TT: I’m Tim Torrance in with you and we are ready for a hydro show here in WORX 96.7. I have Charlie Grooms, Charley Wiggins, and my old partner Jeff Ayler in the studio and, gentlemen, good evening.

JA: Well, Tim, good evening. Glad you’re in the chair tonight turning all the buttons. I’m relaxing back tonight along with Mr. Wiggins and Mr. Grooms.

TT: We’re going to have a good time for the next hour. We got a couple of questions here for the gentlemen this evening. We’re going to talk boat racing for the next hour or so. Mr. Grooms, we’ll start with you this evening. Good evening, sir. Glad you could make it this evening.

CG: Good evening. Glad to be back.

TT: We’re just about a week-and-a-half away from the first race and unfortunately, our boat is going to stay home.

CG: Hmmm. Fancy that. (Laughter) We still have a little paint work to do. We’re going to stay home and we’re going to send Charley out there to Havasu to take a ride in his little boat and kind of get tuned up and he’ll be ready for Evansville and we will, too.

TT: Gonna be ready for Evansville. Now, I read today where you talk about painting the boat…what color this year?

CG: Yeah, we’re trying to do something different. We got chastised a little bit last year by some of the TV guys that there were too many white boat and they couldn’t distinguish who was who and so we opted to go with a tint of yellow. We found that worked real well in the DeWalt days – it was easy to pick the thing out. Pat Furnish brought me some things at work one day and we picked one and we’re going to go with it and hopefully it’ll work out. It’ll be yellow, have some brown on it and maybe some red. So I don’t know. We’re going to kind of shoot from the hip on this one and see what turns up.

TT: Kind of throw it together as you go along?

CG: Well, no, we won’t throw it together because Charles Mac won’t let us do that. It’ll be quality, but it’ll be kind of shoot from the hip as far as the scheme.

JA: It’ll kind of look like the Ham’s Bear Miss Madison of 1975, with the brown and yellow and white and some red.

CG: It may, who knows. (Laughter) Come to Evansville, we’ll see.

TT: Evansville is just a hop skip and a jump away from us. Mr. Wiggins, good to have you with us this evening.

CW: Well, I appreciate you having me. Glad to be here.

TT: It’s always good to have the new driver in the studio. Watching you drive an unlimited light, it ought to be a treat watching you drive an unlimited. I’m sure you’re excited.

CW: Oh yeah. I’m real excited. Been at this a long time and real excited to be given a chance to get in the Miss Madison. Looking forward to Evansville.

TT: So, you’ll go to Havasu and tune your skills a bit in the unlimited light and get ready for Evansville. What are you going to do when you come to Madison because the unlimited lights aren’t going to run in Evansville. You’re going to come to Madison, you’re going to run the light and run the Madison. Dividing the time between both hulls – kind of got to play on you mentally, to try to get prepared for both of them.

CW: I think it definitely will and it will take a little bit getting used to. But, I think having the first race at Havasu with the light boat will get me a chance to get reacquainted with it for the spring. Then go into Evansville with just the unlimited, it’ll give me a chance to get some time in that boat and hopefully by then we’ll be ready to come to Madison in both of them. If everything goes well with both boats, it shouldn’t be a whole lot of work just to jump from one cockpit to another.

TT: But you’ve got a different powerplant to deal with and that’s something new and unusual for you.

CW: Most definitely. The turbine engine versus the automotive engine. There’ll be a lot of differences there I’ll have to learn about and get accustomed to and make adjustments going from one to the other. So it’ll be a learning curve, but hopefully one that we can make and make the switch back and forth without too much trouble.

TT: Did you ever think at the beginning of the year 2000 that in late April/early May, you’d be named the driver of this Miss Madison?

CW: Well, of course I was hoping. I don’t know exactly at what point I put my name in the hat. In the back of my mind I was hoping, but with the time clicking by, getting closer to Havasu, I came to the conclusion that nothing was going to change and I wouldn’t be given the opportunity. But things changed in a hurry and here we are.

TT: And here you are and excited to be in the seat and we’re excited to have you in there. After watching you drive an unlimited light you really know how to put the pedal to the metal. You and Bo Schide hooked it up several times last year. Seen a lot of good racing in the unlimited lights. Certainly we’ll see it again this year.

CW: Yeah, I think we will. We’ll miss Bo not being there, in some respects. But expect to see some other boats really step up. There should be some really good racing in the lights. Hope we’re part of it like we were last year. At the end of the year, last year, there were several boats running close together in speed and that’ll continue on with this year. And hopefully we can be as competitive with the unlimited boat as well.

TT: I have an e-mail I’d like to read here real quick before we take a break. It’s from Joseph Johnson, it says, "Congratulations to Charley Wiggins on his new ride. Will we see a practice session before the boat goes into action and when? I would like to hear more about what is going on with the boat and are there any potential sponsors and who are they? Finally, how many races does the Madison camp plan on running in 2000?" So, Charlie or Charley?

CG: I think he gave us enough stuff to talk about for an hour.

JA: Well, we’ve always been known to go over our one-hour duration time limit.

CG: We don’t watch the clock. We just go till we stop, don’t we, Jeff.

JA: That’s exactly right. It’s like one of the Texas Tornado death matches, Charlie, in wrestling when you talk hydros here on this station. We go over our time limit all the time.

CG: Testing, the answer’s ‘no.’ Charley will get his first seat time in Evansville. It’ll be on Friday morning -- as early as they’ll let us on the course. Assuming there’s no water problems, he’ll get his first opportunity there. Sponsors? There’s still 3 or 4 out there. We’ve pretty well, other than one company, abandoned the national sponsorship for this year. We do have 2 bona fide offers to do some stuff in Seattle or Tri-Cities. Whether either one of them…well, we say they’re offers, but we don’t know on the financial side if they’re enough to get us out there and back. So, whether we’ll do that remains a Board decision. We have some potential stuff in Detroit. We’re kind of doing it race by race. We will be the Miss Madison in Madison. Past that, I don’t have many answers.

