AirVenture Cup Air Race

On the Sunday right before Oshkosh, for the last sixteen years, the AirVenture Cup Air Race has been held. The starting point alternates between Mitchell, SD and Dayton, OH, making the race around 450-500 miles long. It used to finish at Oshkosh but the finish line has been moved out to nearby airfields since Oshkosh gets so busy. This year, the finish line was set to be at West Bend, about an hour's drive south of Oshkosh. It is also the first year that the Sport Air Racing League was in control of the race, which meant that it was open to production aircraft for the first time - previously it had been for Experimental aircraft only.

I was lucky enough to hitch a ride with Sam down to West Bend. We got there in time to be told there was a big lump of weather moving in from the south, and the finish line was therefore being moved to Waupaca, about 40 minutes drive north of Oshkosh! So after a quick refreshment break, a bunch of people piled into their cars and we headed back up the road. I did manage to take a picture of this cool sign at West Bend before we left:

About an hour and 40 later, we arrived at Waupaca. The race start had been delayed to allow the timers to move, so we were in plenty of time before racers started coming through. A tent canopy was set up with some tables for the timers, and some bright orange tarpaulins were laid out either side of the taxiway to mark the finish line.

Eventually we started to hear radio calls from incoming racers. First in were all the speedy Lancairs, Questaires, SX300s and similar. This is a Questaire Venture:

There were around forty aircraft in the race, and quite a wide variety of aircraft types. However, this is something I did not expect to see looming in my lens!

What a treat to see the one-of-a-kind Rutan Boomerang being wrung out across the finish line! It truly is as asymmetric as the pictures show; it was designed to be a very safe twin; if one engine fails there is no yaw due to the difference in shape either side.

Here's Team Ely, who are currently in the points lead for this SARL racing season:

Three twin-engined Defiants entered the race, so they made a new race class for them. They move along pretty fast, and have that curious rudder underneath next to the nose gear. The vertical surfaces on the wings do not move. This is another Rutan design.

Nice to see the Polen Special out again, I haven't seen it in a couple of years.

Low finish pass of the Day award goes to Race 83; zooooom!

There was a bit of a line for the gas pump afterwards.

I took a few moments to look at the aircraft on the ramp once they were parked. Here's the inside of the Boomerang. It is cool how the door moves inside and down, it is more of a hatch then a door.

Later on, I was delighted when the race staff threw me into the back of this Cirrus for the journey back to Oshkosh!

Waupaca Airfield from the air. The finish line was over the taxiway on the left, where there is a 4-way junction with the smaller taxiway leading to the ramp.

The glass panel inside the Cirrus shows clearly the route through Ripon and Fisk into Oshkosh. This time, I got to experience the higher, faster version since we would fly at 2300 feet and 135 knots. We got routed further along the railroad tracks to join the circuit for 27.

Entering the downwind for 27, you get a great view of the North 40, which is pretty packed with aircraft already. The gap on the left would fill up quickly.

Getting into line for the final for 27 takes you over the lake and back in. There are at least five aircraft ahead of us in this shot! One is far left, over the trees. The next is about 1/3 in to the image from the left, again over the trees. The next is up and right a bit, at the top edge of the trees. There's one about to cross the runway threshold; from our point of view he is over the grass on the left. And the last is hard to spot, but he's between the orange and green dots on the runway. Click on the image below to see them better, but that's a typical day at Oshkosh.

Later that day, I was walking past the race tent and got collared by Linda, who said I should go with her and the other racers to the awards dinner! We all got into a school bus which took us to Wendt's On The Lake; a fish restaurant located a little ways past the seaplane base on the shores of Lake Winnebago. The dock that runs out into the lake used to be the finish line for the race; tradition has seen the awards dinner held here ever since. It was obviously a popular spot since it was heaving! Eventually everyone got settled under a huge marquee and enjoyed some dinner (and free beer; woo-hoo!).

The awards were duly presented; for the individual recipients click here for the photos, but here's a picture of the awards they were all racing for:

I think everyone enjoyed themselves; they certainly all seemed to have very large smiles at the end of a long and competitive race.

Sport Air Racing League
Full AVC photo gallery

Epic Voyage to Oshkosh 2012

I've travelled in style to Oshkosh the last couple of years, in a turbine powered King Air. But I'd always wanted to do the journey the 'proper' way, in a small General Aviation aircraft. So when friend Glenn asked if I wanted to join him in his Cessna 172 for the trip, I couldn't say no.

