5:15 a.m. tow-out.

[Big_Jim]

I had been pushing a grassroots effort for the last two years to get the Palm Springs Air Museum to bring their rare P-63A "Pretty Polly" to the races. It had been 40 years since Don Whittington raced his P-63F at Reno '78, and 39 years since Mike Smith brought "What Price Speed?" to Reno '79 (where unfortunately they were unable to race). And I had been coordinating an early morning shoot with PSAM since they announced that the P-63 would run at Reno earlier this spring.

That came to a culmination on Saturday morning. Even though Hacker groused that we had to get up at 4:15, we met the PSAM guys and Tow-5 in the pits at 5:15 and slowly towed the King Cobra down the ramp out in front of home pylon. And then we waited.

About 30 photographers eventually made their way out onto the ramp to shoot the 5 minutes of amazing pink, orange and blue skies as the sun came up around 6:30 and silhouetted the plane in glorious light....but in the half-hour before that (and before most of the other photographers showed up), there was also some amazing deep blue sky and almost surreal lighting from the yellow lights in the grandstands.

This is where I was able to get several of my favorite shots from the entire weekend. Long exposure shots on the tripod that made the early wake up more than worth it......

[RAD2LTR]

Thanks for making this happen. I didn't even see it on the ramp till the sun was coming up. I was late to the party down there but still got some amazing pics. I wanted to do some long exposure shots, but my tripod was having issues, so I was lucky to get a few shots after the light got better.





Will

[TarDevil]

This is where I was able to get several of my favorite shots from the entire weekend. Long exposure shots on the tripod that made the early wake up more than worth it......

Thanks for the effort! Great photo!

[wingman]

Lovely photographs from both of you. I love those long exposure cloud effects in Brad's shot.

Neal