Reno Air Races

Jimmy Leeward's P-51 Mustang just before impact.  Photo courtesy Garret Woodman via Reno-Gazette Journal

I had just gotten home from work Friday when I saw the news about the crash at the Reno Air Races on my Facebook feed.

After calling Carly to make sure she was ok, I spent the next few hours watching the streaming live coverage from three Reno television stations websites, thinking all the while of my experiences covering the races in the 80s.

The Reno Air Races is one of the most well-known and popular annual events in Nevada and it's exactly what it sounds like.  A race in the sky involving different kinds of airplanes.

When I first moved to Reno, I scoffed at the idea of spending money to watch planes fly fast in a circle but after my first visit to Stead Airport (probably carrying the BVU deck for Buddy Frank) my opinion changed.  Perhaps it was Buddy's knowledge of all things aeronautic or maybe it's a genetic appreciation for military flying machines from my dad (an Air Force aircraft mechanic) or maybe my love of going fast (I used to get a lot of speeding tickets) or the more visceral thrill of the danger.

Imagine a car race in the sky, with planes flying wingtip-to-wingtip as low as 50 feet off the sagebrush at speeds sometimes surpassing 500 mph. Pilots follow an oval path, screaming around pylons, with distances and speeds depending on the class of aircraft.  The most exciting were the Unlimiteds.

Probably the most memorable was either 1983 or '84 when one of my co-workers (and for the life of me I cannot recall who) secured us a spot at Pylon 7.  I can't remember which news car we drove to through the desert but it was not a 4WD and should have been.  We parked at least a half mile away and walked in to the pylon which is just a tall telephone pole with a metal barrel at the top.  We set up the camera and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And then the Unlimited race started.  The first time one of the vintage WWII planes screamed around Number Seven, I dropped to the ground in fear and awe.  The planes are at almost a 90-degree angle to the ground as they round the curve and it felt like I should keep my head down, lest it be ripped off by a wing.  I have no idea how many times we felt the rush which was punctuated immediately by desert silence, the smell of sagebrush seasoned with exhaust and the feeling that we were in the middle of nowhere.  Until another Bearcat or P-51 cut through the quiet in the quest for first place.
I will never forget it.

Jimmy Leeward and all of the pilots were rock stars and I hope the initial reports are true -- about his-decide-in-a-micro-second heroism; steering the doomed craft away from the grandstands to save as many lives as possible.  Godspeed Jimmy Leeward and everyone who perished September 16, 2011.