Dispatch from my living room couch: I impatiently email my mechanic: “Is the engine back on the airplane yet or is it still on the crane?”
The reply doesn’t come until the next day: “It is still on the crane as we mount sensors and things on the firewall.”
Clearly, I won’t be flying — much less racing — any time soon. It’s now been 48 days, 11 hours, 27 minutes, and six seconds since I last flew Race 53. [Read more…]
Dispatch from KDMH, Carbondale, Illinois: The carefully arranged chairs in the giant hangar are in disarray, hurriedly pushed and pulled to either side, parted like the Red Sea to make room to bring Les Burrill’s wounded bird— Race 11 — in out of the baking sun.
A small cluster of racers gathers around the green and silver plane, pulling off the cowling a piece at a time.
At Turn Four over the Grand Tower Bridge on the Mighty Mississippi, the Midget Mustang’s alternator belt broke. Burrill saw smoke, aborted, and returned to race central. [Read more…]
Dispatch from KABI, Abilene, Texas: I’m perched on the left wingwalk, leaning into the open cockpit. My shirttails keep coming untucked, and I’m praying that the waistline of my pants is high enough that I won’t be mistaken for a plumber, instead of an air racer.
I point to the instrument panel, “This one tells me how fast I’m going through the air, and this one tells me how fast I’m going up or down. This one here tells me what direction I’m going. This is the throttle, I use it to make the plane go faster or slower. Any questions?”
The 7-year-old boy looks up at me with big brown eyes and asks, “Where are the machine guns?”
No one’s ever asked that before. [Read more…]
Dispatch from KSPA, Spartanburg, South Carolina: I pull the wicked-looking black helmet over my head and cinch the chinstrap down tight. Next comes the neck guard, a thick foam collar that encircles my neck below the helmet. I step down into the cockpit and settle in, pulling the dual shoulder straps across my chest and snapping them into the five-point harness.
The Pitt Boss signals me. I lower the helmet’s visor. All I hear is my own breathing.
Faster than I’d like it to be.
The green flag drops. I punch the throttle. The nine-horsepower lawnmower engine roars to life and I’m off. [Read more…]
We’re lined up two abreast on Lakeland-Linder Regional Airport’s big Runway 27, slightly staggered like fighters on an aircraft carrier’s deck.
Ahead of us a flight of two massive T-28 Trojans in Navy colors thunder down the runway. The T-28s lift into pale morning sky and the tower radios that it’s our turn to takeoff.
The lead plane begins his roll. When he breaks ground, the plane ahead of me starts rolling. As he rotates, the plane to my left powers up. As soon as I see daylight under his belly, I advance my throttle to the firewall and give chase.
I’m racing in the fifth annual Sun 40 Sprint at SUN ‘n FUN…oh wait. My bad. [Read more…]
Dispatch from SXU, the Santa Rosa Route 66 Airport, Santa Rosa, New Mexico: A 6-foot-long white shelf in my hangar displays last season’s trophies. Wood, brass, shining gold, marble and crystal. Each one unique and different, just like the air races where I won them.
Sure, it’s a bragging wall, but it’s more than that. It’s a tangible, 3-D scrapbook of the greatest year of my life.
So far.
Now, I’m getting ready to do it again. This year is going to be bigger and better than last year, and once again you’ve got a seat in my cockpit for the whole adventure. Buckle up. We’re going to the races. [Read more…]
Dispatch from KCVN, Clovis, New Mexico: It’s chilly. It’s nearly noon and I’m wearing my winter flight jacket. As we walk across the tarmac to Race 53, above our heads the sky is solid overcast. It’s pale gray. Low, kissing the edge of marginal VFR, but slowly rising.
Not even 100 miles from home yet, we’ve been on the ground for two-and-a-half hours waiting for a line of thunderstorms to slide north and east off our flight path. We’re playing hopscotch with the weather today, jumping forward one step at a time and waiting on the ground for the sky ahead to clear enough for the next jump.
Well, that’s the plan, anyway. We’ve done one hop and no scotch at this point. [Read more…]
DAY ONE: Dispatch from north of Monument Valley: 7,200 feet MSL, speed 55 mph…
It’s too hot. My plan is shot to hell. Race 53 is hanging on her prop and she can’t climb any higher. Damn! It’s all I can do to stay in the air above the rugged desert. Below, in hues of red, pink, yellow, and cream the world is stone. Smooth stone, sharp stone, broken stone. Hills of stone. Crevasses of stone. Plains of stone. Rivers of stone.
It’s stunning. But there’s nowhere to land and I’m not high enough to cross the southern Rockies at Salina as planned.
Off course to my west, I spy a narrow V-shaped canyon between two lumbering peaks. It looks inviting, but it could be the terrestrial equivalent of a “sucker hole” in the clouds. [Read more…]
Dispatch from KTRL, Terrell, Texas: I pull my mixture control knob all the way back, turn the key three clicks to the left to shut off the mags, and reach up to flip the master switch down.
Race 53’s engine doesn’t like to stop running, but finally sputters, coughs, stops. The spinning prop makes one last lazy arc, then is still.
I sit in the hot, damp cockpit, too tired to fully open the doors, unbuckle my seat and shoulder belts, or even remove my headset.
Racing is hard work. [Read more…]
The PBS documentary film “Beyond the Powder” will be released on DVD and BluRay Oct. 1.
The one-hour film documents the 1929 Women’s Air Derby, and the women who continue to fly the cross-country race today as the Air Race Classic. [Read more…]
