N954J has arrived back home to Winnemucca, Nevada. A surprise welcome back greeting of balloons from Janeanne Knox and her boyfriend Tim was a wonderful way to end a most exciting adventure. The Dakota has never been tugged with such fanfare.

Heather does the M&M "ta da" pose without the little round red one (aka Moe). Moe lives in Reno and so obviously was not able to be in the photo, so we'll just pretend she is there.

Moe took an airline home from Arkansas to get back to work, while Heather and her husband flew back home together. Along the way we ran into our Mama Bird Team #27 in Dumas, Texas of all places (where we were all so happy to see avgas at $4.99 which is just sad to be happy about).

And wouldn't this airspeed (bottom right corner gs = ground speed) have been nice to see during the race when the plane's handicap speed was 142 knots. Although in all truthfulness we were descending and had a pretty nice tailwind. But still it was fun to see..

We WON 24th place and two individual leg prizes!

Tonight we had the final results banquet and out of the forty plus teams that started, we did not come in last and we did not have any penalties (ex. landing light out, flyover altitude off, etc).

  Sweet.  We Rock.

 In addition to being presented these individual medals for placing third and second in certain legs of the race, we also won cash prizes too. We won enough money to buy eleven gallons of av gas, or a few hours in a hotel room, or seven cans of lubricant to get the starter to work the next time it decides to KRAP (the airport identifier for Rapid City Airport) out.

 

The last matching outfit for the year. No pilot outfit would be complete without the flying scarf!

 

 

 

Heather and Moe were joined by the Big Randy Man (Heather's husband). He airlined out to join us and help celebrate our huge win. He and Heather will fly the Piper Dakota back to Nevada, while Moe will hop on an airline so that she can go back to work on Tuesday. She may want to cut out the booze and wake up first.

 

 

 

RECAP

 

Here's Heather with Little Sparky (Chevy Spark). 

It's just like a clown car in the circus and just as much fun to drive.

Our Mama Bird, Pam Rudolph. Was a first time racer last year and won 7th this year. We took notes.

Heather's planned hotel rooms in advance of the start. They all were cancelled due to hanging out in Oregon for two days. Note the rain drops...

A typical flyby. Totally fun to fly 200 feet off the ground down the runway. Makes normal landing patterns boring.

Notes from a typical flight briefing. Moe writes in pink, Heather writes in black. I think we should have Moe take the flight briefing notes from now on.

Notice the Wyoming comment up in the top right corner.

We're racing. And look we're beating them!

The Black Hills of South Dakota. One of the amazing views on this trip.  And then a dive bomb into Spearfish airport!

This image includes 3 very different sky conditions.  Cumulous clouds, mud moisture (common up in these parts we were told), and streamlined bugs on the window (that's the dark streaks).

Big thanks to Paul at Pheasants Fury Aviation for hangaring our plane and keeping it safe from the mean, beating, lightning throwing, hail striking thunderstorms.

We all received a plaque with the race route for 2013

 

Our Mama Bird Family, Team #27. They (we) have invited us to visit them in Lake Havasu

 

 

We have arrived! The friendly volunteeers helped us tuck the plane into our tie down spot and Donna, ARC Volunteer Extraordinaire, greeted us at the door.  What a relief!

 

At the "Meet The Racers" dinner, the ladies and gents partied with the big band....and flew through more hangar talk.  All the racers were there to meet the last plane in after dark.  They fought through to the finish and performed a flawless landing to a welcoming crowd. 

 

 

Remember....MoeFO is the little fat red one...and Heather is the taller yellow one.  It's not good when MoeFO has a dangerous rolling pin in her hand; good thing Heather is running away to hide.  But that was SO yesterday!  The long time racers say it is a successful race under 2 conditions.

1.  Finish.

2.  Still be talking to your partner

 

YEAH!  We're winners!

 

And we think we're extra special because based on our unofficial calculations, we were the plane furthest west.  And we had no penalties. 

 

More to follow on scoring, results and most importantly the banquet!

This is how we started our day. For those that aren't pilots, the instrument is a storm scope and the little x marks are showing lightning strikes. So our first leg of the day, turned out to be a little more exciting than planned. A hard turn to the west put us out of the path of the thunderstorm, but also put us in the wrong direction. So our first leg of the day was a lot longer than planned. And even though we had massive headwinds, at least we didn't get stuck in South Dakota .

Our last en route flight planning session in La Junta, CO. We are looking a little bit worse than when we started, and pretty sure we are getting tired of the shirts.

Finally finished in Arkansas!  Beat up, exhausted and thrilled to have finished the hardest cross country either one of us have ever done. More to follow when we recover....

Finally made it out of Oregon! Landed in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday evening ready to start racing, but the battery didn't want to play with us anymore. So our official race start happened the next morning.

