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Race 89 Flyin’ Tiger Field 2720 County Rd 49 Angleton, TX 77515 |
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For Details, Contact: Donah Bohannon Race 89- Angleton, TX Phone (281) 369-0371 |
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For Immediate Release |
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Exxon Flyin’
Tiger News Flash
The Exxon
Flyin’ Tiger hits a World Record Grand Slam in Palm Springs Desert!
Behind the scenes report breaks Bohannon’s silence on the real rigors and risks of aviation record flights.
Palm Springs, California: Exxon Flyin’ Tiger pilot Bruce Bohannon has pulled off something no other piston engine pilot
has ever done. Pending NAA
certification, Bruce set a Time to Climb record to 12,000 meters (40,000
feet)! In the same flight, he also
broke his own records for Altitude in Horizontal Flight and Absolute Altitude
at
41,300
feet!!!
No, it wasn’t easy and for the first time you’re going to know why!
First, the hard facts:
Date: October 22, 2002
Time: High Noon
Place: Desert Resorts Regional Airport- Palm Springs, California
Records Set: Class C-1.b (piston engine aircraft weighing 1102-2205 lbs)
*Time to Climb to 12,000
meters: 32 minutes, 2 seconds
¨ Absolute Altitude: 41,300 feet
¨ Altitude in Horizontal
Flight: 41,300 feet
Class C-1 Unlimited (piston engine
aircraft of any weight)
*Time to Climb to 12,000
meters: 32 minutes, 2 seconds
*The Exxon Flyin’
Tiger is establishing these as new World Records.
No other piston
engine aircraft, since Time to Climb records were first recorded in the 1950s,
has successfully raced the clock to 12,000 meters!
For years,
Bruce and I have collaborated to write Exxon Flyin’ Tiger press
releases, reporting our successes and failures. He has always downplayed the difficulty and danger of these
record quests; partially for fear of frightening our sponsors away and
partially out of simple modesty. With
each successful mission, our failure to tell the whole story is
prompting more and more comments like:
“You make this record stuff look easy.”
“Bruce
Bohannon set another World Record, so what?”
“He’s been
doing the same thing for years, how hard can it be?”
Some
people just don’t get it and it’s partly our fault. Today I sent Bruce to the hangar so that I can tell you what it’s
really like to fly in the face of fear, frustration and physical pain to
come out alive and sometimes…a winner.
A Date with the Desert-
After our
failure to set these records at Oshkosh, Bruce was hell-bent on solving our
problems and capturing those records before year’s end. He is truly a man possessed when success
eludes him. So we set our sites on Palm
Springs and began climbing the hurdles standing between us and our goal of
40,000 feet.
Major Myth: “All Time to Climb records are the same.”
Spoken
like someone who’s never tried it! From
the day we begin flight instruction, all pilots learn that you can’t have
everything. Want to climb faster? Get a bigger engine! Of course, it weighs more so you’ll need
more fuel. (more weight). The heavier you are the slower you
climb. The slower you climb, the more
horsepower you need. The more
horsepower you make, the more fuel you need.
The more fuel you carry, the heavier you are….everything is a
trade-off. The challenge is finding new
ways to get the most performance possible.
There are no instruction books on doing things that haven’t been done
before. You write your own manual with
lessons learned from each new record attempt….and they’re all different!
The
difference between racing a piston engine aircraft to 30,000 feet and to 40,000
feet is like the difference between the Indy 500 and a race around the world!
Bruce
Bohannon just flew higher, faster than anyone has ever flown in a piston engine
aircraft…12,000 meters (39,370 feet) in just 32 minutes and 2 seconds! That’s an average rate of climb of 1,230
feet per minute…to an altitude that most piston planes never even reach! Think it was easy? Take a walk in Bruce’s shoes and then
decide.
