
Bill Liscomb (27:25.506)
saw Hang glider and you know, he had the skill pack right there, you know. And yeah, I spent a lot of time with Tom, know, worked on, know, 1976 at Telluride, we had Hang glider manufacturers association meeting and they had been pretty active, but this in 76, they elected Peter Brock to be the president and I was the treasurer and
We got it in gear. know, gliders started getting certified. know, everybody started, all the manufacturers started working on the certification prog, you know.
things. And, you know, I worked with Tom, I did airspeed calibration, I flew with an anemometer and lowered it 50 feet below the glider and had another one on the control bar. So we calibrated the pressure wave, creating the different airspeeds and stuff like that. And right after I kind of burned out on hang gliding and played music for a while. And right about then is when he and the real Jim Walker put a platform on top of a
travel all and I think there's some footage around you can see the young Tom Pagini just about get killed with those things bucking and jumping around and pitch excursions.
Tom Peghiny (28:47.905)
Not tied in, no helmet, no shirt, no pants.
Bill Liscomb (28:49.666)
Yeah, yeah, shorts, just a pair of shorts. 40 miles an hour down a country road. Dude! Yeah, dude.
Gavin McClurg (28:51.368)
What could go wrong?
Tom Peghiny (28:55.012)
What could go wrong with a negative pitch stability lighter trying to throw you off the back?
Bill Liscomb (29:00.846)
Yeah, yeah, so Tom Price, know, working there is just that was a lot of fun. had.
I did the wiring and final assembled a lot of ASG-21s. And unfortunately, I had to test fly them. You put it together, you test fly it.
Gavin McClurg (29:24.872)
Bill, why did you get burned out on hang gliding?
Tom Peghiny (29:24.991)
Bill Liscomb (29:28.11)
I think I was just.
scared.
Gavin McClurg (29:35.101)
Hmm. Was this around when, because in the movie there's this real shift from...
You know, there's weekend meets, everybody's flying down the hill. It's a big party, bunch of hippies, others, you know, there's the airspace. There's there's all these this combination of kind of the right people, it seems like come together. Everybody, you know, even now, this community is so eccentric. know, you've just got people from so many different backgrounds. Just one of the things I love about it. But you you have this right combination. And then I guess it's Terrace Jr., who's the first person to thermal.
Bill Liscomb (29:48.782)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (29:55.608)
Mm-hmm.
Bill Liscomb (30:04.248)
Right?
Gavin McClurg (30:13.03)
and things really shift there, right? There's a real shift in accidents, start going through the roof. Was that part of it?
Bill Liscomb (30:13.294)
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Bill Liscomb (30:22.466)
Yeah, I mean that was 74 when Terrace sort of that was at Danny Greensprings, you know, he took off and just like up over the back of the hill. like. And then he came back, you know, and I was scared flying there. I was flying on the coast and smooth air and you know, it was a little bumpy in there at Selmar.
Gavin McClurg (30:27.112)
first time.
Gavin McClurg (30:32.678)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (30:43.63)
And, you know, by then I had seen what happens to quote unquote standard regalos at low angles of attack. You know, you ever been on a sailboat and you come, you tack, you get that angle too low and it's. Yeah, yeah, or, you know, it just, yeah, full off dive. You know, I'd seen it, you know, I hadn't experienced it firsthand, but you know, that's a.
Tom Peghiny (31:01.89)
Locked in irons, that's what we call it.
Bill Liscomb (31:12.28)
That's a sound I'll never forget as long as I live, you know? Every time I hear a truck go down the road with a big flag in the back, I can hear it. You know, it sounds just like it.
Tom Peghiny (31:23.404)
Was that one of the reasons why you switched over to rigid wings? You were an early convert when you had a quick silver.
Bill Liscomb (31:26.922)
Yeah, I am exactly right. That is exactly right. You know, I saw that. Let's see now when Boeing makes an airplane, they put in, they put the company on the line, you know, that is going to be successful. They have a tail. It's in the back. I'll take one of those.
Bill Liscomb (31:48.182)
I did. I flew the bechipers out of that poor thing.
Gavin McClurg (31:52.265)
How much knowledge back then too was being, that's cool picture. How much knowledge then is, it also talks about Mr. Smooth in the movie, Dave Cronk and the first world championship in 75, which Tom, you did too, right?
Bill Liscomb (31:56.381)
That's it.
Tom Peghiny (32:11.428)
this.
Gavin McClurg (32:12.008)
Yeah, over in Cosen, amazing site. They just flew quite a few 300 plus FAIs out of there the other day on a pair of gliders. I don't if you guys saw that. Epic day in Europe. But these pockets are happening. I mean, it wasn't just you guys. It was happening in other parts of the world.
