Another one for the books

Team Ely and the Elyminator, Race 55 have completed yet another race. This one was the Indy Air Race 2015 held in support of Down Syndrome Indiana on August 1st. Posting as speed on the cross-country course of 157.23 mph and winning the Factory 5 FX class boosts our points total to 520 for the 2015 season. This puts us well on our way to a 4th consecutive Production Class Gold Points Championship. 

The Elyminator at Hendricks County-Gordon Graham Field  in Indianapolis 

SARL Season Final - Elyminator Bests All

The Elyminator is the 2012 Sport Air Racing League Points Champion amassing 1740 total points for the season. The competition was fierce with the top three competitors within 30 points of each other.
http://futurshox.net/aerogallery.php?reg=N26958&id=17207#17004

Once again the real Jo Hunter, Aviation Photographer Extraordinaire has captured some incredible shots of the Elyminator (oh and a few others as well). http://futurshox.net/aerogallery.php?event=327#17207

The Great Northwest Air Race and Vacation – Part 2 RACE DAY

Once we had landed and taxied past the hundreds of gliders on the northeast side of the airport, we made our way down the line to find and open spot on the tie-downs next to the other racers. One airplane in particular caught our eyes, Don Otis’s Grumman AA-1A. His little airplane had a lot of similar STCs installed on it and while not as streamlined looking as the Elyminator, it was a lot lighter. So we wondered whether there was actually someone who could beat us. Don is a local from the Seattle area so he hadn’t raced much. Linda and I contemplated that perhaps ours would be the edge we needed to win.

As we scrubbed down the airplane, folks began to gather after having been to the eateries in town. Linda’s Sister Dianne and Bo Willey from Bellingham met us and helped us prepare the airplane for the next day’s festivities. One particular person took notice of our airplane, wandered about asking questions. A pleasant but reserved man whom I thought I had seen someplace before. He eventually departed in his pickup truck and we packed our stuff into Willey’s car and off to the hotel we went.

Race Day

The next morning early, we met Don Otis, one heck of a nice guy, and other racers at the airport. The race brief completed, we climbed into our trusty steeds and headed off along the 150 mile or so race course which spanned much of northeastern Washington’s arid area east of the Cascades. As we sped around the course, we noted the competitor’s call-outs and time differences over each turn and detected that Don was actually gaining on us. He had departed 30 seconds behind us and was working hard to close the gap. Since it’s a cross-country race we normally depart fastest airplane first with 30 second intervals to avoid passing and reduce the risk factor in that area. This isn’t Reno.

Approach a ridge between the second to last and final turn, Don was in our 4 O’Clock position maybe a half a mile behind. The final turn was to the left and he was close to our wingtip then. We had each other insight and were in constant contact. We made the turn much tighter than Don but he was still hanging in there. We crossed the finish line and broke the SARL record for our factory class that we had set two weeks before. That lasted about 15 seconds…

Don crossed the finish line right behind and when he did it, broke our record speed by a mere 7/100ths of a mile-per-hour. Ooooooooh!!!  For someone who has never raced before, he did very well. And a more gracious winner there never was. We had been tickling up against the 160 mph mark for some time. We didn’t quite do it. We clocked in at 159.78 mph. Don’t speed 159.85 mph. (That record would be broken again a month later during the AirVenture Cup 2012 when Linda flew the 495 mile race at an average speed of 172.71 mph (150.08 knots) with Yasmina Platt, AOPA’s Central Southwest Regional Manager. More on that race in a later blog entry)

After the race came the eating and the awards ceremony. With nearly 10 entries in the FAC5 class, our coming in second still earned us some good points, but not as much as if we had been first. Still, we have held the points lead for the league so far. Weather was moving in from over the mountains and we needed to get a move on as we had to cross the Cascades to get to Bellingham to spend the rest of the weekend with Linda’s Sister.

As we were preparing to leave John Smutney asked what Van’s had talked to us about the night before. Huh? Who? “Richard VanGrunsven! That was who you were speaking with at your airplane last night. Didn’t you know?” Well John, no we didn’t. But since his picture was on the cover of Sport Aviation magazine the previous month, that’s probably why I thought the face was familiar.    

The Great Northwest Air Race and Vacation - Part 1

N26958 took us on a couple of long-range cross-country trips recently. We had a race in Ephrata, Washington to participate in on June 16th and we made a weeklong vacation out of it. A couple years ago we did a Fall Foliage Tour of the New England area and this time it was the west.

We departed on Thursday, June 14 and bounced our way from Ellington to Andrews County Airport (E11) for our first fuel stop. After one particular bump, I looked at the attitude indicator and it was rolling to one side which immediately caused my eyes to train on the vacuum pressure gauge which was showing near zero. Dang! We continued on towards our destination and from there we were going to decide what we would do. We were planning on two more legs that day ending in Boulder City, Nevada to stay with my brother and his wife. That didn’t happen.

N26958 at Andrews County Airport

Fortunately for us, IA James Marshall of Marshall Aviation was at Andrews County that day and he took a look at the airplane. He didn’t have that model vacuum pump but he was able to locate one at the main airport in Midland, a 40 minute drive south. He made that round trip quickly and did a wonderful job of replacing the part on the airplane, having us on our way in little more than a three hour delay.

