Day 4 and more
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| Gulf of Mexico/ Bay |
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| Me and some of the awesome gals I got to know really well! |
Done with the race means vacation! Since we had an extra day we meandered around the quaint little town of Fairhope. We went to the airport at some point to cheer on the rest of the teams coming in and then enjoyed dinner eating real, fresh seafood- shrimp and lobster!The next few days included chill time, a few seminars, going to the beach, running, shopping at the little stores around town, and going to the town museum.
One of the cool side projects we were involved in was with the Boys and Girls club. They had an adopt a pilot program where middle school and high school girls were paired with a team and could watch our progress as they were in the race and cheer us on. It was fun to see the girls getting involved with aviation and being able to inspire them to follow their dreams. On one of the days they had their graduation ceremony so a bus load of racers went to that and enjoyed the program and some lunch.
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| Jenna, our adopt a pilot gal! |
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| USS Alabama |
Another day we were able to tour Continental Motors factory (where they make aircraft engines). That was really cool to see how engines are made from scratch.
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| Continental Motors cylinder center pieces |
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| Maggie, Lin, and me at the banquet. |
On Saturday evening we had the terminus banquet. This was where the awards were given out and the final get together before everyone left to go back home. We all were introduced and got our completion plaques and certificates. For the awards, they had categories for the fastest Cardinal, Beechcraft, Piper and some other smaller awards. Then came the leg prizes (top 4 for leg). To our complete surprise we won a leg prize! 4th fastest on the 2nd leg! Maggie had never won a prize so it was super fun for her! We were both astonished at hearing our racer number called! After the leg winners were called came the top 10.
The winners were calculated based on a handicapped speed and how much faster or slower you were from that base speed. Every plane had to fly a box course (fly north, then west, then south, then east. From that you got a base speed. Each leg you had to try and beat that by riding tailwinds or waiting out weather, etc. When you finish you have a score and ten the judges go through and give you penalties based on things you may have done wrong, such as being too low or high on a fly by, landing at a different airport, (if you had to land due to weather), etc. And from that calculation you get a score and it is either + or - from your base score. Whoever has the most plus wins.
We got 25th place out of 50 (and moved up from 34!) We were very pleased with our performance and were excited about the whole thing.
Stay tuned for more.
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| All the racers! |
The winners were calculated based on a handicapped speed and how much faster or slower you were from that base speed. Every plane had to fly a box course (fly north, then west, then south, then east. From that you got a base speed. Each leg you had to try and beat that by riding tailwinds or waiting out weather, etc. When you finish you have a score and ten the judges go through and give you penalties based on things you may have done wrong, such as being too low or high on a fly by, landing at a different airport, (if you had to land due to weather), etc. And from that calculation you get a score and it is either + or - from your base score. Whoever has the most plus wins.
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