Bill Liscomb (32:21.57)
Nice, nice, nice.
Tom Peghiny (32:22.99)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (32:35.278)
Mm-hmm.
Gavin McClurg (32:36.624)
the same time, but is a lot of that knowledge being shared or are you guys kind of in a bubble?
Bill Liscomb (32:42.838)
Knowledge about.
Gavin McClurg (32:44.144)
Well, just design, thermaling, going place, starting to go places.
Bill Liscomb (32:51.508)
MS, MD, monkey see, monkey do, you know? And it's like hot rodding, it's like surfing, you I can go faster than that. Watch this, yeah. I can do better than that, you know, it's just, you know, nature of mankind, you know? You know, there was, you know, but the getting together at the meets and stuff is where you get that information, you know, by seeing it, you know.
Gavin McClurg (32:54.696)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (33:07.556)
Humanity. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (33:20.838)
Yeah.
Tom Peghiny (33:22.414)
Tom Peghiny (33:25.708)
Your mother, Bettina Gray, aka Baddie White, was one of the three top photographers, three or four, in hang gliding.
What was her background along with Bill Allen and Steve McCarroll and Georgia Vegas? Bettina, Bettina, why, you know, many covers of hang gliding magazine and she, she wasn't a camp follower, but she did go to a lot of the, as you drive up in her Mercedes, saloon and, it was present at a lot of the meets. Could you tell us more about her?
Bill Liscomb (34:06.062)
All right, she was the daughter of a automotive industrialist a little over 100 years ago. She'd be 110. She was born in 1915 and got into acting, debutante and all that old school Boston Brahman stuff. Had my sister in 1941 and...
Me in 49. And she was interested in flying. You know, we moved to Florida and she took flying lessons down there and I got to backseat a few of those, you know. And my stepdad, who she met down there, was a pilot. I don't know if he was licensed or not, but he'd rent airplanes and fly us places. He was a real certified crazy, my kind of guy.
I just say that, you know, and so, you know, she was into that and she came to that first Lilienthal meet, you know, her first hang gliding pictures are of the first auto. 052371 and she took them with an Instamatic 110. And my first flight, the hang tubes that you hung on to broke out of the glider.
Gavin McClurg (35:05.68)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (35:34.626)
and spilled me verily onto the earth. we duct tape, bailing wire, screwdriver, hammer, know, rigged the thing back up and then did the big flight where I did the big deep stall and recovery. So she, you know, there's pictures of that thing coming back down the hill upside down and broken. You know, it's having lunch and then we went on to fly. A year or two later, my sister gave her a NICOR mat camera for Christmas. And I guess the rest is history from there.
You know, she really enjoyed going to all the meets like the Owens Valley, you know, and the world's meets, you know, and Japan and the masters at Grandfather's. You know, she was all she was all over the map, man. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (36:14.536)
Wow.
Tom Peghiny (36:16.228)
Yeah, yeah, And she was great. was great. Bettina, are you? I'm wonderful. That's how you know with her beautiful accent. She was so classy.
Gavin McClurg (36:20.52)
Peace.
Bill Liscomb (36:24.59)
Yeah, yeah, so...
Gavin McClurg (36:28.134)
Was she also one of the ways you got so much footage? Was she taking video as well?
Bill Liscomb (36:33.754)
No, she wasn't. That footage I have of the first Lilienthal meet was taken by my sister, Bettina Bancroft. She was there with a Super 8. She's wearing a black top and white shorts. And of some of those shots at the first Lilienthal meet, like of me taking off when that segment of the film starts, that's me. You know, it's in Super 8. And then the zoom in is 16 millimeter that was digitized.
Gavin McClurg (36:41.64)
Wow.
Bill Liscomb (37:02.42)
And there's several flights. Richard Miller's really long flight with the conduit condor where the guy's duck under the bat. So Taris and his crew duck, you know, and bail. God, it's Richard. There's like three or four different camera angles on that from people who shot the same thing. You know, so that was pretty cool to get get all those different angles at the same shot. God, who did playground in the sky?
Tom Peghiny (37:28.898)
The beanishes?
Gavin McClurg (37:30.598)
Yeah. Was there, did your mom's going to all these meets and shooting all this stuff? Did you guys ever get a talking to? mean, was there ever any, you know, listen, Bill, you see, you need to slow it down here. She was just gung ho. That is awesome. No helicopter parenting going on here.
Tom Peghiny (37:46.19)
do.
Bill Liscomb (37:47.438)
No, no, or yeah. No, no, get out of the way. Here's an example of a conversation between us. Torrey Pines, it's crack, it's cracking, you know, and there's a bunch of gliders lined up to go and I'm about five or six in the line. I'm walking down to launch to get in line and my mom's down there to the south of the line and I'd yell out, hey, somebody get that old bat out of the launch area.
