Race to Ridgeland: Best Comment

logansc · #1 05-05-2008, 09:53 AM

Overheard from a Cessna pilot after the third annual Race to Ridgeland this weekend: "So many RV's came by me, I thought I was in a meteor shower"!

You gotta love it! First place went to Ron Schreck of Gold Hill, NC in his beautiful RV-8, "Miss Izzy" with an average speed of 203.25 knots over the125 nm course. Ron stuck around to later fly with Palmetto Flight as the slot in their terrific formation flight demonstration. A great day was had by all!

Full race and spot landing contest results will be on the website in a couple of days. Next year's event will be 2 May, 2009.

jclark · #2 05-05-2008, 12:30 PM

Great event you guys put on there Lee!

The Waco/Stearman flybys were really cool.

And thanks for the complement re "Palmetto Flight".

Looking forward to pictures!

James

TSwezey · #3 05-05-2008, 04:57 PM

I had a good time and so did my 7 year old and my 6 Month old! Next year we WILL be flying it Lee! Maybe we can get Jim to stick around! The hamburgers rocked!

groucho · #4 05-05-2008, 10:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by logansc

203.25 knots over the125 nm course.

Nice. Drooling...

pierre smith · #5 05-06-2008, 06:13 AM

....including us. I'd never run the engine at 2750 and up continuously for so long but Lycoming said it was fine in a phone call to them. We stayed in the yellow showing over 200 MPH for the entire 127.7 NM trip and 236MPH GS on the northbound leg with a southerly blowing at 2500'. It appears that Brian and I were second among the RV's. We passed a beautiful 160 horse -4 from JYL slowly, (Sylvania) Ga on the long leg and he told us (There was a race frequency to communicate to each other during passing, etc) that he was showing 197 with his Prince prop that, incidentally, was a work of art.

The really rough air at 1000MSL banged almost 4 G's....glad to have those 6G wings!

I'm now even more impressed with these little magic carpet rides we have.
If you guys pay attention to details like landing gear fairing fitments, canopy skirts, close fitting baffling and especially keeping the weight down, you'll also match these numbers for speed. We have the stock Van's cowl and baffling but it all fits tight.

Regards,

logansc · #6 05-06-2008, 10:37 AM

Pierre: You flew a great race but you got shut out of the trophies because when we re-ordered the results by using the Excel "sort" feature, your line on the spreadsheet went into a narrow unreadable field and the guys running the computer didn't notice it. As a result, your SECOND place overall finish wasn't visible! Darn computers are no better than their operators (and that definitely includes me).

I just got off the phone with the race coordinator and we finally figured out what happened. We owe you a Second Place trophy. I will order it next week and fly it up to you personally (you can buy lunch). Give me a couple of weeks to sort this out. As far as I know, there were no other glitches. The RV-4 you passed on the course pointed out to us that you had passed him and he didn't think he deserved the trophy he got (honest man!), but I assumed he beat you on handicap since he's flying an O-320/160hp with a lower handicap. Only later did I question whether that was enough of an advantage for him to have actually beaten your speed. Turns out he had not!

In talking to several of the racers afterward, everyone was definitely "hammer down" on the course! 27/27 was commonplace and higher even than that for some---not bad for day/VFR types!

Thanks to you and all the others who flew in and participated. We at Ridgeland had a great time too, thanks for helping make the R2R such a fun event, yet again.

Regards,

Lee...

pierre smith · #7 05-06-2008, 02:23 PM

....and for all you guys, go here and just scroll down for the results:

http://www.racetoridgeland.com/

Regards,

Bubblehead · #8 05-06-2008, 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pierre smith

....We passed a beautiful 160 horse -4 from JYL slowly, (Sylvania) Ga on the long leg...

That reminds me. My wife and I were trucking down over Georgia on our way to Sun-N-Fun using flight following. Atlanta Approach called out "traffic at your 12:00 shows 1000' below your altitude but we're not talking to him."

So I look out there and see a black dot and we are really catching up to him fast! I'm thinking "boy this RV-8 really beats the old spam cans." I tell my wife to watch as I blow the door off some poor Cessna driver.

The dot gets bigger, and bigger, then big, then black and white, and I suddenly realize..

...I have just overtaken Shamu the Blimp on it's way to Augusta for the Masters!

Bob Axsom · #9 05-07-2008, 07:24 AM

Happy to see the reaction to cross country air racing. If you could publish the raw average speed for all of the competitors and the aircraft types it would be more than a little interesting. These real world race performance numbers, both absolute and relative give good reliable and important information.

Bob Axsom