The Vegas Showbirds on the ninth day of the trip, and the THIRD day of this 4 day race!
Thursday, June 21th - The Vegas Showbirds take off on the third day of the race.
We take off from Lewisburg, West Virginia for the 6th leg of the race to Elmira, New York.
From Elmira we continue to Burlington VT for the 7th leg, then to Bangor ME for the 8th leg.
We depart Lewisburg, West VIrginia in the late morning,
just as the fog lifts and visibility is VFR (visual flight rules).
The winds are light and variable as we plug in the GPS
coordinates for our next destination on this 6th leg to
Elmira, New York.
Landing at Elmira, New York, we stop for fuel and water,
and a quart of oil. Then we're off again for the next leg, number 7 to Burlington Vermont.
Below us we spot another racer as we fly our course
to Burlington, Vermont. We see several racers around
us during the race and always look out for other planes.
Clouds en route are scattered and easily avoided.
They look much closer in the photo, but are actually
1/4 mile or more away, and well above our course.
We make a high speed, low approach fly by at
Burlington Vermont airport (we didn't even land for fuel).
We set our course for Bangor, Maine and must do our
fly by at a nearby airport (Pittsville), just west of Bangor,
as Bangor is an active International airport (class "C"
airspace)
with
"hot" military activity adjacent areas.
By doing the fly by for timing at Pittsville, this alleviates
any issues with traffic and control tower sequencing
at the very busy Bangor International Airport.
Upon approach to Pittsville (for timing), then proceeding
to Bangor, we have to make an emergency landing.
The oil check panel door on the cowling comes open during flight, (seen here in the center of this photo)
and make a full stop landing at Pittsville for repairs.
Since we're "off the clock" we can take our time
to inspect the damage and assess repairs.
Repairs are quickly made with super high speed
precision calibrated high altitude aviation racing tape . . .
(OK, it's duct tape, now you know our secret).
Mardell quickly checks the repair job and determines
that we're good to go.
We arrive at Bangor International Airport, in Bangor Maine,
in the late afternoon and get fuel.
The weather is a factor as we look northeast toward
our course, the last leg of our trip . . . the 9th leg . . .
to St. John, New Brunswick, Canada.
As aviation is expanding, the FAA is closing most of these type
of weather briefing offices. This one gave us a detailed forcast
and weather advisory. We didn't like what we heard or what we
saw, and decided to play it safe and stay in Bangor for the
night. Many teams continued on to St. John, and several teams
stayed in Bangor for the night. Scattered thunderstorms were
forcast for the route between Bangor and St. John.
Previous day, Wednesday , June 20th
Next day, Friday, June 22nd
(Last day of the race)