Tom Peghiny (37:48.836)
She was so cool.
No, no.
Bill Liscomb (38:19.27)
She's like, oh Bill. And guys are like, hey, that's Bettina. Watch her. You're talking to my mom. Back off. It's my mom. We have she is she was into having fun. I'll tell you that.
Tom Peghiny (38:26.19)
It's my mom.
Gavin McClurg (38:34.472)
awesome.
Bill Liscomb (38:37.166)
Yeah, yeah, well, not her. This girl had a crush on me and talked my mom into getting horseback riding lessons. So I'd go out and horseback ride lessons with this girl. I had a crush on me. And this girl was tied up with the Kalo Model Agency in Palm Beach, Florida. And I was a redheaded kid, you know, and.
Tom Peghiny (38:58.478)
like Billy mummy a little.
Bill Liscomb (39:02.552)
Pretty soon I'm in an L cigarette ad. It was both still and on TV and Buick automobiles, Studebaker Lark, fashion shows. Those were the worst. You're 12 years old and these women who are ancient, God, they must have been 40 or something, know, come with too much perfume and big bosoms giving you, you're so cute. It's like, But yeah, I did that. Part of my experience.
Tom Peghiny (39:30.36)
And you are a very early convert to flying advanced rigid wing gliders like the Atos and the Axis.
Bill Liscomb (39:39.184)
No, no, I was kind of...
I got out of my focus in flying, went from hang gliding to sailplanes in the 90s. And when I sold my last hang glider of that era, was a Seed Wings sensor, 510, A, B, D, E, F, whatever the heck, I don't know the, remember that. Yeah, they really were, you know, I had the opportunity.
Tom Peghiny (40:06.222)
Yeah, which were fabulous gliders for the period, very, very, very advanced.
Bill Liscomb (40:11.854)
at Torrey Pines before I bought my last sensor, a flying Bob Trampino's sensor against Steve Pearson in Steve Pearson's HP and swapping gliders. So I'd fly the designer in his glider, you know, versus the other designer's glider against him. You know, it was a really, really wonderful comparison. And I would say, you know, my decision was that for coastal flying, for milder thermals, the sensor just kicked ass.
You you could skate it sideways, you find the core, you kind of throw your feet and push and the thing would start just track and core up for the, but the, wills wing was a lot. It made you feel a lot safer with a, with a more pointy nose, you know.
Tom Peghiny (40:46.638)
Right.
Tom Peghiny (40:55.342)
Yeah.
Tom Peghiny (41:02.87)
You then started flying sailplanes in Southern California. Well, actually before that. Do you think that flying RC gliders may have been key in keeping you from doing a lot of stupid stuff? Other people, I've got credit for saving my life really. Tell us what you think about that.
Bill Liscomb (41:17.443)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (41:22.574)
Yeah, yep.
Gavin McClurg (41:23.794)
lot of people do. We hear that a lot on the show. That seems to be an excellent precursor. Maybe kayaking, sailing. There's some other sports too that seem to really help us understand the invisible. But RC seems to be the key one there, right?
Bill Liscomb (41:26.828)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (41:40.14)
Right, right. Yeah, before that first Lilienthal meet, I'd flown RCs for at least a year. I'd soloed a Cub special at Flabob and I'd been up in sailplanes at Elsinore, you know, with Mac Riley. Yeah. So, you know, I had, I knew how to fly, basically. I understood how the whole thing worked rather than like, look, an airplane.
Tom Peghiny (42:08.1)
So then you became a sailplane pilot and really pursued that in Southern California.
Bill Liscomb (42:13.398)
Yeah, yeah, in the early 80s is when I got my sailplane license. built a Mone by Monnet aircraft. I built a little single seat motor glider called the Mone and, you know, got my license so I could fly it whenever I wanted to. And, you know, I flew it. I registered it as a motor glider so I could fly it with a glider rating. So didn't have to go through all that talk on the radio.
Navigate crap. I just wanted to fly, you know and That's where I got my license so I got my license up at Hammett Ryan and Galen Fisher who was a hang glider pilot RC pilot was my instructor and you know held my hand through the whole process of up and through the checkride and you know that kind of laid dormant for another ten years and I ended up in
mid-90s, 96, 97, buying a Russia AC-4C, little single seat 13 meter, 13 and a half meter sailplane. you know, started flying sailplanes. And, you know, it was just, it took a while because the thermaling, my inner ear, it just circling.
