I've been lucky enough to rub shoulders with some of most prominent modern era unlimited pilots, owners and crew members that took that particular class of air racing from the low to mid 400s to breaking the 500 mph barrier, I'm not talking about 3K record attempts I'm talking about an average speed of 500mph on the course at Reno. We almost did it with the Bearcat, I think the fastest we ever went on the course when I worked on it was 491mph. There was a group of strong thinkers amongst these folks that elevated these airplanes to these seemingly insurmountable speeds and one was a guy named Dave Cornell. He helped the Rare Bear transform from a '60/'70s unlimited racer to what ended up being the second golden age of gold unlimited air racing in the late '80s and early '90s with the battles between Rare Bear, Strega, Dreadnought and to some extent Tsunami. It only lasted for a few years but it was awesome. So I knew Dave from not only the bearcat but also from the prop shop I used to work at (at one point in time if your OV-10 prop governor didn't come from Cherry Point I overhauled it and tested it on a bench engineered and built by Dave). Before the movie Crimson Tide came out I knew I wanted a Jack Russel as a dog and Dave overheard me saying it and mentioned his sister bred high end Jack Russels and that's how I ended up with the best dog ever. Dave and Lyle (the owner of the Rare Bear) had gotten their wires crossed before I ever met either of them and let's just say they weren't fond of each other but Dave and I got along so one day he invited me to his house in the SFV and after passing muster with two enormous Rhodesian Ridgebacks and his wife Bonnie (I'd actually had lunch with her and Dave so I wasn't a complete stranger), we walked into his backyard. Most folks think the valley is just apartment buildings stacked on warehouses and that may be where it's headed but to this day there are "large" lots (1-2 acres) all over the place. Dave had built a hangar/barn in his backyard and inside was his answer to the big numbers for unlimited air racers. It was a mix of a T-2 Buckeye fuselage, an F-86 tail and I can't recall what wing he had but it was a real (half finished) airplane right in front of me. I was flummoxed by the fact he wanted it to have a nose wheel holding up a 3350 (he helped the bearcat perfect that engine for air racing including the slow nose case) and then he showed me the coup de grace, an ejection seat. I said that's fine for the pilot but this isn't combat and where is that airplane going once left to it's own devices? A few years later Lyle died and Dave started working on Rare Bear for the new owner. Now Dave has passed, the three blade prop will never run again and the bearcat sits in some hangar somewhere in Texas and will likely never push the power up in honest competition ever again. Funny thing is although we had a bunch of nitrous on board we rarely used it, everyone got played by the theatrics of loading it, it would certainly work if needed but most of the time it wasn't needed.
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