Midair at Reno Air races

form810 said:
Indeed, the investigation will tell. And this particular investigation should be massively assisted by lots of witnesses, video, and pics. Should be easy. ;)
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That appears to be the case in terms of the what, with the sheer amount of spectators present, and right at the airfield. There should be the assistance of many multiple camera and video angles, along with the usual investigative tools. The why, may take a little more analysis.
 
MikeD said:
That appears to be the case in terms of the what, with the sheer amount of spectators present, and right at the airfield. There should be the assistance of many multiple camera and video angles, along with the usual investigative tools. The why, may take a little more analysis.
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Somehow, in the vast majority of cases, the why ends up having to do with pilots. :(
 
form810 said:
Somehow, in the vast majority of cases, the why ends up having to do with pilots. :(
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In terms of midair’s in general, yeah. As to the specifics of the why in each individual midair and the pilots involved with those, there can be some interesting details found. At the end of the day, generally speaking, we aren’t finding many new ways to have two aircraft come together in the same piece of airspace at the same time.
 
There's a picture floating around online showing the moment of impact. I'm not going to post a link, you all are bright enough to find it. I will say that when something like this happens the PA will ask the crowd if they have any images (still or video) to provide them to the FAA and the NTSB, does that mean their images are the property of those agencies? I don't think so. This was the last year of air racing at Reno and the tickets to get in were probably above a casual fans price point (not to mention hotel rooms and everything else) so the people in the crowd with the cameras likely felt "part of something". I have no doubt video will surface. If you want to go down a rabbit hole searching for air racing accident videos go find Miss Ashley II disintegrating on the front straight in front of 100,000 people. I watched it happen and have been unsuccessful trying to find video. I gave up long ago. If you care to listen I'll tell you my completely uninformed but sort of educated opinion. Reno, for the participants, is not a week in September. It's a grind that starts after the Gold race on Sunday, regardless of the class, group or finishing position if you're part of it you start working towards that next September Sunday. This was the last Reno, these pilots finished 1-2 in the final T-6 Gold race ever. If you think a "stock" T-6/SNJ/Harvard has any chance at the Gold you're wrong. Those airplanes are high strung racers that have been massaged and tweaked a little here and a little there to extract every tenth of a second and that takes a group of dedicated people. After a year of preparation and it being the final Reno T-6 Gold race and they finished 1-2 I think the adrenaline dump from one of them caused them to loosen the belts a little too much before they were on the ground. I have no idea why that happened, you can blame it on race control but that's dumb, for these planes it's basically a non-towered airport, they'd call out their position and intention on a common frequency. I'm sure video will surface, I hope you enjoy it.
 
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race control was run a bit differently than in the past, they started calling traffic intervals for landing at PRS which were unhelpful and confusing at best, they werent great at IDing types or race numbers from the ground. race week was slightly less chaotic but I wasnt listening when it happened

the loosening straps with adrenaline thing may be valid, seems like T6/bipe/formula pilots pull off the course at home and go straight to the downwind, other classes zoom up to the cooldown and do a lap or two before recalibrating/sequencing themselves in the orbit for the descent to TPA
 
bimmerphile said:
race control was run a bit differently than in the past, they started calling traffic intervals for landing at PRS which were unhelpful and confusing at best, they werent great at IDing types or race numbers from the ground. race week was slightly less chaotic but I wasnt listening when it happened

the loosening straps with adrenaline thing may be valid, seems like T6/bipe/formula pilots pull off the course at home and go straight to the downwind, other classes zoom up to the cooldown and do a lap or two before recalibrating/sequencing themselves in the orbit for the descent to TPA
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The airplane I worked on required a bit of time to even pull the power back without hurting it and would make a couple of laps around at a higher altitude slowing and cooling down. I suppose at this point none of it matters, I still don't regret having played a small part. It's hard.
 
///AMG said:
You gotta get off the strip. It's, in my opinion of course, a really cool town. I spent a lot of time there when I was stationed in Fallon. We lived halfway in between, and spent probably most of our weekends when I was around in either Reno or South Lake. I don't really know how to articulate my thoughts other than to say that it is a small city that has pretty much everything you might want in terms of activities, restaurants, attractions nearby. If it wouldn't be such an inconvenient commute to my job(s), id live there in a heartbeat. Sparks is maybe a little weird, and a lot more cookie cutter suburban sprawl in the middle of nowhere, at this point. That being said, I am sure that crime is a major issue everywhere in the Reno area. Which would be not so cool. But I probably wouldn't live anywhere near downtown. Lots of cool neighborhoods on the outskirts that are like 10 mins from anything you'd want to do.
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And I hear the Sheriff's department is top notch!
 
mynews4.com

Six cities announced as potential future home of National Championship Air Races

Six cities are vying to become the next home of the National Championship Air Races after nearly six decades in Reno.The world-renowned event has contributed o
mynews4.com mynews4.com

List of cities bidding to take over hosting of the Air Races:
  • Casper, Wyoming
  • Pueblo, Colorado
  • Thermal, California
  • Buckeye, Arizona
  • Roswell, New Mexico
  • Wendover, Utah

I don’t know why I’m surprised they are not shutting down.
 