40 degree bank, 30 degree bank endlessly. It took a little getting used to, you know, that kind of, I really, really enjoyed that. All my hang gliding experience really, really helped me transition into that, you know, aside from the physiological issue. But, you know, I just really, you know, that was my dream. You know, I was getting Soaring Magazine in 1970, you know, and I'd seen the SW12 and just,
Wow, wow, look at that. my God. And I lived to fly for about 12 years in sailplanes. I had the Russia and I got rid of that and had a HPH 304 CZ 17 made for me. Plug in interchangeable wing tips would be 15 meters or 17.4.
Bill Liscomb (44:37.198)
Another opportunity presented itself and I got a the first Diana 2 15 meter racer in the United States and that's all carbon. The wings are hollow. There's a partition down the middle of the inside of the wing so that you can have front and rear water tanks. The whole wing fills up with water and close to 50 to 1 L or D.
First glider, Richard Johnson, tested that when they loaded it up with water, went faster. So the Reynolds number was higher. Drag went down and the L over D actually increased. Most of the time, the polar just shifts over, you know, 10, 15 miles an hour when you add water. So, you know, that thing is just an amazing, it's like the Starship Enterprise, you know, and, you know, 50 to one, you're 15,000 feet over Big Bear Lake.
Warner Springs is 50 miles, 50, 55 miles away. You can't see it because of the mountains and the curvature of the earth. Punch it in on the flight computer and it's like, you'll arrive there with over 9000 feet of altitude. It's like. And the thing would just you could, know, let the sailplane pilots talk about the dolphin flying or you slow down and lift and then speed up before you get the edge of it and.
Gavin McClurg (45:42.438)
And you got it.
Gavin McClurg (45:48.912)
Wow. Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (46:02.734)
race off to the next bump. It didn't take too strong a day to do that with the Diana because of the low sink rate, right around 90 feet a minute, and 48 to 50 to 1 L over D. I'd take off from Warner Springs and go to San Jacinto, 35 miles away, take off at 3,800 feet and go to almost 11,000.
And I can just kind of bump fly over there in the previous sailplanes. have to stop and climb and glide and stop. know, people take off after me. Where are you, Bill? I go, they don't want to hear this. I'm at San Jack. They're looking for their second thermal, you know, it's just like, But, you know, I really, really enjoyed that. got my diamond badge at Warner Springs and, you know, it was like a dream come true. You know, it was just.
Just fantastic experiences flying that thing.
Tom Peghiny (47:06.562)
So what was your motivation and what did you think of making Big Blue Sky?
Bill Liscomb (47:12.674)
Ooh. Well, when Bettina passed away, she gave all of her photos to Vertigo, Inc., Roy Haggard's company. She really had a crush on Dave Cronk in her her final chapter of life. And God bless me, it such a gentleman. You know, I'd send her cars, Dear Bettina, thank you so much for your card and note, you know. And so they ended up with all the stuff and they called me up and said, dude, we.
We don't know what to do with this stuff. We're going to throw it out. You want it? You know, like three or four filing cabinets. Unfortunately, all the black and white negatives had been in her garage in Rancho Santa Fe, which was neither heated nor air conditioned. And it was in a dark room with plumbing. And it got really moist and it destroyed all the negatives. They all got all the emulsion came out of the color.
slides and all the black and whites, you know, look like a dry lake bed. So it was kind of, you know, picking shoes. I was going, man, this is a nightmare. When it is like 50,000 pictures here for God, who gave this woman a camera? Jesus. And I walk in by those one day to go to my little recording studio in the garage. And I just had this epiphany. it's like, Bill, you must make the movie and tell the story. And it was just like.
I was just vibrating with that. And I went, yeah, you I know all the people. have footage. I know who has the footage, you know. It'd be easy. It'd be so easy, you know, to do it. And so I did.
Gavin McClurg (48:55.217)
And it wasn't easy.
Bill Liscomb (48:56.635)
It was over five years. was almost five years.
Gavin McClurg (49:00.264)
Yeah, would have guessed that. Yeah, there's a lot going on there. Yeah, yeah. And editing is brutal and it's an important story. I imagine you were very passionate about getting it right because it clearly comes through.
Bill Liscomb (49:03.094)
Yeah, stops and starts. And if you have time out, go fly the sailplane. Get aired out, you know? But yeah.
Bill Liscomb (49:16.844)
Yeah. Yeah, I looked at different ways to do it as, you know, I got the project, started writing the script and...
know, getting the storyline laid out in my head and everything. you know, thought, yeah, PBS, this would be great on PBS. And they said, well, here's the first loophole you have to jump through and then you can do this, but you can't do that. And you can do this and you have to. I'm like, nope, I think I'm paying for this one. This one's on me, boys. This is the way it has to be told, you know. And I heard one filmmaker somewhere in a talk somewhere or something say, you know, the best way.
Gavin McClurg (49:42.864)
and do it my way.
