[Other] Lightning Discs

[kpc2004]

I use their #2 upshot for my putter and i absolutly love it. I usually wipe off dirt with a towel when needed ive never had much trouble as far as that goes. when i got the #2 upshot it definatly improved my game from when i was using an aviar and i noticed the change after playing just one round with it.

 

[JD-SSP]

Lightning discs

I must sound pretty old but
Ive been playing since the mid to late 70's and I still rely on my lightning spitfire and corsair as short mids and putters. (had them since the mid 80's) very reliable and have held up well. the spitfire is a stable midrange holds its line and the corsair is a short midrange/putter over stable that makes those perfect returns even with a hard anhiezer. both discs have found trees and rocks and have held up well for the tracts and 30 yrs of courses around the country in play. I still use them currently. Even though my 22yr old son can out drive me, I still score better thanx to these discs

 

[money 21]

the #2 helix is a solid flyer in the pro style plastic similar in flight to a new dx gazel. had an us-2 for years loved it for up shots then gave it to a friend that was just starting. they make great discs for kids and GF's that just play for fun and are not veryy competative.

 

[banknwank]

Curiosity gets the best of me when it comes to disc purchases. I love large diameter discs, like under stable , been toying with the idea of learning to roll.........had to try some lightning plastic. I had to order up a new back up for my favorite driver , so I threw some lightning in the basket. I grabbed some large diameter Lightning plastic with a #1 roller, #1 slice, and the largest diameter #2 roller. The plastic seems to fall in between ex and pro d. I am sure they will beat up quickly and not real worried about it as I am not expecting them to get bagged as they are so huge, they won't fit in the bag anyway. They will have to do something special for me to try and figure out a way to Cary them.
The number 2 roller is large like a condor and small diameter drivers look like a mini marker next to it. I had to stop by the park with about 5 minuets of daylight left and give me a try. Only had enough time for three trips back and forth at the park.
# 2 roller rolls pretty straight between 250-300 when focus is on spin and not forward speed. As soon as I tried to go farther , it wanted to turn over onto the lid too quickly. Interested to spend more time with it. It seems to fly pretty good on a backhand at same distances. 179 g and should float should I roll into the lake.
180g #1 roller I was hoping would be easy to get a back hand roller out of. This thing is not not floppy at all at about 300 ft of power. I cracked it pretty hard at about 5 ft off the ground and it just went dead straight? Like a hyzer flip laser, minus the hyzer flip? I will have to pull this thing on a pretty steep anny , with some oat to get a get a backhand roller out of it.
#1 slice at 170 g I bought for stingray like backhand turn overs and liking this disc on first impressions. I can get it up to speed easily down wind, yet it's not stupid under stable up wind. (3-5 mph winds). I have been struggling with 170ish stingrays being a little too flippy, but 180 doesn't want to turn for me. This 170 slice tracks nicely to the right with out getting too steep.
That's all I got for now, will post more after I get to spend some more time with my my sweet lightning plastic.:thmbup:

 

[Three Putt]

I threw the #2 Roller for a little while as a "I'm not throwing Innova" Condor replacement; as I recall if had more of a driver wing than a mid wing like the Condor has. I forget if I liked it or not.

This is it with the old airplane stamp:



I have a glow one that has the #2 Roller stamp that I have not seen in ages. I might have to dig it out and see if it's still in one peice.

 

[Three Putt]

The # 1 Roller was one of his later discs; it came after the stamp switch and didn't have an airplane stamp. By then I was using a minimalist Aviar/Roc/Cyclone/X-Clone bag so I never actually tried one.

 

[Three Putt]

The #1 Slice was this thing:



It doesn't stand out in my mind. There are a bunch of discs like the Discraft Tracer that fall into this category: I know I threw one, but I don't remember a thing about them. It's big, anyway.

 

[Three Putt]

This was my baby:



It's the # 3 Hookshot now. Back in the day there wasn't a lot of really overstable stuff. There were not Gators or Drones or Demons you could just throw into the wind and not worry. The SR 71 was a disc that you could 100% count on to come back. I loved these discs back then. Pretty obsolete now, but I loved them then.

 

[Three Putt]

The disc that is now the #2 Driver was a really, really good disc as well.



I argue that it's actually a very important transitional disc. At the time that is came out (1987) the wing on it was huge. It's kinda a hybrid midrange top/driver wing disc, and for the time it had a very small diameter. Discraft had the failed Cruiser/Windstar drivers before the F-15, but the F-15 was really the first successful golf disc that combined the small diameter, a large wing and enough stability to be a useful golf disc.

Innova didn't really go the small diameter/big wing route until the Whippet came out in 1992; Discraft came back to the idea the next year with the Cyclone. Those three were really the only disc golf companies back then; Wham-O and DGA had given up on molding their own discs by then. Lightning's F-15 Eagle was way ahead of the curve.

 

[Halcón]

How long have you been playing Three Putt? Your profile says 19 years, but that was back in 1995 (which just blew my mind, since I graduated high school that year). You seem to have vast knowledge of disc golf from well before the mid 90's.

