Random Shot Of The The Day

[Race5]

Jim Moss did. Interesting story with a sad ending though.

I wonder where the aircraft ended up. I believe his widow sold it. A beast of an airplane with the R-1820 up front.

GP

The last I heard, it hadn't found a buyer yet. That was as of a couple months ago.

[TarDevil]

I don't think any of the racing GB's had a happy life. A lot of crashes and pilots lost over the various models histories.

Shows how far ahead of the "curve" the Granville brothers were. Delmar Benjamin wonderfully demonstrated that if pilots and runways had been equal to the task, the R1/R2 performed exactly as designed.
The original QED seemed fine in handling. Sadly, it's pilot met his fate from a misplaced rag near the engine intake. The airframe was minimally damaged and currently on display in Mexico.

Even the much more docile sport planes were reported to be a handful.

Model Y won more races than the other GB's combined, IIRC. It crashed from fabric failure.

Delmar told me the Z was a "pussycat" to fly, one of his favorites.

[Leo]

Was Delmar's built as per the original? I thought he had made some minor tweaks to the airfoil section, incidence, or some such. I'm not sure and could just be brain farting.
I know that Doolittle in his autobio said he didn't enjoy it much but if you kept the speeds correct and flew it within it's abilities it was fine.
A different time with different skill sets and experience.

[supercub]

Weren't most of the Gee Bee's accidents contributed to pilot errors?

[Leo]

I think most accidents are, even now. A lot of it depends on ability, training, etc. Any aircraft will kill you if not flown correctly, and the higher the performance the more likely that a minor mistake (or series of them) will cause something bad to happen. Just look at the B-26 and many of the fighters of that time. They didn't fail, the pilots did.
I just always felt that the GeeBee series were heading into unknown territory at that time. Like many racers at that time they had "habits" that were a bit beyond the common skill set available to all but the best pilots.
Just my .02 and probably not worth even that.

[Lockheed Bob]

We all know that even today's top unlimited planes are a handful to fly. It takes above & beyond pilots to fly them as the planes all have there little secrets to overcome. As one of the sayings go "Fly the Plane Don't Let It Fly You".

[Desertdawg]

And we have lift off.

[Air Boss]

Nobody do the VooDoo like You Do; Bip Action; Pylon Judge view thru the can at Outer 6.

[Desertdawg]

Just got back home, spent 6 days on my boat fishing in the California delta (Rio Vista-Collinsville). This time of year is good for striper and sturgeon.

Plus very peaceful/relaxing. Kind of a test run for what retirement will be like in 11 months.

Heres CM a few years back.

[Desertdawg]

Reno 2012