In the latter years of the 1970s, the Solo Nationals continued to wander like the Lost Tribes through the desert, with not even a Moses to lead them to the Promised Land. And yet more and more of the faithful continued to join the pilgrimage each year.
It was not much of a surprise when a record 376 drivers entered the 1976 Nationals at the Ohio State Fairgrounds 
in Columbus, handy to the heavily-populated Central and Northeast Divisions. That was 67 more than had gone to Salina the year before. The course – just one again – was set up on the fairgrounds’ access roads, as was the paddock. No not gravel, but not pavement either. We parked on grass.
Ohio Valley Region was the host and in those years Ohio Valley was the King of solo. Its drivers had won 11 trophies at the first Nationals, most of any Region, and member E. Paul Dickinson had become the first three-time (about to be four) National Champion.
Set up on roadways, the course was mostly a slalom exercise. Think of a square-topped letter A — we went up the right leg, across the crossbar, up the left side, back across the top and past what was warned as the “car-eating fenceâ€? (although personally I’m not sure it lunched on a single car during that Nationals; I think that was a reputation from earlier events), down the right side of the A, across the crossbar again and finish on the left leg.
There was a massive tree in the infield of the course and John Kelly shot a wonderfully picturesque photo of me going past and dwarfed by that tree, which he caught in all its glory.
I especially recall Charlie Clark, his big green Corvair classed then in D Prepared amongst all the LBCs – his competition primarily 1275 Spridgets and their ilk, and somehow getting that big hunk of Detroit iron through the slaloms to his first national championship. He’d catch three more, but those came 10 years later when his car had been reclassed with the ponycars in CP.
We were up to 20 classes by then with two Modified classes joining the list — C Mod for the bottom-end formula cars and sports-racers and A Ladies for the distaff drivers in Modified machinery. Kim Baker of New England Region won AM and FTD in an unnamed Super Vee, but he was only 3/4 of a second quicker than Ohio Valley’s Dick Reese in the CM winner, a Knievel Mini-Indy — basically an amusement park car predating Malibu Grand Prix.
This was the second and last time a Nationals would be purposely contested on only a single course. It’s only happened one time since, in 2001 when the 9/11 attacks pushed us off Forbes Field for a day and a half.
A year later found the nomads in Texas, at Greater Southwest Raceway in Fort Worth. GSR was actually an abandoned airfield on the way to becoming an industrial park and Texas Region had been using the wide runways as a race track.
For the first time the entry actually went down, to 352 drivers, not that surprising really since Dallas was much less an SCCA population center than Ohio but it would become the only time a 5-year milestone has not resulted in a new entry record.
The three-sided former airport terminal embraced an apron that, that year, became the paddock. The courses went out for a fast rip on the runways. My memories of that particular event remain somewhat murky as I encountered a slipping clutch that pretty well took care of the weekend.
Actually I did it to myself. There was a long expanse of open concrete from paddock to startline and a lot of drivers used it to do a dragstrip-style burnout (no one really fussed about it either). So I thought I’d give it a try and when it came my turn I ran up the revs and let ’er rip. In my little Spitfire, then an E Prepared car.
Starter asks, “What were you doing?�
Myself replies, “Just a quick burnout.�
Starter says, “Tires weren’t turning.�
Did the burnout on my clutch! Which continued to slip through the entire run. Didn’t even run the second day. Only reason I wasn’t DFL was two drivers in EP got DQ’d and somehow I was still quicker on Saturday than three other guys who were DNS on Sunday.
Whether we realized it or not then, we had by now established airports as the primo venue for a Solo Nationals. The next year, 1978, saw the event at the former Hutchinson Naval Air Station – back in Kansas again – now known as Sunflower Aerodrome and site of road races done by Nationals host Wichita Region.
The big course/small course concept was taken to extreme at Hutch. The long course was a minute and a half for A Mod winner Larry Gagnon from New England in his Braham, a full two minutes for HS champion Paul Bess from Western Ohio in his Fiat 850. The short course was 36 seconds for Gagnon, not quite 44 for Bess.
Mostly we remember Hutch for the 5-gate “Polish Slalom� – you could go through any gate any which way you wanted, off-course was not possible as long as you went between the cones somehow, but no matter how you did it you were never on a really good line for the next one.
In 1979 we returned to GSR, the first time a site had been revisited, except this time we paddocked out on the apron and ran the courses between the arms of the terminal building. It was great for spectators who could get into the building and watch from the second-floor concourses.
Classes jumped to 34 as parallel ladies classes made their first appearance, and the entry was more than a hundred cars better than had come to Texas two years earlier. Events were running more smoothly as experienced people were now in charge. We’re finally beginning to figure out how to do this!
Copyright Rocky Entriken 2009
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