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Show Mmmftk PSBi Sllll(S(sfts By KEITH BURRIS Deseret News Staff Writer Most people wouldn't consider . Clyde Parsons an antique col-lector col-lector unless they consider his 1929 Great Lakes Trainer biplane an antique. Mr. Parsons, born in Duchesne Du-chesne in 1918, is recognized as one of the most skilled aerobat-ic aerobat-ic pilots in America today. He says his Great Lakes trainer is the best stunt plane ever built. j ONLY ONE "It's one of the few. It has se- -4 '0BdMWMmw - . PM' . - ".'' ' '" . w- kmW , - . ," " -. :xi On watching Clyde Parsons fly his 1929 Great Lakes trainer, few dispute his being one of the finest pilots today, and his craft's performance as tops. rial number 15, and is probably the only one of its kind in the world, because I've modified it and installed a 200 horsepower Ranger engine," Mr. Parsons grinned after electrifying a huge crowd at St. George recently with his daring and spectacular bag of air tricks. "It's nice to come back to Utah," he said after his show. He now lives in Modesto, Calif. "My grandmother, a relative of President Heber J. Grant, came across the plains 100 years ago. The Uintah Basin is full of my relatives," he said. HOBBY AND SPORT Mr. Parsons flies strictly as a hobby and sport. "I have made aviation my life, and love it so much I don't make it my business." His air show, the Gold Coast Air Show, probably the biggest and finest in the United States, has been featured on television. His specialty, a maneuver he calls a "Whifferdill," is something some-thing unexplainable. It starts with a hammerhead stall, then a pull-up into a vertical snap-roll, snap-roll, immediately reversing into an outside snaproll which results re-sults in a tumble from where he recovers either inverted or right side up, "whereever the chips fall." NOT ORTHODOX Nothing is orthodox about Mr. Parsons' flying. He just gets the aircraft off the ground and immediately im-mediately flips it upside down, from where it climbs into the sky. One spectator at the St. George airshow recently, described de-scribed the "WhifferdilT as looking like a box kite with the string broken. "Most fliers remember the old tale about the Whiffer bird who flew backwards to see where he had been. This story became famous fa-mous during the war when I was a flight instructor. I guess that maneuver looks like the airplane air-plane flies backwards," he grinned. NOT DUPLICATED No other stunt flier currently flying has been able to duplicate the stunt Mr. Parsons says a man with a hobby is a lucky man. Such is his hobby with aircraft and flying. 'The best part of any air show is the wide-eyed youngster who is just discovering the romance ro-mance and adventure in flying. "Youngsters have such boundless bound-less energy and are really awed by the old airplane not seen of ten-in ten-in modern-day flying," he commented. com-mented. Another of his craft, a 16-foot "toy" took him two and one half years to complete, and is the fastest small aircraft in the world. "I call it the Knight Twister, and won the National Air Races He keeps all his airplanes on his ranch in Modesto, in Reno with it," he said proudly. proud-ly. Mr, Parsons is the son of Mr, and Mrs. Clyde (Eva Grant) Parsons of California, and a nephew of Perry Grant of Duchesne. His father, Clyde Parsons, Sr. was city marshall of Duchesne for a number of years. r" - |