Air Race - Cleveland, TX

[Becca]

I am going to attempt another SARL Air Race - this time in Cleveland, TX:

http://clevelandairracerevival.blogspot.com/

Any other Mooney drivers coming out?  It would be nice to have a little competition in the FAC3RG class.

My lessons learned from last time:  WOT, don't even bother trying to lean the mixture - fuel rich is required for cooling, have the course programmed in both GPS units, plan on full nose down trim, don't do the race alone (I've already recruited our partner to navigate for me this time).

[carusoam]

Becca,

 

How are you adjusting your W&B this time?

 

I remember last time you had carried some extra ballast distributed from the hat shelf forwards.

 

Good luck.

 

Best regards,

 

-a-

[Becca]

Quote: carusoam

 

Becca,

 

How are you adjusting your W&B this time?

 

I remember last time you had carried some extra ballast distributed from the hat shelf forwards.

 

Good luck.

 

Best regards,

 

-a-

 

[fantom]

Quote: Becca

[Lionudakis]

Not near fast enough I believe and down for a new paint job right now, Might go up to watch though !

[Becca]

So, another successful race.  Between the Bonanzas and Extra 300L, I didn't have a fighting chance for a production award (I think 3rd place was ~198 mph).  However, I did win the Mooney class (FAC3RG) by default again and took home a nice little trophy.  There was a Mooney 231 also racing (different class because he was turbocharged) but that was it for our planes.

Let's see, as for preparing for the race.  Well, first of all, this time I had my partner along, which was awesome and totally lowered both the stress level and work load in the airplane.  I was the PIC, and was responsible for precise heading, turns, and altitude.  We shared responsibility for looking out the window for our waypoints and other traffic.  He made all the radio calls and briefed me with each turn a few miles out about the size of turn, new heading and what to look for.    He flew us up to Cleveland, I flew the race, and then he flew us back.  It was about as picture perfect as a Texas fall day gets here, dry, clear, though hot in the midafternoon, so weather was not an issue.  There was very little discernable tailwind or headwind as well.  Our groundspeed varied between 154-166 kts depending on the leg of the race.  We did do some climbing and mostly descending strategically at points during the race.  I think that my minimum altitude is a little more conservative than a lot of the experimentals in the air race, but I wasn't all that conservative. My set up was like last time, minimum fuel, some ballast in the aft cargo area.  This time jetdriven wanted me to tape the plane like here: http://www.vansairforce.com/community/archive/index.php?t-64372.html

We quickly discovered that the tape was prone to peeling off paint around chipped areas (our paint is about 10  years old and there's some chipping at most of the "seems", which, of course, is exactly where you want to tape).  We did succeed in taping up some of the baggage door and the vents though without risking further damage to the paint.

The last race I did, like this one, I was WOT and had to be full rich mixture to keep the CHTs below 380, leading to fuel burns of 18.5 gph+.  However, we've made some adjustments to the baffling since then, and when I was full rich, the max CHT was 330, so I was able to lean just a little (didn't want to lose speed), and brought it back to about 17 gph with CHTs in the 340s.  Still a big difference from our normal 8.5 gph cruise - all for the extra 10-15 kts required to really make it a race!

End result: 184.93 mph.  Just slightly faster than last time.  There are two more races this season and we're thinking of going to the one in Tyler in November. We'll see.

The whole thing was tons of fun, I highly recommend it, even if you don't want to run WOT, the commraderie is great, and the effort is really an exercise in navigation.