In The
Exxon Flyin’ Tiger there are 25,000ths of an inch of aluminum between the
pilot and 60 degrees below zero temperatures at 40,000 feet. Bundle up all you want, the “brass monkey”
factor is still there! You can wear one
glove, but must forego the other in order to wear a Pulse Oximeter on your
finger. This gives critical feedback on
your blood oxygen levels. At 40,000
feet you have just 15 seconds of useful consciousness if your oxygen
system fails, so frostbite doesn’t seem such a bad trade. I haven’t found a pair of socks in the world
to keep Bruce’s feet warm at altitude.
In his words they “become two stones” at the ends of his legs. Imagine landing a tail dragger at 100 mph
without being able to feel your feet!
So why don’t we add a heater and some insulation? More weight = slower rate of climb = need
for more horsepower = need for more fuel = more weight = slower climb…(oh yeah,
that.)
You’ll
need to pre-breathe pure oxygen for an hour and a half before the flight to
purge the nitrogen from your body. This
(hopefully, but not always) prevents a painful and potentially deadly condition
known to scuba divers as “the bends”.
As you climb and air pressure drops, nitrogen bubbles form and expand,
usually in your joints. Imagine someone
trying to pry your knees & elbows apart with a crow bar…that’s what it
feels like! If you’re really unlucky,
the bubbles can break loose and travel to your brain. Then world records and everything else in your life becomes
irrelevant. Bruce has been forced to
terminate test flights due to the bends and excruciating gastrointestinal pain
caused by the same expansion process.
FAA doctors have assured us that a pressure suit isn’t needed at 40,000
feet. But Bruce’s high-flying buddy
Scott Crossfield is jumping all over him for doing it. (A fact that is never far from my
mind.) You’ll also want to make sure to
Velcro a bottle of emergency nasal spray in the cockpit. Extreme pressure changes can burst clogged
nasal passages and actually break the bones in your face…not only horribly
painful, but “bloody embarrassing” on landing!
Now
imagine launching from the California desert on your world record quest. You’re in The Exxon Flyin’ Tiger; a
light, sleek, modified Van’s RV-4 powered by a highly modified
Mattituck/Lycoming IO 555 engine, blown by a massive, custom Kelly Aerospace
turbo charger and turning a super efficient Hartzell three bladed propeller.
You’re the “baddest of the bad”! Who couldn’t
set a record in a monster machine like that?
Hang on
"Maverick", you’ve got work to do.
As you blast off the runway, pay attention to that noise in your
ears…you’re now at the mercy of ATC. You
want to go up…as quickly as possible. But you’re taking a 120-knot airplane into a 450-knot environment
(airliners and military operations), so controllers may choose to hold you at
particular altitudes (don’t they understand this is a timed record?) or
vector you around the sky (you have only so much time and so much fuel). But this time you get lucky. On the Palm Springs flight, ATC is going out
of their way to help. (There is a God!)
All you have to do is answer their calls, squawk the correct codes & change
frequencies when directed. Most of your
brain can concentrate on the mission.
Your mind is consumed with monitoring exhaust gas, cylinder head, oil
and turbo intake temperatures, climb speed, RPM adjustments to avoid prop tip
over-speed, the leaning process, monitoring GPS to stay on course and slowly
closing the manual wastegate to engage the turbo. As the CHTs climb you’ll need to carefully use the water
system. We use spray bars on two very
large PosiTech oil coolers to cool the oil, which in turn helps prevent the
CHTs from melting your pistons. You’ll
turn the water on and off to manage cylinder head temperatures, keeping in mind
that if you run out of water damage or failure is lurking. As the altimeter climbs and outside air
temperature drops, your canopy ices over from the inside. Your only view out is directly ahead, that
thanks to the design of the Tiger’s intercooler that dumps warm air onto
the windshield. Your instrument panel
fogs up, making it difficult to read critical instruments. At some point the water system freezes. When that happens, you MUST remember to turn
off the pump to keep it from burning up. The colder your hands get, the harder
it is to work the stick, turn knobs and push buttons. When ATC calls, you struggle to speak clearly due to reverse
breathing. (Your diluter demand O-2
system forces oxygen into your lungs at high altitude and you must push air out
to exhale) Suddenly, at about 34,000
feet there’s an abrupt engine over-speed.
