ANN's Firsthand Coverage of the Reno Air Races

I sat down after the racing was finished, with Darryl Greenamyer, one of the winningest pilots ever to fly the Reno skies. He had just finished squeaking out a win over Rick Vandam, who builds superchargers, and who put the 'supercharger from hell' in the nose of his Lancair (and the noses of a couple other contenders).

Darryl said everything was going to plan (he was leading, after having started from the pole position), when, "...on the fourth lap, on the back side [of the course], he said, 'I'm passing you on the right.'" [Of course -- you're not allowed to pass on the inside, and the turns are all to the left --ed.] That got Darryl hopping. "They had the audacity to try to pass me!" he said.

"They pressed me." Darryl couldn't see Vandam, who was effectively under Greenamyer's belly. He illustrated for me (right). "I couldn't see him," Darryl noted, "but I could hear him. It sounded like his propeller was inside my baggage compartment." Darryl wondered out loud, "I'd like to know what rpm he was turning." Then, as if to answer my next question, he continued, "I was at 2800."

Vandam's Lancair is louder in another area, too: exhaust. "He's running a belt-driven supercharger," the champion explained. "I have two turbos."

Before the race, some record running...

Greenamyer's specially race-built Lancair was ready to set records when he came to Reno. He was going pretty fast -- well, really fast -- in Saturday's heat race, when, "People said they saw smoke [coming from his tailpipe]." He hadn't noticed anything unusual in the cockpit: "My instruments looked normal to me," he said. He thought that smoke was coming from someone else's racer, but "Then they said they saw smoke, from Race 33 -- which is me."

He was disappointed, but acted the true pro: "I pulled power," he said, "and it shook a little, so I landed it."

The drama began. The night was young.

"I had burned a piston in one cylinder." Greenamyer's engine, like the rest of the airplane, is special. The only problem was, he didn't have a spare, special jug. "I couldn't mix and match," he said, "so we changed them all."

That took all night. "We kind of made a party out of it," Darryl said. Everybody was dog-tired, though. That's when mistakes get made. "Andy Chiavetta [Darryl's crew chief], he's paranoid about making mistakes. He had at least five guys look at the airplane before we buttoned it up."

Oh, yeah: 'Grand Theft, Aero'

Lancair (kits) had a very nice factory airplane in the hangar where the Sport Class made its nest. The company had offered to help, 'any way we can.' They got their chance. Darryl's team, in rebuilding the engine the night before the race, found itself with a logistical problem. "Last night, we were shy six pushrods," he grinned, "so we 'borrowed' them from [that parked airplane]. So Lancair is truly a sponsor."

Darryl went to bed about 2AM Sunday morning. It didn't last. "He [Andy] called me at 4AM, and said it [the airplane] was fine. At 7, we ran it; everything seemed fine."

The race:

After that refreshing two hours' sleep, Darryl was all set to climb into the cockpit and have at it, against the fastest SportPlanes in the world. He knew he wasn't going to set any records; he just wanted to finish the race... in front. He had a little advantage that he had already earned: "When you have the pole, it's hard [for others] to pass," he explained. It wasn't going to be that simple, though.  For one thing, he had a lot of unproven parts in his engine. For another, he had known weaknesses: "For instance, we had an old wristpin in there. It was polished... it was probably OK." Probably.

He wanted to stroke it in to the win. "I tried to win the race with as little power as possible, but Rick Vandam kept pushing." [Vandam's race average was nearly 15mph faster than his best qualifying speed --ed.]

It's different, when you're just flying, vs racing.

"When you're flying, or testing, you think you feel vibrations, hear things," Mr. Greenamyer said, "but when somebody goes by you, the throttle goes in, just like that." In testing, you always want to have an airplane left over at the end of the day. In racing, it's different: "I was either going to have to land it, or win the race."

Vandam almost pulled it off. With Darryl's homemade engine already down a few horsepower, and with the object's being for Greenamyer to win at the lowest possible power setting, Vandam felt he had nothing to lose. So did his airplane's owner, who, when Darryl had recovered the lead, and was stretching it by a few feet, broke in on 134.7, the race freq:

• "C'mon, Ricky," the voice said.
• "I'm pedalin'! I'm pedalin!" Vandam replied.
• "This is not the time to spare the ponies," said the voice from the ground.
• Vandam, obviously 'pedalin'' as fast as he could, put out a plea to Darryl: "Why don't you put your gear down, to make it fair?"

Darryl was unmoved by the request, kept that throttle stuffed into the panel, and won the race by two seconds, at 324+mph.

FMI: www.sportclass.org