Bill Liscomb (49:57.538)
My advice to people who want to be filmmakers is, know, if you want to be a successful filmmaker, you have to be willing to do everything it takes to do the film, whatever's next. And holy mackerel, some of those next things are backbreaking.
Gavin McClurg (50:10.631)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (50:21.803)
There's this scene in the film, and I forget who the pilots were, I mean, sorry for the language here, but it's just batshit to me. I couldn't believe it, but these guys launch into Bryce Canyon. It doesn't look like there's any place to land. It's beautiful. It's amazing. there's...
Bill Liscomb (50:41.336)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (50:47.665)
It strikes the question of what's the most amazing thing you've seen in these decades and decades of free flight?
Bill Liscomb (50:59.362)
I think.
Soaring in the sailplanes. You know, just because they're so dynamic. You know, I mean, it's just there's just been some amazing experiences with birds and weather and Torrey Pines and some of the inland sites and hang gliding. But with a sailplane, I mean, you you fly through. A bunch of different. Air masses. You know, like you have the Gulf of Mexico air mass coming up and they have the.
Anza brego air mass and they have the onshore breeze. Then you have the other, you just the vastness of the earth, you know, and seeing these gigantic swifts at 14000 feet flying the same speed I'm flying, you know, and a long sighting of them is like three seconds, you know. And again, it really just get a sense of just being a grain of sand.
at the bottom of the ocean, it's just, yeah, yeah, really, and just the awe and the beauty of nature.
Gavin McClurg (52:09.0)
Tom's got a Will's Wing t-shirt on and about halfway down our list of all these amazing people are the Will's brothers, Peter Brock, Anita Hall. Tell us a story about this gang.
Bill Liscomb (52:27.002)
man. Well, you know, it was kind of like it was like surfing, dude. You know, everybody had their spot and their crew, you know, and I was like a Tory rat. And, you know, we were like. I was aligned with the hyper guys, you know, so I knew them. And I don't know if you want any of those stories, but. I think Tom went there and, you know, so that was that was.
Gavin McClurg (52:46.952)
Tom went, ooh, hey, yeah.
Tom Peghiny (52:55.118)
Dave Mules, Dave Mules van.
Bill Liscomb (52:57.294)
Yeah, yeah. And, know, the Will's guys, you know, they're just kind of like these straight cut dudes, you know, and they had their crew. They had that cowboy that drove that light blue pickup truck up and down the mountain that escaped country. you know, so it didn't really have much interaction with them, you know, kind of always kind of doing your thing. And Donita and Dave moved down to San Diego, you know, what, in the 80s?
think and got to fly with them a lot and they were really fun. know, Danita's just kick ass get out of the way, you know, and Dave was a lot of fun. I went flew with him, took me for a ride in his long Yeezy. You know, and some of these other Peter Brock. Peter Brock, yep, there's a lot of flying with him. He was there in 1973 down at Pio Pico Park in San Diego and we watched
A Whitney Porta wing full luff in. That that flapping in the breeze flag sound that triggers my PTSD, I will tell you. Standing there talking to Peter and all this is. Guy like bounced at least one, maybe two. It's like And you know, that was pretty terrifying. I showed up next day. Had you know had had both his hands in a cast like he's holding the control bar. It's kind of like.
Oops. But flew Peter lot, you know, he it's interesting. My my sister's first husband, Michael Gauth, race cars and the guys who were his engineers and mechanics were Bruce Burness and Trevor Harris, who later worked for Peter Brock and made Brock Racing Enterprises where they race little Datsun 510s and 240s that made they were the core of that. You know, so I didn't I just found that out recently, you know.
Liggettime with Peter, you know, it was really special getting to interview him.
Tom Peghiny (55:03.94)
You were inducted into the Regalo Hall of Fame at Kitty Hawk. I thought you were. And well, you were definitely made a presentation to Smithsonian.
Bill Liscomb (55:10.167)
No.
Bill Liscomb (55:17.376)
yeah. Yeah, yeah via. Gary Fogel put that together, you know. This was the National Air and Space Museum had the General Electric Aviation General Aviation lecture series. And I got in, I guess Kay and I got flown back to DC and put up for a couple of nights and had a catered dinner in the in the Wright Brothers room.
gallery with the head curator who was an ex-Marine general. And I was kind of thinking, boy, it's 10-hut and a flat top. And the guy was just like us. Oh, man, hey, did go down and see this stuff? And just airplane junkie. And it was really fun. So that was very exciting to get to do that, to bring hang gliding downtown to the mall,
Bill Liscomb (56:14.926)
You know, hang glider pilots, know, jeez. We're not real high on the hierarchy of glamorous aviators, you know. It's just like whack jobs, you know. In America anyway, know, here it was like, you know, suicidal tendencies, know, dusty bums. And I went to Germany with Larry Newman in 1976 and we said, oh, you're an American. You're an American hang glider pilot. You will sit with us and we will buy you beer.
