THE AUCKLAND DENOGGINIZERS
2005 World League of Football Runner up
Loser of WLOF Superbowl VIII
THE BRISBANE BLUE BALLS
2011 Pacific Rim Division Champion
THE AUCKLAND DENOGGINIZERS
2005 Pacific Rim Division Champion
WESTPAC STADIUM: Home field for the Cunning Stunts (cap 40,000)
Owner Tarl Tankersley
WELLINGTON CUNNING STUNTS - PACIFIC RIM DIVISION​
2014 - Present WELLINGTON CUNNING STUNTS-Tarl Tankersley
2013 TASMANIA HOBARTS-Jason "Hack" Eckhoff
2011 - 2012 BRISBANE BLUE BALLS-Ken Gilliam
2010 BRISBANE 8-BALLS-Ken Gilliam
2009 HONG KONG PHOOEYS-Jason "Hack" Eckhoff
2003 - 2008 AUCKLAND DENOGGINIZERS-Leah Roberts
1999 - 2002 MANILLA FLAMING DRIPPIES-Jason Shepler
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Land Barons come and go, but none have come like Tarl Tankersley. That sentence was worded poorly. But we digress. Tankerley has amassed land holdings that cover over 53% of the state of Illinois (and parts of Missouri and Kentucky) that have gone mostly unnoticed by the political structure of Illinois. This is due to the vast majority of Illinois politicians being from the Chicago area and not worrying about anything south of I-80. Tankersley has parlayed a landscaping business into a land owning business and is now the wealthiest man South of Chicago (and North of Memphis, and East of Jefferson City, and West of Indy). Such amassed wealth led Tarl to look for a professional franchise, and he found it in 2012 with the bankruptcy of Jason “Hack” Eckhoff and the Brisbane franchise. Tarl was able to buy out the bank foreclosure and moved the franchise to New Zealand where the city of Wellington welcomed him with open arms.
Tankersley has overseen the construction of the new front office complex for the Cunning Stunts at the Tankersley Center. Also, using a time share with the Rugby sevens of Wellington, Tarl has secured the Wellington Regional Stadium (Westpac Stadium, cap 40,000) for Cunning Stunt home games. His enthusiasm has brought an energy to the new fan base and as the team experiences more success stadium sell outs are becoming the norm.
One of Tarl Tankersley’s main pursuits that the Kiwis have discovered is his love of dirigibles. He has sponsored the first annual New Zealand dirigible races where half the airships were ruled ineligible by Tarl because they were technically “Zeppelins”. As Tarl was quoted, “You idiots! A dirigible is a lighter-than-air craft that is powered and steerable. These are fucking Zeppelins! Zeppelins are rigid airships manufactured by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin of Germany [sic; Zeppelin Airship Construction Company] founded by that douche, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin! How could you possibly travel thousands of miles with this….this….ZEPPELIN, and possibly think it would be legal in a dirigible race? The name of the damn race is the first annual New Zealand DIRIGIBLE race! Not ZEPPELIN race! And you, over there with the Blimp! You gotta get outta here now I will flat out go off on you!”
Tankersley was a producer and wrote the screeplay for the 1992 film "DIRGIBLE" starring Jack Holt, Palph Graves and Gay Ray. Tarl has also started a creative series of books about Dirigibles (not Zeppelins!) by penning such works as Dirigibles are Forever, When Monsters Roamed the Skies, Dirigibles Dreams, the Children’s book The Stubborn Dirigible, Transatlantic Airships; and Illustrated History, Airship Andy, Battlebags; British Airships of the First World War, and his manga comic effort Dirigible Days. Surprisingly, none have gone on the best sellers list.
TANKERSLEY CENTER: Located next to the Wellington Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa on Cable St. It is New Zealand's principal museum tracking native and colonial culture as well as natural history.
THE TARLGIBLE: Tarl's secret getaway Dirgible. Not very secretive Tarl. Just sayin'.
WELCOME TO WELLINGTON: Wellington's take on the HOLLYWOOD sign.
TARL TANKERSLY, AUTHOR, MOVIE PRODUCER, GAME CREATOR, ARTIST: (Above) some of the collected works of Tarl Tankersley's favorite subject, Dirigibles. (Right) Tarl's 1992 movie, "Dirigible" was nominated for four Oscars and three Golden Globes as well as a SAG award for Ralph Graves. The movie was critically acclaimed but not a big commercial success. (Below) Tarl recently released via Fireside Games a new board game for kids, "Dastardly Dirigibles". The game has become an underground hit in New Zealand and Tasmania, and is gathering a following in Europe and the States. He is working for a follow up game to "Dastardly Dirigibles" marked for release in 2018 called "Dirigibles, Dirigibles, too many Damned Dirigibles"
DIRIGIBLE HISTORY, THE LOS ANGELES TETHER INCEDENT: USS Los Angeles lofted nearly vertical in the 1927 weather-related docking-mast mishap. The airship ended up nearly vertical after its tail rose out of control while moored at the Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey. The crew tried to crawl to the tail but could not climb the 85 degree angle. She eventually settled back to normal alignment when the wind died down. She was able to fly the next day!
THE TARLGIBLE DEUX: Given Wellington's successful season, Tarl took the profits from the playoffs and put it towards a second more modern Tarlgible, the Tarlgible Deux. Seen here with U.S. Navy Dirigible designer, Dan Grossman, Tarl is discussing the drag characteristics of the new more slender Targible Deux (Los Angeles and ZMC-2 Class airship) verses the old Targible TC -10. The blunt older Tarlgible coefficients vary from about 0.045 to 0.042 whereas the new Targible Deux comes in at 0.023. Tarl is commenting that this variation may be due to a combination of effects, but the most important of these is probably the effect of length-diameter ratio.
THE SLATE ALL-METAL DIRIGIBLE, 1929: The 1929 Slate All-Metal Airship, built in Glendale, California, had a hull constructed from corrugated aluminum panels, along with a revolutionary propulsion system consisting of a "blower" at the nose of the airship which would propel the vehicle forward by creating a partial vacuum ahead of the vessel. The centrifugal propulsion was later replaced by a conventional engine and propeller mounted on the tail end of the airship's gondola. The length of his airship was 212 feet and the diameter was 58 feet. In comparison, the Hindenburg was 804 feet long and 135 feet in diameter, and for a more modern comparison, the current GZ-20 class of Goodyear blimp is 192 feet long and 50 feet wide. The structure weighed about 14,000 pounds (Slate claimed his design weighed up to half as much as that in other comparable airships), and when filled with hydrogen, it had a useful load of 7,000 pounds. At launch the rolled seams intended to hold the panels together subsequently unrolled owing to gas pressure created by super heating during an attempted launch of the airship. A few weeks later, Slate's team had looked over the damage and came to the conclusion that because of how the individual duralumin strips were interlinked with each other, there was no practical way to access the damaged area in order to make repairs. The hull was a total loss. Slate met with his investors to see if he could get them to pony up the cash needed to rebuild the shell. While I can find no mention on how much was initial spent for the ruined airship, one titbit that came from Slate's son was that an airship equivalent to the Glendale would cost $1 million in 1932 dollars. Unfortunately for the inventor, the incident occurred only two months after Black Tuesday, the worst of the 1929 stock market crashes. Thus, another dirigible disaster occurred, further marring the history of the dirigible.
AN EXCERPT FROM TARL TANKERSLEY'S DIRIGIBLE DREAMS: The following is Chapter 12 from Tarl Tankersley's DIRIGIBLE DREAMS on how to professionally spot dirigibles. Always be on the lookout for strange dirigibles!
