Day 6 - Race Day 1. Do you want the good news or the bad news??

The day started with a 6am briefing and breakfast at the hotel, then we all got rides out to the airport under brilliant blue skies. Our planes were lined up on the ramp. We preflighted, got in, and waited for the signal to start our engines! Then we all taxied out in race order and released to depart on runway 10, in very quick successions. Mary flew the first leg, and we climbed up and out on the 120 heading that would take us to our first stop, Liberal Kansas. This was a 238 nm leg that should take us about 1 hour 45 minutes flying at full throttle. Despite the prognosis for unfavorable winds out of the Southeast, we picked up tailwinds of 12-20k t and made very good time to Liberal, with an average ground speed of 144 kt which was well above our handicap of 128.61 kt. The leg ended with the first flyby, where we had to fly full throttle down to 200 feet above ground level and zoom past the timing line at low altitude, before flying out to cool down our engines and come around to land and pick up fuel.

At Liberal we did a fast turnaround, and set off on the next leg which was 276nm to Sweetwater Texas, with me flying left seat. Again we made much better winds than predicted. We have taken a completely different approach to what we did last year. Instead of trying to predict what altitude the best winds are at, and wasting time climbing and descending to find them, we are flying at low altitude. Also, instead of trying to maintain a precise altitude, we are using the thermals and downdrafts to pick up speed, and are allowing the plane to follow them, so our altitude varies by hundreds of feet sometimes. Its too early to say, but we think this approach might work quite well...

At Sweetwater, we stopped again for gas after the flyby. Airport ground staff were very helpful, as at all the stops, giving us water and snacks and welcoming us. We also got interviewed by a reporter from the local paper! Sweetwater was home to the WASP (Women's Airforce Service Pilots), and we'd have loved to stay and see the museum, but with good weather we really wanted to continue. But we thought of our own Easter PA WASP Anne Shields! One of the race airplanes is carrying a WASP passenger Bernice Heydu, which is awesome.

This is where the bad news kicks in - are you ready?! While I was inside getting a weather briefing for the next leg by phone, Mary went outside. After a few minutes I saw her come back into the building, but now with a limp, a black eye, and a skinned shoulder and knees. Turns out she ran across the tarmac to help tow an airplane, got her foot caught, and fell headlong. Her ankle hurt very much, but she insisted on going on, and would not hear any discussion. So we set off on the third leg of the day, with me flying instead of Mary, 301 nm to Lufkin Texas. Mary did the radios and nav of course, and we did a great leg, and made great tailwinds.

Once we landed in Lufkin, it became apparent that Mary couldn't put any weight on her foot. Our wonderful new friend Sid Love drove us all the way to the ER, and after a lengthy wait for X rays etc it turns out that Mary has indeed broken her ankle, although it is more of a chip and not a displaced fracture or anything really bad. They put her in a cast to immobilize and gave her crutches, and that is pretty much how she will stay until she gets home. Thank you to the hospital staff, including Jo Anne, for your help.

So here we are at the hotel, completely exhausted, with a 5am wakeup call coming up. We completed three out of nine legs in the first day, with great times, but one of our pilots is injured. It is most likely that we'll continue the race with me flying and Mary doing right seat duties, but we'll decide that in the morning when we get up!

Mary in the ER, looking happier than she felt.

Day 5 - The adrenaline builds!

