Valley of Speed closed?

[RarebearFan77]

Where is and how does a guy with no knowledge of the area find it? Is it legal to get there? John Cobb

[fenceliner01]

Valley of speed fence update

Here's everything I can tell you , from personal experience, about the fenceline issue and our race camp in the VOS.
Firstly, the entire airport boundary is now fenced off. The main access road, Lemmon Valley Drive, goes through the middle of the racecourse, and is gated and closed from early morning until the last racing or qualifying event in the evening. The fence runs along the section lines on the north and west side of the course; it's only about 150' north of the northernmost unlimited pylon.

I went out there today to photograph the Unlimiteds, and got rousted by the pylon judge, who told me that
A: I was on airport property, and
B: the sheriff would soon be out to escort me off, and
C: that they would actually hold up the races if they spotted spectators creating a dangerous condition.

Now mind you, although I was outside the fence, I WAS directly underneath the flight path, so from a safety standpoint, bad on me; I should know better. However, American Flat Road is private and not posted, the are no "no trespassing" signs between the road and the fencline, and a cursory check of the Record of Survey maps in my office SEEMS to indicate that the land is privately owned. Personally, after putting up with a two year Guard Unit activation, and missing Reno 2001 and 2002 because of it, I was not in the mood to be hassled some cranky RARA official.

My advice would be to not bother trying to get close to the course on the north and east sides - access to the areas by public roads are restricted, and you'll probably get spotted by some eagle-eyed volunteer who would like nothing better than to exercise his one- week- a- year authority. With all that being said, I will be enjoying the races at Christy's site in the valley of speed. She's my ex-wife and I'm one of the partners that purchased that parcel. It is a nice place to watch the races, because you're not sitting in a crowded grandstand, beer and toilet facilities area readily available ( and cheap) you don't have to listen to the announcer, the display teams usually begin and end their manouvers right over you head, and the pits are open at the end of the day for swag purchases. We allow access by invite- only because , as a previous poster noted, it keeps out the drunks who put 20 people in the back of their pickup, come barreling in to the site raising clouds of dust, run out onto the race course at the end of the day (that was before the 8' fence)and generally spoil it for anyone else who acts semi-civilized. We also face a liability issue if someone does something stupid on the property, so that's why we have a set of printed rules that need to be followed, like no open fires, a speed limit, no RV generators after a certain hour, etc.
It's not an exclusive club - usually the local residents will walk on to the site during races, and that's fine. Not all of the regulars are owners - and we were charging a fee mainly to cover the cost of renting porta potties ( a very popular move some years back) and pay for gas for the lawnmovers we used to keep the fire danger down. All in all it's worked out pretty well for all concerned and we look forward to getting together every year, jus like the people in section 8.
BTW Wayne - I'd be interested to know why you can't talk about the VOS, unless it's just an inside joke. I also downloaded a couple of your pics from Sunday and applied some color correction to remove the purple overcast - let me know if you'd like to see them (or anything else I shot today - digital cameras are wonderful!), otherwise I'll just delete them from my local drive. Don't want to steal your thunder!

Mike Arnold
SMSgt for two more months - cranky NCO for life

[RarebearFan77]

Fenceliner, I will be there wed. I have a box seat for thursday but was planning on trying to get to the valley. I have heard so much about it. I am not a drunk, I am very civil, I am an addict that would love to be invited. How do I go about it? Please consider my humble asking... Thanks John Cobb