List;
OK, I guess I owe everyone an update on who I am since I've been
participating in these discussions for a while.
I'm Neil Albaugh; my wife and I live about 30 miles southwest of Tucson in
Diamond Bell Ranch. I'm a Senior Applications Engineer for Texas Instruments
here in Tucson. We were Burr- Brown Corp until we were bought by TI a couple
of years ago. I work with electronics stuff all day; it's fun and they pay
me to do it-- what could be better?
My interest in race cars probably started back in high school when my Dad &
I went to the 1955 German Grand Prix race at the Nurburgring in Germany
where we were living at that time. Dad was a career Army officer, so I was
an "Army Brat." Maybe the smell of castor oil is addictive-- I went back to
the Nurburgring every chance I got. A bunch of us even drove around the
track (it was a 14.7 mile track running through the Eifel Mountains) in his
'48 Mercury. Geez... we were fools!
I studied Physics in college and then enlisted in the Army for three years.
More electronics schools-- Fort Monmouth nuke electronics and then guided
missiles at Redstone Arsenal. The Berlin Wall went up and I was suddenly
whisked off to Germany-- again. If anyone ever doubts that our system isn't
really better than a Communist system, they should have seen Berlin back
then. The differences between East & West were stark; the East Germans lived
in constant fear and many died trying to escape.
I continued my electronics career after the service with a long time working
at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, WV. My "Royal
Bobcat" modified GTO was something of a legend back then in the eastern WV
mountains. I drag raced it at the Eastside Speedway in Waynesboro, VA with
modest success. In those days, NASCAR was attempting to wrest control of
Southern drag racing sanctioning from the NHRA, so I ran in "BB Stock" under
NASCAR rules. Now and then I attended drag racing meets in Richmond, VA and
there I had the opportunity to crew for "Starvin' Marvin" Schwartz's Top
Fuel car.
I also went to sports car races at the old Marlboro Raceway in MD (saw the
Cheetahs run against Cobras & Ferraris) and helped out a friend with his
sports racer at Summit Point, WV. I couldn't stand not having a car of my
own any longer so I bought a copy of my friend's sports racer fiberglass
body and designed a chassis for it using the Observatory's big IBM computer
during its idle periods. That was a round-tube chassis-- I'll never do that
again. I moved to Tucson and raced that car in autocross for a while.
I got involved with a Can-Am racing team in the early seventies and traveled
to lots of races as a crew member. We ran a McLaren M8C owned & driven by
Bob Peckham-- a no sponsorship shoestring effort but in two years, we never
DNF'ed. Books refer to the '72-'73 Can Am seasons as the "Golden Years" of
sports car racing. All I know is that it was exciting as hell but it was
also a lot of hard work.
I've done other stuff in my spare time such as restoring a V-12 Ferrari and
the original factory show car Mirage from Manta Cars after their demise. I'm
building another Mirage-- heavily modified-- for competition and TO runs on
the Salt. It's a mid-engine 383 Donovan driving a Porsche G50 transaxle. I
haven't gotten anything done on my project for a while due to having a new
workshop built next to our house. That's finished now and we're almost
finished moving stuff in, so pretty soon I'll actually be getting back to
work on the car. I want to get it up to the salt before I'm too old to drive
the darned thing!
I really enjoy hearing what you all have to say on this list. Thanks for
putting up with my occasional rants.
Regards, Neil Tucson, AZ
/// unsubscribe/change address requests to majordomo@autox.team.net or try
/// http://www.team.net/mailman/listinfo
/// Archives at http://www.team.net/archive/land-speed
/// what is needed. It isn't that difficult, folks.
|