Dawn at Georgetown

Glenn, his wife Nadya and I left Georgetown, TX (KGTU) early in the morning on Saturday 21st July. The fuel pumps were broken at the airport, so our first stop was Hillsboro (KINJ), about 90 miles up the road, to fill up. I rode in the back, which was actually pretty comfortable. Way more legroom than a commercial flight! We passed by Dallas on the way up.

Dallas Skyline

Then it was on to Neosho, Missouri (KEOS). This is the home base of Kyle Franklin and pictures of his airshow acts were all over the walls inside the FBO there.

Pit Stop at Neosho

Nadya chose to ride in the back for the second half of the trip, which allowed me into the right seat up front for the next leg to Fairfield, Iowa. By this point, we had caught up with another Cessna 172 also out of Georgetown, and flew up in parallel with them, a few miles apart. We landed at Fairfield (KFFL) just ahead of them, and ended up borrowing the airport car for a run into town, for some late lunch.

First Solo certificates at Fairfield

Fairfield gate guard

The town of Fairfield was interesting; it seems to be heavily populated by Ayurvedics, there is the Maharishi University of Management, the Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment, and plenty of other Maharishi things around town. Lots of buildings are built in the Maharishi Sthapatya Veda style of architecture and there is a whole Vedic town three miles down the road. According to Wikipedia there is a thriving green and tech culture here too. We only managed to sample the local Subway shop, but their main street looked nice.

The last leg was the shortest at around one hour, and I remained in the right seat, to my delight. Glenn decided to fly on the other Cessna pretty much all the way, which allowed for some air-to-air shots :-)

Air-to-air Cessna

We were going to follow the Ripon-Fisk arrival into Oshkosh. There is a NOTAM that gets distributed in the months before the event, it is thirty pages long and describes how to arrive and depart from Oshkosh for all the different classes of aircraft. You can download a copy here if you fancy a look at it, although I don't know if that link will last forever. Rotorcraft and ultralights have their own procedures, faster warbird and turbine aircraft approach from the other way over the lake, but all fixed wing prop-driven aircraft must arrive from the same direction.

You start to fall into line at Ripon. Eyes on stalks, keeping a lookout in all directions for other aircraft. We joined the conga line of aircraft in single file, spaced half a mile apart. There is a water tower and farm buildings pictured in the NOTAM, and on arrival you can spot them just fine. Then follow the railroad tracks up a few miles to Fisk. We spotted a few more aircraft joining behind us. We flew the low and slow version; 90 knots at 1800 feet. The other option is 135 knots at 2300 feet for faster aircraft. We did get overtaken by a Vans flying the higher, faster version of the arrival.

We were monitoring the radio well in advance of Ripon, listening to the controllers routing aircraft into the two runways currently in use. They are fast-talking, busy people! Unlike standard radio procedure, you don't talk back to the controllers unless they directly ask you something. Some of the aircraft in front of us were being given the choice of runway 27 or 36. When you get to Fisk, they will say something like 'Red and white Cessna, rock your wings!' and you give a vigorous wing rock as your answer. Then they tell you where to go.

Landing at Oshkosh on 36L

Our traveling companion was a bit close to us, so he got routed to runway 27, and we got told to make the right turn to follow the road out of Fisk towards Oshkosh, and join the left hand pattern into runway 36. You're then listening to another controller, who guides the various aircraft into land. There is a series of colored dots painted on the runway, and you get asked to aim for one of them, so they can space aircraft out. We landed juuuust short of the yellow dot! Since we were going to park at the Basler FBO on the other side of the field, we then got a tour of the airport as we taxied around.

This was my first time doing the Fisk approach, and Glenn's first time to actually fly it, although he'd been in the right seat before. I was able to help him with the frequencies, speeds, navigation etc while keeping a lookout, which I enjoyed being able to assist with; it was good to be involved. The whole thing seems actually pretty straightforward, as long as everyone does what they're told.

We made it to #OSH12 tired but happy!

Parked with our travelling companion at Basler FBO, Oshkosh

Fast forward to the following Saturday (27th), after a week of non-stop airplanes (of which more later). We got a later start than we anticipated due to a flat battery of all things. Glenn whipped the cowling off and hooked up a charger; 40 minutes later the engine started just fine. We taxied out and joined a very short line for runway 27. A jet took off in front of us, then we were marshaled out by the pink-shirted FAA controllers and off we went. The North 40 dropped away underneath us and we were gone.

FAA Pink-Shirt Marshaler

Bye, Oshkosh.

