What an incredible week!
Tragedy in three cases. Lost a biplane racer and pilot in a collision (the other pilot suffered minor injusries and attended Sunday's race) , a formula racer and pilot and a L-39 jet and pilot. The L-39 moved into a passing position on the wrong side against advice during planning sessions and was swatted down by the wake turbulence.
Sunday's race was one of the most excting ever. Rare Bear, in her new dazzling color scheme, and September Fury had battled it out during the qualifying races with Rare Bear suffering the expected technical problems all week.
Yesterday was no different. In second place at the end of the first lap the Bear's throttle jammed at almost full and wouldn't budge. John Penny managed to keep her under control for the rest of the race and finshed first by several seconds. Now that was exciting, but a lot of fingernails got munched after the race as John circled with Steve Hinton in the pace T-33 on his wing whle they figured out what to do. John dumped the water for the injection and burned off all but thrty gallons of fuel. He cut the switch a second or two before the mans touched the very end of the runway and was able to stop the Bear in less that 3/4 of the runway length.
We had a personal experience that was just magical. Back in 1994 when John won the gold in Rare Bear for the first time the trophy was placed in Justin's lap with John and Lyle Shelton on either side of him. The scene was filmed by the people who did Reno videos, but we were never able to find a copy. This year we duplicated the 1994 scene with Steve Hinton standing in for Lyle (this was the first year that the Bear raced under new ownership). I had an exciting offer from the new owners to join the team for next year's races. I accepted and we'll figure out a schedule. May even bring Justin with me as he's really good at entertaining himself as long as one of us is in sight.
Oh, the other neat thing was the Gold Jet race, pretty much designed for L-39s, were won by a T-2 Buckeye and the Silver was won by an up- engined L-29. It was a little sad that the only Mustang that made t to the Gold Race pulled out after a lap. There were three stock-looking F8Fs in the Silver and a Tigercat in the bronze (IIRC). The Yaks did well this year as well.
Tom