David,
What were the high end speeds recorded as an average? And what was the average speed in general? My guess is 180 average on the high end and about 140 for the cumulative average.

From what I've observed at the Ralleys I attend each year the 200mph mark is broken from time to time but not as a general rule. Furthermore with very few exceptions pilots are flying in a consistently safe manor. Overall the quality of flight operations, number of minor incidents at the Ralleys I attend has consistently gotten better and fewer respectively --- year after year.

As an example this year at Superman, considering the number of flight operations very few crashes and or incidents occurred. This year the total number of flights was up over the last two years, mainly because every day was a great day for flying. Recall the rained out Friday in 2001 and the high wind day of 02. Jerry increased the user fee's this year, and for whatever reason the total number of pilots was down a little from 2002. Another significant difference this year at Superman was the flight line was controlled almost totally by the user's ---- no official flight line boss and the flight line ran very smoothly overall.

My belief is a 200mph speed limit is basically in effect now ----- there maybe a few exceptions but overall speed limiters installed or not 200mph or lower seems to be the reality of what is happening. I my view the total disappearance of competition speed traps which promoted the highest speed obtainable was the beginning of the end of speed as an "issue" in Jet Modeling.

It's been a few years since I raced large scale aircraft at Madeira type events, but several years back in the unlimited classes speeds were well over 200mph. And by the way the the real world safety record in large scale racing is far worse than in the Jet World. Knock on wood.......

Hummm, I wonder if anyone has entered a turbine powered aircraft in unlimited class racing? I'll bet they came up with a rule against that right-a-way. I know there was a hue and cry when the Lance Air airframes began to win in the unlimited classes cause it wasn't the pro-to typical WWII War Bird airframe..... By the way the year Madeira had the "paid-shooter" incident ---- I believe BV was present with a noon time demo of a turbine powered model aircraft, the first I'd ever seen ---- was it propane powered? I know it was so quite we couldn't hardly hear it --- but it was fairly fast as I recall.
Lee H. DeMary
AMA 36099