High Performance Aircraft Racing

Updates on The Vampire and Legacy - Jet Gold Here we come!

Hello Race Family!

I need to thank John Hammans at Ultimate Aviation, Keith Boman and Cory Bengzten at CB Jet center for getting the Vampire ready to take the Gold Championship this year! Thanks to the best fabrication shop in America, Fibercraft led by Matthew Collier and his team Brian, Manuelle and CJ for working so hard and making the Super Legacy match what's been designed for it.

The Legacy has had some challenges along the way yet we discovered this late in the game and immediately were on the phone with Robbie Rucker at McCauley Propeller - Thanks to Doug Walker. McCauley and their engineers have created a new race governor like none other just for us and matched to that ridiculously fast Race prop that Hartzell made for us! And got it sent to Matthews shop ASAP. Idea to drawing to part in hand in less than two weeks! Heroes!

Beringer a French brake and wheel manufacturer that made us a beautiful set of wheels and brakes got us the new set of "Sneakers" for the Super Legacy in race time and Brian put them on in record speed. These will lighten our weight another ********* (redacted top secret) overall!!! The pictures attached reflect the gorgeous composite work being performed in Florida at Matthews shop and some of the new components.

The Vampire was ready 2 months ago to go to the races when it decided it wanted to go back to its "Cave"…Paperwork on this speedster alone has cost at least two months of delays but its now resolved completely. The opportunity was the burnt up start wiring system and starter, however it wasn't so bad to be obvious. We decided to rip out all of the ancient wire, (Put in before copper was discovered) and begin anew. After the complete rewire it didn't resolve the issue. The team and I went to Therapy (Wine Bar) to come up with the next plan. Keith, Doug and Myself disagreed about the removal procedure on the starter to the point that it was suggested we need to remove the engine, like other fighters require, to get the starter removed. After calling the other Vampire "Experts" we had no solution that was reasonable…Enter Phil Morgan. We discovered our next hero in a senior Citizen home that has the sharpest mind of any 94 year old I have met. An MIT engineering graduate that liked to rewire the British wiring on Vampires among other things. He quickly told me do NOT remove the engine to do the starter. Despite some Vampire bites, we got the starter removed and replaced and it solved the problem.

Next from the most recent Hero, Phil, was why while I was traveling to London, and my good friend Mike Mangold (Red Bull Champion Racer) did some testing for us and helped tighten things up real nice. Thanks Mike and Phil for an even better plane!

The last several days have been very successful, I flew the plane along with Mike on Saturday, and burnt a 1000 gallons of Jet A, did a few flights with no issues. I did rolls, loops, stalls, accelerated stalls an SFO, among a few patterns and the engine is fast, real fast!

Jet Gold here we come! We need a few more heroes to come through and we are getting there!