Last day before the race! The day began (after the now customary trip to IHOP) with an 8am briefing on all nine flyby procedures. We were advised to fly particularly accurately approaching one of the stops that requires a high speed flyby at 200 agl near a prison, because the guards have apparently assured us that they will shoot at planes that get too close! We also reviewed the start procedures for leaving Centennial tomorrow; and had a safety briefing; and a weather briefing by Dale from Lockheed Martin.
We went to the first part of the New Racers briefing at 1pm, where they described how to execute dual flybys. These occur when two racers arrive at the timing mark very close together, and both wish to execute the low speed flyby, rather than one party break away for spacing and thereby losing time. They were not allowed last year, so we were interested to see what the procedure is. I hope we won't actually get to do one of these. I have graphed out all the race teams including their speed and order of take off from Denver, so we can see which planes will be bunched close to us approaching the first stop in Liberal Kansas. This is a short leg (238 nm), and there will be 5 or 6 planes that will be right on top of us, so we will be watching and planning to make sure we can get our flyby slot without getting in anyone's way.
In between all of this I was taking phone messages and running to the hotel printer and fax machine trying to manage my house buying/ selling activities. Then, just to add an extra dollop of stress onto the whole situation, I broke a tooth while listening to the briefing and eating candies! It didn't hurt at all, but I was worried that it might suddenly start bothering me in the middle of the race, which would have been bad. How fortunate then that Colorado 99s volunteer Mary-Lou Pohl was on duty this afternoon, and her husband Raymond is a dentist!! Marylou drove me over to his office, and he confirmed that the tooth was chipped but not badly. He ground it down a bit so it was smooth and sent me on my way. Marylou and Raymond are both Mooney pilots, and it was great talking with them about mountain flying and air racing. I am truly grateful to both of you for helping me out!
While I was doing this, Mary finished the New Racers briefing then headed out to the airport to top up the oil and bring back the tranceiver for charging. We have both been running about all day, and are looking forward to an early dinner, then a chance to brief tomorrow's route, then an early bed.
No photos today, because there wasn't much to photograph, plus my new camera appears to have died although Mary's is fine. We'll definitely post photos tomorrow to show the first leg of the race though. We think the weather will be great Tues and Weds, but more iffy on Thurs, and so would like to get 3 legs under our belt tomorrow. The first three legs are Denver to Liberal Kansas; then on to Sweetwater Texas; then on to Lufkin Texas, a total of just over 800 nm. Hopefully tomorrow we will be blogging from Texas!

Day 4 - Aviation heritage and legacy

I slept in till 830 today, then joined Mary and eight other racers at IHOP for breakfast (yes, again - women air racers do like pancakes and coffee for breakfast!). We then took a ride over to a hangar at the airport for an event organized by aviation artist Joe Jones, plus Nick Sparks and Amanda Pope, the producers of a new documentary on legendary aviatrix Pancho Barnes. The event was to honor women in aviation, and particularly us air racers. Mary and I each got an autographed poster of the Joe's artwork for the movie, and we got to talk to all of them. Then there were short speeches by the local Fox news chief meteorologist, who is also a pilot; by the first woman airline pilot Emily Howell Warner; and by our own Gene Nora Jessen, test pilot, racer, and one of the Mercury 13. Mary and I both had tears in our eyes as Emily Warner described her long road into professional aviation, at a time when she trained many men to fly for the airlines, but wasn't allowed to fly for them herself. Like many women who have fought the great battles in the struggle for equality, she was funny, self-deprecating, and matter of fact about what she has done.
Mary and the Purdue collegiate team, Juliana and Lauren.











Then we saw the start of the new Pancho Barnes movie, which was great. Pancho was voiced by Kathy Bates, and the movie was narrated by Tom Skerritt. Pancho was a larger than life character who received a traditional Victorian upbringing and was wed early to a clergyman, but broke away to go work on a banana boat disguised as a man, during which time she got mixed up in the Mexican revolution! Then she learned to fly, and became a great speed pilot who participated in the first Powder Puff Derby (predecessor of the current Air Race Classic) in 1929, along with Amelia Earhart. She is most famous for running the Happy Bottom Riding Club in the high California desert, which was the favorite hangout of all the test pilots from what is now Edwards Air Force Base. She was a hard drinking, hard living woman who swore like a trooper, and an excellent pilot as well. The movie had some really funny moments.

Gene Nora talking to a young fan. This little girl already has 6 hours in airplanes. Her first ambition is to be the only woman to fly a triplane; and then she wants to successfully complete Amelia Earhart's round the world, trans-Pacific trip. She was awesome!
Unfortunately we had to leave early for the All Racers briefing. This only took two hours (compared to 7 hours last year), which was a relief, and we were reminded about all the safety and planning aspects of the race which was very useful.


The flyby procedures for each stop have now been posted - here is a picture of the procedure at Jacksonville Il.

Tonight we have a Start Banquet, so Mary and I cleaned up for that. We haven't eaten all day so we appreciated the food. Each team was called up to receive their charm depicting the 2009 race route. Some pics from the event...

Day 3 - Official paperwork and inspection day

The day started with us meeting the girls from last night in the lobby to go to breakfast at IHOP. Also joining us was Heather, a first time racer who had flown all the way over from Australia. Her race partner had fallen sick at the very last minute, and US pilot Linda Meeks had stepped in to fill the position. These two racers did not meet in person until today, but they're both great and we think they will do really well together. We completed registration, and the credentials check where race officials check that we have our pilot licenses, insurance form, biannual flight review, medical and other required information. We then headed over to the airport.

