Article Written By: Robert Vess



“OK Men, start‘em up” is the emphatic command given by flight line boss Holly Hollingsworth. Right then, a big digital clock on the other side of the runway begins a 120 second countdown right in front of your face. You already feel a little pressured that time’s ticking away. Your heart races as your helpers put the “beefy” starter to your machine and it growls to life along with four other airplanes on the starting line. The sound alone sends chills down your spine every time!. One by one, Holly taps the plane holders on the back and waves his flag signifying that they can release that quivering beast. If all goes as planned, you’ll be ready when it’s your turn to go and you get into the air before that clock reaches zero. If you’re not, you get to sit this one out.

Usually, everyone gets started and launched well within that time limit. You really need to! Because you still have several things to accomplish in the next 70-90 seconds. As you climb out towards the upwind pylon, the particular turn judge assigned to your plane hopefully knows which one is yours and turns on your assigned colored light (on the pylon) to signify that you’ve passed the pole. Your caller acknowledges this to you and yells over the noise for you to turn back. As you cross back past that pylon, your judge hopefully turns off your light. That “on-off” light sequence tells your caller how far you are traveling past the pole and this is very important information if you are going to fly a fast course!

Now you traverse the 1600 foot straightaway towards pylon two and repeat the recognition process with another judge there. If all goes well, you start positioning yourself for the race start. What? That’s right, you haven’t even started the race yet. You’ll most likely get into the air with some good time left on that 120-second start clock and your caller has the responsibility of watching it along with the lights and all the other race traffic! Immediately upon reaching the zero count from engine start, a new 60-second countdown begins. This single minute is all the time you have left to get comfortable with your plane and put it at the right place in the air for what I consider to be the most exciting part of RC flying I have ever experienced: the start dive! You’re circling above the course as the clock ticks down and at the proper instant, you turn and dive toward the start-finish line (which is at mid field right in front of the pilot stations). The race will start as this timer reads zero and a loud horn sounds; with or without you. In this competitive sport, you don’t want to give away any time so you attempt to get there at the exact instant the horn sounds. If you get there a little too soon, you receive a “start cut” that results in a time penalty with obvious race repercussions. If you’re way too soon, you get disqualified completely. So you have a lot of anxiety to deal with as you try to judge things just right for a close yet penalty-free start. But guess what? There are four other pilots trying to do the same thing at the same time! Needless to say, it gets wild as five fast airplanes funnel into a narrow path toward the starting line.

The race itself involves six laps around the two pylon course. Your caller tries to help you fly the fastest route possible while still making it around both pylons for all six laps. As you race to overtake someone or stay ahead of them, you have to fight the urge to turn “a little sooner”. So you really have to establish trust that your caller is anticipating the lights so that the response time between seeing the light, telling you to turn, and having you react does not comprise your efforts. It takes practice and even a “sixth-sense” to do this well. Some teams even rely on electronic timer units to help cue them. Just like for the early start, any cut costs you a time penalty on your race time (6-10 seconds, depending on the class). More than two such cuts and you are disqualified. A clean race is the goal here! As you cross the finish line to complete lap six, your assigned timer/scorer stops a clock and reads your elapsed time for the race. He/she applies any cut penalties and that’s your official time for that heat. The finish order is determined from the order of official times for the five pilots. Incremental points are awarded for each successive place and these are accumulated throughout the five or more heat races flown by each pilot in each class over the weekend.

The points earned during the heat races are actually what you’re attempting to maximize both for the present race and the season point championship. For the season, the pilot with the most points in each class at the close of the three-race series is crowned the national champion and receives valuable trophy/merchandise/cash awards. For the race, the top five in each class get to fly in the “Gold” trophy race from which a champion from each class is determined. The second five also get to go at it in a “Silver” trophy race. Sponsor-provided plaques and merchandise are awarded to the winners of these trophy races. And the alcohol class winners also earn cash awards!

This is giant scale air racing! And the Unlimited Scale Racing Association (USRA) is the special interest group that governs and promotes this exciting sport. You can visit the homepage of the USRA at www.usraingfo.org to see all the rules and specifications for each of the several classes that are offered but a quick summary of the four that are active on the circuit will follow.

In order to get newcomers involved and experiencing the racing excitement, a low-cost class called “Dominator” was formed. Here, everyone races Lanier Dominators (essentially big, v-tail, Quickee 500-type aircraft) with one of two allowable engines. A “spec” APC prop and 15% nitro fuel are provided at each race. It seems that the fast combination is a minimum-weight, plans-built airframe with a Moki 2.10 engine. Of course you have to fly well, too! Typical speeds on the straights are around 130 mph.

