I soloed at 17. Sold it for $1,000,” he said, shaking his
head with regret.
For Danny, the paint scheme on Harold’s Cub was
the best of any air show airplane at the time, or
since. He said, “The attention to detail was amazing
for an air show airplane. It had a starburst scheme
on the top, but a checkerboard pattern on the bot-
toms of the wings, horizontal stabilizer, and landing
gear so the crowd could easily tell when it was
inverted. Up close, you saw the red and blue were
separated by a streak of white, which made it stand
out. Very labor-intensive. It’s a time-consuming
scheme to apply, but his clip-wing Cub—and the
Great Lakes Special and the Chipmunk after it—
really stood out. It was a real razzmatazz paint
scheme, but done in a very tasteful way.”
Most Cub fans know that “clip-wing” is a slightly
deceptive term, implying that the wings are short-
ened from the tips inward. Not so. Actually, the wings
are shortened by removing 40-1/2 inches from the
root of each one. The Reed version of the clip-wing
Cub included doubling the number of ribs in the
remaining wingspan, adding a vertical steel channel
stiffener on
the outer
strut fittings
DANNY AND AIR SHOW ANNOUNCING
EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2012 will mark the 37th year that Danny Clisham has been a member of the air show announcing team at Oshkosh, and he’s looking forward to the event with great enthusiasm.
Danny’s interest in aviation began during his childhood, and he credits
his uncle, Jim Mynning, a pilot, for convincing Danny’s parents to allow
him to get involved with air show announcing. In the early 1960s when he
picked up a microphone for the first time, most air show performers just
announced for one another.
Danny’s “break” came at an air show in West Virginia in 1965 when a
local television station’s “color” announcer didn’t know how to describe the
air show routines. “I hopped up behind him on the hay wagon and whis-
pered in his ear that I’d describe the maneuvers in his ear and he could repeat
that to the crowd. Instead, he handed me the microphone, and the last thing
I saw was the bottoms of his shoes as he raced away.”
But Danny, who’d attended air shows throughout his life, thought there
was a way to “elevate the [air show] industry and get the respect it was due.”
A longtime fan of Hollywood show business and announcers like Ed
McMahon and Dick Clark, Danny felt the air show community would be
enhanced if the announcers looked the part. “I thought that dressing like a
celebrity just made the whole program more Hollywood.” So, the signature
Danny Clisham suit was born…and the now famous boutonniere. That came
from Jackie Gleason. “He looked like he cared about his audience. It was just
a class act. If it worked for him, maybe it could work for me.”
Forty-seven years later, that boutonniere is still working for Danny, and
air show crowds around the world are more informed and gain more enjoy-
ment from air shows because of the work Danny has accomplished.
