A View from Broadway

Combat Graffiti 2023

Beautiful flying site in British Columbia is the venue for the annual Combat Graffiti fun fly. Ken Burdick photo.

By Ken Burdick

Yes Folks, it’s true.

There was a small underground force of Combat fliers assembled in Mission, B.C., at the PAC club’s flying field on Canada Day weekend, Sunday, July 2, 2023.

The host behind all this was Paul Bedford and the Pacific Aeromodellers Club. So it’s more than just Conbat Graffiti, it’s an open invitation for contro- line fliers to have a day of flying at perhaps one of the most beautiful venues in the world.

Mountains, eagles and acres of mowed green grass fit to play golf on. I say underground because the number of Combat flyers has dwindled too not very many. Some top-notch pilots did show however, Kelley Crozier, Greg Davis, Mel Lyne just to name a few. Most of the flying activity was relegated to our secondary event, Vintage Diesel Combat. I didn’t get to play in that because my engine was not just fast, but WAAAAAYYY too fast. It was a gift from the late Barry Hobkirk, who got it from Kelley Crozier, who got it from a guy who got it from  Sal Taibi, of free-flight fame. Between Greg, Kelley and Mel, I couldn’t tell you who won more matches in D-Bat, but they were all well fought and exciting.

The combat Graffiti ships were many. Two WOWs, two “Hotter N That” two Sneekers, a Werewolf that is spectacular and built by master modeler Nigel Tarvin. The usual assortment of Voodoos including mine from somewhere in the 1960s. Greg, Kelly and I all had engine setting problems with the old iron engines. I gave up on my WOW, which was flying fine but not consistent on the needle.

“The Match”

Greg Davis (left) and Ken Burdick with WOW airplanes.

Greg Davis and I had been working up to a good match for weeks before all this and I needed something that would keep up with the tight turning Hotter N That, he finally got it tuned up and flying really well. It seems easy to say that you can just dial it in, but it isn’t. I switched to my Sneeker with a Johnson SS. I had just put in a new set of gaskets and it was running fine.

Rust Bucket

The rust bucket was me (pictured at right, in 1954).

I had not flown in a year and only then it was a Speed ship; it may have been three of four years since I have flown a match!

We both got up right away and were equal speed. Greg was running a Fox .35 Black Head that sounded really strong, but the Johnson was matching it and then some. We both use 10X6 Top Flight props to keep the speeds down to 75 mph. The match started with me cruising up behind Greg and forcing an outside loop, my inside counter worked perfectly and then it was game on.

To fly against a pro like Greg is a pleasure, and it all came back to me in those few minutes of intense concentration. What I was most happy about was the footwork I thought was long lost, it had come back and I was being where I needed to be.
Many spectators don’t realize that there is a lot of specialized footwork required in a Combat match. We flew constant action until the engines signaled us it was time to run out of fuel. I came away the winner somehow, but did see and make the cuts. It was good for the both of us to have a match like that one, with two excellent flying airplanes that didn’t suffer a scratch. We both may have lost a step, but the guys all said we still “got it.”

Greg and I were both hosted by Kelley Crozier and his lovely wife Heather at their beautiful home in Chilliwack.
They both had to be at a grandkid sporting event at 8 am on Monday,  It was a three-day holiday for Canada Day which falls on July 1. On that Monday, I was awakened at 3 a.m. with a charley-horse in my right leg and couldn’t get back to sleep. Geezer syndrome I suppose. So I quietly got up at 5 a.m. and crept out the door without waking a soul, or so I believe. The morning was just beginning and it was another cloudless day. The view of the valley was beautiful, the air was that heavy moist coastal air, that you feel deep inside when you breathe in, and the temperature was cool but with promise of warmer to come.

Winding my way down the hillside, I thought “what a great day to do some rubber-necking," and when I got to Hope on Highway 1, I took the road less traveled, the canyon route to Kamloops. The Fraser canyon begins several miles after the turn-off and is announced by tall old fashioned barrier arms with which to close off the road in case of weather or nature interfering with our travels. The trip winds along the Frasier River, and takes me back to car-travels as a young boy. The trees are right up to the sides of the two lane road.

I Spotted an ancient “Order of the Moose” Hall somewhere in there; now I wish I had stopped to take a picture of the old dark building. It had a bright red and white Canadian flag prominently displayed on the front, but it was there and gone in those early morning hours. The winding road that makes up the canyon was hewn out of solid rock, there are more tunnels than I could count. Blasted out of solid rock, they stand as testament to a bygone era, where our grandfathers pitted brawn and brain against the elements to connect point A to point B. I loved seeing it.

The new road, the Coquihalla Highway, gets you there much more quickly than the canyon; it has its own majesty. You know immediately when you have reached the Eastern, drier portion of British Columbia. if you take the Coq, nicknamed the “highway through hell” for a TV show. Tthey pull semis out of the depths of the mountain in accidents during the winter. I have driven through blizzards there and it’s no joke.

The Canyon, on the other hand, goes around the mountain, and not over it. The old two lane highway gradually  introduces you to the more arid climate, by taking you down to near river level then gently back up again into a new tan and brown countryside. I passed the burned-out village of Lytton, victim of the fires that ravaged the area two years before. Nothing remains of the village except the ominous black trees reaching up from the lower road to remind us that there were once people living there and now gone.

There are so many small towns and villages along the way, some named by First Nations, others by the gold rush in the mid 1800’s. Cache Creek is a good example of one of the names.

Did you know that 25 Camels were brought in 1862 from central Asia to the Canadian gold rush?  They brought them to Victoria on Vancouver Island; there must have been a story of how they ferried them across to Hope and the gold rush. The Camels just didn’t work out, but you can see signs with a camel on it along the highway as a reminder of those days.

So lil 'Geezers, the get-together with old friends was a time for us all to reflect on our days as leaders in a sport long since forgotten by most nowadays, a time to say hello and goodbye, to smile to each other and just to enjoy being together once again.

— Kenny-b

A Sneeker and two Vintage Diesel Combat planes. Ken Burdick photo.

WOW by Ken Burdick. Ken Burdick photo.

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This page was upated July 7, 2023