[DGA] 1983 Kitty Hawk Driver Player Disc

[Three Putt]

Just reading about discs. The Kitty Hawk discs were CLEARLY made specifically for Disc Golf. YET... our buds at INNOVA claim that the Eagle was the FIRST disc specifically made for GOLF. NOT SO. The PDGA website says the Kitty Hawk came out in 1982... and the Eagle a year later. LAME MOVE by Innova. (DGA vs. PDGA.. yeah I know)

You made an account and posted just for this?! The Eagle was the first modern beveled edge disc (distance driver). The Kitty Hawk is still your typical putter shape. So in that sense, yes, Innova did release the first "golf" disc. The Eagle is still as relevant today as it was in 1983. I bag several of the. The Kitty Hawk, not so much.

Threeputt needs to fact check me here but I think the first Eagle and the current iteration are two different molds. The current Eagle was the first beveled edge disc (I think?) but it didn't come along until well after 1983

The original Eagle is most comparable to the Aero, of which I have seen zero in the wild over the last decade. Modern Aeros have been tweaked from the original Aero mold to be more stable, and the original Aero mold was tweaked from the original Eagle mold. I am willing to bet the eagles in your bag is not what we are talking about.

Aero's are a rare sight. When I threw other brands, I did throw the Aero. Such a great point & shoot disc.
The only other time I encountered an Aero was at 2015 AM Worlds in K'zoo. My play in the tournament wasn't good enough to make the final four round, so I volunteered to spot on my league course - Spinski's. At one point during the round I spy with my eye a shape of disc familiar to me. I walk over & check it out. An old school CE Aero. Had to chat with the thrower & he showed me that he was carrying several Aero's. Probably very valuable bag that dude was hauling around.

There were a few discs that were made for golf before the original Eagle; they were smaller diameter than a Frisbee and heavier, but they were still lids.

The original Eagle was the first beveled rim disc that was approved and went into production, and Innova got a patent for it so it gets to be the first modern golf disc. The original Eagle from what I understand didn't come out like Innova wanted it to, so they tweaked the mold and renamed the disc the Aero.

Innova early on didn't make discs, they contracted all their injection molding. There was no "San Marino Innova plant"; San Marino was the P.O. Box address. Sending the mold out to different places plus not a lot of QC over how it was used lead to a short shelf life of the Aero mold; by the late 80's the Aeros were kinda warped out of the mold since the mold was worn out. So the Aero went OOP and they retooled the mold into a driver called the Phenix; if you ever see a Phenix it has the "CHAMPION DISCS" tooling that the old Aeros had.

Around '95 Innova decided to bring back the old Roc, the old Cobra, the old Hammer and the Aero as "Classic" discs so they recreated the Aero mold and sold it as the "Classic Aero". This is also where the "Classic Roc" came from.

The Aero was back in production for quite some time after that. It seems to have gone out of production sometime in the last 10-15 years as you never see them anymore.

The Eagle that is out now came out in 1999. It was over 15 years after the original Eagle so they figured it was safe to recycle the name. Other than the name, the two discs are not at all alike.

 

[Three Putt]

At any rate, the Kitty Hawk discs were part of what was a rapidly changing golf disc landscape; I know some of the puzzle pieces but I don't know how they all fit together.

Ed Headrick left Wham-O to start DGA and the PDGA, but Wham-O was essential to the DGA (and by extension the PDGA) plan that Ed had. Wham-O corporate money was flowing into disc golf, and in return for that Wham-O made the golf discs that DGA marketed i.e. Midnight Flyers. Jan Sobel ran Destiny Discs (remembered now for the Super Puppy) and he always had what seemed like a credible claim to designing a beveled-edge golf disc before Innova was even a thing, but Ed was fiercely protective of Wham-O so no such disc was going to be allowed in PDGA play. The Destiny Discs "first golf disc" if it was a thing did not go into production.

EDIT: also in the "I don't know if or how this fits" category is that Ed's name is on a lot of Frisbee patents; I have no idea if that meant he was getting some sort of compensation from Wham-O for the Frisbees sold due to that or not. It's a puzzle piece, but I don't know if it's even for this puzzle or not.

1982-'83 was a period of rapid change in Frisbee sports because Wham-O sold. It became a division of Kransco. The Frisbee went from a company's #1 product to this thing they sold in addition to Power Wheels. The huge marketing push of the Frisbee as a sporting goods item ended and that 70's hippy dippy Frisbee thing ended overnight.

