#ICYMI - Extreme Flying – Red Bull Air Race, with Kirby Chambliss

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Hop in, buckle up, and earn your wings alongside hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly as they explore Red Bull Air Racing with Technical Director Jim “Jimbo” Reed, and pilot and 2-time World Champion Kirby Chambliss. Photo Credit: Myself (Hamish) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:10Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 0:11Gary O'Reilly?

  This is Playing With Science. Today, we take to the skies, but not to serenely sail through the clouds, oh no. This is going to be straight up vertical, upside down, and flying by the seat of your pants stuff, because today, we have the need, the need for speed.

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  That's right, goose. Okay. Yes, we do, because we are going Red Bull Air Racing, and helping us to navigate through the course is the man that knows everything about Red Bull Air Racing, Technical Director Jim, Jimbo Reed will be joining us.

• 0:46Gary O'Reilly?

  But first, of course, a show involving speed and pulling some serious G, would not be the same without our very good friend from Forbes Magazine, adventure journalist Jim.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  Jim Class!

• 0:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, who I am pleased to say is with us in the studio once again today. Hi, Jim, welcome back.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  Thank you, Gary, thank you, Chuck, it's always great to be here.

• 1:04Chuck Nice?

  That's right, man.

• 1:05Gary O'Reilly?

  He says the nicest things, doesn't he?

• 1:06Chuck Nice?

  I know. Jim Class, the man whose name was made for adventure, yes.

• 1:11Gary O'Reilly?

  So you're not unfamiliar with the Red Bull Air Racing, or in fact, not that they go supersonic, but speed itself in an aircraft. How many times have you gone supersonic? Remind us again, please.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  I've flown supersonic four separate times in four separate planes, so...

• 1:29Chuck Nice?

  What are the planes?

• 1:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, please list.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  The first was the MiG-25 Fox Pad, and actually I went Mach 2.6, which is two and a half times the speed of sound.

• 1:37Chuck Nice?

  And that is a Russian fighter jet, right?

• 1:39Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:40Gary O'Reilly?

  That's a Clintish wood.

• 1:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's right.

• 1:42Gary O'Reilly?

  It is, yeah.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  I flew in an English Electric Lightning.

• 1:45Gary O'Reilly?

  I remember those, yes.

• 1:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I'm not familiar with the English Electric Lightning.

• 1:49Gary O'Reilly?

  It's kind of like a delta wing aircraft, but it's got a strange... Contraption at the front with a cone, but a

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, is that the one with the, and it's got the big rod that comes out of it?

• 1:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, no, that's, that's like a, an AWAC. That's a Nimrod. That's a surveillance aircraft.

• 2:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you don't have to be mean to it. Don't call it a Nimrod. Okay.

• 2:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, it's called. Carry on, Jim.

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  But go ahead.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Uh, the English Electric Lightning in South Africa. Uh, I also flew in the Concorde, believe it or not. One of the last flights of Concorde.

• 2:16Gary O'Reilly?

  The, the real one.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, the British Airways.

• 2:18Gary O'Reilly?

  AKA British.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It was, it was the British one. Uh, and, and there we went.

• 2:23Chuck Nice?

  And what was the flight from, from New York to London in the Concorde? How long did that take?

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Actually, what we did, because it was one of the last flights, it was a press flight. We flew to Bermuda and back. And I think it was a little under an hour and 10 minutes or something like that. We didn't, we didn't land in Bermuda, but we went around.

• 2:38Chuck Nice?

  You just went around?

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39Chuck Nice?

  Oh, and so you went to Bermuda and back in an hour and 10 minutes?

• 2:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Just long enough to chill the champagne.

• 2:44Chuck Nice?

  I'd love it.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  It was something like that. It was, it was insane. The thing is fast. Mach two.

• 2:49Chuck Nice?

  Mach two. Wow.

• 2:50Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, what a commercial airliner that was doing, for those of you who don't know the Concorde story, there is the French version and the British version, and a joint venture between them, one of our rare moments of entencodier. Also, there was the Russian Tupolev, or there's the British dubbed it Konkordski. And, um, there, there was a lot of, uh, industrial espionage.

• 3:13Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 3:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Considered because when the Russians unveiled their aircraft, it was like, that's ours.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  It just says, it just has a Russian name attached to it, right?

• 3:23Gary O'Reilly?

  But they had these winglets at the front.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 3:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Which were very, very intelligent and then changed the wind draft over the main wing itself.

• 3:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 3:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Which was allowed for fuel economy, made less noise. And they were saying that if they were ever to develop Concorde two, they'd have had those winglets in and they'd have stolen back some of the stuff that

• 3:43Speaker 02

  I love it. It's improvisation by the Russians. Yeah.

• 3:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yeah. And, and a little bit of, uh, James Bond espionage.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 3:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Always, always a good story when there's espionage.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Love it. Uh, and the fourth aircraft was the F-15.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Which of course was the, is the great American fighter jet.

• 3:58Chuck Nice?

  The American fighter jet? Used to be the flagship of the American fleet.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But all, all, all four of them were, were heart-stopping experiences. Um, I have to say, most pilots have never even flown supersonic. So I was lucky.

• 4:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, there's not that many supersonic. Aircraft to begin with.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 4:16Chuck Nice?

  So.

• 4:17Gary O'Reilly?

  What are you pulling in terms of G? When you, I mean, straight up vertical or you're just horizontal at those sort of speeds?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  It, you know, the G depends upon the turn and the speed.

