The day dawned early in Hays. We drove the courtesy car back to the airport and regretfully left it there. It was a sunny breezy morning, and we filed IFR up to Alliance Nebraska in plenty of time for the 12 noon race start deadline. It was a beautiful flight, as the air out west is always clear and pure and lacks the thick brown inversion layer that's constantly present in NJ and PA, so we could see for miles and miles under a cloudless sky. Alison flew this leg. Arriving at Alliance, we taxied up to the terminal where all the other planes were tied down having arrived either last night or this morning. There were a lot of volunteers and spectators, and the food they laid on was great!
Since we'd only arrived about 1130am, Barbara, Linda and I decided to watch the majority of the racers depart at noon, and leave a bit later on ourselves when it was quieter. It was really exciting to be a spectator for a change, and hear all the engines roar to life, then watch the planes taxi out. The departure procedure was to takeoff on runway 26, then come around and do a high speed flyby at 200 feet on runway 17. This means that planes were taking off in one direction and roaring past the timing line at low altitude in the other direction, in a continuous flow that was very exciting to watch.
After a while, we decided we were ready to go too! Linda was the pilot for this the first official race leg. We took off, flew the flyby procedure over the timing line, and headed off to the next stop which was Great Bend KS. This is actually quite close to Hays where we were that morning! The tailwinds were kicking, and the engine flew very well at full throttle full prop, although we did need to cool it down a couple times. Linda flew a great high speed flyby at Great Bend, and once again we were met by many helpful volunteers and plenty to eat and drink. The race legs are very hot and tiring as we keep the air vents closed to reduce drag, and fly at relatively low, hot altitudes, so you have to drink tons of water and take care not to dehydrate.
The last leg of the day was from Great Bend to Borger Texas. Alison flew this leg. The winds weren't quite as good on this leg, but it was pleasant and the flyby at Borger went well. We landed just before air race sunset which was 9pm central time, and tied down. Poor Borger was't expecting quite so many race planes all at once, but they did great and lots of friendly people were around to feed us, drive us to our hotels, and help in any way they could.
So that's two legs down! We don't know how well we did, for several reasons. First, we still don't have our official race handicap yet because the weather prevented us flying a handicapping run in Iowa City. But even if we had it, we wouldn't know how we did relative to other racers because everyone races against their own handicap, and the scores aren't calculated and published until the end of the race. We know we flew hard, found some tailwinds, applied some elements of strategy.... But that's all we know at this point. Tomorrow, we'll see how the weather shapes up and hopefully set out on the next two legs!
