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Bent
Props & Engine Swaps
| As strong winds attempted to move the
surrounding desert onto the runways at Stead, the 1997
Reno National Championship Air Races wound to a close.
For some race teams a change of oil and kick of the tires
would suffice to get them home, a few others had a long
week ahead. Several aircraft were damaged in Sunday's
events, leaving more than one crew chief wondering just
what went wrong. The sometimes strong Nevada winds had
been a factor all week, but Sunday brought a dramatic
change in direction and intensity, causing the Bi-Plane
class to cancel their gold event and raising doubts for
others. Pilots and race control had their hands full with
the constantly changing direction and intensity of the
winds, creating some confusion at times on runway choice.
On to the racing...... The 8 Unlimited Bronze class
racers took the course. With Stewart Dawson in the Hawker
Sea Fury FB-11 "Spirit of Texas" coming in
first, Howard Pardue in the
In the Unlimited Silver race, Bill Rheinschild, flying the P-51 "Risky Business" was penalized for low flying and finished second behind Dennis Sanders in "Argonaut". Brent Hisey in "Miss America" got nipped for flying too low, taking third. Skip Holm in the highly modified Sea Fury "Critical Mass" had a scare when a large piece of the right side cowl blew out. Skip saw the pieces flying by the cockpit, the engine felt OK, but not knowing what was going on he wisely elected to bring it in early. Metal fatigue, apparently, was the culprit in this mishap. Skip took the event in stride, when a crewmember asked if this had quickened his pulse, Skip replied that he'd been happy to have something to occupy his attention, having been somewhat bored by the race to that point........ I guess when you've been at it as long as Skip Holm, you've probably seen it all! Stu Eberhardt in P-51D "Merlins Magic" also called a mayday when he lost power. As of Monday "we're looking" was all the crew had to say about the cause of this failure. Now it was time for the much awaited contest between long time rivals "Strega" piloted by Bill "Tiger" Destefani and "Rare Bear" flown this year by owner Lyle Shelton. Throw in a Sea Fury with one *VERY* large engine, "Dreadnought" flown by Brian Sanders and the less than 50hr old XP-51 Levitz/Rogers racer "Miss Ashley" piloted by Gary Levitz, and you had the mix for a great contest! As Steve Hinton, flying the T-33 pace plane, brought the racers over Peavine Mt. and cut them loose, it looked for a moment that "Bear" had the edge, with Lyle pulling ahead briefly. Could the cagey veteran have pulled a "fast" one on Tiger? Tiger was in the lead by the first pylon, but still
hot on his trail and looking as though he may just Lyle fell back..... at first we heard he was out of nitrous (this is not confirmed) later we heard he'd experienced a rough engine and had radioed that fact (FlightLine's trusty Bearcat pocket scanner, decided to go south for this race, so we had to depend on what we could glean from a neighbor) Sanders in "Dreadnought" passed Lyle after he slowed, the trio finishing 1-Strega 2-Dreadnought 3-Rare Bear. The Levitz/Rogers "Miss Ashley" coming in 4th. This team, after a somewhat slow start early in the week, just kept getting faster. With only 50 hours on the aircraft, and basically an untested design they did very well indeed holding on to the number four position, with Bill Rheinschild in "Risky Business" close behind. The wind had really begun to kick up at this point,
with racers landing on both crosswind runways. Then.....
"77's a definite Mayday!"..... The
"Bear's" rough engine had been caused by an
exhaust header break on the lower right side of the
engine. The hot gasses finally burned through the magneto
leads and Lyle had a complete loss of power. He elected
to land on runway 18 rolling to a stop about 3/4 of the
way to the end, followed closely by Tiger in
"Strega" who was also in trouble, with oil from
a failing Sunday evening brought a howling duststorm to Stead
field, no work could be accomplished on the damaged
aircraft by any crew under those conditions. Monday
dawned with much less wind, clear skies and much activity
in the pits. We listened to "Strega" crewchief,
Bill Kerchenfaut, briefing Tiger on the damage at Stead
Monday morning. It was clear the damage was extensive,
with Kerchenfaut covering several areas of possible
problems. In addition to the obvious damage to the prop,
the right landing gear and attaching wing structure were
visibly damaged, Tiger and Bill were also inspecting the
left gear strut. Oil There was no activity around "Rare Bear" the cowl had been replaced showing the extensive burn damage to it. Lyle's damage did not look good, but was going to be a ton cheaper than Tiger's! "Critical Mass" crewchief stated they had scrapped their original plan to cut off the edges of the damaged area and fly it as is and were going to repair the blown out cowl, patch the horizontal stabilizer (a section of the cowl had embedded itself in the tail) and fly it home. The damage to the cowl is amazing, considering it was only wind that caused it, looking as though a piston had blown through it.
That about wraps the Sunday Unlimited race story..... Stay tuned as we convert the basket of data and photos into electrons for you! We'll also be attempting to find out the fate of the damaged aircraft in the next few days. -Wayne Sagar- |
Grumman
F-8 Bearcat "Bearcat" finishing a moderately
close 3.47 seconds behind. Last year's T-6 Gold winner
Sherman Smoot, flying "Voodoo Chile" in place
of Bob Hannah, coming in third. Sherman had a close call
in the last heat race on Friday. Calling a Mayday after
burning a hole in one of the Merlin's pistons, Sherman
skillfully brought the ailing Mustang in at reduced
power. After an extremely valiant effort by the crew in
an all nighter on Saturday, the "go-home"
engine was installed, allowing this showing in the Bronze
event. ("Voodoo Chile"and Sherman may well have
been contenders in the Gold on Sunday had the race engine
been installed!) Stephen Bolander, flying "Mary
Bear", was moved to last place for a dead-line cut.
The 
give
him a race, was none other than Lyle Shelton in
"Rare Bear". It was not to be though, it soon
became obvious the problems that had plagued Lyle's team,
since their arrival, had not completely gone away..... as
it turned out it was to get worse!
prop
seal limiting his visibility. The combination of the
gusting winds, "Rare Bear's" position on the
runway and the bad forward vision conspired to cause
"Strega" to balloon on landing, then come down
hard resulting in a serious prop strike on the runway and
damage to the landing gear attach point.(and perhaps
more...see below) Tiger then rolled to a stop just past
Lyle. What a sight, these two "kings" of this
sport sitting on the runway within a stone's throw of
each other, both aircraft out of commission...... All
other aircraft in this race landed safely. Gary Levitz
electing to hold off, taking up last place in the pattern
while the situation on the runways settled down.
was
leaking from the area of the radiator and oil cooler.
Whether this was running down the inside of the fuselage
from the bad prop seal, or coming from the gearbox or oil
cooler was unclear. We heard concerns about motor mounts
as well..... clearly "Strega" was very damaged,
and the extent of this damage was unknown.