Skylane N222VW - our baby!

Hi everyone! This is Linda. I just sent out an e-mail announcing this blog to many friends and family and I realized that I have not even posted anything yet! I am very excited to be racing again this year, especially in our own plane! I have included a couple of photos of the plane below....one from the outside and one from the inside. We've only had the plane since October but have already fallen in love. It will be great to take it on a grand adventure across the country. I can't wait!

Maintenance...

We decided to put the plane in for an early annual inspection, to make sure that it's in good shape for the race and other aviation events in May, as well as to fit in with our work and travel schedules. While we've had no issues with the engine and airframe, we have had a number of instrumentation and avionics problems to work out. One is the nav select unit at the top of the King stack; and the other new one is our artificial horizon. This instrument is required for flying in cloud when there's no visible horizon, and shows whether you're climbing, descending or turning. It's a vacuum driven gyroscopic instrument, and a couple weekends ago during instrument approach practice it toppled, indicating that the gyro is failing. Its quite something to see one of these fail, and I'm thankful it didn't occur in actual instrument conditions. We are trained to recognize instrument failure by referencing the others in the pack to figure out which is giving the erroneous indication, but still it would be very distracting in actual conditions to see the horizon indication drop down the instrument then tip over into an apparent steep turn. So yesterday Linda flew the plane over to our wonderful mechanic Kent Heller at Pottstown, who will replace the gyro as well as completing the annual. Looking forward to getting it back in tip top shape!

A new team mate!

Linda and I are very excited because we just asked our friend and fellow air racer Barbara Strachan to join us on the race as a passenger - and she accepted!! We thought of this over President's Day weekend, on the way back from our trip to Clearwater Florida to visit Barbara and Russell. This is the icing on the cake and is going to make it so much fun. None of us have raced three up before, so this will be exciting and interesting. Now we'll have the brain power and flying experience of three of us to draw on, not just two! Not to mention the laughs we're going to have.

Race numbers

We got a text from Mary at Women in Aviation in Reno telling us that we got race number 21! 21 is a lucky number I think, so we're feeling good about it. Mary's team is #17.

Celebrated with two beautiful spring flying days - the temperature was a balmy 55 degrees, the sky was blue, and the winds were light. On Saturday Linda flew a lesson, and I got some solo time in the C182. On Sunday Linda flew the C182 down to Chester County to meet Rich and I in the Cherokee. To explain: I have owned a 1971 Piper Cherokee for about nine years now with two partners (one of whom is Rich). However in 2009 I relocated, and instead of being 5 miles from home the Cherokee was an hour's drive away at N10 (Collegeville). So Linda and I decided to form a partnership and buy a plane together at DYL (Doylestown). I was expecting it to take us quite a while to find and buy the right plane for us, giving me plenty of time to sell the Cherokee. Instead, our C182 N222VW was only the second plane we looked at - things moved with lightening speed - and before we knew it we were owners! The Cherokee share is for sale of course, but no takers yet. So as a result, I managed to get the cool picture below. The plane in the front is our Cherokee. Two planes beyond that there is a rare sight - one of our sister airplanes, a 1971 180F with the exact same paint scheme and a very similar tail number. And beyond that, barely visible at the end of the row, our race plane C182 222VW.

We also found out that our Baby Bird team is Classic Racer # 30 Kansas State University (Megan Henderson and Nicole Lordemann), so we are excited to be able to help them out with some advice and what small amount of knowledge and wisdom we possess!

Another year, another race!

Its February 2011, and team Cool Beans (aka Linda Evans and Alison Chalker) is back again for the 2011 Air Race Classic. Linda and Alison haven't raced together since 2008, but Alison flew the 2009 and 2010 races with Mary Wunder, who is also flying again this year with new race partner Rose Brown.

New this year - the plane! As of October 2010, Linda and Alison are the proud owners of Cessna 182 N222VW, and this 1997 airplane is going to be racing its very first Air Race Classic. Here are two pictures taken during the prebuy:

Last weekend we took a break from the long cold winter and flew 2VW down to St Pete FL to see our friend (and former racer) Barbara and her partner Russell! We got some sun, saw an alligator, and got in a long shakedown flight on which we learned a lot about the airplane.

The Air Race Classic is a transcontinental air race for women pilots, and has been raced in one form or another for more than 80 years. Each year the route is different, but it is always a VFR (visual flight rules) race in daytime across approximately 2400 nautical miles. Racers have 4 days to complete the course, and teams are scored on their performance relative to their individual handicap. Understanding and handling your airplane to get maximum performance at full throttle is key, as is reading the weather to find good tailwinds and maintain VFR. There's no experience like this one. This year's race is a 2722 statute mile route from Iowa City to Mobile, Alabama, taking in eleven stops!

To find out more about the 2010 Air Race Classic, as well as the history and results of previous races, check out their website http://www.airraceclassic.org/.

To see the 2008 blog from Team Cool Beans (Alison Chalker and Linda Evans), see http://evanslle.googlepages.com/.

To see the 2009 and 2010 blogs from Team Adelles Belles (Mary Wunder and Alison Chalker), check out http://adellesbelles.blogspot.com/ and http://adellesbelles2010.blogspot.com/

To find out more about The Ninety-Nines, check out http://www.ninety-nines.org/