I was in Reno last Saturday...

[teookie]

And this is some of what I saw. Snuck the company camera along with me and snapped these pics.



This is "Precious Metal". I wonder what kind of maintenance issues they run into with those counter rotating props.


T-6 Race


More T-6 action


One of the jet class racers.


Snowbirds.

[teookie]

More Snowbirds. This was cool.


Rare Bear. 3000+ horsepower anyone?


September Furry. I love the shiny red prop! I also love the sleeve valve engine!


Proves I was there... Me and Voodoo.


This guy was amazing. He did things I've only seen R/C planes do.


I'm already looking forward to next year!

[rv6ejguy]

Rare Bear's Wright R3350 is capable of closer to 4000hp for a few laps in present trim. All the fast Sea Fury's are presently also fitted with either poppet valve R3350s or Pratt 4360s. What a great sound!

[mike newall]

What a timely reminder that while this year, an American airplane won, last year, the line up for the Unlimited Gold race was either British designed or British designed engine - quite brought a patriotic tear to the eye. We will quietly ignore the Eastern Bloc contribution - harumph

[airguy]

Interesting note on Rare Bear - for those of you who were there, you'll remember that he called Mayday during the cooldown laps with a stuck throttle. John Penney could not reduce power below 35" and 2400 rpm, and only had about 8 minutes of fuel left onboard at that power setting. September Fury was still sitting smack in the middle of 14-32 with a blown engine from Mike's mayday on the next-to-last lap, and the other unlimiteds were recovering on 26. There was very fast rush job to get Sept. Fury off the runway, John gained a few thousand in altitude, killed the mags and did a gorgeous deadstick on 32. The final cause turned out to be some body filler that came off the very-recently rebuilt cowling and was ingested into the engine air intake on the wing root, some of it got caught up in the carb throat and blocked the butterfly valve from fully closing. It is my understanding that on mag shutdown, he had approx 3 minutes of fuel left.

It remains to be seen if he damaged the engine by supercooling it by killing the mags inflight with that power setting, but that part was unavoidable, and I suppose the body filler did not any favors to the blower or engine in any case. The engine was about to supercool inflight one way or another. A clipped wing Bearcat with a windmilling 4-blade comes down FAST, his descent angle was relatively impressive.

[Mike S]

Thanks for the info about the cause of the stuck throttle.

One thing you forgot to mention, was that the actual landing was a picture perfect, textbook example of how to put a high drag, high wing loading dead stick plane safely on the ground.

Carry extra altitude/speed/energy until the runway is assured, then nose up to bleed it all off, and let it settle in.

Penny did a masterful job of that landing. If it hadnt been for the announcer keeping us informed, no one would have realized there was a problem.

[Kevin Horton]

Originally Posted by airguy

Interesting note on Rare Bear - for those of you who were there, you'll remember that he called Mayday during the cooldown laps with a stuck throttle. John Penney could not reduce power below 35" and 2400 rpm, and only had about 8 minutes of fuel left onboard at that power setting.

I wonder if the Reno racers have a waiver to the 30 minute reserve fuel requirements of FAR 91.151.

[RV10Rob]

Originally Posted by teookie

This guy was amazing. He did things I've only seen R/C planes do.

"This guy" is Michael Goulian: http://mikegoulian.com

[airguy]

Originally Posted by Kevin Horton

I wonder if the Reno racers have a waiver to the 30 minute reserve fuel requirements of FAR 91.151.

Unknown - but the FAR only requires 30 minutes of fuel according to the FLIGHT PLAN. Actual conditions are allowed to vary, but the fuel load at departure must allow PLANNED landing with 30 minutes. A much higher than planned fuel burn following the checkered flag was obviously encountered in this case, it's entirely possible he could have managed 30 minutes at normal cool-down power rates. At the time of Mayday (about 90 seconds after the checkered flag), he said he 50 gallons of fuel onboard pulling 35" MAP, and his crew chief radioed back "8 minutes fuel". And you're right, he did a wonderful job of energy management.

And as far as the announcer keeping the crowd informed - yes he did a good job, but I would NEVER come to Reno without a radio to listen directly to race frequency. Please please please bring a scanner only - not a transciever - we have problems every year with people in the crowd unintentionally transmitting and blocking the primary race frequency, sometimes requiring a mid-race freq change. 120.4 race frequency, 134.7 air boss, 127.3 ground ops.

[Kevin Horton]

Originally Posted by airguy

Unknown - but the FAR only requires 30 minutes of fuel according to the FLIGHT PLAN. Actual conditions are allowed to vary, but the fuel load at departure must allow PLANNED landing with 30 minutes. A much higher than planned fuel burn following the checkered flag was obviously encountered in this case, it's entirely possible he could have managed 30 minutes at normal cool-down power rates.

Actually, the reg calls for 30 minutes of fuel at "normal cruising speed", which would probably have quite a bit higher fuel flow than the cool down laps.