• 4:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh huh.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  And the most G's I pulled, I was in the F-15. And I remember the guy said, okay, we're gonna do a turn. I'm gonna max you out at four and you tell me how you feel. And I said, okay, let's do it. Felt okay, but I could definitely feel four times my body weight. Then he said, we're gonna ramp it up to seven. Are you ready for seven? And I said, okay, let's go to seven, which is.

• 4:49Gary O'Reilly?

  It's not really an option. I'll get out here.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  No, but I could tell him no. And he took me to seven. And then he said, do you wanna go to nine? I said, nope, I'm fine with seven.

• 4:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Now, maybe. What is happening? Because, I mean, probably everybody bar yourself involved in this broadcast and listening, and I'll see the listeners as an involvement, have never had that kind of experience.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  You can get that experience in a centrifuge if you want to. When I trained for my Virgin Galactic flight, I've been in a centrifuge and we pulled six G's. The experience is, it's like if you had a, seven times your body weight on your chest. And it's difficult to keep the, the blood in your upper, your.

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  Extremities, yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially your head. So you have to do.

• 5:35Chuck Nice?

  And do you wear the, the?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  You wear a G, yeah, we wear. We wear G pants.

• 5:39Chuck Nice?

  G pants, right.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  That helps you by about one G or one and a half G. So you still have.

• 5:43Chuck Nice?

  Really helping.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  No, it's not helping that much.

• 5:45Chuck Nice?

  Uh, the same people that design hammer pants.

• 5:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. For those of you who know what hammer pants are.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Honestly, I don't know what hammer pants are, but it must be funny because you guys are laughing.

• 5:57Gary O'Reilly?

  We'll draw you a picture after the show.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  But, but you have to tense, uh, there, there's a, it's called the heck breathing.

• 6:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  And you, you tense up your legs, your glutes, uh, and you go heck. And also your your chest and it keeps the blood up into your head so you don't pass out. Right. Um, but at nine Gs, I probably would have been close to passing out. So I stopped at seven and I started to gray out. You could literally start to see gray uh in in your.

• 6:21Gary O'Reilly?

  So what does an astronaut experience once they're trying to leave the earth's?

• 6:26Speaker 02

  They don't experience that much more. I mean, I think in the shuttle, they only pulled about three and a half to four Gs on launch. And then coming in reentry, I think they probably maybe five or six Gs. So it's not all that different from what these the astronauts pulled. But the fighter pilots technically pull more Gs than the astronauts do on uh most of the time. And that's because of the maneuvers that they're making in the plane, right? Right. I mean, like when I was in the MiG, we flew up to eighty four thousand feet.

• 6:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Holy.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Gosh.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  At Mach two point six and people say, oh, how many Gs did you pull? How many Gs did you pull? And I said, really, it's not that much in terms of Gs because you're doing a gradual turn. Now, the the the speed is incredible. I remember I had a camera in my right hand. And as we started to turn, very wide turn, but at Mach two six, the camera felt like it weighed twenty pounds.

• 7:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  And I was looking at it going, that camera doesn't weigh twenty pounds, but.

• 7:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Does at the moment.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  But I I probably only pulled a couple of Gs in that flight up to eighty four thousand. But in the F fifteen, when we're doing the sharper turns, you know, we pulled more Gs.

• 7:24Gary O'Reilly?

  It's interesting because we we talk with athletes all the time and about their endeavors and their achievements. And we talk about how it was in the moment and and just as you've described your moment. And then we look at, well, how did you recover? How long did it take you to recover? What were the after effects of? Because I can't imagine that you pull that many Gs and get out and go, that was great. And just keep there must be some sort of hangover of having had that experience.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Part of it is, um, you get dizzy, uh, you get a little nauseous. But you have enough time in the plane, like when we F fifteen, I think we flew two hours. So, um, we did the G force stuff in the early part of the flight, so I had time to recover. But but you do, I had that barf bag right there in my uh elastic of my pants in case I needed it.

• 8:11Gary O'Reilly?

  It wouldn't have been anywhere near that far from my mouth where we are.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  You know, I'll tell you the truth, I was more afraid of getting sick than I was of going supersonic. I mean, it's just those kind of things you think about. People think, oh, you're afraid of this and that. And it's the little things like, oh, do I have to go to the bathroom once I'm strapped in? Oh, my God, do I have to puke? And isn't that what the suit is for?

• 8:34Speaker 02

  No, the worst part of it is you have an oxygen mask on.

• 8:36Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, you don't want to throw open that.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  So you have to pull it to the side. And in fact, one time in the English Electric Lightning, I did get really sick and it was just pulling that thing to the side.

• 8:45Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Nothing to talk about here. I don't want to talk about it.

• 8:48Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, that's, we appreciate that.

• 8:51Gary O'Reilly?

  And thank you for not sharing.

• 8:52Chuck Nice?

  You said something before we got on the air was, was the, um, the speed of sound, the higher you go, what was that you were saying?

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Okay, so the speed of sound, uh, because air, the air, uh, pressure changes, the higher you go, uh, you have less air pressure. At sea level, the speed of sound is about 750 miles an hour, but up at about 30,000 feet, I think it's more like 650 or a little over 600. And the higher you go, the less the, uh, the speed becomes to go through the sound barrier. Um, so it's interesting from a science perspective. I'm not quite sure why that is, but I do know it's because the air gets thinner, uh, the speed of sound changes.

• 9:30Gary O'Reilly?

  So.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  So Mach one at sea level is different from Mach one at 30,000 feet.

• 9:36Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 9:37Gary O'Reilly?

  And that's the sonic boom.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  That's the sonic boom. And you don't feel it in the aircraft. I can tell you that.

