aafo: what about the "Miss Ashley II" approach to this. The Griffon seems to be relatively inexpensive and available.

Kerch: Well, but there again you can't buy a new part for a Griffon, maybe some new old stock. In the Griffon stuff they [Miss Ashley II] have a single stage Griffon, the ideal setup is a two stage supercharger and I think Don Whittington has just about all of those in captivity......They get about 70in of manifold pressure [Miss Ashley II actually ran somewhat higher than that] at Reno....... a two stage you can go up to over 100in.

aafo: we've heard you run Strega in the neighborhood of 150? ......

Kerch: Well yea...we don't quite get that high...At Reno about probably abut 136 to 140 depending on the day.

aafo: that's still amazingly high!

Kerch: Yes....it's really up there.

aafo: are there any aftermarket parts available?

Kerch: We make pistons, we can do new bearings, gears have been made, some nose reduction gears, although they've never worked out well. We've made camshafts but they didn't really work out that well.

aafo: so basically you need the "old" original parts to do well..

Kerch: They're the best.....Cylinder heads and liners are becoming a big problem. The money is only one part of it....I'll give you a good example, we were having problems with connecting rods for many years, our connecting rods were breaking. A guy from [a commercial supplier of high performance connecting rods] thought they could make replacements and told us to send them a sample. They did not realize that the Merlin has a "fork and blade" rod, they took one look at the sample and said "you guys are crazy we can't build this". The cost of making the rod was so astronomical in the quantities that we wanted, they didn't even want to consider it. That's one of the big problems. What I'd like to see is another class established.... 750 cu in class..... 777 cu in would be better. I talked of this at the NAG banquet last year. 550 cu in was the cubic displacement of the old Graves Trophy Race of the Cleveland era, I thought reviving that class would be good. Of course the "Thunder Mustang" has a 600+ cubic inch engine .....since that engine's available it would be a shame to eliminate that one. Then I read about another engine, a V-12 marine application that was 750, so I said make it 777 cu in. The casino's would like that <laughing> it has a certain hype to it... What I envision, I've been thinking about it for a long time, is a class wherein the current unlimited aircraft engines are just too big. I see a race that's not just 8 laps, It's 25 laps. A 25 lap race, the rules being the same as the unlimited rules except for the cubic displacement limit. No other regulation on it, it could be two cycle, four cycle, supercharged, fuel injected completely computer controlled.....it doesn't matter. That is the cubic displacement limit and you can use any type of airplane you want. If you can squeeze that into a "Nemesis" formula one then fine. And it can be a bi-plane or whatever.... Wouldn't even have to have wings! Whatever you want as long as it flies.

aafo: sort of a "LimitedUnlimited" class..you could see some real innovation with this formula!

Kerch: That's the whole thing! There are a couple reasons for the 25 laps: The 25 laps evens things out. In other words if you build an airplane, and we'll say it's got 750 cu in for purposes of discussion, we'll say you make 3000 hp out of this engine.....Well you gotta feed your 3000 hp for 25 laps, which means you have to carry a lot of fuel. So the size of the airplane now increases, remember before I said airplanes are all compromises. You might have a 500 cu in engine that makes 1000 hp and it's efficiency and the size of the airplane are such that it's just as just as capable or more capable of winning a 25 lap race. Another thing that having the 25 laps does, it delays these super high speeds up in the 500mph range. I think you'd see the first year out up in the 400's and it would take a while before the speeds climbed up into the critical mach number. And you have to say who is going to build these airplanes and why would they do that? The way I see this happening is: Three years from the date of announcement, an event would be held at Reno, I feel that Reno is the place to have it because of its history. 25 laps on the unlimited course flying with the rules I've just specified. First prize would be one million dollars, with a three million dollar total purse.

aafo: that kind of prize money would certainly provide incentive!

Kerch: I think you would see quite a number of people become involved in that. The only stipulation would be the class would be allowed to have an in flight camera mounted in the cockpit, and you would allow Internet access to your in-flight racing.

aafo: You've got our support here! [where do we sign up!?!] This would be amazing to see!

Kerch: I think you would see, in this kind of scenario, automotive type powerplants become used in this class. You'd see a lot of innovation along the lines of "Nemesis". John Sharp has done some fantastic things and there's no reason why a class couldn't be established that would have the lions share of the money go to this class. The unlimiteds would die out, as we currently see them, and this class would eventually evolve back into the [new] unlimited class. I don't want to do away with unlimiteds, I just want to get these world war II dinosaurs out of there and make room for new technology.

aafo: going this route might open up avenues for sponsorship not currently available....the aircraft powerplant manufactures come immediately to mind.

Kerch: Or the General Motors or the Fords and bingo you've started to hit on some of the possibilities of this. I think that it would be of international proportions, you'd see airplanes come out a lot of different countries. For a one time event, run it as a one time event.... in the three years that you allow people to build these things, you would publicize this on ESPN, make TV updates on what's happening in this class, hype the daylights out of it, every aviation publication, just keep feeding the information to them to hype the event. I think you'd see a lot of people come just to see what people dreamed up!.......What would happen, because there are so many possibilities, the guy that builds the best compromise would win! continue>>