Thread: No Red Bull Air Races This Year?

Crap. One of the things I planned on doing was attending one of these races if it was in San Diego again or somewheres near by this year. Really disappointing. I love these races. Been watching them on tv for three years now.

I understand they feel the need to take some time off and reorganize and implement better safety procedures, however. I hope it will become a much more viable sport in the future and keep growing and that they will find a way to stabilize the schedule. Then find a way to even the playing field so that its more a competition of pilot and crew skill rather than who has the deepest sponsorship wallets. I surely dont want this to become aerial Formula 1 in that regard. Limit the amount of airframe modification during the season, too. In the off season teams can test and submit templates for the aircraft they will be flying and they will be forced to use that shape for the season w/ maybe the exception of wing tips. Otherwise it will again be like formula one where you have body parts specific to every track which increases cost to the point where many teams wont keep up and it will even the contest between metal(edge 540) and composite(mxs-r) constructed aircraft Also move towards a more standardized engine, keep the lycoming 540s but limit the teams to performance parts that can be had by anyone off the shelf rather than one of creations. Also I think the gates should be flown at whatever orientation suits the pilots line rather than knife or level I think this will improve safety and competition on windy courses where one pilot my fall victim to a gust another didnt have to navigate. So hopefully, they are rethinking some of these issues and will institute the proper changes for the betterment of the sport.

They need to do a much better job of not making last minute dates/publishing of venues which do a disservice for event attendees planing for time off, flights accommodations at the venues. They need have set venues/dates and not keep changing them last minute.

I hope this will not be the end of the races, but only a new beginning.