• 9:43Gary O'Reilly?

  But if you were on the ground.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:45Gary O'Reilly?

  And an aircraft going supersonic or just about to escape and go through the sound, you would boom.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Yes, depending upon how high up the aircraft is.

• 9:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, that was a thing in Russia. They don't care if you break the sound barrier over land.

• 10:00Gary O'Reilly?

  No.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  So I'm sure the.

• 10:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Here in the USA, they're picky.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  No, they don't let you do it unless you're on a military base or out in the water.

• 10:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Uh, so they're very, that's why it's so hard to go supersonic.

• 10:09Gary O'Reilly?

  That's why Concorde didn't really make.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Exactly. They couldn't, they couldn't fly to California from New York.

• 10:14Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's because our entire country is inhabited. I mean, except for parts of Montana and the Dakotas. But, uh, yeah, but you can't go supersonic over America. You're gonna, the boom itself is, it can be quite damaging.

• 10:26Gary O'Reilly?

  It's actually, um, if I'm not mistaken, the way you fly the aircraft and the angle at which you do, you are flying, once you make that move across the speed of sound. That will diminish the boom itself. So there's all sorts of little sciencey tricks that a pilot can incorporate to diminish things.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And to Chuck's point, you know, when that meteor came over Chelyabinsk and that was going supersonic.

• 10:54Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it was.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Huge sound boom. And what it did, it smashed all the windows.

• 10:58Chuck Nice?

  Blew out windows everywhere, along all the entire flight path of the meteor. Blew out all the windows.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  That's because it was going through the sound barrier and the boom came.

• 11:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah. So now, when it comes to these planes, you actually flew in one of the Red Bull planes. Well, the Red Bull plane, because I shouldn't call it one of the Red Bull planes.

• 11:17Gary O'Reilly?

  I think the racers have two. There's a Masterclass and a Challenger. And I think for each category or series, whichever you like, there is a slightly different aircraft.

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  Right. So which one did you fly in? And those planes look like they're really moving.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  They move. Now, part of that is they're so close to the ground, so they move several hundred miles an hour. You know, I was in, I think it was the Challenger class. And, you know, we went on a flight. We went through the pylons. We did a loop. We did some rolls. And I just told the pilot, take it easy with me because I really don't want to get sick. And he did. But it's amazing how agile those planes are, how they can turn on a dime.

• 11:56Gary O'Reilly?

  So you're, like me, for instance, if I'm the guy that said, oh, I'll come with you. I'll go in one of these Red Bull Challengers. And I'm a newbie. I'm novice. I mean, I rarely leave the ground unless it's a commercial flight. But you're an experienced man.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Sort of.

• 12:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, compared to me, most definitely.

• 12:14Chuck Nice?

  I would say compared to most people, period. How many people have flown in four different supersonic crafts? That's amazing. But go ahead.

• 12:22Gary O'Reilly?

  So you're in this Red Bull Challenger, and it's doing things. How, how did that take you out of the experiences that you'd had prior to that? Supersonic experiences are one thing. But this is, this is sub, this is maybe only two, three hundred miles per hour. But as you say, the proximity to the surface of the earth and the fact you're maneuvering in this aerobatic way.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  It's a bit unsettling, you know, you see the ground coming up real fast. Uh, the trees go by very quickly because it's all relative.

• 12:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, cause you're low.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, when you're way up supersonic, there's nothing, like when we were doing Mach 2.6 in the MiG, we were so far above the clouds, there was absolutely no.

• 13:04Gary O'Reilly?

  There's no point of reference.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  No, no point of reference.

• 13:06Chuck Nice?

  And did you hear Lord Lift Us Up Where We Belong playing in your head while you, I'm sorry, go ahead.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  I was praying. There's actually, there's three, there's three sayings about the Lord when you go supersonic.

• 13:16Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 13:17Speaker 02

  You're in an airplane. One is, oh my God, don't let me die. Oh, then you feel so bad. It's like, oh my God, let me die.

• 13:23Chuck Nice?

  Please let me die.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  And then the third one is, oh my God, I'm glad that's over.

• 13:26Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  So there's three sayings about God when you're, when you're in one of those aerobatic planes.

• 13:30Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 13:31Gary O'Reilly?

  So when you are in there and you're a man that isn't just experienced when it comes to flying, supersonic flying in this sort of area where many people fear to tread,

• 13:45Gary O'Reilly?

  how much is plane, how much is pilot?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Uh, it's, it's both really. Um, last summer I flew in a T-38, which is a supersonic plane that they used to use to train the shuttle pilots and also the U2 pilots, which by the way, still flies.

• 13:59Chuck Nice?

  Oh, the T-38, that's the small little plane. It's, oh man, it's like so small and tight. It actually looks like a toy. Um, Mike, it looks like a toy. Mike Massimino, astronaut Mike Massimino, who is a friend of StarTalk, um, actually trained in the T and.

• 14:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Can you imagine him?

• 14:16Chuck Nice?

  And he's a big dude.

• 14:18Gary O'Reilly?

  For an astronaut, he's a giant.

• 14:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. And it's like, it looks, it looks like a toy plane though.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  When I first saw it, I thought, oh my God, I'm not getting in that thing. That looks like a toy. There's no way that thing's gonna, you know, stay aloft, but it did. It was a, a really nice flight. We did some rolls and things like that, but it's very agile. More like the, the Red Bull planes. It's a much smaller plane and it can turn a lot more quickly.

• 14:38Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:39Gary O'Reilly?

