When I was building stick and tissue paper models and trying to fly them with twisted rubber bands double-knotted I found some magazine articles about aerobatic aircraft. Though I never read about a Fokker or a Camel with an inverted flight fuel tank I was certain I would need one to the kinds of flight I would be motivated to try. Time passed. I lost my baby fat but other than becoming a good sprinter, my unusual attitudes were limited to crashes on my bicycle. On special day I saw kids riding over a recently dumped muck pile where the over the top had been smoothed by the truck tail gate. I decided to show off how ar I could jump after topping the pile. Backing way up, I got up to speed and when I met the pile I was surprised that instead of being like a ramp it was like a scoop and I flipped over high in the air, backwards, in a back flip where I landed almost straight down and bent the forks back to where I had to push the bike home. It was a new bike.
Time passed again and I was in a dorm hallway where two Amateur wrestlers lived at the University. They encouraged me to try to stand on my hands and fulfill that bargain that maybe would give me an inverted tank and safe flight lessons. I used the arm chair and the wall to flip back and put my feet against the wall, then stretch my feet up. Eventually, I could walk on my hands all the way down the hallway and back to my room door. My second year I took Physics and in Advanced Calculus, the instructor announced by name that a student I recognized as my previous year's Chemistry lab partner had killed himself over the Christmas holiday with a gun. My Physics Lab partner was a pre-nursing coed. I walked her to her dorm one day all the way across the Diag on my hands. I avoided the mandatory Organic chemistry for a major and declared myself a Physics major. I had avoided advanced placement earlier as well as Engineering. Mathematic became my most prolific subject. Inside Out? That was rebuilding a Chevrolet V-8 engine using stock Corvette parts. My father was just as against hot rods as he was unwilling to let me fly with our family doctor in his Piper "Cub. California is where I found employment in the aerospace industry and it was in 1969 I met development of the AGILE missile and a computer program from McDonnell for the FX that was flexible enough I could modify it to fly 3-dimensional profiles. Hooray! At the top of a extension and an oblique loop, I could be upside down and counter a tighter turning opponent as I returned. How I felt the opposition shouting about lower wing loading, higher thrust to weight and a bigger fleet, not to mention a gun. Somehow, The FX became not one pound for air-to-ground and the HIPAAS became the Strike fighter. McNamara's Cost/Effectiveness funneled out designs and Professional Aerobatics showed designs much slicker than the Aeronca Champ with Franklin 2 cylinder engine and inverted flight tank I wished for.