RARA Race Course Distance Measurement Method Changed and Used in 2003

[Leo]

Course length

Has anyone given a true, logical explaination of WHY the course is measured differently?
It seems to me that pylon-to-pylon straight distance would be the only usable distance. How they get around that distance is up to the pilots. If someone flew fast at the outer edge of the course or slower and really tight their speed would still be compared using that set distance.
The only true measure of their speed is a time along their exact ground track (impractical at best), anything else is arbitrary anyway.
So was this all advertising?


Leo

[AAFO_WSagar]

Leo,

in talking with *some* of the racers, outside of the facts around old records not withstanding, the current method is how they have felt that the course should be measured all along..

The problem, as I see it is, it was not measured that way, now it is.. skewing all existing records..

Someone threw out the thought that the "official" distance measuring methods by the .. is it FAIA??? would not approve of this current method..

It may have bumped up the excitement level in reading about the speeds achieved by those who just started coming this year, or who never really paid any attention to them in the past... It sure confuses the issue if you have any historical interest in the sport..

As to the reasons for doing it.. I've heard about 100 different explanations, none from any official source..

Wayne Sagar

[Leo]

distance

Either way the distance gives an innacurate speed for any racer that is not exactly on line. Kind of like comparing the straight line distance between two cities with the road centerline distance. It takes you just as long to drive it, but the latter is a more accurate measure of your groundspeed.
I just figure with the course variables so great already (even altitude changes represent a longer distance traveled thru the air), why break something that is'nt broke?, and cause all this controversy.
This is why there IS an FAIA.

Doing it for crowd draw is about as brilliant as the "Something's going to hit the fan" billboard and radio campaign they had locally this year. Yeah, THAT'S what we go to see.


Leo

[Unregistered]

They changed it back!

After acheiving their goal of a 500 mph lap the RARA has decided to go back to the old way of measuring the course. They said that Dago's 500 mph lap will still stand in the record books. I report this with great happiness and pure bull****.

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: They changed it back!

Originally posted by Unregistered
After acheiving their goal of a 500 mph lap the RARA has decided to go back to the old way of measuring the course. They said that Dago's 500 mph lap will still stand in the record books. I report this with great happiness and pure bull****.

Source??

Wayne

[hattend]

Re: They changed it back!

Originally posted by Unregistered
After acheiving their goal of a 500 mph lap the RARA has decided to go back to the old way of measuring the course. They said that Dago's 500 mph lap will still stand in the record books. I report this with great happiness and pure bull****.

Do you work for RARA? How about a signature?

Don Hatten
Rare Bear Fan Sponsor

["Bear Driver"]

First off, I am not the "holder of several records at Reno". However, over the years I've been very fortunate to have the opportunity to fly around the desert at Stead in the company of other, very capable and humble race pilots. So, perhaps I can speak to this issue.

In doing my own survey of other race pilots, the overwhelming sentiment seemed to be very much against this new method of measuring lap speeds on the unlimited course. I share that sentiment 100%. Since I've been racing, we've always been competing against our previous accomplishments, hoping to better last year's speeds. So now we're faced with having to remember a correction constant, 2.56%, and to have to do the mental gymnastics of dividing our RARA posted speeds by 1.0256 to find out what our course speed really was. Everyone, pilots and fans alike, were doing this all during this year's race week. Some thoughts on the shorter race course and on the new timing method:

When the course was shortened, they softened several of the turns so that we would be better able to track the course, as opposed to floating wide of pylon 7 on the old course (necessary at gold speeds). But, since the course is shorter, there is a greater percentage of time spent in the turns, with less time on the straights (2 to 4, 6 to 7), to accelerate and check systems status. And pylon 4 is impossible to see until cresting the ridge at 3.

The good and bad of the new course are that with the softer turns, there is less energy bleed in the pylon turns than we had with the old course, but the smaller the course, the greater is the percentage of ground track flown relative to pylon to pylon distance. With the old timing method this would tend to give slower speeds. Didn't seem to hurt Skip and "Dago" last year though, as they shattered da "Bear's" old record, posting a 497 something.

The new plotted ground track used to calculate lap speeds seems rather arbitrary, in that at gold speeds we still can't track that line. Trust me (and I had plenty of opportunity to watch Skip's line), "Dago" and the "Bear" both were considerably wide of the plotted, "optimal" course. Probably the only ones able to come close to RARA's plot were the bronze racers. And, if I were to fly my Piper J3 around the course, I guarantee that in the eight minutes it would take to get the little Cub around a lap, I would be able to fly directly from pylon to pylon! I could post a speed 2.56% greater than actual using RARA's method!