  So what's, what's, I mean, we're getting to this with, with Jimbo Reed. I'm gonna call him Jimbo.

• 14:43Chuck Nice?

  Jimbo.

• 14:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Yep. Uh, they were six foot four and built like a tank.

• 14:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God.

• 14:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Still calling him Jimbo. He'll probably crush me. Um, what is it in the design that makes it just so good for aerobatics from your point of view?

• 14:57Speaker 02

  You got me there. I don't, I don't understand the science of why they're able to do that.

• 15:01Chuck Nice?

  It was like, I just fly in the planes.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  And, and I, and you know, in truth be told, I'm just a passenger. And I marvel at these pilots and what they're able to do. The one thing I can say about the Red Bull plane is I was in the front of the cockpit. So, so I was able to see everything directly in front of me and the pilot was behind me and he was flying. So that was an interesting perspective. Normally I'm behind the pilot. So you, you don't see as much. I have to say, I thought it would be scary, but it was pretty cool.

• 15:30Gary O'Reilly?

  What's interesting, I've seen it from a, about a 20 odd floor of a hotel in the Emirates, watching practice runs around the pylons.

• 15:38Chuck Nice?

  Little trip to Dubai, huh?

• 15:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh huh.

• 15:40Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 15:40Gary O'Reilly?

  And it's fascinating to watch and it's captivating. But you sat in the front of one of these things.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Between pylon, pylon, trick, trick, how long in terms, because people watching it can be desensitized because of the distance.

• 15:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:56Gary O'Reilly?

  From where the camera actually is to the, the plane itself, you get, the time becomes elongated.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's true.

• 16:03Gary O'Reilly?

  When you're in there, what is it? What is actual time for you?

• 16:07Speaker 02

  You know, it, it looks like everything slows down, actually. Um, as you're coming on to the pylons, you're thinking, okay, those wings are going to be really close to those pylons.

• 16:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Uh, but as, as you go through the pylons, it, it seems to slow down. I think it's like anybody who says when they're in an accident or something, time slows down.

• 16:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  It seems to slow down. But then once you're through the pylons and you see how close you are to the treetops, then it speeds up real fast.

• 16:32Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome. You just, by the way, it's, uh, it's explained how my parents described my birth.

• 16:40Chuck Nice?

  Time slowed down.

• 16:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Ah, dear. More therapy. Right. Let's, um, while Chuck gets the therapy he needs, we'll take a break. Um, thank you to Jim Clash, uh, but he's not going away. He will be joining us after the break, as will Jim Reed or Jimbo, race director of Red Bull Air Racing, a man who basically knows everything you need to know about Red Bull Air Racing. You're going to love this. Stick around.

• 17:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science. This is our Extreme Flight Show. Jim Clash from Forbes Magazine, adventure journalist we've already spoken with, and now that man we promised you before. Jimbo Reid, the race director at Red Bull Air Racing. But I've got to add a few things to this. Engineer, and I think this is possibly my favourite name of a company, the Spaceship Company.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Yay!

• 17:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Yay. And former engineer at Virgin Galactic, of which Jim has a connection to, because Jim Clash, you have a ticket for Virgin Galactic.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Yes, I'm passenger number 610. I bought my ticket in 2010, and they keep telling me every year I'm about to fly next year, but so far, nothing.

• 17:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Is he nuts? Should he sell it, cash in?

• 17:53Speaker 03

  No way, man. I'd hang on to it. I'd ride every ride.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  All right. I got mine for 200,000. Now they're up to 250,000, I think.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, see, that's a decent investment return.

• 18:04Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go. So, all right, Jim Reid, there's too many Jims. Please explain the difference between the Masterclass Series and the Challenger Series in terms of the aircraft and what they're able to deliver.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Okay, the Masterclass run, well, first off, I guess Challengers and Masters run the same engine, propeller and exhausts, this is to keep them all fairly similar performance. We derate the Challengers down to 2,750 rpm from 2,950 to manage the speed a bit better. The Challenger airplanes are stock as far as the cowling and the canopy and wingtips, the wheel pants, the things you usually see the Masters modifying, are all stock on the Challenger airplanes. But otherwise, they're all, except for Mica Bracio, they're all Edge 540s, either V2s or V3s. All the Challengers are V2s.

• 18:58Gary O'Reilly?

  When you're designing a course, are you looking to stress or showcase pilot ability or the aircraft capability, and therefore the pilot's ability to bring the best out of the aircraft? Or are you looking to thrill those people who've paid good money to turn up and see you?

• 19:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm looking to make sure everybody survives. And then after that, we are looking to...

• 19:27Speaker 03

  It's very, it's kind of NASCAR-esque, so we have it regulated down, it being the airplanes. Like I said, with stock powerplants, propellers, and exhausts, and so the performance differences you'll see in the airplanes are aerodynamic, and so they're not as large as you would see in other, for instance, in the past Air Race in 2010 and before, there was limits on the engine modification you could do, but it was still a money game, and everybody could, who had the most money, could build an engine that's making 50 more horsepower than everybody else, so we keep it regulated that way, so, but it was interesting, when I was a tech

• 20:12Speaker 03

  for three of the different teams over the past years, before I took this role, I would tell you it's 98% psychology, so the airplanes are really similar, they're all very fast, but if the pilot thinks his airplane is faster, then he's gonna go faster on race day, so

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  More than one occasion, he would come in complaining after a practice run, we'd say, "No worries, we'll sort it all out," send him off to the hotel, go get a beer, come back in the morning, tell me how we checked everything, we'd found a couple of things, fix them, and off it goes, and it's a second faster than it was the day before, so.

