What Byles and Steven said, and more.
I have found that even within the racing community of fans, most people either do not read the factual report of the 2011 Reno Air Race accident, or do not understand what they read.
It's not that complex, but it does take an understanding of the terminology, the way airplanes are actually operated and difference, for instance, between a test flight to see if there is an oil leak at the flight school, and having a Lockheed test pilot fly your racer to high IAS and perform a series of flutter tests on the airframe.
The P-51D has a redline of 505 mph indicated airspeed. A Learjet is 380. In race flight, a P-51 indicates about 450. It is not over the redline.
Someone mentioned modern props; The composite propellers designed for turbo props do not have the strength to take the pulses a piston engine produces. It's been tried, they shatter. The only one that has worked is the Constellation/P-3 hybrid prop used on Rare Bear during the nineties. It is very heavy, solid aluminum, and produces so much gyroscopic precession it wears out the airframe. It is not used anymore for pylon racing and is said to be most useful for straightaway speeds in the 540 mph range, good for another 3km record attempt.
Old airplanes; This previously mentioned Bearcat airframe was fully de-mated and inspected by x-ray in 1996 and 2007. About 100 hours of operation between those two dates. When it was reassembled it was done with all new hardware. When I worked with the crew in the mid 80's the aileron bearings were new when it flew to the race, and replaced when it returned to base. About 10 hours of operation in between. The pilot was a Naval aviator, been to NATC test pilot school and was a cross service instructor pilot in Air Force T-38 Talons. Then he built his own flying Bearcat from a wreck.
Many of today's racers are very old airframes, they're made of aluminum and steel and those materials are very well known and it's well know how to test for wear or corrosion. Most racing Mustangs are built up from parts, Stiletto, Strega and Dago Red were wrecks rebuilt from new or serviceable parts. They were built to race at that point. Voodoo and Sumpthin' Else were stock flyers modified over the years to racing form, and this was a path fraught with failure. Stock phenolic material elevator trim tabs were to blame for the failure of the trim system in the case of Voodoo in 1998, however the flutter was excited by mis-rigged flaps. These lessons come to some through hard experience, on the other hand some teams choose to document the lessons of others and fly an airplane with all of the known components of the most failsafe performance installed up front.
Then there is flight test; Jimmy Leeward's airplane was never flown by anyone with experience in flight test. It was only flown by him. It was never subject to any flutter test flights in it's history since it's wings were clipped to 28 feet by Dave Zueschel in 1983. During that modifcation it was sold from the Wiley Sanders Trucking Company team (who's race pilot was Lockheed Test Pilot School grad/ Air Force test pilot Skip Holm of Have Blue, F-117 fame) to Jimmy Leeward. Jimmy never invited Skip to fly the airplane after the wing clip, never asked anyone about any flight test and refused advise from people that knew some good things came from flight test. (Dave Zueschel built Stiletto the year of N79111's sale to Jimmy and it had the same short wing clip and scoopless fuselage, Skip Holm noted significant peculiarities in the airplane's handling in pitch at high IAS, but praised the wing clip though noting a slow roll rate. Skip won the 1984 Reno final in Stiletto, it's first time out.) No comprehensive or even partial flight test was done on Spectre X, LARS, Galloping Ghost ever in Leeward's ownership from 1983 to 2011.
A good friend and race pilot was crew chief on Spectre X, as Jimmy's racer was known in 1983 and he said he could not make any sense of Jimmy's mental process through the period of Monday through Wednesday of race week as Leeward proceeded to blow one engine per day trying to set a qualifying record with green engines. This man is a well respected warbird restoration specialist and was the back-up pilot for the famous Red Baron RB-51. He refused to work with Leeward ever again.
Leeward was a darling with the RARA officials, and a great realtor. He owned a famous airplane that had raced through the racing era from 1946 to 2011 (maybe, some say it is not really the airframe of the 40's racer), was Miss Candace, and Jeannie and won many races and set many race records. It'd been rebuilt many times (bellied in in 1970 and 1981), but was always a well groomed racer prepared by teams at Sanders Aeronautics in Long Beach, Aero Sport in Chino and then Zeuschel in Van Nuys that worked hard to make it a safe racer with good integrity. These qualities were thwarted by Leeward when assembling a race team under his ownership.
No team is as dysfunctional as was the accident aircraft team. No airplane is as potentially dangerous and no pilot as limited as that embodied in the Galloping Ghost 2011. The teams that elect to race this year will be those ready to submit to the most rigorous inspections of airplane and paperwork that has ever been at the Reno race. I predict all will come through with minimal effort as the effort will have been done before arrival.
It should be a safe 2012 race this month. 2011's fatal accident was an anomaly made up of many factors. One can read/watch about them in the exhaustive NTSB report and hearing video recordings.
Chris...
Topic: Reno air race incident (Read 3477 times)
