Quote:
Originally Posted by 111db
Wow, averaging almost 410.
Any wrecks this year? There were 3 planes down and 2 fatalities when I was there.
One other cool thing I recall seeing was a homebuilt that had a supercharger. Only the supercharger wasn't on the main engine... it had a separate engine behind the pilot that basically forced air into the main engine's intake. So the pilot basically has a wound out briggs & stratton on his back along with separate fuel for it. Nutz.
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That's pretty crazy. Yeah, those guys do some incredible mods to those engines. The commentator at the races said that some of the Merlin V-12s in the Mustangs are running 155 lbs of boost! He described the cylinder as a "metal balloon."
Thankfully, there were no crashes during the event. Rare Bear had a couple of close calls, though. Two of his races ended in maydays. I caught both with my camera.
His first mayday was a stuck right landing landing gear. If you look closely at this pic, you can see the gear door stuck open a little bit. He was just about to land it on its belly, when he finally got the wheel to drop by applying some high-G turns.
Then he blew his engine during the Gold race. This resulted in a very quick and scary lookin' emergency landing. Imagine if both malfunctions had occurred at the same time..
