Reno 2002

WarbirdAeroPress.com's Reno 2002 Daily Coverage

Friday 9/13

Today's Coverage by Michael and Chris Luvara

The Reno Air Races continued their dramatic week today with triumph and tragedy. For those readers following the past week of events, attrition has been taking its toll on aircraft here at the 39th annual Reno Air Races, whittling the field down. Today, unfortunately, was no exception.

It's certainly hard to summarize the day's events in words. At approximately 2:30 pm today, a sport racer crashed fatally near the home pylon after structural failure. At the time of this writing, RARA has not released official word or details about the pilot or plane. (Please see RARA's official site at www.airrace.org for official news). After the accident, the race was red flagged and the remaining aircraft exited the race course and landed. During recovery, another sport class racer was substantially damaged during a landing incident. At this point, RARA postponed several airshow routines while efforts were underway to assist the pilots and to secure the racing site for further operations.

The final gold race unlimited was run around 4:00, which served to end the day on a more positive note. However, the mood around Stead was somber.

There was some Racin'!

Even though tragedy was the days' news, a lot of great racing occurred. The Silver heat race saw Art Vance in Furias and Bill Rheinschild in Risky Business do battle on and off of the course (keep reading!). Dago Red and September Fury went at it in the Gold heat race.

Much progress has been made on Tiger's behalf this week. After blowing his race motor when it sneezed during qualifying, his crew has managed to get another motor assembled and installed into the airframe today. What lies beneath the engine case? Only Tiger, the crew and a few select insiders know. We can say that the motor originated from Dan Martin's shop and is a "Sparrow-built" Merlin. It's also housed in a gray case rather than the typical Strega red. Word has it that Dan's race motor was better to rebuild than Tiger's in the short timeframe that they had. Time will tell what power the motor harnesses.

After the final gold race today, Rare Bear was taxied out to the tarmac and Lyle Shelton hopped into the cockpit. A few turns of the prop and the
Bear's distinctive roar emerged over Stead. After 5 minutes of running at various power settings, the mixture was cut and the motor freewheeled to a stop. The crew was happy - as evident from their cheery mood and smiling faces. The motor ran well - very well. This was good news for the Bear and crew as previous runs were not 100% satisfactory. However, it appears that the Bear will not Race in 2002.

Precious Metal

Two interesting signs in the pit area caught our attention today. Both belonged to Precious Metal, but one wasn't in their pit area. You can draw your own conclusions!. Turning to her performance, she was solid and performed to the crew's plan - run safe and finish the silver race. Ron Buccarelli has taken an incremental approach in working his way up the Unlimited racing ladder, finishing in the middle of Silver today. Will he and the plane move up into the Gold after Saturday?

The silver race was certainly the most interesting of the day. During the takeoff and join up, several of the racers made early turns in order to join the T-33 pace aircraft more quickly. This meant that the racers arrived in the formation at different places and times; not in the normal race order that facilitates a orderly join up. After some manuvering to get the formation sqaured away, Risky and Furias got "a little" close. Through the normal turblulence and such, nobody really noticed the two racers had a meeting in the skies west of Stead. Even Dennis Sanders remarked that he didn't see any pieces come off.

About nine inches of Furias' right elevator was clipped by Risky's prop. The result? hard to believe, but both racers continued and hammered thorugh a great silver race. The missing metal was only discovered when they got on the ground.

Furias' crew went to work to replace the elevator's tip, and Risky's prop was redressed and announced fit. Are you wondering about Rhino's mood? We spoke with him late today, and he was positive and upbeat. "We have procedures, and we didn't follow them today," he said. "If you don't follow procedures, these things happen."

What can we say? Skip turned her around the pylons as tight and low as usual keeping ahead of Mike Brown at all times. That isn't to say that Mike
didn't put any pressure on him. How much does "The Skip" have left? It's directly proportional to how hard the second place airplane is running.

Mike Brown certainly has had some magic done to his modified Sea Fury. Behind Skip today, Mike turned some HOT laps behind Skip. It's one fast Sea Fury! What's left on the throttle quadrant? Well, that's to be shown on Sunday, if there is any left…

Voodoo

Will she quit teasing, strip off her clothes on Sunday and show us her goods? Or has she already shown us her potential? She kept a safe
distance from Mike Brown in September Fury and Skip Holm in Dago Red today as those two battled out front. This has many wondering if there a hot little Merlin under the hood or just a slightly tweaked stocker? This is another closely kept secret around the pits this year. We'll have to wait till
Sunday.

Miss America

The crew has her locked away on the East side of the field, away from most prying eyes. The aircraft is being disassembled and preparations are underway to transport the aircraft for rebuild. Word is, "next year."

Critical Mass' area wasn't full of action - but the pit had a large number of spectators. The motor and mount have been removed
from the airframe. All components will be trucked back to the team's Auburn base.

Yawn... Oh! The Airshow...

The airshow portion of the air races has been going really well. The Startfighters put on their demonstration, while the military F-16's blasted
by the crowd during their demo's. Greg Poe wowed the crowd with his aerobatic routine, along with Julie Clark putting her T-34 through its paces.

So, what will Saturday and Sunday's races bring? There's a lot of cards not yet laid out on the table. It should be interesting as the throttles go
forward on Saturday and Sunday. Reno 2002 has certainly been one to mark the record books so far. With Critical Mass, Chech Mate, Miss America, and Rare Bear out of racing, it has many asking if Dago will run away with the Gold… Don't count out the others just yet!