The prop is running away at 3500-RPM…keep it up and you may loose
a propeller blade which can yank the engine off the mounts and then you’ll be
skydiving. But if you pull the power,
instantly reduced exhaust gas flow will cause the turbo to spool down and
you’ll be making a Time to Climb record attempt in a glider (a repeat of the
failure at Oshkosh). QUICK, DO SOMETHING!!!!
As much as
I have fantasized about making a record attempt myself, it’s times like this
(which are too numerous to mention) when I “get a grip”. You can have the machine, you can have the
support, you can have the desire; but there’s nothing like experience to
improve your chances of survival.
OK,
relax…Bruce has the plane. With just
6,000 feet to go for the record all hell breaks loose. There’s a sudden over-speed and impending
disaster. As competitive and driven as
Bruce is, experience prompted him to do the right thing. It took him less than one second to
instinctively pull the power, saving the engine and propeller!
The price
of survival was starving the turbo. Now
piloting “The Exxon Glidin’ Tiger “, Bruce starts working on his
consolation speech. But then his “never
say die attitude” kicked in. Experience
saved the plane and possibly his life, now; experience was about to save the
record.
I won’t
tell you what he did to breathe life into a dead engine. There are rumors that we may have
competition on the horizon, so there’s no sense in telling all of our
secrets. Suffice it to say that every
failure is an opportunity to learn and Bruce never fails to learn
something. Our attempts at Oshkosh this
summer taught some valuable lessons that Bruce put to good use in Palm
Springs. He revived the engine and
indicated 41,601 feet on the GPS (allowing for a possible 300’ GPS error) at
the top of his climb. Mission
accomplished! Now you can relax….right?
OK, you’ve
got the plane again. Wonder what the
view is like from over 41,000 feet? No
time for sightseeing, you’ve got to get down from here alive and hopefully
with a healthy airplane. How much fuel
do you have left? If you miscalculated
cool-down time or were vectored by ATC you might not make it back to the
field. If you have to land elsewhere
you can kiss those hard-earned world records good-bye. (The rules say you must land at the same
field you departed.) Have you checked
your oxygen tank lately? Did you
remember to recharge it after pre-breathing to give you enough for the entire
flight? If you’re in danger of running
out you may have to put the nose down and sacrifice your engine to save your
skin. Fuel’s good…oxygen’s good…but
your guts hurt, your eyes are bloodshot
& bone dry and you’re afraid you may break a frozen finger off
before you can land. Can’t hurry,
though…cool the engine too quickly and it’s toast (cold, cracked toast). Fortunately, The Exxon Flyin’ Tiger
has a VM-1000 display (Vision Microsystems) that warns you when you’re about to
shock cool one or more cylinders. (This
has saved us many engines!) It’s
your job now to slowly descend, level off for cooling, then descend again while
slowly opening the waste gate on the turbo charger to avoid over-boosting the
engine. (With a compression ratio of 12:1, that’s a real danger.) Remember to keep enough power on the engine
in decent to prevent your oil from getting too cold. The Tiger has an extremely efficient oil cooling system.
While you’re doing that, manage the fuel mixture, the prop and the throttle
while keeping all temperatures within their perimeters as you reverse the climb
process. ATC is still in your ear and you’ll
need to respond accordingly. Navigate
precisely; you don’t have enough fuel or oxygen for time-consuming
mistakes. You’re down to 20,000 feet
and starting to breathe easier…almost home!
Then your heart stops….is the video camera running?!?!
The NAA
oversees installation of a camera to record your altimeter, airspeed indicator
and clock. If the camera isn’t running,
you could make it to the moon and it wouldn’t matter…there’s no
proof! You really should have
checked the camera a couple of times in flight. Bitter cold is rough on equipment and batteries. But you had a couple dozen other things on
your mind and forgot. Now you hold your
breath and take a peek…
IT’S
RECORDING!!! You just avoided a bitter
disappointment….trust me, we know.