• 20:46Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  You know, Jim, when I watched the Red Bull race on television, I thought those pylons were made of something really solid, but in fact, they're made like out of an airplane parachute-type material, so if you hit it, it just slices it and doesn't make the plane crash?

• 21:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, you want to, we want to impart as little load as possible to the airplane that hits it, so it's designed to come apart in sections by design, and they did a lot of testing in the past, put a piezoelectric pressure-sensitive strip on the leading edge of a couple airplanes and go out and smack pylons over and over, and develop an envelope of force imparted by the pylons, and then we do everything we can, pylon pressure is actually being higher, decreasing the amount of load imparted on the airplane when they hit it, so we jack the pressures up as high as we can, and a lot of engineering in the makeup of the pylons, but it's kind of a nylon material, and it tears super easy, not quite like paper, but very nearly.

• 21:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you have like an F1 pit crew, once one of those pylons gets taken down, they're immediately reassembles it?

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, they're they're probably the hardest working guys on the airport and they're they are a bunch of legends. Uh, they can, I don't know what their record is, it depends on uh where the pylon is located, floating on a barge or sitting in the in the uh field somewhere, but I think a standard pylon repair is just right at sixty seconds, so they can

• 22:16Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  It'll be inflated, a crew of six or seven will go up there, reattach the sections that are damaged, inflated, get the hell out of the way and we can carry on racing.

• 22:25Gary O'Reilly?

  So it doesn't make sense to have virtual pylons, like a hologram, because these guys can reassemble it quicker than you could turn the hologram back on and off again?

• 22:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's it's just not exciting, right?

• 22:35Speaker 02

  When I was when I was there, they actually let us get inside of one of the pylons and look up, and it's pretty daunting uh how high these things really are.

• 22:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, they're uh what, twenty-five meters?

• 22:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow, whoa. You've been an engineer for several Red Bull teams, and now you're the other side of that particular line, and how do they cheat, and how on earth do you know they've cheated? Have you got that kind of eyesight that can see, or do you hear something? Or is it like, oh, he's most likely to cheat, check his plane, or her plane?

• 23:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, it's interesting, they cheat in uh, I think, every manageable, imaginable fashion. Uh, at least they think about it and and uh they get away with it sometimes and we catch them other times. Uh, as far as me being able to have a look, um, one of the best resources is the thirteen other teams, because there'll be a bunch of eyes out there, say, hey, look, did you see his tailwheel is smaller than everybody else? You know, something like this. Uh, but I spent, you know, for, I think my first air race was two thousand nine, and until two thousand fifteen, I was on a team, and all of that time, uh, devoted a massive amount of energy to figuring out how to cheat effectively

• 23:49Speaker 03

  and not get caught, any way we could, because uh that's, you know, whatever, I'm not the smartest guy out there, but

• 23:56Speaker 02

  You admit it, I love it.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  I can manage a race winner, too.

• 23:58Gary O'Reilly?

  He can, because he's on the other side now.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So before we, you know, go ahead, go ahead, continue, sorry.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  Oh, I was just gonna say, so we have a, I've, we've thought about, you know, shit, I don't know. Everything, I think there is, you know, inside of getting inside, outside of getting into the ones and zeros and data packets sent down and these kinds of things. We've talked about all this stuff in the past and so a couple of, me and a couple of my techs on my team are very experienced in this endeavor to try to make airplanes go fast without nobody noticing. And so we can, we see these things. The ways they cheat are interesting. There's, I used to take, they would download the data from your engine. We have an RPM limit. We have a few other limits that the engine must operate inside of to have a valid flying session.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  At the end of the race, they would download the data from the engine monitor and standard operating procedure on race day to set it to record once every 800 seconds. So you could set it to 5 hertz, you could set it to once, anywhere in between that and then once every 800 seconds. And we'd get in the part for May, they'd come download the data and he said, wow, man, there's no data here. I said, yeah, shit, I cannot make that thing work. I don't know why, it's, it's just always been kind of dicked up that way. And, oh shit, I guess it must be fine. And yeah, sure, it's fine. And then reset it to 5 hertz so I can get usable engine data on the next run, you know, but.

• 25:23Chuck Nice?

  So, I believe Volkswagen did the same, no, I'm joking.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:27Gary O'Reilly?

  There goes my chance of a decent VW, thanks, yeah.

• 25:34Chuck Nice?

  So let me ask you, before we go any further, because there's some things, you know, we're talking about the plane, the construction, and I think maybe the listeners might benefit from just your expertise in when you talk about the construction of these planes as opposed to regular, regular wings on regular planes, the angle of attack, the symmetrical wing, and the things that make these planes so maneuverable and allowing them to do these wonderful stunts and fly upside down. Can you, can you break that down for, for everybody listening?

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh, I'll give it a try anyway. Um, like standard aircraft, uh, you fly around on just general aviation stuff, not giant jets, are usually, uh, somewhere between, uh, just have an operating, uh, kind of limitation of maybe plus three Gs and minus one, something like that. So they're meant to be flown along on a Sunday afternoon. Standard aerobatic category airplanes, uh, the biplanes you see at the air shows and other things you'll see, uh, lower levels of similar aircraft to what we fly will be plus six G and minus three is their envelope. These airplanes, uh, are built solely for maneuverability. Uh, they're unlimited class aerobatic airplanes, so they're plus minus 12G. So you can thrash

• 26:54Speaker 03

  it around as you want, uh, roll rate of, uh, 420 degrees per second. So it'll more than one revolution per second if you smash the stick over. Uh, just immense control surfaces, the bits that, that, uh, pitch and roll and yaw the airplane, uh, are just massive on these airplanes and it's, uh, super harmonic. So it's, uh, I don't know, you can make it as, as wicked of a roller coaster ride as you like.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  How does the pilot-

• 27:20Speaker 03

  Uh, never worry about hurting the airplane.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  How does the pilot not pass out at 12Gs?

