WRAP-UP 2007 San Diego Red Bull Air Races

[madmax]

Shulman practicing for the Redbull Girl tryouts..

[Redneck Shaun]

LOL.... Sweet max!

Hey I'm new at this stuff. Do they clip those barriers very often?

[madmax]

Friday's shots -- GAME ON! Today was the beginning of the elimination rounds - it was very noticiable that the level of competition was very high! Today the wind was up to a pretty good tick, but this didn't stop any of the action. It actually added to it. Shooting from the South Embarcadero, we had a great vantage point on all the action. The pilots flew 4 rounds total which lasted about an hour and change for all 13 pilots. Klaus Schrodt was the lone cut pilot.






This is what happens when a pylon goes down. Boats jam out to the barge, and somehow they mystically pop up again in about 3 minutes. All in all I think we saw about 8 pylons taken down through the weekend.








Some of my favorite shots from Friday's flights:

[pbrantuas]

From talking to the pilots it sounds like there are barrier clippings at every show.
They are so familiar with clipping the barriers that they can acctually tell what part of the aiplane hit the barrier. Some will clip it with there tail wheel, some with their wing tips and some with the middle of the wing. One pilot even told us that he had to do a tail slide to get the barrier off of his wing.

[madmax]

Once all flights were completed, myself, Jason, Matt, Pedro and Brett headed down to the temporary runway (TRW) at Brown Field, near the Mexican border. We had a very cool chance to meet some of the pilots, get an up close and personal look at their planes, and find out what makes these guys tick. There were probably about 12 media folks there, and we jumped right into the fray. Check out these shots.. This was -very- cool.

Waiting in line to see what our journey down south will bring...



Side view of Peter Besenyei's Redbull edge. One note on the modifications these guys make... They tape EVERYTHING up that might cause drag. Anything protruding gets taped. The pilots will tell you that every little bit counts in these races. The racing planes are amazing, and at the same time, not much different from our models! Everthing is scaled up of course... They even come apart like our models, and there were 15' high stacks of wing "boxes" on one side of the field for the wings and stabs when transporting. 2 747's carry all 13 of these planes around the world.



Note the tape on the wing ferring in both shots..

[madmax]

Jason interviewing Frank Versteegh. This guy was cool, and knew Jason from RC events in the past. Frank's introduction was met with a full blown headlock by Frank, and he was the most humerous of all the pilots. Frank is flying Kirby's old edge, and covered in new vinyl.

[Ryguy]

Awesome pictures. I just about had my parents convinced to go out there this weekend to watch. Hopefully I'll be there next year whenever they're in the states.

Anyone know what sort of prize money is in this for the pilots and manufacturers? I tried looking everywhere for it, but couldn't find anything.

[Plane Addicted]

Where are all the video's.. we need video's! The pictures are great! But you I can't wait to see all the sweet video that you guys shot.

That burger that Jason is eating looks great. Will In and Out ship to Michigan?

[madmax]

I had the chance to interview Kirby Chambliss. VERY cool dude, easy to talk to, and he took me on a tour of his Edge. We have video of these interviews that will be up shortly. Kirby is one of the top guys on the RBAR circuit, and has some cool mods including new winglets - you can see the vapor trails that these create in the flights. Kirby also showed us the incredible video downlink system that exists on all of the racing planes. Sitting in the turtledeck is a metal box that monitors speed, g-force, and 3 onboard cameras all pumping information back to the production trailer at the embarcadero. VERY impressive setup from a techie point of view...

[madmax]

The "backup" Redbull tandem Edge. Woulda been SWEEET to get a flight in this bad boy!

[madmax]

A shot of the wingtips of both Redbull Edges (Peter and Kirby). Note the airfoil differences.

[madmax]

The Redbull MIG. Super sweet plane. Loud as loud can be. Full on communist era Russian design complete with 1/4" gaps underneath the canopy.