Once Wham-O sells, the gig was up for the IFA. It shuttered. The gig was also up for the PDGA as Ed's whole vision of the thing just lost funding. In addition, he either lost his connection for Wham-O to make heavier golf-specific Frisbees or he was free to do his own thing. You have the Ben-Wal discs and the Kitty Hawk discs all very quickly show up as Ed starts to make golf discs outside of the Wham-O connection. That's probably an oversimplified version of that, but the events line up so...

This is where I always thought Tim Selinske got overlooked. Dave Dunipace is credited with the beveled discs idea, which maybe he came up with on his own or maybe be took the idea and ran, who knows. Selinske was on the inside at Wham-O/IFA at the time. He knew what was going on. Wham-O is sold and suddenly this new Innova company is Johnny-on-the-spot with the Eagle? Either really good timing or Selinske doesn't get credit for reading the market and making a smart business move.

At any rate, Ed in '83 suddenly backs down on the rule that you have to throw Wham-O discs at Worlds. The story always has been that the players demanded it, but if the Wham-O money had still been there I don't think Ed would have cared. He backed down because his vision of the PDGA was over.

I'm glossing over a safety thing that Ed didn't think beveled discs were safe to throw around public parks (and he was right) but I'm glossing over a lot here and missing other stuff I don't know.

Shortly after that, the PDGA was handed over to the players. Again, the official version is that it was this great thing Ed agreed to do out of the kindness of his heart to let the players decide their future. The reality was that Ed lost the funding to do what he was planning on doing. So kindness of his heart or did he punt it? I don't know.

With Ed no longer pulling strings, Innova steps in and becomes the straw that stirs the PDGA drink. When I started playing in the early 90's, people joked that the PDGA was a division of Innova. The whole direction of golf discs and how they would develop was now Innova's ballgame.

The Kitty Hawks are just this little slice of upheaval of how we got from heavy Frisbees to beveled-edge golf discs, and it was a quick transition so the Kitty Hawk discs were not around very long. Very cool discs.

 

[The Shide]

Three Putt,
Thanks for the awesome history of the Kitty Hawk & other items. We need to know from where our sport came. I played in the 70s, but had no idea about the beginnings, until I heard/read the little bit of information that is out there.
If you haven't already, you should listen to a podcast called The Roots of Flight. They have some episodes available on DGN. Has a lot of this foundational information from folks who were there. Maybe they should get a hold of you?

 

[Three Putt]

Three Putt,
Thanks for the awesome history of the Kitty Hawk & other items. We need to know from where our sport came. I played in the 70s, but had no idea about the beginnings, until I heard/read the little bit of information that is out there.
If you haven't already, you should listen to a podcast called The Roots of Flight. They have some episodes available on DGN. Has a lot of this foundational information from folks who were there. Maybe they should get a hold of you?

DGN? Don't you have to pay for that? If I have to pay, I kinda like not knowing. :|

^proof that I'm an actual disc golfer

 

[Three Putt]

Here is a little bit of that picture that gets fuzzy over time; The PDGA Newsletter from April '83:

I listened to the Roots of Flight where Ted Smethers repeated the often-told story that he, Tom Monroe and Lavone Wolfe "forced" Ed Headrick to allow discs from companies other than Wham-O in a meeting after Ed arrived in Huntsville for Worlds. I'm not sure what happened in Huntsville, but the PDGA newsletter from three months before that event (before Tom Monroe and Lavone Wolfe had even been chosen to run the event) already said "the tournaments will be non disc specific". They knew Wham-O wasn't going to sponsor so there was no reason to restrict discs to just Wham-O. The bottom of the page starts the announcement that DGA was making the Kitty Hawk discs. That continues on page three along with an order form.

If Ed was making Kitty Hawks and Wham-O wasn't sponsoring, the idea that Ed would have been in Huntsville arguing that they only allow Wham-O Frisbee's seems very odd.

I have no doubt that Tom Monroe, Lavone Wolfe and Ted Smethers had some sort of testy meeting with Ed before Huntsville Worlds, but I think the legend of what that meeting was about has been blurred in some memories. My understanding was that there was some sort of argument that Innova (which had started production that year) had not produced enough discs to sufficiently allow everyone to have access to them, so there was a meeting to decide if the Innova disc would be allowed. I'm sure Monroe, Wolfe and Smethers would have been arguing for Innova and Ed (ever the businessman) would have argued against. That could have been a feisty exchange, and the players won because the Innova disc was allowed.

 

[Jeff Imparato]

I played with steady Ed in Lakeport,Ca. He left wham o they said he was crazy. The Kitty Hawk was made in Lakeport,Ca by Ed. Wham o realized there mistake after Ed got it going.

 

[BionicRib]

The plot thickens….