June 24 - The melt down party

Here are some pictures from the "Melt Down" party on Firday night.It was held in the "Sky View" restaurant on the 17th floor of the Holiday Inn where we are staying.

The team from Indiana State doesn't need to clean underneath their plane anymore. They can finally sit and relax.

A viewof theMobileskyline.
Linda and Barbara

Team #23 (Barbara Goodwin, Maureen Kenney) - on the outside. Team #22 (Carolyn Van Newkirk, Carol Church) - on the inside.

Us and our baby birds.

Be still my beating heart

So we have an update, and some potentially exciting news....!

Linda and Barbara completed the handicap run this morning (while I completed my massage!), and all went well. They were able to fly the four sides of the square at the correct density altitude at full throttle, not much turbulence, and get good speed readings. The judges will take all this data and compute our handicap. We don't know what it is yet, but we have a pretty good idea just from our own observations during the race and during the handicap run itself. The handicap is important because the race is scored based on the average of how much you beat your own handicap by on each leg.

Now for the potentially exciting news... At the end of every race, the judges compute all the scores, and pull the top 12-14 planes or so for inspection. This is to make sure that the competition winners haven't tinkered with their airplane en route, or somehow put in a bigger engine or something! The call to these lucky few pilots from one of the judges comes late on Friday night. As the news gradually percolates out that one or other person has got "the call", and you haven't, it's difficult not to be somewhat crushed even if you aren't super competitive(and let's face it, we're all competitive!). I have never had "the call" in four races, and neither have Linda or Barbara in their two. Well, late last night Linda knocked on our door and told us she'd received "the call", and we were one of 14 aircraft that needed to be re-inspected. We were so excited, we couldn't believe it. Now, it's important to remember that the decision to potentially include us in the top 14 was made without even knowing our handicap yet. Furthermore, its made without everyone having signed their score sheets yet, and there could be some disputes that would make people's scores better if resolved in their favor. So we could still end up anywhere in the ranking, maybe not even in the top 14 at all. But you know what, it's really nice to have the feeling that you got the call and that placing is even a possibility! So we are enjoying the feeling while it lasts.

So, after the handicap run, the plane went straight into inspection, and did fine. The last thing that happened this morning was that we went to see the chief judge Marvin to review our leg times, which will be used to compute our scores once the handicap is available. We did great, zero penalties (yay!!), and our timing data agreed almost exactly with his. This is a result of the excellent job that Barbara did recording all of our time and elapsed time data from the back of the plane, with Linda duplicating it as a back up. So we signed off on our score sheets.

Only time will tell now. Remember, we are by no means guaranteed to end up with a top 10 or top 14 place because of the variables I mentioned above. But we are enjoying the feeling right now, and that's what counts! Go team Cool Beans!!

Will we finally get our handicap this morning?

Woke up at the crack of dawn this morning to go to the Mobile airport to try to get our handicap flight done before the mid morning cumulus starts to build. It's about 8am and it's already extremely hot and humid. Our check pilot is still busy with another flight, so we are waiting in the cool terminus building. Since I'm not needed for the flight (they try to get the same weight distribution as the race configuration, so the check pilot stands in for me), I have helped preflight the plane and prepare for the trip, but then I am going to be disloyal and go for a massage while the rest of the team is flying.... Then I will return to pick them up, and we'll go on to the rest of the day which is a tour of Continental (aviation engine manufacturer, although our engine is a Lycoming!), followed by an event on a battleship, and at some point we have to get our final scoresheet signed off.

Barbara writes:

I'm in the same cool terminal waiting for our check pilot to return. This handicap flight is truly the final lap in our journey. We feel we have done the very best we could with only minor things we might have changed thinking back over the six legs of the race. Now we wait on the results and the judges decisions. For the time being we still dream of finishing at the top of the pack. Although I sat in the back for every flight Linda and Alison have made me feel very much a part of the team all the time. I love them both for it.

We made it!!