It was nice to have companay. Our first landing was at Rawlins, WY (our third fly-by city) and we were greeted warmly by local folks that provided us with much needed hamburgers and drinks. 

The FBO owner gave us some M&Ms for the road. They didn't last very long.

Beautiful to look at, but horrible to fly under. Pretty much flew in the bumps all day, but had great tailwinds for most the day.

Have to be in Arkansas by tomorrow at sunset, so off to bed for some much needed sleep!

As quoted from Kathy Walton, The Reno Area 99s, "it's a scientific crapshoot".

And the science and shooting crap continues!

Here we are trying to poke a hole through the clouds.  Uh, yeah.  No.

Friendly folks at Professional Air at Bend, Oregon, like Pam greeted us.  Here we are enjoying the airport view from the second floor cafe.  Check them out,  www.professionalair.com

Okay, back to business flight planning.  Moe walks outside (again) to check the rain storm overhead and runs into the line guy, "Wait, 5 minutes and the weather will change".  Moe, "It's been 5 minutes so I thought I should come see...just in case the big windows were blocking my view!".

This is how we spent the morning waiting for the weather to break. It never really did, so the ARC officials made a decision to release the racers on their own to navigate to the first stop of Mountain Home, ID.

So we took off.

And mother nature had other plans.

So we landed in Oregon to wait for better weather tomorrow.

Our "rental"car to get us to town.

BIG thanks to Rob Berg and Jordan at Berg Air, Madras Municipal Airport FBO.  You guys are great!

http://www.bergair.com/

There were low ceilings today over a mountain pass that we have to cross, so the  start has been delayed for a while. The fast chase plane is going to take an exploratory flight later to see if the weather has opened up. So in the meanwhile, 90 women are hanging out in the FBO playing on their IPads and phones, checking on weather and playing Angry Birds.

The race folks were nice to us and treated us all to Egg McMuffins. They have never tasted so good!

Today we're blue M&Ms

Today we spent all morning at "airplane camp" getting lessons on how to do the fly- bys at each airport along the route. We do not have to actually land at every stop, but we do have to fly about two hundred feet down the runway every stop and the timers on the ground record the time of our passing. For each leg of the race we have a start and stop time, and that way only the time spent flying the race is counted (not time spent getting fuel or just sitting waiting for better winds).

In addition to prize money and medals for the first ten teams, and little awards for the winners of each leg, there is also a prize for the most congenial team. Moe and Heather thought that they would increase their odds of winning if they passed out bags of M&M candies to everyone. Turns out the candy was a big hit since there were no snacks provided. We'll let you know how the bribe turns out.

The race starts Tomorrow! For those that want to track all the racers progress, there is a website to view each of the racers progress using a Spot device. The web address is:

www.trackleaders.com

Once there select the Air Race Classic 2013 link and follow along. Remember it is not who gets there first. The winners not be known until the very end when each airplane's speed has been calculated and the pilot who flew their plane the best is determined.

So when we first started planning this trip Moe asks if we were going to share a room to keep expenses to a minimum.  Well, apparently there were a number of big groups in town this weekend, so Moe and Heather not only got to share a room, they got to share a bed! And they giggled all night long just like little kids....

After a refreshing night's sleep, the team spent time learning about mountain and canyon flying in a safety seminar presented by Lori MacNicol a renowned back country pilot.

The day ended with a "Meet the Racers" banquet. The last fun, non-stressful activity we get to do before tomorrow's day long safety and training briefings. Again we did a great job pre-flighting the matching outfits.

All the air race teams had to arrive today by noon. Upon arrival the pilots must present credentials such as  proof of currency,  log book review, etc. The airplane also has to be checked to make sure that it has had all the proper and current maintenance . An airplane mechanic reviews both the plane's logbooks as well as a physical inspection. Local aviation mechanic students from South Seattle Community College helped with the inspections. There were no issues found. With either the plane or us, the pilots.

A pretty amazing sight to see all 48 planes on the ramp, each with a race number. Some of these women have competed in over thirty races!  All age groups are flying, both the young and the wise. We are sort of in the middle age group - not quite wise yet and definitely not young.

So here is a picture of Moe imparting her "wisdom " to one of the collegiate racers, Andrea

"Well, when I was your age I had to fly uphill both ways..."

Okay, won't lie...we almost got stuck.

With great fanfare we depart Winnemucca , NV with friends and family braving the freezing cold morning to send us off.

A beautiful flight through Oregon and on into Pasco, WA where the race will start on Tuesday .

Happy to land safe and sound. The race partners did not get divorced yet.  It looks promising that they will finish the race as friends.

If the racers should ever have an emergency and land off airport, they can always  use Heather's shoes as a beacon!