2007 Aerophile Team Announced! - Friday, June 22, 2007 @ 13:32:34 PST - Ray Debs
We are proud to announce the 2007 Aerophile Racing Team Members! We are looking forward to a great year with 2 aircraft to bring to Reno (Carbon Slipper and Plane Mantis).
See you there!

Carbon Slipper Wins 5th Place Gold! Reno '06 - Monday, September 18, 2006 @ 22:25:47 PST - Curtis
We just returned from a little over a week at the Reno Air Races and we qualified at 233 MPH and had a fastest lap of 243 MPH during the weeks competition. In the final Gold race Ray held off Holbrook Maslen in "Judy" and Jason Somes in "Alley Cat" to win fifth place Gold!

Carbon Slipper Goes to Boise, Idaho - Thursday, April 27, 2006 @ 23:32:58 PST - Curtis
A few weekends ago Ray came down from his home in Boise and picked up Carbon Slipper. He is planning to finish up some carbon work for wing fillets and gear leg intersection fillets as well some odds and ends. I am planning to rebuild the Plane Mantis engine that we had on Carbon Slipper at Reno '05 and swapped after qualifying due to finding starter bearing pieces in the oil tank.

Curtis Gets Married!! - Monday, October 31, 2005 @ 13:45:52 PST - Ray Debs
We are happy to announce the marriage of Curtis Weinman to Erin Rothermel on October 23, 2005. It was an emotional and touching ceremony in which Erin looked gorgeous and Curtis looked extremely happy. We wish them a long and happy marriage.

Aerophile Articles page updated - Monday, October 10, 2005 @ 14:26:49 PST - Ray Debs
I took a little post-race time to clean up and update the Aerophile Racing Website, and one of the pages that you should visit is the Aerophile Articles page. It has links to lots of press we have received, and a few articles of note that we have written over the years. We hope you enjoy reading these as much as we did, and if you see others, please let us know.

4th in Silver at Reno 2005! - Wednesday, September 21, 2005 @ 16:20:15 PST - Ray Debs
Carbon Slipper placed 4th in the Formula One Silver class at the Reno Air Races this year! We had a very successful year with finishing the airplane, getting the airworthiness certificate, doing the test flying, getting it to the race, and qualifying to race. There was a LOT more work after that with the crew staying up all night for many days building up a new engine and swapping them.

Everyone on the team has earned the right to be proud of our accomplishments. I personally want to thank everyone involved: my air racing partner Curtis Weinman for all his work and big sacrifices, John and Jacob Raquet for their sanding and taping and everything else, Barry Sherwood (CEO of Sunset.Net, one of our sponsors who came down and helped crew during the test-flying period), Herb and Beverly Weinman who took care of the crew by providing food and rides, Gloria Kahn and Charlie and Tina Federmann who helped during tech inspections and qualifications, Eric Gillespie who was part of the crew at Reno, Hep Porter for being a great teammate and test-pilot, Craig Catto for making our wing and tail and training Curtis and I in the art of composite construction, and finally, my wife Connie for being very supportive and understanding during the past 4 years of building and racing. There are many other people who I didn't specifically mention who also helped, and I am sorry if I forgot anyone.

I will be writing a trip report in the near future and will post it here, but I wanted to make a brief announcement as a quick update. Keep checking back as we will be posting photos and videos of the plane and races.

Great News!! Carbon Slipper is Airworthy!! - Sunday, August 28, 2005 @ 23:09:20 PST - Curtis
We received FAA certification for Carbon Slipper being Airworthy. Story to follow after we do our first test flight tomorrow.

Getting Carbon Slipper Ready for Reno! - Wednesday, June 15, 2005 @ 02:28:38 PST - Curtis
Hi Guys, We are back to our aggressive work schedule to get done all of the little things that add up. We have plans of test flying soon and then doing a bit more speed enhancements before Reno this year. Ray is working on the composite work and Curtis is focusing on the welding, mechanical, and engine tweaking on our second engine. The goal is to build a very fast engine and break it in on Plane Mantis then swap for the ultimate effect. I have been looking at many numbers of other past race planes and have come to the conclusion that there does not seem to be any direct correlation to the difference between getting close to minimum weight vs having a sleek plane. There have been IF1 planes that were around 504-515 pounds empty that went fairly slow (in the 170's) and had a fairly clean profiles and planes that look so bulky, draggy, boxy, and had huge wheel pants that screamed along at 240 MPH! So... is it all engine and prop? Or flying skills? Well, we will be looking forward to getting some numbers of our own for Carbon Slipper. We'll keep you posted, on our progress not our numbers. You'll have to wait for Reno for that!