• 27:24Speaker 03

  Uh, it's a, it's a training, just like anything else. It's, uh, repetition at G. So if you spend an hour at two G, uh, in an airplane, then you'll be ready to go to three G and not have an issue. If you spend an hour at three, you can go to four and you just work your way up that way. But there's, uh, they all have other airplanes and they have to maintain a G tolerance for sure, or, yeah, you definitely, uh, have that risk.

• 27:47Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm looking at these aircraft and the wings seem particularly far forward in terms of their placement as opposed to other aircraft I'm familiar with seeing. How much does that affect the ability and maneuverability of these aircraft? Is that the balance? Is there, what is going on with the reason they're that?

• 28:08Speaker 03

  That they're further forward, did you say?

• 28:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Correct, yes, thank you.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's um, it's just a aircraft plan form thing. It's a, uh, they call it a tractor configuration where the engine's in the front. And the tail follows, um. But it's, it's just a very effective way to get. It's probably the most effective way to make the aircraft maneuverable. So you see some of these, uh, I worked for Bert Rutan in the past and a bunch of his airplanes have the small canard up front, small wing up front and the larger wing in the back. And they do all the same stuff, they just can't do it at these, these rates that, that this particular configuration.

• 28:45Gary O'Reilly?

  So it's again, a bit like a race car in the sense that it's about as much of the perfect balance that you can achieve with configuration?

• 28:52Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly. It's, it's the same reason that F1 car looks like an F1 car, not a Mercedes.

• 28:58Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm interested, uh, and we, we sort of touched on Formula One racing. They have in race, in car, live telemetrics back to the team's headquarters. Do the Red Bull teams have similar? And can they affect the aircraft in flight? Or is it something they've just got to leave it alone and be aware that maybe something going in this direction, something going in another direction?

• 29:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, um, the organization, Red Bull Air Race, uh, us, the dark side, we have TM that comes down, uh, that gives us engine, uh, data, uh, positional data, all the stuff we need to judge, uh, the aircraft and their flight paths, uh, the camera stuff, it all comes down on the same TM link. And then the teams have, uh, they can see what we put up on the screen, but until their airplane lands, again, none of them have data that's streaming down. Uh, so they can run up to a lap, uh, to the airplane as soon as it's landed with a laptop and Bluetooth off of it and, and grab all the data quickly that way. But, uh, our data stream is the only one coming down live.

• 30:06Chuck Nice?

  So let me ask you this, speaking of judging and data. There are some very specific rules to how the planes have to get through the gates or the pylons. Uh, one of which is as you're going through the gates, you can't be on a turn, which means you only have a 10% variation in the levelness of your wings. Um, and you also have to have to be between the like candy corn looking part of the way of the pylons. You can't be like above or below. So, I mean, that is one crazy for a pilot to have to be so precise to maneuver a plane at those speeds at that, in that very, very narrow window. We'd all do it.

• 30:49Chuck Nice?

  This is true, but who's making those judgments? Do you have like computers? Do you have cameras? Or, or is it just all, is it all you guys?

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Uh, no, we have a bunch of, uh, really clever kids that sort out the onboard, uh, position reporting stuff and the judging terminals that, uh, essentially the, uh, human judges, uh, are oversights, are overseers of the automatic, uh, judging systems. And they will flash up what they think is, hey, look at this, uh, airplane at this gate. We, a computer thinks it's over 10 degrees bank. And then the human interface will go back and look and say, oh yeah, that is, it's clearly over. And then issue the penalty. Uh, so it's the vast majority of it is automatic. Uh, but then there's a human oversight.

• 31:37Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha, gotcha. So now what are the qualifications? Suppose I want to be a, a Red Bull pilot. What, what do I have to go through to become a Red Bull pilot? I'm sure there are some people who are listening to this or who've gone on YouTube and they've seen these beautiful videos of these pilots doing these amazing feats. And you're like, man, I got, I want to do that. How, how, how would you go about being a Red Bull pilot?

• 32:02Speaker 03

  You need to start out in aerobatics, so go get your private pilot's licence and then start flying aerobatic manoeuvres and eventually get into contests that they have all over the country. And then work your way up to where you win your national aerobatic contest, or you finish in the top half of the world's aerobatic contest. And if you can do one of those two things, then you may, you're eligible to receive an invitation letter to come to one of our training camps and fly an edge close to the ground and see what you think. Wow.

• 32:34Gary O'Reilly?

  I like the idea of an envelope. It appears like Harry Potter. It appears as a Red Bull invitation on it. All right, let's go back to something we discussed a little bit earlier. With course design, do you look to, can you continually stress a certain part of a pilot's ability or the aircraft's capability? Or do you have to go, right, we'll go here with this, give that a break, come back in with something else? Are you looking at speeds? Are you thinking, what is the main drive of trying to achieve a course? I know you said about safety as paramount and we respect that totally, but when you come to design the course, pilots and aircraft, what are you thinking?

