Steve Smith, who used to work with Ray, talked us into trying the first T-34 Race.  We bought one plane and Curt entered in the Novice class and Ray entered in the Expert class (because we couldn't both be in the Novice class while sharing a plane).  We had so much fun that first race that now we have become more serious about racing.  Currently, we have 4 aircraft, one of which is rebuilt from pieces of other people's crashes that we collected at the races.  This means that we each have a primary aircraft and we share a backup.  If we somehow crash 2 aircraft in a race, we can still both fly the third.  We have about 6 identical engines, 4 of which we bought for racing, so we shouldn't have any problems running out of those.  

The nice thing about the T-34 class is that everyone is using the exact same aircraft kit, and one of the engines on the approved list.  It must be built according to the instructions and no aerodynamic mods are allowed.  The kits are about $120 and the engines we are using are about $130.  This low-cost aircraft makes it much easier to get into racing.  Especially with the attrition rate so high.  Each race we have seen a number of mid-air collisions, and the just plain mistake crashes.  The first race we counted 13 accidents.  It wasn't so bad the second and third races, with only about 6 crashes each.  This was probably because the pilots were learning how to fly in a race.  Curt and Ray have both been very fortunate to have no crashes during the races.  We kept ours to practice sessions...

There are 4 races in the 2000 season.  The first was in Morgan Hill at the Tomcats model field.  The second was in Madera.  The third was in Lodi, and the last one on October 14th was in Morgan Hill again.  In the Novice class, there was an average of about 20 pilots each race, and the Expert class averaged about 25 pilots.  You can see how Curt and I have done on our Stats Page.

We will be flying in the Warbird race series as well as the T-34 series for the 2001 season.  The Warbird class has much faster aircraft and more powerful engines which makes it more exciting (especially if you win and don't crash).