London Air Races

This past Sunday I set off for London to watch the Red Bull London Air Races. The day actually started the night before when I realized I had not printed my race ticket which was emailed to me after purchasing online. Normally that wouldn't be a problem, but I don't have a printer. So the morning of my first stop after leaving for London was my Rolls-Royce office where I had hoped to print the ticket there. Don't worry Rolls-Royce... I didn't use any company resources because my attempt to print didn't work. Something was not working somewhere between my computer an the printer. Typical. So I set out for London with the only evidence of my having bought a ticket being an electronic version of my ticket on my iPhone.

The racing was excellent. It quickly becomes obvious that these pilots are the best of the best. They're flying over 200 mph less than 60 ft from the water routinely pulling 9-10 g's. At 10 g's a 150 lb person feels as if they weigh 1,500 lbs. Imagine being under that pressure while flying precision maneuvers only 60 ft from the ground. This is far more extreme than what a fighter pilot must withstand.

During the race the weather was classically English. You can see from the photos the overcast skies and it spit rain several times over the course of the 2 hour event. But it was the wind that concerned the pilots. Winds were reported to gust near 20 mph. This made the course that much more difficult.