• 33:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think there's a really large drive to try to get it to be competitive, to showcase the pilot's abilities, you know, so sometimes we're boxed in, as I mentioned before, that like a, the track in Budapest where we can barely manage to turn around because we're stuck on a river. But in Texas, in Indianapolis, in Germany, in places where we're in a motorsports-like setting, we have more area and we can, we can make the track, you know, more turns and, you know, tighter gates, and so you can, you can get the pilots to where the best pilot

• 33:58Speaker 03

  is, you know, the best and smoothest pilot is continually moving to the top. If you get these long straight tracks, then it's the fastest airplane and really you can win or lose the race with how close you get to the G limit as you do the vertical turns at the end. So if you're 11.99...

• 34:15Speaker 03

  G, uh, cause we have a 12G, knock it off, you're done racing, fly back to the airport, we have to have a look at the airplane limit. Uh, so if you can get 11.99 on those long straight tracks, you're gonna win. But if you hit 12, or if you're at 11.9 and you hit a bump in the air and you get 12 in your house, so it's nice to have, uh, more than three tiny chunks of the track determine who's gonna win. You know, so that the, the turning tracks, kind of the bumblebee in a glass jar kind of tracks are, are more fun, I think, and showcase the, the abilities of the pilot better.

• 34:47Chuck Nice?

  Cool. You just mentioned something that, uh, I know we're running out of time, but I'm very interested to know, when you said bump in the air, like air pockets, I'm thinking like environmental factors, so wind and like, uh, like, uh, when you kick a field goal, you can be the best field goal kicker in the world, and if environmental factors screw you, you got screwed. That's all there is to it. Is the same thing at play in these races?

• 35:09Speaker 03

  Absolutely, yeah. Uh, some tracks worse than others. If, uh, when we were in Vegas, they had a big grandstands at the motor speedway there that was set to the west side of the track. And so all the air that was coming in, uh, went from the west that day, and it was just this massive mechanical turbulence over top of the track, smashing all the pylons around. You could watch the airplanes go through the air. It was, it was, uh, really fighting to keep it in that envelope you described earlier, you know, trying to make clean passes on the gates. Uh, so there's a bunch of that stuff comes into play, little tiny, you know, rain clouds, rain showers passing by, and if you get stuck in a rain cloud, or underneath a, a small shower in the hold, not enough to go home, but then you get into the track with a wet airplane.

• 35:52Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  You know, it's just bad luck, you know?

• 35:55Chuck Nice?

  Wow, all of this is super exciting, man.

• 35:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh, Jim Reed, it's been a pleasure, sir, even if it was just to look at your beard.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  Pleasure so am I.

• 36:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Like you, it's awesome. Thank you, sir.

• 36:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science. This is our Extreme Flying Show and joining us now is Aerobatics World Champion Kirby Chambliss. Let me just give you an idea of how talented this man is. One of the most outstanding pilots ever to fly in the Red Bull Air Race, a man who boasts two world titles and at least 10 race victories, and a man who has helped with innovations make the Red Bull Air Race one of the most spectacular sporting events you will ever, ever watch. So Kirby Chambliss, welcome to the show, sir. How are you?

• 36:44Speaker 04

  I'm doing great. How are you? Thank you for having me on.

• 36:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, you are welcome. It's a privilege to have someone like you on the show. How did you get into aerobatics? Because you kind of started life as a commercial airline pilot, if I'm not mistaken.

• 37:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, so, you know, I tell everyone, you know, I was 21 years old, I was flying a business jet and I'm our chief pilot. It was for La Quinta Motor, and our chief pilot, Jerry Anderson, was a really smart guy. And he said, hey, if the jet ever ends up upside down with a CEO on board, we want you to be able to turn it right side up without killing everyone. And I thought, you know, 21 makes sense to me. So we went out in an aerobatic airplane. We turned the airplane upside down. And I was like, wow, this is the coolest thing ever. And then it kind of made flying where it was three dimensional. And quite frankly, I was, you know, starting to get bored with the normal straight and level flying anyway. And so everything that I did from that moment forward, you know, was about aerobatics. And then that led into the Red Bull Air Race.

• 37:44Gary O'Reilly?

  How interesting you've quantified what you do as three dimensional, because that takes a very different thought process. That takes a whole different kind of mental construct for you to be able to fly like that.

• 37:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I love these airplanes. I was the on the Edge 540, the one that basically it's with very few, well, there's only one exception, you know, it's the, it's the race plane, it's the Edge 540, and then they switched to Edge 540 version three. And I was a test pilot on that airplane from the time it started in 1993 until 2005.

• 38:18Speaker 04

  It's become like an unbelievable airplane, not only for aerobatics, but also very well suited for the Red Bull Air Race. But I tell people, you know, I do display flying in it also. And, you know, I say, I mean, you know, of course, the airplane makes me look good, but basically your imagination is a limitation. You know, the airplane is capable of just about anything from, you know, flipping end over end seven or eight times to, you know, its working G is plus 12, minus 12 G is that's its working G and it's capable of even more than that.

• 38:50Gary O'Reilly?

  How do you read your instruments flying at over 200 miles an hour upside down and you are experiencing 4, 5G at times even more probably? And how do you structure your thoughts? Because you've got a strategy, you've got a set course to approach, yet you're doing all of these other things that would confuse and bewilder just about any other person on the planet?

• 39:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, you know, the thing is, it's like anything else, whether, you know, you, it's, you know, we're pretty good at adapting and it's whatever you get used to, you know, so it, but also the airplane, you know, for me is like an extension of my arms, you know, it's like running down through the gates with my arms extended. I mean, it's not a big deal to do it, you know, but it's like anything else, you know, once you know how to do it, you're able to do that. And if you're looking inside the airplane, you've got a problem. So, I mean, I look when we're on a normal track and we have a, you know, 230 mile an hour start speed, I've got a digital display showing me the speed and that's the only time that I'm looking inside the airplane. And then once I go through the start gate, you know, I can open it up and at that point,

• 40:00Speaker 04

  the thing I'm looking at is the gates. I mean, I never look inside the airplane.

