We all know that the best way for an aviation enthusiast (especially a homebuilder) to watch the Reno Air Races is in person, with a pit pass, at Stead Field. Well this year, its understandable if you’re sitting at home somewhere within a reasonable flight of the Reno area, wondering if it is worth the trip (and fuel expense) to fly to the races and risk seeing nothing due to the persistent wildfire smoke that is hampering the 2022 race schedule.
It’s currently Thursday at noon, and so far today, the only flying has been from the entertaining STOL drag guys and a couple of airshow performances – which makes it hard to justify the trip. Truth is, I live about an hour drive from Stead, down near Carson City, and I haven’t driven up to the field today because I really don’t want to hang around outside with air quality indexes in the “hazardous” range. Heck, Reno has cancelled public schools for the second day in a row because they don’t want kids outside!
Fortunately, the Reno Air Racing Association provides a way to stay informed – they have a live video feed each day on Youtube, a continuous broadcast that you can have on in the background to keep up on the news – and even watch some racing from previous years as they vamp for time and hope for clearing skies. If you want to check it out, fire up your favorite connected device, go to YouTube. It’s not the same as being there – but its better than nothing!
We’ll continue to hope for better air, and tomorrow I’ll head up to Stead just to hang out with the racers, mechanics, and other fans in the Sport, Formula, and Biplane pits. After all, I only get to see a lot of this folks once a year, and even if we don’t get to see much flying, its fun to trade stories and watch them tinker with exotic hardware.
Further coverage of the 2022 Reno Air Races can be found on AVweb sister publication, KITPLANES.
This article originally appeared in KITPLANES. For more great content like this, subscribe to KITPLANES!
I remember as a kid watching the Reno races on television. And back then we only got three VHF channels.
Thank you for the update, I’m switching to YouTube now.
I hope to see more of Paul Dye as a contributor to AvWeb. I purchased his book, “Space Shuttle–Houston” at Oshkosh, where he was a featured speaker. Not only was he NASA’s longest-serving Flight Director, but the book gives incredible insights to the Manned Space Program–the development, early launches, dealing with the Russians, the Shuttle flights, and a lot of background.
Dye is living proof that you CAN succeed in almost any industry if you work at it. He restored two Cubs to learn to fly in the beginning–applied and was accepted at NASA, despite lack of lofty aerospace credentials–and had a fascinating career. In the interim, he built several airplanes, and after retirement, became editor at Kitplanes. Now that he is “Editor at Large”, I hope to see more of his contributions to AvWeb!
I had tickets. Never been to the air races before, so we went big, with VIP everything passes. But my wife has asthma, and I’m not going to take her to Reno just to take her to the hospital. Having lived some years of my life in hurricane regions, I know it doesn’t make sense to try to go on vacation into a place where the locals are evacuating. So I made the difficult no-go decision. Still waiting to see if my tickets can be refunded or credited towards next year.