“Blue
Thunder II Crew Report”
September 30
2009
Everything
with any aircraft as it is being constructed is
entered into a construction log. Once the
aircraft is licensed and flying, all items
pertaining to the aircraft are entered into a
maintenance log. For this reason, I want to
continue this monthly report but change the name
of it to the “Blue Thunder II Crew Report” to
keep all of our friends, fans, sponsors and
family informed as to what is going on with the
racing team. Over the next couple of months, we
will be analyzing most of the data we have
collected this last six weeks.
All month, and
especially the week of the races, we were
struggling with gremlins, the biggest of which
was the right inner gear door not closing and
the oil cooler air exit door. You can not
believe the number of comments and jokes I
received about this picture taken by Tim Kern.
We qualified for the races with the gear door
wide open at just less than 300 MPH.
We made
improvements all week long and finished the
Super Sport Gold in 5th place a just
over 350 MPH. Considering that we were top
qualifier at 357 in 2005, I consider this an
outstanding accomplishment by the crew for the
first competition of a new Thunder Mustang.
“Thunderstorm
2009” was another success. The menu included an
80 pound pig, called Nancy Pelosi, Diestel
Turkeys, Tritip Baron of Beef, and King, Coho,
and Chinook salmon, 24 cases of Steinlager beer
from New Zealand gifted to us from our Kiwi
friends Simon Gault and Chris Bromley…and lots
of camaraderie.
The magnificent
sight of eight Thunder Mustangs lined up on the
ramp was the photo op of race week! Next year,
we hope for more. For those of you who could
not join us in person, we hope you were able to
watch the first-time-ever full live coverage of
all of Sunday’s spectacular excitement on the
pay-per-view offering
Next month we
will talk about our plans for the future. Until
then, the entire “Blue Crew” sends a heart-felt
thanks for your continued support. We’ve
accomplished a lot in the past twenty-one months
from taking “Blue II” out of the box and into
the air, and there is more to be done to take 1st
place in the Gold.
Blue
Thunder Air Racing