It was a cold and windy morning, but we got the race number decals applied to the fuselage and underside of the wings without too much swearing. We then wandered down to hangar 21 where Verne and the other race mechanics were conducting the mandatory airplane inspections. There was a line of planes building up, waiting their turn.

Below are Kelly and Erin, Classic 7, working on their Beechcraft Debonair; and Cynthia and Mary, Classic 25, working on their Cessna 172M.

I called my friend Ian Critchley, who lives in Boulder. The last time I saw him was when I visited Boulder for the 99s Convention a couple years ago, and so it was great to hear that he had the time to pop over to Centennial despite the short notice. Mary and I headed over to the restaurant at the Denver Jet Center for lunch, then she headed off to do a girl scout event while I caught up with Ian.

We headed back over to the airplane around 230pm for our own airplane inspection. Mary taxied the plane over and conducted the static runup check; then the mechanics took off the cowling and looked through their checklist of items to make sure we had not performed any sneaky or race-illegal modifications on the plane. It seemed to go much faster than last year! The one bummer was that it turns out that since our black race numbers were stuck on over the brown and orange fuselage stripes, there was not sufficient contrast and we really should have got ones with a 3 inch white outline. I was kicking myself for not having thought of this when I ordered them, but we were certainly not the only team in the same predicament. Fortunately Terry Carbonell had the forethought to bring a roll of white contact paper for just such a contingency, and we were able to cut out and stick on forms to provide the required contrast. However I don't think either of us are going to be winning prizes for arts and crafts any time soon - our work might look OK from 200 feet below, but does not stand up to close inspection!

Made the half mile walk back to the jet center for about the sixth time today, and got a ride back over to the hotel to change, then back again for the Welcome Reception. I am having a panic attack about buying a house in PA while air racing in CO, but felt slightly better after a couple of beers. We got to meet old friends from last year, including Linda's and my Mother Bird from last year, Caroline Baldwin, plus Linda Street-Ely, Carolyn van Newkirk, test pilot and Mercury 13 astronaut Gene Nora Jessen, Anne Marie Radel and Julieann Sikora (Classic 1), Minnetta Gardiner and Linda Moody (Classic 4), Kelly Burris and Erin Recke (Classic 7); as well as new friends such as Dee Bond from NZ. Came back for dessert in the hotel with Laura, Camelia and Bill. It was a nice day, despite no flying, but we are now are pretty exhausted. Two more grounded days to go until race start on Tuesday.

Day 2 - We made it to Denver!

Left St Louis this morning after breakfast, filing IFR to Salina Kansas. The St Louis airport is enormous, and full of SouthWest airplanes, but about 15 taxiways and one runway were closed for work, so it took ages to get cleared to taxi to the active runway. Mary took off around 9am and we headed West once more. We flew at 8000 ft to avoid turbulence lower down, but once again headwinds slowed us down. But the choices we made yesterday really paid off - by flying a more Southerly route to St Louis, we avoided a whole bunch of weather to the North today. As the flight progressed the clouds thickened, and the GPS showed active cells fairly close to our route. Since it was such a clear day under the clouds, we got a nice view of one cell that had built fast and was raining heavily a few miles away. We flew this leg at full throttle all the way to simulate race conditions, and were pleasantly surprised that at 8000 ft the engine could be leaned out to only 11 gallons per hour even at this high setting. Approaching Salina, a cold front started to move in across the route, so we landed a few miles short at Manhattan Kansas, known to the locals as "the little apple"!.

Mary's legs, and the instrument panel showing the GPS496.

PS Thanks to Kenny for fixing the autopilot - we really appreciate it!

In Manhattan we borrowed a crew car and drove out for lunch. The lady at the desk told us "its a small red compact with a lot of hail damage". Bizarrely, when we started to look around the parking lot we saw at least four cars meeting that description, so we had to go back inside and get more specific directions! We had a good lunch, and by the time we arrived back at the airport the frontal weather had passed over.

I departed on a clearance for Akron Colorado, into blue skies with little puffy white clouds to play in. Again we flew this leg at full throttle to simulate race conditions, leaned out to 11 GPH. The plane did great, except that (annoyingly) the gear in transit light came on again, again with a definite drop in airspeed indicating we were probably getting some drag once the gear had shifted. This time we recycled the gear and the problem went away.