Only two fuel stops were planned for this trip, since we had filled up at Basler. The only snag was that on the way home, we would have to hand fly the plane! There is a little button in the panel that switches the autopilot on and off, which had got itself stuck just before we arrived at Oshkosh. No amount of fiddling and tweaking by Glenn would shift it. So back to basics it was...

The first leg was two hours down to Monroe City, Missouri (K52). Here we found a very pleasant lady - I think her name was Ruth - who was excited about all the extra visitors passing through on their way up and down from Oshkosh. She took our names, and a picture of us in front of our aircraft, which she would later print out and add to her records. She showed us her folders of Oshkosh visitors; one for each of (at least) the last five years. I flicked through this year's folder and found a couple of aircraft I recognized; one SARL air racer (Ken) and one Vans with a distinctive paint scheme I'd photographed at a fly-in last autumn.

Pit stop at Monroe City

I'd already offered to help Glenn fly if he wanted a respite, and here is where he took me up on it. He gave me the left seat, saying he was quite happy to fly from the right seat. The last time I sat in the left seat was probably 20 years ago, taking a trial lesson in a Cessna 150, so this was quite a big deal for me. Glenn took off and got us to about four thousand feet, at which point he handed me the controls. I continued up to 8500 feet and proceeded to fly south, while Glenn took the opportunity to relax his concentration...

Getting to know the panel very well

This leg was to be the longest; almost four hours. I flew the whole way until about two miles before touchdown; about three and a half hours. This is by far and away the longest I have ever flown; most of my 'stick time' comes in 10 or 15 minute bursts, if I am lucky. It was very cool to fly the left seat; I thought it would feel a bit strange but actually it's pretty natural; all the instruments are in front of you instead of having to squint over to the left all the time. I was following a combination of the heading bug on the compass, and the readout on the Garmin 430 which automatically calculates the wind-corrected heading to fly. Maintaining my altitude within +/-100 feet as best as I could - the bumps don't help - I flew straight and level at 8500 feet for a while, before Glenn looked at the winds and we decided to come down to 6500 feet. On and on we flew, with a good tailwind which was nice. It was pretty smooth at first until we reached a front, which had clouds at 8000 feet and lots of bumps underneath them. Nothing too major but enough to keep me on my toes. By the time we got near to the next airport, my eyes were tired from looking into the hazy brightness, and I could feel my accuracy wavering. We landed in at Paris, TX, just over the Red River border from Oklahoma.

Paris, TX

Paris, however, was closed. So all we could do was refuel and go. Glenn took the left seat again and I went into the right, and closed my eyes for a while to relieve myself from the bright. Flying that long was pretty tiring. This was a shorter leg, at least, a mere two hours which went past pretty quickly, despite the GPS telling us it would be 1:30 remaining, for at least 20 minutes... the winds had turned around a bit and we didn't have that lovely tailwind any more. However, we got back to Georgetown, all in one piece, in the evening light and Texas heat.

Back in Georgetown

Glenn says we spent 18.7 hours in total flying up there and back, 913 nautical miles up there, 909 back, 1822 in total. Go to Skyvector.com, click on 'Flight Plan', then copy and paste this line into the box:
kgtu kinj keos kffl kosh k52 kprx kgtu
You should get a pink line describing our route. You can only see one chart at a time, but you can choose them from the chart selector at the top. Zoom in and out at the bottom right.

It was, all in all, pretty epic.

Thunder Over Cedar Creek

Thunder over Cedar Creek is an airshow up near Corsicana, about 4 hours drive from my house. I believe it is the only one in Texas held over a lake.

I met Jim, Glenn and Nadya up there, and cutting a long story short, we scored the most fabulous vantage point for the show, on a private two-story boat dock overlooking the lake. We were right on the display line, just outside the aerobatic box. One heck of a great view!

Pictures from the show are still to come, but I had to share these. I took time lapse video of the final two performers of the night, flying aerobatics with lights and pyrotechnics.

Here is Matt Younkin flying his Beech 18:

This one is Otto the Helicopter (a Schweizer 300) flown by Roger Buis:

And finally, here is the time lapse video showing both aircraft:

We all thoroughly enjoyed this show and hope to return next year!

Venus Transit

I wanted to see the Venus Transit, but I don't have a solar filter for my telescope. So I thought that a fun thing to do would be to go to the viewing party being held in town, by the Austin Astronomical Society, UT and Austin Planetarium folks. They were going to have a bunch of telescopes set up on the roof of the Robert Lee Moore Hall at UT, downtown.

