Thursday, September 16, 2010

Flying Towards Winter

This is the week I live for. It's Air Race Week in Reno. Qualifying and Racing begins today over the High Desert at Stead Field for the 47th Reno National Championship Air Races.

I first attended the Reno Air Races in 1982, and have been out to see them every year since save two and a half.

About that half...It was 2007. I was staying at a friend's house in Reno while I remodeled the windows in his kitchen. Steve-O-Reno's house was in the hills just above the University of Nevada/Reno Campus.

I had 12 linear feet of the kitchen wall behind the kitchen sink, opened to the elements while I removed the original windows and framed in the space for the new, wrap-around windows that would give a panoramic view of Reno and the Truckee Meadows.

The strong diurnal winds blew straight into the kitchen every afternoon, so I got after it early so I could wrap up the day's work and cover the opening with plywood protection before the afternoon winds would ramp-up enough to be a problem.

During the remodel, Steve-O-Reno had company over before dawn for a Deck Party...the view of the Reno Balloon Races are beyond compare from Steve-O's deck. They launch almost 100 hot air balloons from Rancho San Rafael Park just under a mile away.

The next week was Air Race Week, and I was pushing hard to get the window project wrapped up. I didn't  even go out to Stead to spend the day on Sunday for the Medal Rounds of Unlimited Class Racing. I ran out there Saturday afternoon and caught the final Gold Class Unlimited Race Qualifyer.

In 2007 there were plenty of aircraft over Reno proper, and from my scaffolding outside Steve-O-Reno's Kitchen, I could see the Unlimiteds and the AT-6 racers "coming down The Chute" to the start, and there was a vintage B-17 flying out of RNO all day, all week, giving $200 rides over the Truckee Meadows.

I also missed one year in the 90's, 1993. That year Rick Brikert lost his life when he crash landed the Burt Rutan designed "Pond Racer" . Bob Pond had commissioned the design and construction of a composite purpose-built Unlimited Class Racer when he became alarmed at the rate at which historic War Birds were being turned into Reno Unlimited Racers that were suffering damages, crash losses and destroying irreplaceable engines at an accelerating rate.

Everyone missed the 2001 Reno Air Races, all non-military aviation in and out of North America was still on hold in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, PA

The weather will be a factor this year.

The Reno AFD says:

.LONG TERM...SATURDAY THROUGH TUESDAY...
 MODELS CONTINUE TO SHOW UPPER LOW MOVING INTO THE AREA FROM SAT-SUN 
 AND ARE IN BETTER AGREEMENT OVERALL BUT DIFFER ON DETAILS. GOING 
 WITH A MORE GFS-GEM-GEFS IDEA THIS MORNING WITH TIMING OF MAIN FRONT 
 FOR SAT NIGHT. EC IS A BIT FASTER BUT WITH LACK OF A VERY STRONG 
 JET...PREFER THE SLOWER TIMING. MAIN DIFFERENCES IS HOW FAR SOUTH 
 JET WILL BE AND THUS PRECIP CHANCES. COULD BE QUITE WET LIKE 
 GFS..BUT PREFER GEM AMOUNTS RIGHT NOW WHICH SEEM A BIT MORE 
 REASONABLE. STILL...THIS SYSTEM WILL HAVE PLENTY OF MOISTURE TO WORK 
 WITH AS IT IS PULLING A 1.5+ PW PLUME EAST OF 130W ATTM.
 
This is gonna be great! Rain or Shine, I'll be out enjoying "The Sound of Freedom" in the high desert!

No comments:

Post a Comment