rv969wf said:
I've never entered an air race but might someday and would be interested to know what altitudes most of the pilots flew in this race, what kind of manifold pressures, RPM's and actual TRUE airspeeds. I did some testing today on my -6 [snip] Four way average of 221.25 mph. [snip] it's getting faster with everything I do. One thing that bothers me is flutter, what are the fast RV's doing about not getting into a flutter problem because I'm pushing the VNE. Thanks AJ
First, embarassment should be the furthest thing from your mind. It is just a lot of fun, no matter what place you finish in. On the contrary, it is fun to enter before you do many mods, and then see the improvement later.
Second, 221 under those conditions sounds pretty fast. We had a tough day during the Rocket race, with winds from the North at 25 kts or so, it was quite bumpy, and the direction made it a cross wind for most of the race. I think on a calm day the speeds would have been faster.
Typically, the racers run at 500 agl to keep the regs happy except when they think they have a tailwind, then higher of course. We had a barometric setting of 30.37, so add 600 msl for the area, and running at 500 agl means 1100 msl, subtract 1.1 " map for the altitude, then add it back for ram air induction, we were running around 30.4" wide open, redline rpm, for 30 minutes. During that time, the wind blew us 12 miles south. It was chilly at about 50 degrees F, so there wouldn't be that much difference between true airspeeds and average speed over the course, except that we flew the extra distance.
The RVs have all been flown a lot faster that this under various conditions, Dave Anders for sure at 225 or so kts, Tracy Saylor turned 206 kts in his RV6 in the last Sun n Fun race (at sea level on another bumpy day), and Rich Jankowski the same day at 204 in his RV6. Danny King says he saw something over 250 kts after he blew a loop in his RV8. So, as long things don't get too rough I don't worry about my Vne too much.
I know from your postings you are a kindred soul...you like to mess with your airplane, and try to get it to go faster. Racing is one of the rewards of all the work we put in. The other reward we get is flying along with other RVs on a trip, and using less gas
![Big grin :D :D](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
. Have fun, and come race with us!!