Minuteman said:
mynews4.com

Six cities announced as potential future home of National Championship Air Races

Six cities are vying to become the next home of the National Championship Air Races after nearly six decades in Reno.The world-renowned event has contributed o
mynews4.com mynews4.com

List of cities bidding to take over hosting of the Air Races:
  • Casper, Wyoming
  • Pueblo, Colorado
  • Thermal, California
  • Buckeye, Arizona
  • Roswell, New Mexico
  • Wendover, Utah

I don’t know why I’m surprised they are not shutting down.
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They have some secret for getting the event insured that Reno didn't?
 
Minuteman said:
mynews4.com

Six cities announced as potential future home of National Championship Air Races

Six cities are vying to become the next home of the National Championship Air Races after nearly six decades in Reno.The world-renowned event has contributed o
mynews4.com mynews4.com

List of cities bidding to take over hosting of the Air Races:
  • Casper, Wyoming
  • Pueblo, Colorado
  • Thermal, California
  • Buckeye, Arizona
  • Roswell, New Mexico
  • Wendover, Utah

I don’t know why I’m surprised they are not shutting down.
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Besides insurance, how many of the bids are going to be able to withstand the scrutiny of the local citizenry? Even those who don’t mind a bit of airplane noise might object to this sort of thing.
 
Murdoughnut said:
They have some secret for getting the event insured that Reno didn't?
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I kind of wonder how much the insurance issues were related to the subdivisions around Stead. You can get a racer or a fan to sign a waiver, but meemaw in her retirement bungalow getting a Mustang torpedo in her house would be a different story.

If you look at the Wendover airport, they wouldn’t have that problem.

And the race would be a glorious mix of Burning Man and Nascar.
 
I honestly thinks it's over. The fastest classes (Unlimited, Jet and Sport Gold) all ran on the same course, trying to replicate that over open land within close proximity to a population center with not only enough hotel capacity but also other options for entertainment after the race day is over seems like an insurmountable obstacle. I hope I'm wrong. I guess from this point moving forward it's going to be one of those things like Air America or Mulholland Drive, some mythical thing you can read about or watch videos but if you weren't there you have no idea.
 
Buckeye, AZ. Lol. Too much land would have to be acquired for a course. A tiny airport, and the amenities are sparse.
 
Murdoughnut said:
They have some secret for getting the event insured that Reno didn't?
Click to expand...
Insurance was a factor but not the dealbreaker at Reno.

The bottom line is nobody really cared
that much about the races other than the racers. NASCAR truck races do better.

I’m hoping it ends up in the middle of the desert with minimal spectators and first class broadcast production.
 
Pilot Fighter said:
Insurance was a factor but not the dealbreaker at Reno.

The bottom line is nobody really cared
that much about the races other than the racers. NASCAR truck races do better.

I’m hoping it ends up in the middle of the desert with first class broadcast production.
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Ask Reno next October if nobody cared. It started in the middle of the desert and no one cared, eventually Wide World of Sports covered it on CBS. But it was a different time, the really sad thing to me is the greatest battles never got much coverage outside of some magazines or newspapers. There was a small production company called Skyfire in the late '80s to early '90s that made videos that you could buy on VHS that would interview the pilots and crews during one of the most competitive and fastest periods of the races (I have some somewhere). It's all copyright material and whoever owns the rights won't let it out on YouTube. There was an Unlimited Gold race in 1991 when almost the entire field was full of fire breathing monsters and no one broke, some say it was the best race ever, it was the fastest race ever up to that point and it was actually pretty close. This is the only video I can find (I should also say that the area this video is videoed from is pretty close to where the T-6s that hit each other this year ended up). Enjoy, or not...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3lrJkoBseg
 
knot4u said:
Ask Reno next October if nobody cared. It started in the middle of the desert and no one cared, eventually Wide World of Sports covered it on CBS. But it was a different time, the really sad thing to me is the greatest battles never got much coverage outside of some magazines or newspapers. There was a small production company called Skyfire in the late '80s to early '90s that made videos that you could buy on VHS that would interview the pilots and crews during one of the most competitive and fastest periods of the races (I have some somewhere). It's all copyright material and whoever owns the rights won't let it out on YouTube. There was an Unlimited Gold race in 1991 when almost the entire field was full of fire breathing monsters and no one broke, some say it was the best race ever, it was the fastest race ever up to that point and it was actually pretty close. This is the only video I can find (I should also say that the area this video is videoed from is pretty close to where the T-6s that hit each other this year ended up). Enjoy, or not...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3lrJkoBseg
Click to expand...


I don’t think Reno will notice the absence, economically.

The races attracted just enough of an audience to make things complicated without the revenue to address the complications.

A fresh start in some remote location is a good thing. Removing the spectators solves a few issues. I hope that production technologies are leveraged to make it a viable broadcast event.
 
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