Smoke on the Water

Fire in the sky at the Red Bull Air Races yesterday in San Diego Bay. All I can say was this was an incredible thing to experience. It is like nothing you have ever seen before in racing. The worlds top aerobatic pilots competing on a race course through gates that are inflated pylons. The pilots must make it through each gate either in level or knife edge flight. These pilots were flying on the edge at just a few feet over the water at speeds of up to 250 mph.

My son and I went down there in the morning, got a place to park at the convention center, bought our tickets and were able to get right in when the gates opened at 11am. We staked out a front row place to sit on the south Embarcadero Park near the race control tower. Here’s a picture of the action from our view point.

We were about 200 yards from the nearest pylons.
If you want to get a feel for the speed and skill required, check out this 30 second clip I took with my digital camera.



The Red Bull web site has more videos of the action.

In the early races we saw three pylons get hit and torn down. The pylons are made of lightweight sailcloth and will not damage the airplane when hit. The ground crew can erect a new pylon in just a few minutes.

The weather was very nice, but we did get just a light misting of rain at the very beginning then it cleared up and was sunny the rest of the day.

The racing was elimination style, so at the end it was down to Kirby Chambliss versus Paul Bonhomme. Kirby, the defending 2006 champion from the USA, was the crowd favorite, but Paul flew the fastest time of the day on the final run to win.

Red Bull put on a great event and I hope that they return to San Diego next year. The races will be shown on Fox Sports later in the year. Check it out!