Meantime, the weather just kept getting better. We were flying across the vast open planes of central Kansas, with a reported visibility of 70 miles although I'm pretty sure it was more like 150 miles. You can practically see the curvature of the earth under these conditions, and the land just stretches away in a patchwork of farms and fields for as far as the eye can see in all directions. Mary had fun flirting with the Kansas City Center controllers, and we talked to another collegiate race team on their way to Denver. Once we crossed the frontal barrier and into Colorado, the winds shifted and we picked up a 15-25 knot tailwind, with ground speeds up to 150 kt! We were making such good time that we amended our destination to go all the way to Denver Centennial, our ultimate destination. All in all, Pottstown PA to Denver CO in about 13 hours.

Approach to landing, 17R at Denver Centennial!

Touched down in Denver around 4pm local time, and taxied to our assigned FBO, the Denver JetCenter. Frank, the husband of a local 99, kindly drove us to the Sheraton where we were staying. We took a shower and just missed the closing of registration, which we will take care of tomorrow. We met a couple of other racers that we remembered from last year, including Camellia Smith, her husband Bill, and her copilot Laura Berry (racer 15), as well as Cindy Kerr and her new partner Mary Unger (racer 25), and we all crammed into Bill's rental car and went off for a really nice dinner.

Day 1 - 6.5 hours flying to St Louis Missouri!

Our adventure began early this morning, when we met at Perkiomen Valley airport in the pouring rain, with the goal of flying to the Air Race Classic start in Denver Colorado in time for the start deadline of 11am on Saturday. It was cold, grey and miserable as we loaded our gear into the plane, and Arnie topped off the tanks for us. The weather services showed a heavy weather system over most of the East coast, with thunderstorms embedded throughout. But it was moving away to the East, and we could see a way through to clearer weather out West. We filed IFR to Columbus Ohio, with Mary flying the first leg. It was raining hard when we took off, and almost immediately went into the cloud. Mary climbed to 6000 feet as we contacted Philadelphia Approach. It was turbulent and a complete white out, and at one point Philly had to relay communications to us via another pilot because although we could hear them, they couldn't hear us. Mary said "this SUCKS!". We were in the soup all the way to Pittsburgh, but then we started to break out of the cloud tops and see blue sky above. Near Altoona we crossed a convergence of two fronts and the weather went down again, but although the cloud cover remained the bases were coming up at the airports further West. We took the ILS 28 approach into Columbus, but were able to approach and land visually. It was a tough 3 hour leg, and Mary did great.

We went to Odyssey Aviation at Columbus and managed to scrounge some fruit while the plane was refuelled. We picked up our voice messages, and I found that I may have bought a new house!! as the sellers have accepted my offer. Cool.

I originally intended the next leg to end in Peoria Illinois, but the weather showed a large convective system bearing down on Peoria from the NW at 35 kts, and there were severe weather watches and convective sigmets for the whole area. So we figured out that if we went further South we could avoid it, and filed to St Louis Missouri instead. I took off into nice clear weather. Around Terre Haute we heard some other female voices on the frequency headed West (call sign ...701...), so Mary asked if they were on their way to the Air Race Classic too, and they said yes! We think you guys might be one of the collegiate teams. We picked up headwinds over 30 kt at 6000 feet which were really slowing us down, so we descended to 4000 feet. The winds were better there, but there was a thick cloud layer so I also logged a chunk of instrument time. I was worried that at our slower ground speed we didn't have enough fuel to get to St Louis, but we did, and were given a visual approach to 28L following a regional jet. We left N29SP at Signature Aviation and checked into the Drury hotel for the night. We have no less than three free drinks coupons (each!), so are about to go down to the bar and restaurant for some real food.

Disgusting picture - when you're flying in cloud and have finished with your gum, there's no time to dispose of it nicely! Sorry Adelle.



Proof that we made it to St Louis - and that its almost 100 degrees here, which is why we look hot.

Mary unpacking the plane at St Louis.

Final preparations

Last night the mechanics did a final oil change; and fixed the issue with the "gear in transit" light, which was on too sensitive a setting. We have a part on order that should get the autopilot working again, that will reduce our workload on long legs somewhat, and we hope it will come in from California tomorrow. Today I flew the plane back to Perkiomen from Pottstown Muni with Mary right seat (1400 overcast), and we washed and waxed the N29SP, with the help of Mary's husband Arnie Wunder. All we have to do now is put on the number "8" decals. The current plan is to depart Thursday morning early - there's no good weather day out East this week, so we'll just file IFR and set off early to avoid the thunderstorms.