Paperwork, most of it done
Nobody could have prepared us for the amount of paperwork that has to be done to enter the race. It started with the entry itself, that needed a lot of attention. It continued with getting the Airworthiness Directives submitted in the right format, and getting the necessary insurance we needed in order to be able to participate in the race. The insecurity of not knowing if our airplane would be able to race and would we get the needed insurance, definitely made us very nervous. Slowly but surely everything fell into place. Starting with us finding renters insurance that would suffice, and the submission of our Airworthiness Directives finally being accepted with this email:
You can imagine our relief when we knew that we could race the airplane we intended to race. I can't even wrap my head around how to get a different airplane and start the application process over again. Thank goodness we don't have to!
Thank you so much to the airplane division for being patient with us and getting it done.
We also had to complete two courses online; Aeronautical Decision Making and the DC special flight rules area. Both courses were very informative and definitely good to have done before the race. The certificates needed to be send to the safety division of the race, and have been accepted, another box we could check. In addition we have the hotels booked for the start and terminus, as well as bought tickets to both the start and terminus events.
The handicap flight
A big milestone that had to be completed in order to compete, is the handicap flight. The Handicap flight determines the handicap speed of each team entering, to allow different make and model airplanes to compete in the same race. The challenge is for the teams to achieve actual ground speeds as far over the groundspeed established in the Handicap flight as possible. The trick is to fly the perfect cross country, play the elements and navigate the weather as efficiently as possible. The handicap flight needed to be completed before May 15th. Our initial handicap pilot ( a pilot that will judge that it is flown according to the rules) wasn't able to perform the flight with us before the deadline. But we were fortunate to be appointed a different handicap pilot. She was willing to come out to Lancaster CA on May 10th, which was mother's day! We were relieved to hear that we would be able to complete the flight before the deadline, weather permitting of course.
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| Our Handicap Flight flown on May 10th 2015 |
During the handicap flight the airplane is flown in race configuration, full throttle and leaned for max performance. Four legs of 5 minutes were flown in a box pattern at a density altitude of 6000 ft. It needed to be a calm day, with no turbulence. This proved to be a little bit challenging in the Antelope Valley CA where our airplane is based at Edwards AFB. The spring is notorious for really bad winds and the heat combined with terrain and airspace restrictions made the handicap flight a somewhat difficult task. The ARC provided a data logger and this was backed up by the handicap pilot reading and manually recording the groundspeed from the aircrafts GPS. The data from the logger and the hand recorded data was then submitted to the handicap division for review, together with weight and balance of the aircraft.
We were lucky, on May 10th 2015 the winds were not that bad and it was actually a relatively cool day for the time of year. The handicap pilot met with me at Fox field KWJF in Lancaster at 8 in the morning. After briefing the flight and going over the necessary paperwork we took off. My nerves were through the roof! Even worse than checkride nerves for some reason. But the flight proved to be a lot easier than I had anticipated. The airplane basically did it for me, on the autopilot. All I had to do was make sure the mixture was properly leaned and the throttle full forward. Also had to keep an eye on the airspace we were flying in, we didn't want to cross Edwards AFB airspace on our last leg. It was a great experience to fly the first official flight of our race. The following week we received the email stating that the flight was successful:
Looking fabulous
The final major milestone I'd like to report on is the completion of our team logo and shirts. Of course we need matching outfits to be looking fabulous throughout our flying adventure!
Our next major milestones: purchasing the race number and applying it to the airplane, flight planning, and get the 100 hr inspection done before we leave on the 11th of June.
Stay tuned for more from team Flying Dutchess and Soaring Eagle!
~Flying Dutchess
