At the airport

My dad came to see us off

Took some effort to get the planes out of the grass

Lots of racers

Of course, 35 is the best!

Race morning

We are up and ready to race!

Sun is coming up on race morning

The lobby is filled with racers before 6am

Eastern PA racers are ready to go

So is team "Shark Attack"

Most teams have retrieved their impounded plane keys.

Time for a briefing and we are off to the airport!!

Ready to race

Another busy day today but we are finally ready to race!

More briefings today.

The Flying Cookies equipped the racers with some Gurl Scout cookies

Then posed for a picture wearing one of their team shirts.

And the back of the shirts.

Laundry time for some of the teams.

We have visitors. Heather's husband and two of her daughters plus my dad came to the start to see us off. 

Here's the Hill family back at the hotel. Time for bed, it's an early day tomorrow.

Meetings and banquet

Sorry, no post yesterday. We spent the day in meetings and then attended the start banquet.

One member from each team took our Bad Elf and SPOT trackers outside to get reception to test the devices. Follow the racers live on trackracers.com!

The racers waiting in line for team photos at the start banquet.

The banquet was interrupted by buzzing cell phones announcing a tornado warning.

We were in Stafford.

So what do a bunch a women pilots do when there is a tornado warning? Of course we go outside to watch! The rumors during the banquet that a tornado touched down at the airport proved to be false and all the planes and people were safe.

We didn't get a photo of us in our matching banquet clothes but here is Heather in our outfit.

Welcome reception BBQ

We had a great time at the welcome reception BBQ and Abingdon cocktail hour. Thank you to our hosts and sponsors. Here are some pictures from the event.

The head of the Abingdon Watch company.

The Eastern PA racers.

Really good BBQ!

Heather demonstrates her hoola hoop prowess!

This is Molly, she flies out of WBW, an airport in NE PA where my dad worked when he was younger. She is flying with a team from Purdue University.

Our day at the Airport

We are back at the airport.

Thanks to Mary and Juliet and their truly special rental car.

Registration is complete and we have our credentials.

More repairs! Both lord mounts, that hold part of the under cowl in place, were broken. Fortunately, there was a mechanic at the field who had two of them in stock. How lucky is that!

Here is the replacement part. It's just adorable, isn't it?

Still getting repaired.

All fixed now! Here is our hero, Kevin Woodside, the mechanic who saved us! We love the Air Race mechanics, they are awesome!

Now we can take our log books to be inspected by the aircraft judges.

After the log books are inspected, the airplane gets inspected.

Here are two of the mechanics who volunteer their time to help with the inspections. We could not have the race if it were not for all of the volunteers so THANK YOU!! Special thanks to AWAM (Association for Women in Aviation Maintenance) who send many volunteers to help with the inspections.

Flying to the start

We flew around some intense weather on the way to the start. That blackness is a thunderstorm off to our left.

Here we are enroute.

My first ever flight into the SFRA around Washington DC.

We made it! Many teams are here already.