Departing Andrews County we had to outrace a thunderstorm coming up from the south. We had been cut off from our planned northwestern route over Albuquerque due to a fire fighting TFR and several airports that didn’t have self-serve fuel and the FBO’s would be closed when we got there. So we rerouted ourselves more directly west, avoiding the restricted areas around White Sands and Alamogordo flying into the night and landing at Safford, AZ (KSAD) where we refueled and then decided to stop for the night. Night flying in the mountains in a single engine airplane and being tired led to this decision to stay. I’m fairly familiar with the terrain but without recent experience and there were those pesky TFRs were all about. Besides, I’m not the devil-may-care freightdog I was 20 years ago. A fresh start in the morning would be better and it was.

N26958 crossing over Solo Ranch Airpark NM

I called my brother and we departed early from Safford. We crossed to the north of Lake Roosevelt and then south of the Four Peaks Wilderness and Payson. I remembered I wanted to show the plane to John Spall in Deer Valley whom we had bought it from but now we were behind schedule and I hadn’t spoken with him (sorry John, we’ll try to catch you again next trip west). So we pressed on over Prescott and the air became crisp and clear at 8,500 feet, most of the forest fire smoke left behind. I remember Boulder City’s airport (KBVU) was busy but it was even more so being peak Grand Canyon tour flight season. A spark lit in my heart when I spotted the first DeHavilland Twin Otter on approach right after we landed. I have 800 hours in those airplanes and though it may have been close to 25 years ago when I last flew one, it is still one of my favorite airplanes.

Bonniville Salt Flats in distance

We spent a little over an hour enjoying my brother and his wife’s company and then we were off once again, this time nearly due north. We went eastward away from Boulder City, crossing the Colorado river to the south of the new bridge which spans the river south of the dam, crossed a ridge and turned northeast over Temple Bar and Lake Mead. We kept our altitude fairly low to stay out of the arrival traffic into Las Vegas McCarren and the Class B airspace. We contacted Nellis Approach and continued northward into some the Military Operation Areas that sit to the east of all that restricted area and “The Box” enclosing Area 51 north of Las Vegas. We were now flying into the Basin and Range Region of the United States. Our destination this time was Twin Falls, Idaho. I have never flown up this side of the desert, not in a small plane anyway. I have crisscrossed the area from high in the flight levels in a Learjet but not at lower altitudes so it was more interesting and in a lot of ways, more challenging. Firefighting TFR’s, Thunderstorms, mountain wave due to a strong westerly flow over the ridges and a lot of thermal activity contributed to a generally rough ride most of the time on this leg. Area 51 to our left, Great Basin National Park and the Bonneville Salt Flats on our right, we passed by Wendover, Utah Municipal Airport (formerly Air Force Base) where in WW II, the B-29 crews who dropped the Atomic Bomb were trained. 

We had to circumnavigate a line of thunderstorms that were coming in from the north, then get back on course to Twin Falls. As we entered to valley to the south of Twin Falls Airport, (KTWF) things began to green-up a bit along the Snake River. I was reminded that this was where Evel Kneivel made his famous non-event jump in a steam-rocket powered “cycle” over the Snake. Well, into the Snake River, more or less. It may sound somewhat critical but I actually admired the guy. After landing on the shorter runway but directly into the 20 knot wind we took some time to eat a little lunch and then headed off in the direction of Boise and after that, Ephrata, WA.

N26958 on the Twin Falls, Idaho ramp

We flew much of this leg over or near the Snake River as it wound its way north along the Idaho-Oregon border and then broke off from it as it went through higher terrain to the east into what is known as the Grand Canyon of the Snake River and Hells Canyon Wilderness. We headed more northwesterly, crossing a few ridges in the late afternoon light, west of Walla Walla, Washington where we had a narrow miss with a small UAV that of course, nobody knew anything about. After that encounter, we continued on past Moses Lakes Airport where Boeing was doing some test flights with one of their fleet and we were on the watch-out for gliders as a large soaring event took place at Ephrata at the same time as the Air Race.

Hells Canyon Wilderness

As we approached Ephrata a familiar voice, one of our fellow racers, greeted us on the radio. We touched down in the waning light of the day and taxied past the hundred or so glider tied down on the northeast end of the tarmac and found a spot amongst the other racers. We proceeded to clean the bugs off the airplane and prepare for the next day’s race.

N26958 @ Centerville, TN

The Elyminator stopped at Centerville, TN (KGHM) to refuel on a recent trip to Cincinnati.

A Record is Broken

June 9, 2012 N26958 participated in the "Big Muddy Air Race" held at Carbondale's Southern Illinois University Airport (KMDH). There on the 159 nautical mile course it performed well winning not only the Factory 5 Class first place finish but breaking the previous Sport Air Racing League's FAC 5 Class speed record.

The previous record stood at 158.54 mph (137.86 kts) and N26958 completed the closed cross country course with a speed of 158.69 mph (137.99 kts) breaking the record by a narrow margin of just 0.15 mph.

We felt with our ground speed exceeding as much as 149 knots on the last two legs that our strategy might have paid off with a record breaking flight and we were extremely elated when it proved to be true.

Next weekend is the Great Northwestern Race in Ephrata, Washington (KEPH) and we hope to improve on or class record speed there.