In case you don't know, the planet Venus occasionally gets between us and the Sun, at which time we can see it as an eclipse. This happens at rare intervals; the last one was five years ago and the next one won't happen for another 117 years, so if you missed the last one then now was the chance, or not at all.

I arrived just after 5pm, when the transit was starting. The RLM building is 19 stories tall. There was already a long line of people waiting for the elevators, but the staff directed us to the staircase. They had a projection room on the 13th floor for those who couldn't access the roof, but the elevators could only take so many people. Thus it was we all found ourselves getting our exercise for the day, climbing up the stairs... to the twelfth floor, where the line started!

It then took about an hour and a half for the line to slowly crawl up to the 19th floor, where we then had to snake around the corridors before - finally - stepping up into daylight on the roof... There were a lot of people here! I get the feeling they weren't expecting nearly so many folks to show up. However everyone stayed in good humour and there was a bit of a party atmosphere.

My plan was to simply have a look at the transit with my own eyes, and leave the proper photography to the guys with the equipment and experience to do this stuff properly. That didn't mean I wasn't going to try, though!

Here's a couple of the telescopes in use:

This was my first and best attempt at taking a shot by holding the camera up to a telescope eyepiece. I couldn't focus close enough with the camera to match the eyeball distance at the eyepiece. You can see here most of the Sun, with the black dot that is Venus, although it's a bit out of focus. But there it is, look, it's Venus!

They had a pair of binoculars set up, projecting an image back into a shadowed box. This cast a very respectable image of the Sun onto a piece of paper taped onto the back here:

I took this shot and then found a couple of solar filters lying around, so tried a handheld shot with the camera, holding these up to cover the lens. I also used the Live View mode on the camera, so I was looking at the LCD viewfinder, not through the main viewfinder - if the filters slipped, I didn't want to get an eyeful of Sun.

Moments after I got this lot held up, the people behind me looking at the box projection all cheered as an aircraft went through the image. I didn't realise until processing my own images that I also caught it! OK, it's not a fabulous image, but you can see the contrails with a dot in front, and the faint dot of Venus in the 1 o'clock position:

If you want to see what a camera stacked with a long lens and multiple teleconverters could have done, click here! (not mine, obviously)

Here's a couple more of the telescopes. There were a variety of types in use. Too bad the observation dome behind us wasn't in use ;-)

By this time, the staff were urging people to leave if they'd seen the transit already. Apparently the line had now reached the ground floor! There were also clouds moving in, so I hope they didn't all have to leave disappointed. The transit was due to last for six hours in total, but we only got to see three hours since the sun set half way through. I'm glad I went; it was fun.

I leave you with a view of UT and downtown Austin from the 19th floor:

SARL Air Race at Terrell, TX

This year's Memorial Day air race was held in the shiny new terminal building at Terrell Airport. This is a great new facility that pays homage to the No. 1 British Flying Training School that trained British pilots before America joined the war, during 1940. The floor in here shows a replica of the maps given to the British, to show how big Texas is in relationship to the rest of Europe.

Texas is pretty big

The race was sponsored by Bobby and Ann Elise Bennett, who held a party on the Friday night at their private airstrip a few miles from Terrell airport. I flew up with Mike Thompson in his RV-6 and we landed in alongside another couple of RVs. The party was very cool :-)

Race 193: Bobby B

Next morning, I hitched a ride with Bobby in his Beech Bonanza. The flight took all of about three minutes, but it was fun. We landed in at Terrell and were soon followed by lots of racers. The ramp filled up until about thirty planes were present. Not quite all of them were in the races, some just came to watch. I am always impressed with the variety of types that take part in these events; there was everything from an Aeronca Champion to the Swearingen SX300 that always leads the charge.

Race 391: Jason doing a burnout!

The race started; I stood by the taxiway and got loads of shots of the takeoffs. Those with smoke systems -especially new smoke systems - love to use them! Stand up Race 391 and Race 77... It takes about 20 minutes to launch everyone, and it is not long after the last one has gone that the fast guys are back. It takes about an hour for everyone to complete the course and land back in. The slowest guys can opt to run the short course, and on this day the Aeronca and an Ercoupe did so.

Mike Smith was first back in his SX300, which is a very sweet airplane, and it was my lucky day, since he kindly agreed to take me for a flight in it :-) We snuck off before the prize giving, while the race organizers were determining everyone's times.

Race 35: The SX300

The SX300 is a kit plane, although only very experienced builders constructed these things as they are very complex. It has a Lycoming IO-580 engine that makes 380 horses at 2900rpm, which is about as big as it gets for normally aspirated single engine planes. It has a retractable undercarriage which looks like it's been stolen off an F-18. It is sleek and fast even standing still, with thin wings, a raked tail and few exposed aerials or other lumps or bumps.

