Bill Dodd Gone West
By Mike Heuer, IAC #4
IAC Historian
An old and good friend has passed away who had a great impact on my life when I was a teenager, but also played a role in the early development of aerobatics here in the USA which led to the formation of IAC in 1970. Those early pioneers, who we should never forget, made possible the sport we all enjoy so much today.
Bill Dodd, IAC #18, was an aerobatic pilot and owner of many different airplanes over the years. He was a florist in the Chicago area in the 1960's. I remember watching him fly at one of the first airshows I attended as a teenager. He was flying in his Ryan ST-M, powered by a 150 hp Menasco C-4S. He was one of the smoothest and most precise pilots at the time. He flew in the show at the EAA Fly-In in Rockford and was a regular at the Antique Airplane Association Fly-Ins in Ottumwa, Iowa.
Photos Courtesy of Mike Heuer
When Paul Poberezny first conceived of the idea of an aerobatic division within EAA in the mid-1960's, he formed what he called the "EAA Precision Flying Division" and put Bill Dodd in charge as its first chairman. Paul did this for a number of reasons. First, he was a great believer in the value of aerobatics in being a precise pilot, a sermon he preached for decades as EAA’s founder and first president. So the name fit. But Paul was also concerned about the use of amateur-built aircraft in aerobatics and fending off any governmental restrictions, so he needed people and ideas. He wanted us to be safe and self-regulating. This is a culture in aerobatics that exists to this day. There was a move on FAA’s part at the time to ban homebuilt aircraft from flying aerobatics. Thanks to EAA and those people Paul surrounded himself with, that was avoided. We can only imagine how aerobatics would have failed to develop as it has if those regulations been enacted.
Bill made many trips out to our airstrip in northern Illinois in those years in his Ryan and also his Bücker Jungmeister. We purchased a Ryan ST-A from him in late 1966, as he had two of them and ultimately, I flew my first contest in that Ryan and my father, Bob Heuer, flew it in Unlimited until we built our Pitts S-1S N442X and started flying competition in the Pitts in 1969.
Photos Courtesy of Mike Heuer
In about 1968, Bill ceded the chairmanship of the EAA Precision Flying Division to Jim Morgan, a TWA pilot in Chicago, who had been a friend of my father since the late 1940's. Jim was a consummate gentleman and superb instructor. It was in late 1969 and early 1970 that IAC was formed, and the rest of that story is history. But both Bill and Jim were there at the beginning along with my father who was IAC #2 and our first president.
Bill also showed a lot of trust in me as he let me fly that gorgeous Jungmeister, at our airstrip – when I was all of 18 years old. Later, in early 1969, he let me fly his just-completed Pitts S-1S which had been built by Curtis Pitts in Homestead. It was light and beautifully-crafted airplane in midnight blue with white stripes. I had never been so impressed by an airplane up to that point in my early career, and we raced home and completed the building of N442X later that year.
We sold that Pitts to Charlie Hillard, who went on to win the World Aerobatic Champion title flying that airplane in France in 1972. In that year, the entire Unlimited team flew Pitts aircraft. The fuselage (welded up tubing only) came from Curtis’ shop as well and we had purchased it from Bill, as he decided to have Curtis build him one instead. In early 1969, my father and I made a road trip to Homestead and picked up our set of symmetrical wings from Curtis for our Pitts. At the time, those wings and four ailerons made a strikingly competitive airplane out of the Pitts and easy to fly aerobatics. You could only buy them from Curtis as there were no plans for them.
Photos Courtesy of Mike Heuer
Though there were a few aerobatic contests around the USA up until 1968, that is when things started to get organized. Bill Dodd was on the Aerobatic Club of America's rules committee, and in the above photo you will see Bill unveiling the newly printed ACA rule book for 1968. This is what finally gave us a standardized set of rules to use at all contests and established various categories -- though IAC expanded on much of that later.
Bill was a pioneer but also a wonderful mentor. He treated me with respect as a young man and as an equal. I never forgot this and we made this a part of IAC’s culture to help others and to look out for each other. That culture survives to this day.
