Air Racing 101

摘要

When the reno air races started in 1964, they were based on the premise that out in Nevada's high desert, where there was no one around to suffer collateral damage, all bets were off. If you came to race, you knew the risk and accepted the consequences. The traditional way to learn how to race was to simply strap into a race plane and go take a good look at the pylons. The bravado of self-education added to the ethos of the sport, but it took a toll on pilots and airplanes. In the first four decades Reno lost 15 pilots. After a particularly preventable fatality in 1994, racer Alan Preston went to operations director Bill Eck and revitalized a concept that had been discussed over the years. In 1998, when the Sport class debuted at the Reno Air Races, a school to learn to race airplanes debuted with it.