Race day 1!

Race day in Arizona dawned sunny and clear, and already hot at 6am which was the time of our breakfast weather briefing. We arrived at the airport around 7am, and the ramp quickly became the scene of many racers preflighting their airplanes, fuel trucks and mechanics doing final checks, and many helpers and photographers around the planes. At 8am, the first group of five airplanes started their engines, and in a loud roar the group taxied down to the taxiway that led down to runway 21R. Then the next group of five, and the group after that, until finally at around 830am our group (6) got the signal to start our engines!

The Control Tower cleared us for taxi and then takeoff, and then we were off, climbing into the thin air and over the first range of mountains, at full throttle. Alison flew this leg, with Linda doing navigation and communication. Our first stop was Albuquerque New Mexico, about 300 miles to the East. During this first leg, because all 50 planes take off around the same time, everyone is bunched pretty close together at first, although the separation widens gradually due to the different speeds of the different airplanes in the race. Our airplane is one of the faster ones in the race, and so during the leg we overtook a few of the slower airplanes, as expected. Looking out the window is very important to make sure that you see everyone, and in addition we have a TCAS (traffic collision avoidance system) on board which shows us the position and altitude of other traffic on our GPS. Another helpful thing is that all the racers use a common radio frequency to communicate their position to each other, and pass on helpful information, such as the band of smoke from wildfires that we had to fly through at the halfway point. The leg was uneventful, and we flew over the same remote high desert as on the journey in to Prescott. 

When we approached the flyby airport, which was Los Lunas, a little airport about 20 miles South of Albuquerque, it really helped that we had checked it out on the journey out, as we were familiar with the terrain. We made an 80 degree turn to overfly the runway and zoomed down to flyby altitude of 300 ft above ground level till we crossed the timing line and the end of the runway, and then flew away to slow up and let the engine cool down. Mostly the official stop airport for the leg is the same as the flyby airport, but in this case we had to land at Double Eagle, a bigger airport just to the north and west of Albuquerque.

Once on the ground at Double Eagle, we decided to stay the night even though we had only done one leg. One reason was to keep company with Barb and Ethel (team 7), who had a vacuum pump failure on the flight and had to get some repairs done. We checked into a hotel and had an early dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. We'll be up bright and early tomorrow to get some more legs in! PS - remember that because each plane flies at a different speed, this is a race against our own handicap - so the fact that many planes are one or two stops ahead of us at the end of day 1 is no indication of how well or badly we will do by the end of the race.

PPS - for those who are wondering, Alison writes the blog entries (although I always do it in the third person); and Linda does the photos and captions. Just another way that we make a great team!

Sun coming up, time to race!

Vans to transport racers to the airport

Team Wunder Women ready to go

So is Cool Beans

And our baby birds from Purdue, Molly and Mary

The ramp was very busy, you can see the damage to the tent from the microburst last night

Heather from team 31

Team 7 Sure B.E.T. Taxis for departure

Our ceremonial starter

Passing another plane enroute

You can see the line of planes on our traffic display. Each triangle represents at least one plane.

On the ground in Albuquerque, it was quite a Congo line for fuel

Albuquerque

The stop in Albuquerque gave necklaces to all the racers

Team 7 with no cowl getting their vacuum pump replaced

Our plane getting towed for fuel, there were no lines at the pump at 6:30pm

Team 30 and team 7 staying in Albuquerque for the night.....here at the Cheesecake Factory

And some Baskin Robbins for dessert