I miss Howard...

[Neal Nurmi]

...and his airplanes too.

[Neal Nurmi]

Nelson Ezell driving the Fury.

[Robbie Stuart]

They broke the mold when they made him, there will never be another HP!
I miss him too!
Robbie

[Speedy]

Hey Neal, would you mind if I reposted the top picture from Dallas on Facebook? Howard's daughters Paige and Leigh are on several of the FB air race pages and I'm sure they'd like to see that.

[Neal Nurmi]

It would be my pleasure, Brad. I'll probably be putting up a couple more Howard shots here as I scan them, and in this specific case I'm fine with you posting them in Facebook for this purpose.

You do know that using Facebook rots the brain and destroys your free will, though, don't you. That stuff is really bad for you...

[Neal Nurmi]

Reno 2000, during practice and qualifying.

[Neal Nurmi]

Hey Brad -- This slide was not properly labelled, so I have a question. Was 2001 the only time Howard had both numbers on the airplane? Do you have any idea why he changed numbers from 66 to 13?

[Lynn Allen]

Thank you Neal for these. What year did he make his Sunday Gold mayday landing just after takeoff? 1993/1994??

[Neal Nurmi]

Don't know offhand, Lynn -- Brad will know. He just ran out of gas, didn't he? That's not supposed to happen on takeoff.

Regarding the number change -- it just occurred to me that Lefty's Race number would have become available about then, and 13 is next to 14...

[Neal Nurmi]

Many folks don't know that Howard actually started his racing career back in 1979 in this...

[Speedy]

Yup, 2001 was the only year that 66 and 13 were both on the plane. The strange thing is...the 66 was always on the back half of the fuselage behind the roundel. So in 2001 Howard had to have moved the 66 up forward and put the new 13 in back. Strange. But yes, you hit on it...Lefty had retired and 13 was next to 14.

1998 was the year that Howard had the engine quit on takeoff. As I recall, he had won the silver and bumped up...and in the process the crew forgot to refuel. I have video of it from pylon 8 where the engine goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrup....................brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrup................................................brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrup and then quiet. I couldn't tell who it was at the time (I thought it was Argonaut) because he was backlit, but the 180 to the left and then landing downwind on runway 8 was dicey. Good thing he was the last plane to take off and wasn't landing back into someone taking off.

[Neal Nurmi]

A family affair... Both Pardue racers running together at Phoenix

[Neal Nurmi]

[Lynn Allen]

Very nice Neal, well done..

[Neal Nurmi]

Thanks Lynn. Here's a Bearcat sunset