You know, and you're setting up your hang glider, there's a Lufthansa 747 pilot here, and in front of you is some nuclear physicist, you know, and they're all like, American hang glider pilot, you know. And then get back home and say, of the way, dirt bag, you know. But they paid a lot of money for my equipment.
Gavin McClurg (57:05.616)
You're in the film you talk about that Anthony Matthews, the musician Steemboat Springs, his death really struck hard. And then of course the two Will's brothers, Eric and Bob, you know, there were some pretty heavy carnage going on when things started going up with hang gliders.
Bill Liscomb (57:19.33)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (57:29.82)
What did that do to the community? We talk about now that we really need cheap mistakes. What we want is cheap mistakes to learn. These were not cheap mistakes. They were the worst kind of mistakes, obviously. But I imagine they were quite instrumental in safety in the future, but also these are hard knocks.
Bill Liscomb (57:40.696)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (57:55.672)
Yeah, yeah, it's like Donita said there, you know, it was just so hard to comprehend, you know, it was like, you know, we've got some bad stuff in it's mixed with fentanyl and somebody OD'd, you know, won't happen to me, you know. Ken Durussi says, yeah, it's safe, it's safe, come on, what's the problem? You're fine, you know, but, you know, there's a real dichotomy there, you know, between, you know, I've got to go do this, you know.
Anthony Matthews and Peter Brockson Hall. They both died almost there was like three weeks there where you know they went in those two went in and then Jack Schroeder is paralyzed up at Point Furman and I just you know I just went man I think maybe I'm gonna do something else for a little while here and digest this but you know that the good news is everybody took note of it and
was well aware of what they did wrong and strove to not repeat the same mistake and develop the aircraft a lot better. And that goes back to getting them certified. That really helped a lot. the parachute, those were just like epic events, you know?
Gavin McClurg (59:17.48)
big, huge shifts in the sport.
Bill Liscomb (59:18.51)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember in the 90s, Flying Magazine had an article on aviation safety. If somebody is really into researching it, that article is there. And it showed the fatalities per 100,000 hours. And general aviation was at like 5.2 or 5.2. Hang gliding was at like 2.4. I'm like.
That's because we were offline with a parachute right here hooked to the airframe. And because of that, I always felt naked going for a ride with...
some kid in his Ukrainian airplane with no parachute, you know, and.
You know, it's just such a boon, you know, to have that just, poomp, right there.
Gavin McClurg (01:00:11.112)
There's actually a quote in the film is that a reason a lot of people died is that they thought it was safe. This still surprises me. mean, you hear this now with, you beginners are, when they get into the sport, they're not.
Bill Liscomb (01:00:22.018)
Mm-hmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:00:29.958)
told that and it's not intrinsic. know, I think it said these things are very easy to fly and they're hard to fly well, but they're very easy to fly. And this is a weird one, isn't it? I mean, that we that people still think it's safe. It's aviates not. Yeah, 100%. I'm just surprised that we're still dealing with this quote.
Bill Liscomb (01:00:41.934)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (01:00:46.348)
Well, I think that's kind of the sales pitch for it, you know, because in the the general meeting. Yeah, yeah, you know, back in the day, you know, it was like, it's dangerous, like it'll be another one died, another one died. And that's true. You know, we've run out of fingers and toes counting our friends who perished. mean, wow. And so when somebody asks you how safe it is, you know, I think
for the pilots and the people actively doing it. It's kind of a defensive thing to say, know, well, it's as safe as you make it, you know. It's, yeah, it's safe. I'm doing it.
Gavin McClurg (01:01:28.488)
What do you chalk up your own survival to? In this list, we've got one sitting with us right now, Tom Pagini, but in this list, a lot of these guys and girls still around. How did you thread that needle?
Bill Liscomb (01:01:34.69)
Mm-hmm.
Bill Liscomb (01:01:47.434)
Hmm.
You know, I think I didn't want to be the first to do a 360. You know, in 72, 34, that was a big deal, doing a 360. And people died. There's one of the scenes in Wack Attack is Lloyd Short with the Moon Eyes kite taking out a big creosote bush with his hang glider trying a 360 and
BLABOO! You know, it's hilarious. But, you know, people didn't know when you turn in an airplane you have to increase the angle of attack to create more lift to keep the nose up so you don't do a death spiral.
you know, and.
You know, I think, you know, I was very timid. I'd want to see people do stuff. You know, and like Tom said earlier, you know, it's like, well, these regalos have a known issue with, you know, pitch instability. A tail. That seems pretty good. Yeah. You know, put something with a tail. That's the ticket. And I did get back into hang gliding, by the way, after I started getting.
