Airventure Cup, Drama, and Sport Air Racing

[Becca]

You may have been reading on other forums (http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=86162) that there has been a lot of drama about this year's Air Venture Cup - which is the annual race to Oshkosh that has been going on in various forms for a while now.  To make a long story short, EAA doesn't want to be officially associated with an air race any more.  Personally, that leaves me very disappointed in the new leadership at EAA.  But the ray of awesomeness is that, the Sport Air Racing League, has taken over the race event.  What makes this particular special is that SARL allows production class racing (also "Heavy Metal" racing, which means you might see some other pretty interesting competitors this year)!

If y'all haven't done a SARL race yet, definitely consider it - they are emminently safe and tons of fun.  The way they go is that they start in speed order with the fastest plane first (passing happens, but is rare), altitudes are per the FARs (no one is racing at tree height or around pylons), and a lot of the production planes choose not to even race at WOT (I do, but not required, you can just treat it as a long cross country).  Really people come for the comraderie and to meet the other pilots of fast airplanes, and no one brags like a Mooney pilot how fast our planes are vs. fuel flow.  Also I have always been excited at how diverse the SARL pilots are - its not just your typical pilot event - there are everyone from young families to grandparents participant and also a higher population of female pilots than you find at a typical airport event.  

You'd think I wouldn't be inviting you all out since I hold the 201 record, but I'd like a little competition!

They are still working out all the details, so the web page might take a little while to update.  One of my questions is that after the race ends, are they working out a mass arrival to OSH as previous air races have done?  Because if so, there's definitely some substantial benefits to that...

If you want to try SARL on a smaller scale, here's the schedule of events for teh remainder of this year.  Jetdriven and I try to make as many of the Texas ones as we can:

http://www.sportairrace.org/id4.html

[Becca]

Airventure Cup is now taking entries.

http://www.airventurecup.com

Should be a fun time and after the race, I suspect we'll all fly over to Osh together so we can camp in close proximity! 

This race used to be only open to experimentals so take advantage of its new SARL management to have production classes!

Don't be intimidated by the entry form - the reason for the questions aren't to weed the "inexperienced" out of racing (in fact, treat it like a long cross country - anyone can do this).  Its because they print a magazine of entrants and are looking for information to help the editors write the articles about you.  I will be putting in that I hold the Mooney 201 record, so!! Come out.