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Tony Pacini -> RE: Best racers banned in Sacramento (11/8/2005 4:42 AM)
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Our Arizona group ran into some similar situations at that club. One year we showed up with Nelson-powered NE-1s (warbird/recon version of the Piper Cub), trophied in Gold, and were promptly told that they wouldn't be allowed the following year ("they're not warbirds"). We showed up the next year with T-34s. Definitely a warbird, right? Using YS .91s and fixed-geared aircraft we again took some of the top trophy spots even though most of them were flying 1.20-powered birds with retracts. We were later notified that the T-34s, too, had been outlawed. Their definition of a warbird has evolved to "must have left the factory in mass numbers armed with guns or capable of dropping bombs" or something to that effect. In essence anything with a "T" designation (trainers) would no longer be allowed. The next year they announced that the engines had to be able to idle below a certain RPM figure for so many seconds before being allowed to take off. Most of us showed up with Mustangs (kind of tough to outlaw them in a warbird race) but a few of us were told that "technically" our "Miss Ashley II" models didn't fit the defitinition of the warbird rule. Let's forget that this is a warbird race that is supposed to be patterned after the full-scale races in Reno, and that MAII was developed specifically for that class of racing. They let us fly them, but only after letting us know that yes, again, we were on the verge of breaking the rules. It became painfully obvious that their new rules seemed to be aimed at us and because they couldn't beat us they decided to outlaw our equipment. We haven't been back in a couple of years, either.
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