WEEK IS ALMOST OVER AND ONE MORE DAY LEFT AFTER THIS ONE.

STEAD – Air Race Update has more racing, the Blues and a heat race that was a bit more exciting than one pilot planned for. I’m also going to tie up a couple of loose ends from yesterday.

Pete Zaccagnino took this photo of his crashed Vampire. The incident happened on Thursday and fortunately he escaped injury.
Photo courtesy – Pete Zaccagnino.

On Friday Pete Zaccagnino crashed his Vampire after first losing the canopy then having the engine shut down. Afterwards he took a photograph of his wrecked jet racer.

Another pilot had an exciting heat race.

When the Sport Heat 2D began Chiwami Takagi-Read declared a Mayday and pulled out of the race. She also mentioned smoke before her successful landing.

But where there is smoke many times there is fire and such was the case. The emergency crews reached her plane in a hurry, made sure she was safely out then put out the fire.

While she’s all right the same can’t be said for her charred plane.

Yesterday those two Phantom Jets I mentioned actually landed at Stead. Think I was focused on a race when they used Runway 14 and now both are in the static display area.

It’s the end of the road for these two veteran fighters as they’ll be retired this December and won’t be on the air show circuit again.

This year’s static display area is a great chance to see F-18’s, F-35’s as well as an F-15 and both Phantoms.

The day began with Formula One and Biplane heats then began to run through the heat races. In the T-6 Gold heat Nick Macy won but was almost caught by Chris Rushing while defending champion Dennis Buehn slipped to third after running second.

In their T-6 heat race Chris Rushing (14) almost caught Nick Macy (6) at the line.

In the Jets Gold it was all Rick Vandam as he rode the L-39 American Spirit to victory.

Rick Vandam cruised to victory in his Jet heat at the controls of American Spirit.

The same went for Steven Hinton, who again cruised to an easy victory. But this time Czech Mate was only four seconds behind Voodoo.

Steven Hinton heads for another victory at the controls of Voodoo.

Some Bronze and Silver races were run and are listed with the winners.

Winners for Saturday:

+ Formula One: Phillip Goforth (Bronze).

+ Biplane: Jeff Rose (Heat 3A), Jeffrey Lo (Silver).

+  Sport: Leland “Dan” West (Heat 2D), Sean VanHatten (Heat 2C), Vince Walker (Heat 3B), Jeff LaVelle  (Heat 3A).

+ T-6: Nick Macy (2A), Michael Pfleger (Bronze).

+Jet: Zachary McNeill (Bronze), Zachary McNeill (Heat 3B), Rick Vandam (2A).

+ Unlimited: John Dowd Jr. (Heat 2B), Steven Hinton (Heat 2A).

Sunday is the only day left and all the National Championships are up for grabs not to mention a year’s worth of bragging rights. While some victories seem certain in racing nothing is.

Should be another day with great weather and some fast Air Racing. For further information to go, www.airrace.org.

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