Linda flew the last leg from El Dorado to Mobile today. Some racers were worried about forecast IFR conditions on route, and thunderstorms arriving in Mobile by 2pm, but it seemed to us that the en route conditions were just a little ground fog that would burn off by 10am. We left around 1030am, just ahead of the single scheduled flight that leaves El Dorado for Memphis every day. It was already very hot. We did the flyby to runway 17 then zoomed off to the east heading for Mobile. This was one of the longer legs at 280nm (about 2 hours at race speed), but was very pretty country that we got to see in some detail from our relatively low altitude. We called some of the uncontrolled airports we passed over en route to position report and monitor traffic. Again, drinking a lot of water was really important with all the air vents closed! The end of the route was through Mobile controlled airspace, but just as in Oklahoma city the controllers knew we were coming and were ready for us, and very accommodating. So about 30 miles out we called Mobile approach, who gave us a transponder code and we entered their airspace; then there was some switching back and forth with Mobile downtown Tower to make our 20, 10 and 5nm position reports, then about 10 miles out Approach cleared us to switch over to Mobile Tower. The Tower controller was magnificent! He had women pilots shooting all over the place in different directions at full speed, some doing their flybys, others vectoring to cool off their engines or come around to land, and even though he was working flat out and at double speed, he never lost his cool and managed to keep the whole situation under control. In fact he did better than me - I was trying to run two radio frequencies simultaneously, ignore the continual warning beep indicating that the right tank was running low on fuel, watch for traffic, and hear above the rising level of happy excitement from the rest of our crew in the airplane, and allegedly at one point I may have punched Linda (the pilot!) in the arm a little too hard as I tried to get everyone to shut up...! Sorry Linda! The controller cleared us for our flyby, which went very well, then we shot up and over the Mobile Bay to cool down. It was very pretty flying over the bay and looking back over the city. We came back around and were cleared to land on 18. Wheels down, and another race accomplished!!

We taxied to the Mobile ramp, tied down, removed all our belongings from the plane per race rules, patted it, and thanked it for being such a good race plane. Our rental car was driven right up to the plane, so all we had to do was pack it up and we were ready to go to the hotel downtown. Checked in to our two rooms, hooked up with Mary and Rose, and went out for a late lunch (we were starving!). Then back to the hotel for the meltdown party and to hang out with the other racers and exchange stories.

Each race is different, and for all of us this will be distinguished as a very difficult weather race. For team Cool Beans, this will also be memorable for the amount of en route maintenance we had to do - it was like a very expensive maintenance trip really! But always there's the beautiful scenery, meeting up again with old friends, and of course awesome flying day in and day out. The race isn't over yet. We still have a handicap flight to do; scores to add up; and we find out how we did at the banquet on Sunday night; and then finally we have to fly all the way back to PA on Monday! Stay tuned.

June 24 pictures - El Dorado, AR & Mobile,AL

Two thirds of team #18 (Sonia Bortolin & Tamra Sheffman) at breakfast at the Country Inn & Suites in El Dorado, AR. They are flying for breast cancer awareness (flyingforawareness.org). Sonia is a breast cancer survivor.

Two thirds of team #2 (Gene Nora Jessen & Brenda carter) at breakfast in El Dorado, AR

The airport dog in El Dorado, AR.

Crop fires on the way to Mobile

Crossing the mighty Mississippi river

Our first glimpse of Mobile, AL peeking upon the horizon

Approaching the final flyby in Mobile, AL.

After flyby, heading out over the gulf to cool down

Turning back toward Mobile to land

Lots of race planes on the ground in Mobile

A happy team #21 on the ground in Mobile after a successful race

Heading to the hotel

Team #17 and team #21 joined forces for lunch at "A Spot of Tea"

The hospitality room on the 17th floor of the Holiday Inn is a buzz with activity

Children from Mobile adopted race teams and made posters

Friday morning

Hanging out in the highly air conditioned terminal building at El Dorado Arkansas, almost ready to leave. The plane is preflighted, the paperwork is done, and we are ready for the last leg to Mobile. The weather should basically be nice the whole way so long as we arrive before the 2pm thunderstorms, except for a little low IFR which is probably just ground fog on the route. Once again we are among the last to leave - it's been our MO for this race! The folks here have been wonderful, especially Josh the stop chair (and his entire family who have been helping out with rides and other things) and Michael.

Barbara writes:

Another hot day on the ramp as we prepare the plane to leave for our final stop on our journey. It seems over too soon. We have established an easy routine of who does what and when and it flows well. It will be a challenge to get back to doing it all myself for future flights without my partners.

June 23rd pictures - Norman, OK & El Dorado, AR

The approach into Norman, OK
Alison gets a ride in the "follow me" cart

We were surrounded by "Boomer Sooners". They have a big aviation program at University of Oklahoma who did a great job hosting us in Norman.

Welcome display in Norman.

They have their own airport

The "follow me" cart. We got quite a few rides in the follow-me cart as we sorted out some issues with the airplane.

University of Oklahoma footbal stadium (on its side)

An almost dry riverbed on the way to El Dorado, AR

There are about 30 race teams in El Dorado tonight. We ran into some of them at "Mel's Seafood" so I crashed their picture.

The sun sets on the planes parked at El Dorado airport. Ready for the last leg of the race tomorrow to Mobile, AL.