Now you
have the field in sight…don’t relax!
You can’t feel your feet, you can’t see over the nose with that huge air
scoop in the way and you’ll touch down at 100 mph. Vile thoughts creep in…was the airframe
damaged in the flight? Just how much
can an airplane shrink in bitter cold without breaking? Will these stones that were my feet work the
rudder pedals? Will I accidentally jump
on the brakes and end up on my back?
You remember that old geezer constantly preaching, “the flight’s not
over until the wheels are in the chocks”.
That old geezer was right. You are careful and you do make
a victorious landing.
How many
times would you like to experience this fun-filled flight? Any idea how many test flights, malfunctions
and “May-Days” it took before Bruce made that easy, no-big-deal desert flight
to set FOUR WORLD RECORDS? Did I
mention we almost had to cancel the whole thing one day before record
day? Let’s back up a bit.
Bruce and
Crew Chief Gary Hunter worked non-stop to solve the various problems that
plagued us at Oshkosh. We learned from
turbo-guru Bob Minnis that our accessory pressurization lines were undersized
and poorly placed, causing fuel mixture problems and a horrible vibration. Bruce and Gary corrected that problem and
learned how to avoid the turbo stall that shut us down at Oshkosh. Cooling is always a major issue and some
things were changed to help in that department. Weeks before the Palm Springs attempt, we were tested, proven and
“race-ready”. But on the flight from
Texas to California, something went wrong.
We travel
as a flight of three; Bruce in “The Exxon Flyin’ Tiger”, Gary in his
Very EZ and I in the Mattituck RV-4.
Everything was great until we took off from an El Paso fuel stop. Bruce suddenly picked up some strange
vibrations and instrument indications of some type of engine problem. We continued on to Phoenix and before
departing there, Bruce told Gary and I to stay on the ground while he took off
and made a few checks. He determined
it was OK to continue and we made it into Palm Springs right at dark.
The next
day, Bruce and Gary worked the problem from daylight to dark. They finally found the culprit…a partially
clogged fuel injector that was flowing just enough fuel to read a correct EGT,
but was running lean of peak. That
caused the engine roughness and overheating of one cylinder. We cleared the injector, made a test flight,
did the official weigh-in and were ready for the record attempt the next
day. Although the issue was resolved,
Bruce had another worry in the back of his mind…would the overheated
cylinder manifest another problem that would force him down on the record
attempt? Last minute scrambles
before record runs are not unusual and always unsettling.
That’s
pretty much the nitty-gritty of our Palm Springs world record flight. And if you think any of the other records
Bruce has set were any easier…re-read this story and multiply it by
hundreds. Every record quest had it’s
own set of challenges, risks and close calls.
The research and development behind all of Bruce’s world records go back
to 1989 when he began racing “Pushy Galore”.
He’s flown hundreds of test flights, surviving everything from blown
engines to airframe failures and too many “May-Days” and deadstick landings to
count! In “Pushy”, Bruce learned how to
run nitrous oxide on an 0-200 engine to get 250 horsepower. But that knowledge didn’t entirely apply to
running nitrous on the Tiger’s IO-555 and we blew up an engine
trying. So we’re learning an entirely
new industry…turbo charging. The
perimeters used on stock engines and certified aircraft just don’t apply to a
hopped-up engine on a highly-modified experimental plane. As always, we’ve got a lot to learn.
If Bruce
Bohannon makes record setting look easy, maybe it’s because he has over 9,000
hours of mostly “high-risk” flying.
From crop dusting to aerobatic competition, air racing and even
skydiving, that’s a lot of test pilot experience. Or maybe it’s because he’s smart enough to start with the very
best aviation products and services before he pushes the envelope beyond known
limits. Or maybe it’s that charming
grin and self-effacing manner that make Bruce’s incredible accomplishments seem
almost routine. If you didn’t get anything
else from this release, understand this……
Each time Bruce flies a little higher, a little faster than the
guy before him,
it
wasn’t luck and it damn sure wasn’t easy!