45 year old Mark Beatty of Graham, Washington recently unveiled his brand new 1/10th scale model of the 2007 U-37 Miss Beacon Plumbing. Mark is president of Valley Construction Supply, and like many of us, spent his youth growing up a hydroplane racing fan in Seattle.  Schumacher Racing was honored that Mark would be the first to race the new “Checkerboard Beacon”, even if his electric boat hit the water before the real thing. We asked Mark to tell us what inspired him to choose the U-37 as his latest project:

I was one of those kids who made hydroplanes out of a piece of wood and towed them behind my bike and raced the other kids in the neighborhood.  I have built model boats ever since. In the early eighties I built a 1/8th scale boat and raced it, but then work and family got in the way so I kind of dropped out of the model boat scene for next 20 years.

Then while on the internet one day I came across the web site http://classicthunder.org/index.html.  The idea of racing a 1/10th scale battery powered hydroplane sounded kind of appealing…plus I was looking for a hobby that I could begin to share with my 12 year old son. I went to a couple races, watched them, and spoke to a few guys (who where more than happy to help out in anyway). I thought I would give it a try and decided to build a couple boats to race in each Division (Classic Thunder has a Vintage Division and a Modern Division)

As a kid, I remember watching the hydroplane races with my father and specifically remembered the “Checkerboard Bardahl”.  As luck would have it, nobody in the club had that boat, so I put my 5 bucks down and registered the 1968 Bardahl. I bought a carbon fiber hull from Jeff Campbell, and proceeded to paint it. What a pain in the butt to paint all those checkers! But the boat turned out great and raced very well for me last year.

A mutual friend of Pyro (Scott Raney) and myself is Dick Lynch at Jet Chevrolet in Federal Way.  Dick knew that I raced the boat and that I was thinking of retiring it. I off-handedly told him I wished I could get Billy Schumacher’s autograph on the boat before I stopped racing it. Dick called the U-37 shop and helped arrange it for me. While at the shop, Pyro showed me all around.

About that time, Billy came down from his office with a sketch of how they wanted to paint the boat for 2007. Immediately I had this thought run through my mind of building the U-37 in its new paint scheme and racing it and the ‘68 Bardahl again for 2007—sort of the ‘old’ Comet and the ‘new’ Comet.

So with a lot of help from Pyro and an open-ended invitation to come to the shop anytime, I decided to build the boat. It is entirely built from airplane plywood foam and epoxy. Pyro was a great help.  He would email pictures of the real U-37 to me throughout the painting process. Once it was fully painted, I went up to the shop and took a lot of pictures and measurements, then set about painting my boat.  Scott and Billy are great guys and there is no way I could have done this with out their help.

It turned out pretty nice–not perfect, but it is a race boat. I finished the boat a week before the clubs opening race, and even with very little test time on opening day the boat got two heat wins and a third in the final. I’m really looking forward to Racing this boat once I get it dialed in. I am hoping to get a couple pictures of the “Checkerboard Beacon” and the “Checkerboard Bardhal” running side by side at the next race.

The U-37 Team will be following Mark’s endeavors on the Classic Thunder Tour this season, and will hopefully feature reports after each race on the success of the ‘lil’ Miss Beacon Plumbing.  Stay tuned.

The new paint scheme

Getting up on a plane...

Gold Cup form

UPDATE:

Lil’ Beacon Plumbing wins Classic Thunder’s 2007 Presidents Cup

In what can only be interpreted as a good omen for the future, Mark Beatty’s 1/10th scale U-37 Miss Beacon Plumbing capped a perfect day of racing on Sunday, June 3 by winning all three preliminary heats and the final of the Presidents Cup race, sponsored by Remote Control Hobbies.  While the real U-37 was cooling off from a successful two-day test in the Tri-Cities, Mark’s beautiful scale model of the Miss Beacon Plumbing was dominating the Classic Thunder race on beautiful Lake Warden in Covington, Washington.

In only the fourth race of its short career, Beatty’s U-37 outran the 2003 Trendwest driven by Mitch Dillard and the 1978 Circus Circus driven by Dave Sarcy.  Ironically, Dillard and Sarcy’s boats accounted for all three of the previous wins in Classic Thunder races this season.

Mark’s stellar performance and 1200 points plants the 1/10th scale Miss Beacon Plumbing firmly in second place in the season high point standings.  Next up on the schedule is the Mapes Mile High Race at Angle Lake in SeaTac, Washington on June 24th.

Here's a shot of the winning boat