Reno National Air Races - Friday, September 12
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| In flight, if you look very closely, you and see the 3M's on the gear doors. |
In the successful Silver Heat on Thursday, Sawbones won in spite of the landing gear tailwheel deploying at about lap 2. The cause, it turned out, was an actuator whose hydraulic seal had given out. Friday morning was spent removing the actuator, bringing it to a hydraulic service center to install a new seal, and reinstalling it. The challenge was that it could not be tested except in flight. That test, which was run as Sawbones lifted off for the race, didn't work out. The tailwheel never retracted with the main gear, so Curt ran the whole race with a kickstand generating some drag at the back of the plane.
It didn't really affect the outcome, however. Being in the Gold Class, running against faster heavily modified aircraft, odds were Sawbones would end in the same place she started - last. Once he learned he was carrying a bit of an anchor behind him, he decided to run a conservative race. In fact, the first place plane lapped Sawbones just as they approached the finish line. Still, running in the gold brings with it it's own excitement.
So that accounts for about 15 minutes of our day. The rest was spent transporting 3M guests into the pits using our dedicated six person golf cart, explaining how the races work and the history behind Sawbones a half-dozen times, and chatting with visitors and team members. Those chats can be very interesting. Especially listening to Curt share stories and information with groups that come by - like this class of Air Force cadets that attracted all kinds of on-lookers. They asked Curt a ton of questions about his experience in the Air Force, with NASA, and with flying in general. Since he's flown about every fighter and experimental aircraft as a test pilot before joining NASA, he had plenty of experiences to share.
Another of Curt's visitors was Mark Kelly, a fellow astronaut, but probably better known for his marriage to Gabby Giffords, the former Arizona Congresswoman that survived an assassination attempt. Mary, Curt's wife, was so kind to wave me over and introduce me to Mark, knowing I'd be glued to the conversation between the two shuttle commanders. That conversation covered everything from Mark's twin brother Scott's relocating to Kazakhstan as a member of the back-up crew for the next scheduled Soyuz mission to the International Space Station, to why it is Curt chooses to fly the slower Sea Fury instead of one of the faster modified P51's (no shuttle astronaut worth his salt wants to be anywhere but in front of everyone else). Curt's answer to that last question was "been there, done that ... I just really like how the Sea Fury handles, and trying to get the most out of a big radial engine." Curt still holds the record for fastest time in qualifying for jets (549 knots) and in a race (521 knots), set in 2010 when they allowed jets to go full out. Since the 2011 crash, they've limited jet speeds to under 500 mph for safety (under flawed assumptions, according to Curt). This is the first year Curt is not racing jets in several years.
The most interesting part of that conversation was Mark's take on the potential impact of current political situation in Ukraine on the ISS program. He cited some of the bluster coming out of Russia from the program managers on the Russian part of the ISS consortium, with threats of going it alone without the U.S.. Mark didn't think it would ever come to that in the end however.
The things you can learn in Reno....
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