From my perspective, and mine only, these new higher speeds somehow seem to be hollow accomplishments. This is not meant however to take anything away from the magnificent performance of the "Dago" team this year. They treated us all to "shock and awe".

So, hang in there folks. With a "Dago" that seems to be getting stronger each year, and a "Bear" that's just reemerged from it's cave, stretching it's sore muscles, perhaps we'll see a REAL 500 mph lap next year that the pilots and fans alike can truly respect.

John Penney, crewmember
"Rare Bear" Air Racing Team

[Unregistered]

Thanks for the insight John. No real surprise that the new measurement method is not well accepted.

BTW, great job by yourself and the whole Bear team this year. What a show!

GP
Reno fan since 1977

[Kilo Hotel]

Thanks!

John, your appraisal of the situation seems dead on to me. Since there's no white stripe painted on the inside of the 'track', anything other than pylon-to-pylon distance is arbitrary and essentially meaningless.

The sportsmanship displayed among the top competitors is one of the best things about Reno. Thanks for your insights, and my hat is off to you and all the others who work so hard to get the race planes in the air and out on the course for our enjoyment.

[Unregistered]

Maybe we should just use lap times as a performance measure and forget about speed.

Ron Henning

[fenceliner01]

Agree

Use of times seems to be the best idea, since RARA seems to be the only racing organization that doesn't define the length of their race course in relation to fixed objects on the ground. Has RARA ever published (by coordinates or ANY other means) the path that they use to define the distance of the course? As an example, at some NASCAR tracks, the racecourse distance is measured as a 15 foot offset from the outer walls. This may not be the ideal racing line, but it is a measurable distance.

Whole "racing line idea stinks to me, because by profession, I'm involved with Land Surveying. I know that the original and modified unlimited course was laid out and measured by a Licensed Surveyor, from which the previous course distance was published as a POINT TO POINT

[fenceliner01]

Agree

Use of times could be the best idea, since RARA seems to be the only racing organization on this planet that doesn't define the length of their race course in relation to fixed objects on the ground. Has RARA ever published (by coordinates or ANY other means) the path that they use to define the distance of the course? As an example, at some NASCAR tracks, the racecourse distance is measured as a 15 foot offset from the outer walls. This may not be the ideal racing line, but it is a measurable distance.

The whole "racing line" idea stinks to me, because by profession, I work as a land surveyor. I know that the original and modified unlimited courses were laid out and measured by a licensed Professional Land Surveyor, from which the REAL course distance was published as the total POINT TO POINT distances from the center of each pylon. The concept of a racing line is totally ludicrous to me. Let's take two examples, and then I'll step off of my soapbox.

1. If I had to write a legal description of a land parcel as "the tracks created on the ground by a high speed vehicle as it circumnavigates the boundaries set and monumented (by pylons, in this case) by a previous survey dated Sep XX, 19XX", I'd lose both my license and my job. I'd buy the parcel, though, because it is a lot of additional property that can't be quantified. I'd then spend the rest of my life trying to defend my property rights. Sound familiar, RARA?

2. The Space Shuttle orbits the earth about once every 45 minutes, if I remember my Discover Channel facts correctly. At some point, it passes a line projected due south of the Home Pylon at Reno, completing one "race lap". Now a 45 minute lap may seem slow to most people, but if you do the math, (and I won't right now, but wait until tomorrow!) you can intuitvely ascertain that the Shuttle is travelling somewhat faster than 500 mph. This may seem like a ludicrous example, but I think you see my point.

The bottom line to this whole post is that RARA has created a standard that can't be objectively measured, and as a person that has spent his whole life measuring distances on the ground for the public record this pisses me off no end. This is a step backward in the history of the modern age of Air Racing at Reno, and ultimately, by introducing confusion between past and present racing achievements, invalidates the accomplishments of all racers.

Mike Arnold

[fenceliner01]

OOPs

Sorry about the double post. I amy be able to measure to the micron level, but I still haven't mastered the "double click".
Mike A.

[Leo]

measuring

I'm in the same business fenceliner, and I agree. The only objective distance is pylon to pylon. How you get around them is your problem, so to speak. You're speed should be the time it takes you to cross from home pylon to home pylon. Whether you take 8 miles or 28,000 to accomplish that only affect you're speed as measured along a fixed length.
Just think, Sparky and the F4F would be MUCH faster than the shuttle. And definately got it beat in turning radius!

Leo Smiley

[Sani Hut]

DAMN RIGHT