The Vegas Showbirds on the tenth day of the trip, and the FINAL day of this 4 day race!
Friday, June 22nd - The Vegas Showbirds take off on the FOURTH & FINAL race day!
We take off from Bangor ME for the 9th and final leg of this race. The weather is a factor
and the race ending deadline of 5:00 PM fast approaches . . .
Early Friday morning we head back out to the airport.
Radar weather on screen at Bangor Airport Pilot's lounge
doesn't look good . . . we're worried, and we aren't the
only ones . . . there are several race teams here, eager
to fly the last leg of this race.
Pictured here is the pilots weather briefing system, it
shows is a large cell right over Bangor airport, which
is moving to the north east (right in to our flight path).
Last minute weather briefing from the Flight Service Station
at Bangor Airport indicates fog surrounding the finish line,
which is the breakwater at Partridge Island (just south of
St. John, New Brunswick). A call placed on speaker phone
to the group of racers yields a decision to change the finish
line to the St. John Airport (this decision will cause problems
later on as some racers had finished yesterday).
Dan Goodwin, a helicopter pilot that had just landed
from a flight coming from the northeast (which is where
we are headed), gives the group of racers a first hand
in-person pilot report of the conditions en route.
After carefully weighing the factors, we decide to go.
The race deadline is fast approaching.
Flying toward St. John, we encounter tail winds, as seen
here by the smokestacks of a manufacturing plant blowing
toward the direction we are flying. We make good time
and our airspeed is around 180 KIAS (knots indicated).
We encounter low ceilings and remain clear of clouds,
which are scattered but rapidly changing. Frequent rainshowers occur and we watch for large cells.
The terrain is hilly with some mountains, we fly at 7,500
and stay clear of clouds.
We approach Partridge Island from the Southwest as the
fog partially clears below us. The shoreline underneath
the plane is where the timers are, and they don't see our
race numbers from their vantage point. So we aren't timed
as we pass over the breakwater. This hurts our score, as
we made some good time getting here.
The clock is still ticking on the time for this leg for Classic 30,
the Vegas Showbirds are timed "wheels on" the runway,
which means the timers stopped their time for us for this leg
when we landed at St. John Airport, which was about 10 minutes further from the breakwater finish line.
Previous day, Thursday, June 21st
Next day, Saturday, June 23rd