TT: Well, I think that’s about as clear-cut as it can be. Hopefully the things will transpire for the Madison that you can make the Gold Cup and possible go out west. So, it’s basically a race by race situation and you’re going to take one race at a time and go from there.

CG: Well, we’re committed to the east coast stuff to the Commissioner. We made an arrangement with Commissioner Muscatel. We are a national boat because we partnered with the E-lam. With the good folks at Ellstrom Manufacturing, they’re our national partner, we will together hopefully cover 2 or 3 races. We will cover Evansville and Madison on our own. They’ll cover Havasu and San Diego on their own to kind of fill that one slot. Past that, I don’t want to say race by race. Tri-Cities and Seattle is a fun place. Those are big time races out there, so we would love to do those. In addition to that, we would like to give Charley absolutely as much seat time as we could. Seattle is a 2-mile course and it’s pretty tough and rough with the log boom. I would like to see him exposed to that at high speed. In addition, they run pretty fast in Tri-Cities, and that’s a quiet place. I would like to see him there. So we’re going to try real hard to do those and I’m more than confident we can get that job done. Right now, we don’t have anybody signed, so we’ll see. There’s some guys out there who like Charley, like us, and they want to see us there, so we’ll see if they come up with enough cash to get us there.

JA: Charley, congratulations. Glad you’re in Madison today. How’d it feel to sit in the cockpit of the U-6 this morning as you were getting fitted for that ride this year?

CW: Well, it was pretty exciting. I didn’t realize that I was a little wider than your previous driver and maybe a little taller, so we had a little adjustment to do in the cockpit. We fooled with that probably most of the morning. Got me fitting in there pretty comfortable.

JA: How much of a difference was it sitting in that U-boat cockpit compared to your UL-10 on the Lights series?

CW: Well, you’ve got a lot more room in there. You could read the paper in the unlimited compared to ours. It’s a shoehorn fit in the light boat and this was pretty nice.

JA: Charley, we have an e-mail question for you from one of internet listeners around the world. This is from Ray Downes and he writes, "I’ve heard the boats are set up to pull to the left and they require to be steered to the right to maintain a straight line. Does this mean that when in the turn if the boat is set up right, the steering in neutral, no pull left or right. Or do you turn hard left into the turn entrance and then slightly counter-steer toward the exit." I got an ‘F’ in one semester of geometry. I’m glad you’re answering this instead of me.

CW: I appreciate you writing in. That’s a good question. I think what you’re implying is that going down the straightaway the boat has a pull to the left and you have to steer back to the right to keep the boat going straight. I have driven some boats that are set up that way. It doesn’t really mean that going through the corner you’re neutral, you still have to steer hard to the left once you get the boat turning. With our unlimited light boat, we like to run it straight down the straightaway, so you could actually take your hands off the wheel and it would track straight. That’s typically the way I like to run the boat. And then you have to give it hard rudder to get it turning and then feather out of the wheel or turn back to the right a little bit, the most you can and still keeping the boat turning. I think that answers your question. I hope it does.

JA: Charley, on the unlimited light, you’re running just the verticals only on the wing assembly, not the horizontal. With the U-6 Miss Madison, the unlimited hydroplane, you’ll be running both the verticals and the horizontal. What kind of differences does that make for your light without the horizontal, then you’ll have to adjust to that big wing with the unlimited. It will be a lot different in the straightaways for you.

CW: I think it will. I’m actually anxious to fool with that and get a better feel for it. It might be something that we learn would be a good addition to the light boat after seeing what the difference is between the two. The front canard wing is a big factor in both boats. So there will be a lot of similarities that way.

JA: One more question then I’ll throw it back to Tim. What does it mean to Charley Wiggins to drive for the oldest unlimited hydroplane team on the circuit? Just to mention a few names like Jim McCormick, Ron Snyder, the list goes on and on. You’re in quite an elite group of men that’s drove for this team.

CW: It’s real exciting and it’s a great honor. It’s just a really neat chance to drive for the city of Madison and the fans here are really great fans. Not the only place where I’ve been that they get excited, but the fans really get behind the boat and excited and really yell for the boat. You don’t see that at some races, at least not for one particular team. It’s obvious that they follow the boat. I’m honored to represent them and the city of Madison and look forward to hopefully representing them well.

TT: Thanks very much, Charley. I have another question here for you. You’re on a roll here with these, so we’re going to jump right to you again. It’s from David Holmer. It says, "Hi Charley, will Mr. Grooms let you race the Miss M as hard as you’ve raced your unlimited light and what are the prospects of the team making the western circuit this year." We’ve already pretty much covered that last part.

CW: Well David, that’s a good question, maybe we should direct that to Charlie. First of all, I’ve got to get some seat time in the boat and get to where I feel comfortable. I believe once we both agree that I’m comfortable in the boat and ready to move forward and push the envelope, I think we’ll be given that chance. Maybe Charlie Grooms would like to comment on that.

CG: You listened to me today, didn’t you?! (Laughter) We talked about that first thing today for quite some time. Charley’s right. We want him to get to where he’s comfortable. I think that’s only proper, so he makes good decisions – the right decisions – and gets some experience. He’ll get that. He’s a proven racer and a proven winner and we’re here to race. We’re going to turn him loose once he feels like he’s ready to go. Have at it. Push the pedal to the metal and go for it.