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This was the most scenic shot on the way to La Junta -
a reservoir.
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Friday June 24 - It's the final day of the 2013 ARC run. Because of the extended delay on the ARC Start, the deadline for arriving at the Terminus was extended from 5pm local to sunset. We have a little extra cushion to make the flyby at Drake Field. After making the 4 stops yesterday, the final 3 stops can be made comfortably today, assuming that we are not jinxed by weather or mechanical issues. The weather forecast seems good, and we just need to watch for isolated thunderstorms bubbling up.
We have a
mere 3 stops to fly today, which sounds like an easy "Sunday $100 burger run," compared to the 4 stops that we powered through yesterday. It's an early wake-up call with Carole Sutton and her daughter scheduled to pick us up at 5:30 am. Harsh! But we want to get out to the airport early so that we can debug the plane, plan our legs a bit, AND spend a bit of time to plan how we'll transit the MOAs and the Alert airspace around Vance Air Force Base. The plane is especially hard to debug this morning, because we had carried all the bugs from Spearfish thru Brookings and into Holdrege at the very end to help get a few of the last ones. I figured out the fuel order, filed our final ARC flight plan, and organized our plan for the three Military Operations Areas (MOAs) that we will fly through. In general, they are not much of an issue, because we fly below their active shelf and then need to get flight following and permission to transit Vance AFB. We decide to ask the controllers to let us transit thru the Tulsa airspace. After a weather briefing, we're off to wrap up this race, and we are ready for touching down at the terminus - Drake Field (Fayetteville AR).
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The terrain between La Junta and Woodward -
not so interesting.
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Holdrege NE to La Junta CO - it's a SLOW, HOT ride. Holdrege hit 94 deg F at 4:00 AM! It was gusty as we took off. As we were circling to position for our Departure Flyby to get back on the clock, we heard a team approaching for their Flyby coming in from Brookings. Since they were still on the clock (and we weren't), we followed race etiquette to allow them in for their flyby. It was Purdue flying a Cirrus with a handicapped speed of nearly 180 kts (as compared to ours just shy of 130 kts). They screamed on through the timing line, and we were doing only about 100 kts on our flyby thanks to some quartering headwinds of nearly 50 kts. Yes, it was a very slow leg for us, although we found a little speed gain as we got away from Holdrege. The scenery was less than exciting with about the most excitement occurring about 132 miles from La Junta with a large reservoir of water off our left side. Otherwise, it was just mostly watching out for obstructions along the way. Flyby to Land. Fuel. Check weather. No real rush, unless we find weather or winds favoring a quick turn. Central time to Mountain time - "gaining" an hour...not really...
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And no race is complete without a windmill shot.
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La Junta CO to West Woodward OK - Mountain time back to Central time..."losing" the hour now. La Junta was a great little stop really. OJ and Daylight Donuts for breakfast. Now for those who don't know Daylight Donuts, they are a chain in the South and Midwest, and they are pretty good donuts. Again, it was nice to meet the local volunteers whom I had worked with earlier in the year as an ARC route liaison. All the volunteers that help at the en route stops do an awesome job of welcoming and hosting our racers.
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And of course a great cloud shot -
between Woodward and Fayetteville.
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Just as we're getting ready to leave, I get a text message from BJ, a crew member of Classic Racer 25 - our good friends from Idaho, GeneNora, Patty, and BJ. They have lost their radios and are inbound to Fayetteville from Woodward and will need to shoot their last flyby with no radios. Racers need to communicate their approach to flybys by radio so the timers know they're coming. Moreover, racers need to talk with the local traffic and listen to the local traffic to know what's around them when they're coming into Fayetteville. The "radio failure" procedure is to use lights and wag your wings, and the Drake tower will use light guns (green, OK; red, go around) to communicate with the plane. At first, I'm wondering what I can do with this text message in La Junta that will help these racers approaching Fayetteville. It was really a lucky turn that I was on the ground when their message came in, and it dawns on me to tell the La Junta Stop Chair so that she can pass the word to the Fayetteville Stop Chair. It works, and the word is passed on. It will be interesting to hear how it all turned out when we get to Fayetteville. I text BJ back to let her know that we got the message communicated to Fayetteville for them.
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Yes, that's us flying thru Vance AFB and
approaching the Alert Area
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The flight to Woodward is pretty uneventful. Hot. Headwinds. The terrain is now getting lower, and we're flying along watching for obstacles. We've decided that climbing isn't really worth it for us - costs time and no guarantees that the winds will be any major improvement for us. Now Lynn has not actually flown a flyby yet. She's done a lot of flying en route, but I tell her that she can't claim the full Air Race Classic without doing a full speed flyby. I remind her that the Woodward flyby is at 500 ft above ground AND that she has done a masterful job of minding her altitude with precision when flying. She agrees, and we spend some time getting things ready to swap roles - she is flying the flyby, and I'll be coaching her on nailing the altitude and holding it. We're looking for the airport and the abandoned runway that she will do the flyby on. We've got it in sight, and Lynn nails the Flyby to Land. Whoohoo! We circle to land. It's our last fuel order. Skip the debugging. The winds are whipping on the ground. We just head off to the FBO for our last weather briefing and some refreshments. This little airport offers the racers a great welcome - everything in their refrigerators and freezers are free - snacks, sodas, water, AND ice cream. These ice creams were the best welcome treats on the whole race.
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Yes, that's a racer plane above us flying toward FYV...
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West Woodward OK to Fayetteville AR - LAST LEG! It's mid-afternoon, so we have lots of time to spare. If we had needed to land by the original deadline of 5pm today, we could have. But we knew it was sunset, and we still have plenty of time. We see a little weather popping up, so we decide not to loiter too long. If needed, we can deviate around anything isolated that pops up. But otherwise, we'll be landing about 6:30 pm. We take off, and Lynn takes the controls again to shoot the Departure Flyby out of Woodward. It's just so much fun shooting these top speed flybys over a runway or taxiway as the FAA race waivers permit. We're outta there and pushing on to Fayetteville. We enter the first Vance MOA, and as we transition into the second Vance MOA, we contact the Vance controllers to ask permission to fly through their Alert airspace - they give us a squawk code and we're flying through.
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Classic 26 at rest on Drake Field...
tied down among the other race planes.
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Tulsa airspace is a little different. We maybe should have climbed and flown above their controlled space, but we chose to ask for permission to transition through their airspace. It turned out that the controllers were super busy. We couldn't believe how much traffic they were directing. It was hard to get a word in edgewise with all the radio chatter. We finally got cleared into the airspace but then had to make a 10 degree deviation for traffic - small bits of time lost, but we're back on course to FYV. After we clear the Tulsa airspace, we're on the homestretch to Fayetteville. We're descending down into Fayetteville. We're loooking for the airport...looking...looking...talking to FYV tower...looking...they tell us to turn to our 1-2 o'clock...no airport...looking...we realize that we're too low, because the airport is on the other side of some hills...arrgghh...frustration with the tower vectoring...frustration with the knowledge that we descended too soon...we finally get the airport in sight for the last flyby...done!!! Circle and land. Ah not so fast, the plane in front of us takes a bit too long on the runway, and the tower tells us to prepare for a go-around. We are waved off to circle in again. Touch down. We completed the race. It was a crazy 4 days of flying, but we finished!