Tom Peghiny (01:02:58.412)
Bill Liscomb (01:03:05.036)
I started really scaring myself with the Diana 2. With that much performance, with that amazing sync rate and spectacular glide ratio, I'd go a little farther up that cannon. I'd get a little lower farther away. I'd start doing, get into situations and later go.
That wasn't very conservative. That was a little on the other side of the risk line. I started having vision problems, started getting ophthalmic migraines where you get these like a prismatic thing in your vision. And you lose your peripheral vision and everything kind of looks like that. You can see it, but you can't get the detail.
And I thought, well, you know what? I go back into hang gliding. This stuff happens a lot slower. If I'm at Slope Soaring at Torrey Pines, where are you going to go? You know, I in the sailplane. You know, if I get one of those events, I can't look at my flight computer, which is, know, screen that big, you know, to get me home. You know, so it's like, well, wait here until this passes, you know. So I got an Atos and a Freedom 170 and
Wow, both of those excellent choices. I would have to say that early ATOS was the best thermal and glider I've ever flown. You get it in at one of those Torrey Pines 300 foot a minute thermals and drifting back with the sea breeze. It's like flying a Schweitzer 233, you bank it up and you just push it out until the wing starts to rumble a little bit. And you go way far back and glide home. And then I pulled a muscle taking off.
in the Freedom 170 one late afternoon.
Bill Liscomb (01:05:01.762)
Hey Bill, maybe it's time to quit hang gliding.
Tom Peghiny (01:05:06.616)
Hey, on a very light note, tell us about hang diving magazine and diver drive.
Bill Liscomb (01:05:16.588)
Welp.
Bill Liscomb (01:05:20.886)
I don't know if you guys ever noticed this, but like in the early days of hang gliding, was a large percentage of the population of pilots were cynical, smart Alex. And the first one that was really fun to be around was Rich Finley, who was a top gun naval aviator. He may very well have been in the first generation of people to come through there in the early seventies. I met him like 73.
Gavin McClurg (01:05:32.2)
you
Bill Liscomb (01:05:49.646)
And I think that's about when Top Gun started and I know he went on to be an adversary instructor, but he had nicknames for everybody, you know. We'd be at a meeting and he was just we called him motor mouth because he's just going all the time. All this data and stuff you never knew you needed to know. And then somebody come in and hang letter and they try to be hitting the bulls eye and he'd flare 20 feet above the bulls eye and.
And Richard just say, well, you can park it there, but it won't taxi very well. You know, stuff like that. And, know, we started nicknaming the calling them hang divers, you know, and, you know, that just kind of went on and on and on. And my friend Bill Rector and I, I think we excelled at that. We had a natural born talent for that. And we did a. We talked.
Tom Peghiny (01:06:20.9)
you
Tom Peghiny (01:06:39.576)
Yep.
Bill Liscomb (01:06:47.138)
Gil Dodgen at the editor of Hang Gliding magazine to let us do an April Fools issue. And we did the Hang Diving magazine and it was towards the back of the magazine. It was upside down. And I mean, they got on us loose. Hey, you guys need to talk to your publisher. Hey, print stuff upside down. And, you know, just it lampooned everybody and everything in Hang Gliding. And it was just absolutely hilarious, you know.
We had mornings, we'd get together in the morning and have breakfast and go up there in Pork's Dungeon and start clicking the keys. We'd be holding our guts doubled up on the floor, just laughing our butts off. Apparently, Gil didn't think some of that stuff was very funny. He felt a little offended by some of it. I don't know if it was the picture of me with a hat and the big nose and the glasses at the keyboard.
He's a pianist, a really good pianist, you know. So his little finn, so they didn't want to do it again. So my sister confronted us and we did our own hang diving with a yellow cover with George Worthington, his letter to the editor. Dear editor, that was the best letter by George that I, George, have ever seen about George.
Tom Peghiny (01:08:10.335)
pet names.
Bill Liscomb (01:08:10.84)
George B. Fossilton, you know, the shaky signature.
Gavin McClurg (01:08:14.322)
you
Tom Peghiny (01:08:15.182)
Pet names like Dennis Pagan was dense pages.
Bill Liscomb (01:08:18.452)
Yeah, yeah. my God, yeah, the list is.
Tom Peghiny (01:08:24.228)
I was a thom pigsweeny. I always had pet names for everyone. I didn't hook in at Torrey Pines and he had my thom pigweeny and the free fallers with their new hit, the gravitational boogie. That was how he reported it and I always had nice pet names for everybody.
Bill Liscomb (01:08:27.181)
Yep.
