Mike Tompson is the best Contact
Mark,
I will send a message to Mike Thompson (
[email protected]) to help coordinate this he is the chairman of the Sport Air Racing League that is sanctioning the event and he is also the local man on the scene as well as a competitor in the RV Blue Class. The latest list of entries does not contain a #70 so that should not be a problem.
The course is very easy to follow go to
www.sportairrace.org and click on "Calendar of Events". On that page click on "The Rocket 1000". On that page click on "Rocket 100 Info". There you will find some narative and photographs of the course and several links as listed below:
[start of links listed]
Route and Turn Points
Race Rules
Rocket 100 Course Annotated
Course Narrative
SARL racers register here for the Rocket 100
Non-SARL racers register here for the Rocket 100
Worried About Pushing Your Engine Too Hard?
[end of links listed]
The first four of these links will get you familiar with the course to the point where you can plan the flight and set up the GPS for it. But after I completed my race flight plan yesterday I got a message from Mike saying there is a change to the start. Here is the message:
Folks,
We've had a change of the start point.
We will no longer start at the HUTTO water tower. We will start down the runway of the Macho Grande field.
Macho Grande is 41XS and its position is:
30-32.345333N 097-25.133333W
or
30-32-20.7200N 097-25-08.0000W
or
30.5390889 -97.4188889
depending on how your gadget wants to enter it.
Those of you who ran the Rocket 100 last year may recall the short dash South from Taylor to the highway, hanging a left (heading East) and following to the apex of the turn and then Macho Grande is right at your 3 o'clock, straight South.
A hard right turn and dive for the start down the grass strip, and away you go to Elgin (Turn 1).
The remainder of the course remains the same including the finish at the HUTTO water tower, same as last year's Rocket 100 and this year's Taylor 100.
Only the start point has changed.
I will send some pics from the Rocket package as soon as I can find them...
Gotta be on one of these computers somewhere...
Let me know what questions you have.
On a more general note, the weather seemed to be threatening, but I note a change in the local forecasts. Friday is looking better and Saturday has turned to scattered stuff, 30%, which I'm sure will be 30% somewhere else.
Well, we're no strangers to marginal weather at races, eh?
Consistent with the safety of your crew and your ship, I hope you will all make every effort to be here for this "season finale" race, the Rocket fly-in and SARL awards luncheon.
- Mike
The runway at Taylor is a north-south runway and we will probably be launched to the south. After takeoff I will fly south as the message today instructed to the highway the runs east-west just outside the airport boundary and turn left and look for the runway at Macho Grande. Mike says it is grass but I have not seen it and I do not know its orientation - I assume it is north-south. This will be the only tricky part of the race because we will be at a low altitude going as fast as we can and unfamiliar grass strips are notoriously hard to spot. It is shown on the San Antonio Sectional as an R in a Circle with the name Macho Grande 600 feet elevation and 2,500 feet long less than 2 miles SSE of Taylor Muni It is not in my GPS data base so I created a user waypoint called MACHO with the coordinates listed in Mikes message. I don't think I will have a problem finding it but weather permitting I will fly over it Friday for familiarity.
After that the course is very easy to follow using the GPS with no pre-race run required. My flight plan is in the airplane right now the "Route and Turn Points" table gives the lat-long of every significnt point in the race after the start [the change] and the mag course and distance from one point to the next.
After leaving the grass strip start point fly roughly 170 dergrees (all magnetic) for 11 miles to the Elgin water tower. The tower is highly visible but there are a lot of water towers in this part of the country sobe sure it's location is in your GPS as a user waypoint. N -30 degrees 22.03', W - 97 degrees 24.57'. This turn requires that you turn fairly tight to avoid a residential development.
Then proceed on a course of 72 degrees for approximately 38 nautical miles to the Caldwell Airport with the identifier RWV. You must make this turn at 1,400 ft. MSL or above . It is a fairly severe turn to an outbound course of 285 degrees.
The third turn is 38 miles away at a radome on the west side of Granger Lake. You will see the lake first but the radome stands out snd can't be missed. You turn to a new course of 203 degrees and head for the finish line 11 miles away.
The finish is on the right side of the Hutto watter tower which is very prominent and can't be missed.
Except for the start line at Macho Grande I'm sure you will have no troublewith the course.
I know of two others that are planning to show up and race if the weather permits it.
I hope you can make it We are flying there Friday. Sorry to read that Ron Lee can't make it.
Bob Axsom
