Designer Times
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46. 1984 Los Angeles Olympics
Rise of the Flying Saucer to the Phoenix Spacecraft

A big reason why radical new aircraft get tested at dawn in the desert is that the air is smooth, if there is a crash, nobody gets hurt, and the best part is that no one sees your little disaster. The Olympic flying saucer was scheduled for it's first test flight just nine days before it was to appear at the closing ceremonies of the Twenty-Third Olympiad at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. But the flight was to take place in the late afternoon when there would be a gusty sea breeze. Worse yet was that David L. Wolper, Ceremonies Producer would witness the test flight.

After listening to the two Hughes Aircraft helicopter engineers warn me about what I might expect, I had a few hours to mull over what disaster might happen, and to be ready to implement a possible fix. At the appointed hour, helicopter pilot Bill Mac Millian flew in and landed with his crew in Wright Airlift Bell 314 Big-Lift chopper. Similar to the Vietnam era Huey, it sure raised a big cloud of dust....that monster must make a lot of wind for sure. Maybe a lot more than the modest amount that I was assured of by John McGraw's experts.

Both our saucer crew and Bill's crew went over the launching procedures. I had purchased a 100 foot long steel cable to connect between the helicopter and the shorter 3-cable bridle on the saucer, thus allowing the chopper to be parked downwind from the saucer, lift off, then slowly take up slack to lift up the saucer. All of a sudden, about 100 various folks, many of them "suits", entered the secret test area. Oh my gawd!....the desert was packed with gawkers. My heart just sank....Now I knew DISASTER WAS COMING.

Everything went smoothly with the helicopter startup, cable hook up and saucer lift off. I noticed that as the helicopter had the saucer off the ground, the rotor noise got louder (lots more wind). Bill hovered the saucer...everything was very stable. Then as he started forward into the afternoon wind, the saucer lagged behind a bit, tipping it's leading edge downward. This caused the fabric covering to distort and twist some of the outer aluminum ring trusses causing them to separate. Instantly the big round flying saucer sagged ino a wrinkled bag of junk twirling in the helicopter downwash.

Bill flew the wreck back to the landing pad and lowered it gently to the ground as our crew and I pulled the junkpile out into it's original round shape with this horrific windstorm blowing everything in chaos. With the helicopter safely shutdown, a stunned silence fell over the audience. Wolper's Production Manager Barnett Lipman and I crawled into the wreck and found virtually no damage other than the disconnected outer truss ring sections. Bill and I has a short de-brief to confirm what he experienced with respect to aerodynamic drag and rotor downwash effects.

Wolper showed me my $50,000 progress payment check, then put it back in his pocket, asking what "I was going to do now". We now knew that a covered saucer was impossible to lift in downwash, but should fly nicely as an open naked framework. We also could see that the repairs would be quick and easy. Wolper then said "Bob, a flying saucer can be anything we want it to be". Wolper, Walker, Daniel Flannery, and I instantly saw the saucer as a Saturn-Ring like Spacecraft. I would design the repair that night, then meet the key Ceremonies design folks the next morning for the re-design.

The audience and the helicopter guys left, the Hughes Aircraft secret police then found and confiscated our celebration champagne, even my camera containing the crash evidence....but they gave it all back as I drove out the gate. On the way home, I had a tire blowout. Oh man...

Next morning I bought the repair materials, gave the new shop drawings to our crew and hustled off to the re-design meeting at Daniel Flannery Productions. Wolper Production Designer Rene Lagler dragged out the early flying saucer proposal sketches. It was originally concieved as a Spacecraft City-like apparition. Wow. We were back to the right idea. Flannery's team immediately placed orders for some new lighting instruments to add to the effect. Our fabric crew sewed up a central red "beating heart" feature for the center triangle frame. This new Spacecraft was going to be really cool, way better than the flying grey taco.

24 hours after the crash, we had a perfect test flight. When Wolper saw the central core floating in the center of the Saturn ring, he said "Bob, paint the cables black". I had already bought the black paint the day before. We were approved to break down the Spacecraft, load it into the two trucks, and re-assemble it at a new "secret" final test site near the Los Angeles Coliseum. This was a grass area on Figuera Street next to the L.A. Sports Arena, which was hidden by a 12 foot high fence covered in white fabric so that no one could see what Wolper was up to for his Closing Ceremonies.

We now had a cozy place to work out the final Spacecraft details and test the gas turbine generator and electrical equipment. I used my homebuilt RV as a field office. During the project I had to do all the accounting every night, prepare weekly invoices and paychecks, and make sure my tax records were properly done, besides designing and running for parts. While this was a mad time, I did enjoy handling almost every detail from technical to money. I still have all the business records.

By mid-week before the big show, we started our helicopter flight rehearsals from the Sports Arena to the Coliseum about 1/4 mile away. Folks had heard the gas turbine being tested...sounded like a jet engine...and could see flashing lights behind the big white curtain. Olympics security kept the public at bay. But our first full test rehearsal flight at 2 AM one morning blew our cover. Bill landed the chopper just outside the fence, we hooked up the 100 foot lift cable and he lifted the Spacecraft straight up out of it's secret nest.