Bill Liscomb (01:08:40.844)
Nice, yeah. Yeah.
Yes, nobody escaped it.
Gavin McClurg (01:08:48.602)
Yes, get a lampoon everybody.
Tom Peghiny (01:08:48.772)
And if you knew all, you'd have the same thing with the World Cup. They do it a little bit with XC Magazine on the last page.
Bill Liscomb (01:08:55.49)
World Cup, W-H-I-R-L-E-D, not the W-O-R. And then the centerfold with Mr. Bill goes hang diving. Made a Mr. Bill doll and a little toy hang glider. And, you I'm getting drilled by the rotor. And there's a quarter inch drill bit coming into the picture. Ending up in a crater with Sluggo trying to give him a rotor newgie.
Gavin McClurg (01:08:56.797)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (01:09:25.068)
much fun.
Gavin McClurg (01:09:26.418)
Brilliant, brilliant. You've mentioned music a times. You're a musician.
Bill Liscomb (01:09:31.226)
Uh-huh, I have been known to do that. You know, when I stopped playing in this hang gliding, you know, really dedicated in the late 70s, I ended up in a five piece country western band and that was very fun. You'd be surprised how many beer stinking honky tonks there are in San Diego, dude, you know, in the East County. gets pretty cowboy out there. Did back in those days.
From there I played in the Bluegrass band in early, late 80s. I started playing Bluegrass and got disinterested in those same three gigs at the same three places every year and started a little coffee house trio and we played for close to 10 years, know, myself, another guy on electric guitar and a gal who played bass and sang and we did that every weekend for a very long time. was most fun ever.
Gavin McClurg (01:10:29.704)
Bill, I asked Malcolm this and the answer was fantastic, so I gotta ask you the same thing. If you could rewind the clock back to your 50 hour self, whatever that was, teen somewhere I imagine, that you could magically transport yourself back to that Bill and give him some advice knowing what you know now, what would it be?
Bill Liscomb (01:11:03.63)
Maybe look into that advice of knowing when to keep your mouth shut.
Gavin McClurg (01:11:11.548)
This is a good life one, not necessarily flying, but that's a good life one.
Bill Liscomb (01:11:13.804)
Yeah, you know, yeah, you know. Yeah, be real careful of that handful of pills, yeah. Roll down the windows in the van before you they let you in.
Tom Peghiny (01:11:14.774)
I thought you were going to say, don't those reds or something.
Bill Liscomb (01:11:29.866)
No, you know, as far as my flying goes, know, I do think just being very cautious and, you know, not trying to be at the cutting, at the bleeding edge of it, you know. think, you know, survival skills, you know, just real personal survival skills, you know.
Gavin McClurg (01:11:42.257)
Chuck Yeager.
Bill Liscomb (01:11:52.502)
Keep doing that, Bill. That would be my advice, you know. That's a good attitude, you know.
Gavin McClurg (01:11:55.654)
Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (01:11:59.64)
Let's, yeah, don't go first, you know? As we were flying with Al Adams, one of the old timers down in San Diego, helped me learn to fly a Tore. He was 20 years older than me. were at some place we'd bushwhacked. You we were just driving around on a Santa Ana day. Always a good day to fly.
Check out a new place. Don't do that. Don't do that. Some advice there. We found one place and Al called it, You Go First Ridge. Nobody flew it. It looked good. It looked really good.
Gavin McClurg (01:12:19.1)
ripping out towards the ocean.
Gavin McClurg (01:12:30.642)
you
Gavin McClurg (01:12:35.4)
Bill, your movie is incredible. It's so awesome. I'm so glad you made it. The entire community, I'm sure, is because it's just, it's...
Bill Liscomb (01:12:40.558)
Thank you.
Gavin McClurg (01:12:48.324)
It's classic and it has it all. It's all there and it's I'm so thankful to all the people who took the footage that you were able to assemble so beautifully that tells such a poignant amazing story. Thank you very much and and Tom thank you for making this happen. is a precious as always. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate both. Thank you.
Bill Liscomb (01:12:59.214)
Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.
Bill Liscomb (01:13:11.838)
Yeah, well thank you. know, for me, doing Big Blue Sky is, it was like a, it's a, it's the story of the spirit of man, you know. The original, the working title for the movie was Dreams Come True, you know, and it really is the story. You know, we had a dream and this is how we pursued it and we, and we achieved it.
Tom Peghiny (01:13:13.124)
You're very welcome.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:21.83)
Hmm, it certainly is.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:27.11)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:31.58)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:38.054)
He certainly did. It's incredible at some cost. of course. Those things that are worth it are. Well done, boys. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. And this has been a real pleasure. I've just gotten a lot more wrinkles in my life. I'm smiling so much the last little over an hour. Thanks a lot.
