Back when I was a kid, I remember watching the Reno Air Races on TV. It looked really cool, and I thought that I'd like to go one day. Earlier this year a friend who lives in Reno, posted that this would be the last year of them being held in Reno. In others words, don't miss it if you are thinking about coming.
I know JT is really into airplanes so I figured it would be an easy sell. It also coincided with his 30th birthday being within a week of it. I made the call and he was in. I booked the hotel even before the tickets went on sale.
This was the reason for the whole rest of the trip up to now. It turned out that he got the extra time off and the whole Vegas portion got thrown on top of this. It was almost like two seperate trips as we flew from Vegas to Reno (90 min).
We bought the 3 day pass for the show and I spent the extra $$$ and got a reserved grandstand tickets as well as the pit passes. It was money well spent. We didn't use the seats that much, but it was nice to have a spot to plunk down when we wanted to. I'm putting all 3 days in one post as it was a bit repetitive each day, although we saw different things.
Our first day was Thursday and of course the lightest attended day. It was easy as we used a shuttle sevrvice from the hotel which did 2 things. Made it relaxing and less expensive as we didn't need a rental, or have to worry about parking at the air races ($$ and a PITA). Luxury Prevost bus and it dropped us right by the gate.
This is a Curtis P40 Warhawk painted in the Flying Tigers colors. Used pre WW2 in China against the Japanese, they became quite famous. Also is a 1972 Chevy Impala Kingswood station wagon. Both were in beautiful condition.
North American P51 Mustang. the majority of unlimited racers were flying these.
Bell P-63 Air Cobra. The engine is behind the pilot!
A Russian Yak, forget which model
T6 Trainers on the flight line getting ready to go up for a race.
T6s racing by. They have to fly between 50 and 200 feet to stay on course.
I found this video from back in the hey day of the 1980s. Much more vareity of planes in the unlimited class (F4U, P38, etc) than what we saw and alot more up close and personal. As there have been many crashes and fatalities over the years. I believe you can't get anywhere on the course any more to stand underneath them. I guess this is what we both hoped we would see. It was still fun though.
Of course the military was there for demos and recruitment. They had prbably a dozen different planes from small to the biggest we have (Galaxy). Didn't get a pic of the big ones as they wouldn't fit in the camera lol.
Heritage flight with and A10 and P51
P51 and I think a Northrop F89 (not sure though).
F6F Hellcat
View of downtown Reno from the hotel. It's not a big city at all and I liked that about it.
Had to fly through Vegas on the way home, and got a nice view of Hoover Dam from the air. You can plainly see how much the water has dropped.
As a sad epilogue, after my returpsn to Florida I found out that there had been a crash of two T6s on the last day of racing. In fact they just came in first and second for the event. There were a few more races after them and they got called off as both pilots died in the crash. They hit mid air somehow and that's all she wrote. Due to the investigation, all the video has been taken offline and no details until the investigation wraps up.
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