Anyway, I'm just curious because I enjoy seeing you reminisce about the old days.

 

[Three Putt]

I threw Lightning Discs for a long time and I sold them for a long time. Steve Howle was a good guy to deal with from my point of view; he sold glow disc for no upcharge and he would custom stamp your discs for no upcharge. The discs were better than they got credit for; disc golf was very small then and the bad blood between Steve and Innova during the disc patent lawsuit era created an environment where Innova-loyal players badmouthed Lightning Discs relentlessly. I have a lot more Lightning Discs I can post and comment on; I'll try to do that over the next few weeks.

 

[Halcón]

Now I want to try some Lightning...

 

[Three Putt]

How long have you been playing Three Putt? Your profile says 19 years, but that was back in 1995 (which just blew my mind, since I graduated high school that year). You seem to have vast knowledge of disc golf from well before the mid 90's.

Anyway, I'm just curious because I enjoy seeing you reminisce about the old days.

I played for the first time in '88 or '89. It was a rather underwhelming experience but it was free and I was broke. I also worked in parks and recreation and liked being in parks, so I used to go play from time to time. I found the weird collection of misfits that were disc golfers kinda interesting so I used to talk to the "dude with golf discs in their trunk" guys when I ran across them. They were a hoot.

1995 was the year I got a job with a park department that had a course and I started talking to people like Steve Howle on the phone becasue I was ordering stuff from them. Steve and Ed Headrick used to get bored and talk your ear off. You could tell Innova was doing more business becasue Tim Selinske had better thing to do than talk to me on the phone.

Some stuff I remember from that '88-'94 period and some stuff I picked up on long phone calls with bored disc golf pioneers. At any rate, I would not have described myself as a "disc golfer" before 1995. I was a guy who knew what disc golf was and had played from time to time.

 

[Three Putt]

Now I want to try some Lightning...

The Disc Golf Hall of Fame started in 1993. Ed Headrick and Dave Dunipace was in the first class of inductees. Jim Kenner went in in 1997. Tim Selinske went in in 1999.

Steve Howle started Lighting Discs in the mid 80's and was a major manufacturer of golf discs through the late 90's. Lightning was a major fixture in disc golf for the first 15 years of the beveled-edged disc. He still isn't in the Disc Golf Hall of Fame. Bad blood between a small group of people in a very small sport pushed Lightning discs to the fringes, and the old-time golfers still won't give Steve any respect for what he did. The dude wasn't perfect by any stretch, but he should at least be acknowledged.

 

[Hampstead]

Didn't Steve get kicked out of World's one year for drinking during a round?

 

[Bultx1215]

I still break out my old P-38's now and again. Like going home again. I still have quite a few, even glows. Think I got the glows in '85. They still glow brighter and longer than any glow disc I have.

 

[Three Putt]

Didn't Steve get kicked out of World's one year for drinking during a round?

No idea. He did tell me a long-rambling tinfoil hat-inspired tale about being barred from sponsoring World's one year. The PDGA I guess shrugged and said his sponsorship package must have been lost in the mail. As with most stories from that time frame, the main culprit in the story was Innova. I don't know what all went on in all the lawsuits over the disc patent, but Steve sure hated Innova with a passion.

 

[Halcón]

What happened with the lawsuit? Innova sued Lightning for using bevel-edged discs? Was only Lightning involved? Discraft?

-Sits back and waits for Uncle Three Putt to tell a story-

 

[Three Putt]

I would hate to act like I know anything other than there were lawsuits. DGA sued everybody that hung a chain off a pole and Innova sued anybody that made anything remotely close to a beveled edge golf disc. They had patents and vigorously defended them.

Steve told me that the reason the Rubber Putter looked like an Aero instead of the Aviar had something to do with the settlement of a lawsuit. In that settlement he didn't have to put the patent on his disc, which is why Lightning Discs don't have the tooling like old Innova and Discraft Discs.

Discraft definitely was sued as well.

The only legal papers dealing with that kind of suit I saw personally was the papers that Gateway was served; Dave McCormack showed them to me at league one night. There is a generation of Gateway discs with the patent info in the tooling; they had to reach a settlement to keep making discs.

I think Gateway might have been the last disc golf company that made discs independently while the patent was in effect. I'm not sure what sort of agreement there was between DGA and Innova that allowed DGA to make discs like the Blowfly, but I'm sure there was one.

 

[Three Putt]

I still break out my old P-38's now and again. Like going home again. I still have quite a few, even glows. Think I got the glows in '85. They still glow brighter and longer than any glow disc I have.

That was always funny...you would spend $3 extra to get an Innova glow disc, and sometimes they didn't glow at all. I had three glow Vipers at one point and none of them actually glowed. I spent hours every year looking for my buddies glow Roc becasue it didn't glow but he insisted that it did and threw it all the time.

The Lightning stuff didn't cost any extra and it glowed bright every time. I don't think I ever picked up a Lightning glow disc that didn't glow.