Sure and Steady Wins Over Fast and Flash

Reno Air Races, Sunday, September 14

The morning was far more peaceful than the day before. With another beautiful sunrise, Bonnie and I arrived before the rest of the crew and started putting up the tables, canopy’s, pulling out coolers, and setting up chairs (all put away because of the strong winds that whistle through the high desert most evenings). Folks straggled in randomly and quietly. without the growing panic and fury of Saturday. 

The plane checked out well as other classes of aircraft raced overhead. The pairings were announced at the morning pilot briefing. Strega, after providing such an exciting show with their photo finish against Voo Doo Saturday, withdrew from Sundays race with a blown engine. It’s pilot and owner, Bill "Tiger" Destefani, announced his retirement following the second rookie error he made by flying too high. The rules committee sighed from relief, since they would not have to determine what the penalty would have been for his second infraction in two days. That left Sawbones in fifth place, just ahead of the much faster Precious Metal and two other Sea Fury’s  - 924 and Argonaut, that with Dreadnought made it three from the Sanders stable - all moving up into Gold from Silver, filling out the 8 plane line-up for the championship race.

Since we were in that group, we participated in a parade of the Unlimited finalists in front of the grandstands. That consists of the entire crew sitting on or walking along side Sawbones from the pit, along the ramp, to the stands. It’s a slow 15 minute crawl that ends with each aircraft turning to face the stands with crews standing in front of the plane to salute the crowd. After pictures and introductions of each of the planes and their pilots, we walked toward the stands and turned to face the plane from the edge of the ramp, which was only about 15 yards away. 


From there, a female celebrity (still don’t know who it was) shouted, “Gentlemen, start your engines,” over the loudspeakers, in true NASCAR fashion. Seven multi-thousand horsepower engines turned slowly, popping and sputtering into life, building to a wind-blown roar just in front of us. The eighth engine, the one powering Argonaut, continued to rotate its propellor but without the corresponding ignition. It occasionally backfired and blew a puff of smoke, but it wouldn’t catch. As all the other planes filed by, Argonaut stood motionless except for the slowly milling prop.  Finally, just as it looked as though it was going to be left behind, smoked belched from multiple cylinders as they independently found the right mixture of fuel and air. The crowd roared and applauded. 

We turned for a fast walk back to the pit to watch the race. On the way, traveling down the ramp in front of the barriers, we were constantly stepping in front of the hundreds of cameras with  huge, expensive lenses trying to take pictures of the passing warbirds. I found myself walking with a significant hunch tying to duck those lenses, imaging how I must resemble the hunchback of Norte Dame trying not to be seen.

Within a lap of the race, Rare Bear, one of the top three fastest aircraft, flew out of the course. Two laps later, Argonaut bailed, declaring a Mayday and making an emergency landing on a remote runway with what turned out to be a false alarm on the part of an errant engine instrument. Precious Metal, in the meantime, moved up into third place behind Voo Doo and the much smaller Yak 11 called Czech Mate. The conditions for Curt were brutal. Following Dreadnought is never a fun place to be, because of the extremely dirty air the bigger and heavier Sea Fury with a 28 cylinder 4000 hp Pratt & Whitney engine produces. With that and the gusty winds and buffeting from all of the other aircraft, you could see Sawbones bounce violently as it rounded the pylons. The g-force pegged between -3 and +9, as Curt’s banging around the inside of the cockpit compounded the bruises on his shoulders and hips from previous heats. But he fought masterfully, keeping Sawbones tight in the race course, maintaining that fifth position with a final race speed of 415 mph, the highest ever recorded by Sawbones in a final race, and only four mph slower than Dreadnought.

Sea Fury "Sawbones"

Sea Fury "Dreadnought"

He returned the plane to the cheers of the crew. Fifth place was as good as we could have hoped for, and put Sawbones at a purse level that could help cover all the costs of the week for its owner. (Insurance costs alone for the six days of flying exceed $4,000, with fuel costs racking up another $4,000). But then the vagaries of Reno Air Racing popped up again, as Curt emerged from what is called the cold locker - an air conditioned, windowless room at the end of the hauler that Curt uses for changing into his flight gear. He had a huge smile and was almost shaking the smart phone in his hand, reading from it that Precious Metal, the popular third placed P51, was disqualified for cutting one of the three show lines, critical safety perimeters on the race course. That moved Sawbones up to fourth place, meaning an even much higher purse for Robin and the team.

That’s what we celebrated when we attended the awards dinner that night. It started with several minutes of silence in honor of the highly experienced and very well known pilot that lost his life earlier in the week due to a mechanical failure in his sport plane during practice. I could imagine it reminded everyone of the risks these pilots take, and how those risks can’t always be compensated by skill and experience. 

We had made closer friendships with all members of the Sawbones team, but in particular with the Browns and the Crandalls,  Over the four days they had introduced us to a broad cross section of incredibly interesting and colorful characters within a very tight aviation community. The stories they and their friends  shared with us spanned from the hilarious to the deeply historic. As I told Bonnie, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit like Forrest Gump - I didn’t really belong there, but it sure was fun being allowed to participate inside aviation’s premier league for a few days. 

The Sawbones Cres