Formula One-GT (F1-GT) requires 42% scale renditions of aircraft that have at least attempted to qualify for the Reno National Air Races. So some beautiful and sleek designs such as the GR-7, Kelly F-1d, Polecat, etc. are flown to great effect in model scale. Here, the airplanes all use a stock gas/ignition Zenoah GT-80 and a special APC prop to keep a level playing field and reduce costs. The level of competition in this very popular class is extremely high due to the “spec” powerplant, numerous fast designs, and competent pilots. Straightaway speeds on the course are on the order of 160-165 mph with these gas-burning racers and the world record for six laps is 1:43.26.

If you take the same airframes used in F1-GT and put an alcohol-burning motor in them, you have the much faster Formula One (F-1) class. Awesome custom-built engines of up to 8.8 cubic inches in displacement are allowed and most choose to use the venerable Zenoah GT-80 as the basis for their conversions. And these powerplants turn custom solid carbon fiber props at over 11,000 rpm on 20% nitro. This results in race speeds up to about 185 mph and start dives over 200 mph! Even though the race course is 1600 feet between pylons, these cover the full race distance in about 90 seconds! The world record is 1:23.45.

But, just like at Reno, the big dogs of USRA racing are the Unlimiteds. These are also expected to be reasonable scale renditions of their full-scale warbird counterparts and are sized to have approximately 100 inch wingspans. Other than the outline, the only real limitation is that the powerplant must weight less than 14 pounds. So approaches toward engines are wide ranging. Some prefer monster 290cc Herbranson engines, others use Aerrow 200cc engines, and now some are proving that available 150-160cc engines like the DA and ZDZ can be competitive on light airframes since they can “turn” inside some of the heavier engine planes. What is common is that all the planes fly the course in excess of 200 mph with the fastest showing speeds of 240 mph! It’s simply awe-inspiring to see these airplanes finish the race in just over a minute! The official world record is 1:11.34.

So are you hooked yet? If you want to see it for yourself, there are two more races in the 2006 season that you can attend. The first is August 17-20 in Ashtabula, OH (near Cleveland) and the final one is in Parker, AZ (near the CA border) on October 26-29. I can honestly say that if you ever choose to give this sport a shot and get on the sticks yourself, you WILL be hooked!

Robert Vess

I'll be covering this event (Astrabula) with photos and videos and interviews.. so anyone who can't make it... can check it out!!!

It is awe inspiring!

AWESOME!!! Pylon = Da Shizz

any video available?

ya i want to see this video would be really cool

same here i want to see some video because we dont have theso class here in australia..

its a darn shame that the one at Parker is the same weekend as TAS, bummer, would of been great after travelling all that way to be able to see both.

Movie please!!

I will have a few videos shortly after the event.

I'm going to interview team speed demons, and have them do a video overview of thier planes,
(Some of the stuff they do for slipstreaming thier planes is outstanding) and I'll also get a nice video of the action.

Hope I can keep up with the planes!

great Sleepy
waiting to see some action in a vid!!!

great write up! how 'bout some vid?

Originally Posted by rcdart

its a darn shame that the one at Parker is the same weekend as TAS, bummer, would of been great after travelling all that way to be able to see both.

Just confirmed that... very disappointing. Parker AZ is a party travel destination for folks in socal, btw... Used to go there every weekend.

Speaking to video -- there is like zero video that I have been able to find on the go fast stuff. Would have been nice to hit parker to check get some coverage, but we will be at TAS. If anyone finds any vid, please post.

Great writeup RV!

Hey everyone!

I realized (and so did some of my USRA competitors) that there were a few typos in the article that need to be corrected. Actually, I recognized one of them - the max. displacement in F-1 is 4.88 (80cc) not 8.8 cubic inches (145cc). Now that would be awesome!

And in Dominator, they only use 5% nitro instead of 15%. That's almost like using water! Nah... These planes are still plenty fast and provide some great racing excitement!

Finally, the proper link to the USRA site is www.usrainfo.org. I never did learn how to type!


Sleepy, we'll have to get Scott Hanbury to get you some proper press credentials so that you can provide the video documentation of the awesome racing action for eveybody!

I'm on it.
I emailed him and mentioned I'd bring a helmet, so I can get the "Starting line" shots!!

Thanks for the post, I was in Chicago and watched my first pylon race at the LaGrange Rd site,
There were about 2 to 3 planes flyinng in each heat, never seen it before. Was great change from just flying around,
See you in Astubula if my wife will let me attent, I'm from akron south of there.