Getting into the beast takes some balancing; you put one foot on the step and then climb up onto the wing, which in this case has been waxed and polished, so don't lose your footing! Step into the seat, ducking under the raised canopy, and slide down until your bum hits the leather. At this point, Jason came over and took a few shots of us in the cockpit.

Jason took this picture of Mike and I in the cockpit

Mike started the engine and we taxied down to the runway. He closed the canopy, lined us up and pushed the throttle forward. There is a proper throttle quadrant in this plane, and once we had some speed, he slid the ram air control forward as well, to add two inches of manifold pressure for extra power. We shot off the runway and into the air in no time at all. This aeroplane seriously moves! It has a 3,000ft/min climb rate without even trying. Mike pointed the nose up at a pretty steep angle and we took an elevator ride up several thousand feet in short order. This SX300 is a little rocket ship.

We leveled out at around 4,000ft and flew around the clouds a little, doing around 230-240kts. Mike regularly sees 300mph (260kts) in a race situation; this is a fast aeroplane. Mike explained how much he loves the airplane as a rapid cross country machine. He can cruise at 10,000ft doing 240kts indicated air speed, burning 15.5 gals per hour. It is very stable in flight, no vibration from the engine, and he can trim the controls for hands-free flight if he wishes. It's very comfortable too.

The panel; we're just at the top of the climb-out, here

Mike asked me if I would like to fly it, and not being one to turn down such an opportunity, I took the controls with delight. He warned me it was very sensitive in pitch, and he wasn't wrong. I tried some turns, and found the aircraft very willing to go into a steepish turn, but heavier on the controls when leveling out again. I also found myself climbing in the turns more than in other aircraft - there's that sensitive pitch, again. I enjoyed having my own set of controls on the right side of the panel - Mike has his instruments set up with the standard six-pack duplicated either side, and it's pretty much all analogue. My kind of panel! Nothing wrong with modern digital displays, but I like round dials and needles. His airspeeed indicator has an impressive amount of green arc before the yellow starts at around 245kts. Red line is at 272kts (313mph). I spent an excellent ten minutes chasing down cloud streets and valleys, before Mike took it back again.

Sleek Machine

He then demonstrated a couple of aileron rolls, which were beautifully stable and totally positive-G, so I did not fall into my straps at all, but could enjoy the view of the world spinning under the top of my head. Then he went for a barrel roll, which was very cool. I really could do these all day, I just love them! More and more these days, I am thinking that if I ever do get my pilot's licence, I want to do two things - take people for rides, and do aerobatics (not at the same time!). Lots of aerobatics. But I digress...

Ramp O' Racers

Pretty soon we had to get back to base, for the race prize giving. We made one pass over the airfield before landing, during which I was able to get some shots of the ramp full of race planes. I love to be able to do that, it is such fun to see them all together. The ramp was devoid of people though - they were all waiting for us inside so that Mike could be awarded his prize - oops! We dashed in and the prizes ensued, so I got busy taking photos of the winners.

Race 55: The Elyminator; Team Ely

After the ceremonies, Linda needed some filming done, so we rigged a couple of my GoPro cameras into Bobby's Bonanza and one in Linda and Mike's (yet another Mike) Grumman AA5A. We took off and made a couple of circuits, with Linda on the ground taking ground-to-air video. I rode in the Bonanza to make sure the camera angles were right. Linda wanted to get some footage of the Bonanza passing the Grumman over the airfield. It was fun to fly with Bobby again, he really knows his airplane - actually, I could say that of all the racers I have flown with, they are good pilots.

Race 26: Mike T

We landed back in and then it was time to leave. Mike T and I loaded up his RV-6 again and we set course for home. It had only taken us 40 minutes to fly north thanks to a stonking great tailwind, but going south it was on our nose and took an hour to fly back. We climbed to 6500-7000 feet where the air was cooler, just above the cloud tops. I was quite happy, watching the cloud banks slide up alongside us and drop away below. I looked at Mike and he threw in an aileron roll to liven the proceedings up... Oh yeah! So if anyone looked up in the Temple area, and watched a small plane do one solitary flip en route, that was us...

Chalk another very fun race day into my books, at least. I may not see the SARL guys until later in the season now; they fly races elsewhere in the country during the summer season and don't come back to Texas until October. So until then, I wish them happy, safe and successful racing.

Here's a video of several assorted clips from the day's flying:

I could do aileron rolls all day...