Live stream Reno Air Races!

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It seems they have the camera rolling every second. Later today will be the Silver and Gold Unlimited races! Modified WW2 fighter planes going 500 mph! If you like motor sports or car racing, check this out!

It's also real racing, airplanes on the course at the same time, instead of just racing a stopwatch one at a time as in some other so-called air "racing" events.

I'm sorry I didn't post this sooner, but didn't know for sure if there really would be a live stream. Apparently, there is! YAY!

Reno Air Races live stream

How does one get a prop driven airplane with straight wings to do over 500 mph in level flight? With propellors the tips of the blades make a shock wave which reduces the forward "lift" of the blades.

I recall that a P-38 could do 550 but only in a power dive from which it has difficulty pulling out.

ruveyn

They have done it ruveyn. The RB-51 Red Baron, a modified P-51 Mustang fighter with a Rolls-Royce Griffon engine driving contra-rotating propellers (two propellers on the same shaft rotating opposite directions) did just barely under 500 mph and got the world speed record for propeller aircraft back in the late 1970s. That record stood for more than a decade. The Wikipedia article on "Fastest propeller-driven aircraft" says:

RARE BEAR IS AT RENO 2012! WE MIGHT SEE IT RACE LATER TODAY ON THAT LIVE STREAM!

Last year the Galloping Ghost, an even more highly-modified Mustang, was doing well over 500 mph when it suffered structural failure and crashed into the crowd. That was the first time in all the years of the Reno Air Races that any spectators had been hurt. I am very glad they did not cancel the races because of that.

Okay, to be more accurate, the fastest racers on this course are well above 400 mph, some of them get close to or even exceed 500 mph some of the time though.

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 16 Sep 2012, 1:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks for the link.
Going to the Reno Air races is something on my bucket list.
I'm glad to see that the races are continuing after last years tragedy, that was such a sad, unfortunate accident.

The winner of the eight lap Unlimited Gold race today was Steven Hinton in #7 Strega at 477.523 mph, but on one of the early laps his speed for that lap was 504 mph. #77 Rare Bear apparently had some engine overheating and did not finish the race, but made it down safely. Rare Bear has won this race ten times. This year's win was the eleventh time Strega has won. My late father and his Air Force buddies watching the race used to contrast these different planes as round noses (radial engines as in Rare Bear) and pointy noses (liquid cooled inline engines as in Strega).

Incidentally Steven's dad Steve Hinton was flying the pace plane / safety plane for this year's race, and he was also the pilot of the RB-51 Red Baron racing plane when it crashed in the desert in 1979. I was there in the desert that year not far from where he crash landed. My dad held me back from running to the wreck. Steve survived (obviously), but there was a huge fireball when the plane hit the ground. The wings with the gas inside broke off and exploded and the weight of the engine pulled the fuselage with Steve out of the fireball.