• 40:04Gary O'Reilly?

  How interesting. So, everything is an external source of information for you to fly the way you do. What I find interesting is you see yourself as an integral part of the aircraft. Like you say, the wings are an extension of your arms. You know, you talk to race drivers, Formula One drivers, NASCAR drivers, they will tell you if the mix on the car isn't right or the tire pressure isn't in the right place. Do you have the same intuitive feeling about your aircraft when you fly?

• 40:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, with the with the exception of the tire pressure because maybe when I maybe when I rolled onto the runway, I could tell if it was a little bit flat. But once you get in the air, the tire pressure doesn't matter anymore. But yeah, I mean, I can tell you, you know, a lot about the airplane, you know, just by the way that it's running, by the way, you know, that the controls feel, I can tell you how fast I'm going, probably, and it would be a pretty good guess, but I could get pretty close just by the load on the controls, you know, that there as it goes through the slipstream. But again, you know, the it's changed a little bit now before, you know, now we are, it's gone pretty much technical, but I'm listening to G tones. But the only reason that I'm listening to a G tone is to make sure that I haven't over, you know, exceeded a G and

• 41:21Speaker 04

  taken a penalty. But, um, you know, other than that, again, uh, everything is outside of the airplane. And these gates are coming on you so fast, you know, and you need to be so close to them. And you're trying to carve those fractions of a second off that track. I mean, you just don't have time to look inside the airplane. I mean, they come at you like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I mean, you can see the videos, those gates, that's real time and they're coming that fast. So like I said, you better be looking outside the airplane. And I always people are always asking me when I do display flying, you know, where are you looking at? I'm like, I'm looking at the ground because that's the thing that I don't want to hit. Other than that, nothing else really matters.

• 41:58Gary O'Reilly?

  When when you race, every course is slightly different, depending on the location you're in for a number of safety reasons and other things. But do you have with your team a strategy for the race? Or is it one of those situations where you say, you know what, once I'm up there flying, I'll decide how I do this?

• 42:18Speaker 04

  You know, I mean, I tell people to imagine, you know, that like a NASCAR driver or Indy driver or whatever, this is, hey, by the way, we're actually going to go out right before you race, and we're going to move the asphalt around. Is that okay with you? Because that's what happens to us, you know, it's a living, breathing track. And every track is completely different. And it can be different from day to day. And, you know, if the wind changes, I mean, those gates, a lot of times are on the water on a barge, you know, on one rope. It's a little bit tight, you know, it's a little bit loose as the tide goes in and out, or the wind blows it over a little bit, you know, and it's got these huge sails on it called pylons. And so if they twist it, imagine you twist it 10 degrees, you know, I still got to get through there. And so also, people think that we go straight

• 43:03Speaker 04

  through the gates. I take the biggest angle, or you know, the biggest cut that I can without hitting that gate to whatever the biggest advantage. I mean, if I'm going to end up going over to the left for the next gate anyway, then I'm not going to go straight through this gate. I'm going to try to take the biggest oblique angle that I can off to the left in order to save those fractions of a second. You always balance that with, you know, if you hit the gate, obviously, you're going to get, you know, penalty points here and you're going to be out. But if you don't take the angle, the next guy will and he's going to beat you.

• 43:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you have a strategy where you might duck out of a gate, accept the penalty because you know you're flying so fast, it won't affect the way that you finish the race, just that quick?

• 43:43Speaker 04

  A long time ago, you know, there was a couple of occasions that you could almost do that. Now, it's so close and you're talking fractions of a second. And also, they can, they're looking at you at 1500 frames a second, you know, on these cameras. And so if you skip the gate or didn't over, you know, went a little bit off to one side of it, you know, first of all, you're going to get that high penalty and then you're also going to get a course deviation and that's going to be the end of you. But no, so, um, you know, it just doesn't, you know, it doesn't work out of the numbers anymore to be able to do that. You know, you're again, you know, the whole thing, you know, the whole three or four places, I mean, can be separated by, you know, a couple of hundredths of a

• 44:25Speaker 04

  second, you know, so it's, you know, two tenths or three tenths of a second for, you know, maybe the first four places. And I've seen it when we qualified that basically 12 out of the 14 were within a half a second, you know. So it's super tight. And so one, a one second penalty or two seconds for sure, you know, is going to take you out of the whole thing.

• 44:45Gary O'Reilly?

  We've had shows where we've spoken to race car drivers and they've said to us, if I'm not in the red zone, I'm not racing. Is it the same for the Red Bull pilots? When you go and do your thing, you have to meet at the edge of that limit?

• 45:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, you've got to be right there. You know, there's certain times that, you know, that strategy you go, you know, or let's just say that I happen to be flying second and I know a guy, you know, I just heard over the radio that he got a penalty. Well, that gives me a two-second buffer. So now I might be a little bit more conservative knowing that I just need to advance depending on, you know, which round it is. So there's strategy that goes in there. And again, you know, we're, we're always, you know, talking to our tacticians and stuff about changing the line. I mean, again, the wind can make a huge difference, you know. Say, for instance, that, you know, we're normally on one of the turns that you would go flat and now there's a really strong wind, you know, maybe

• 45:46Speaker 04

  it's better to go up and over and pick up that tailwind going the other way or to go flat and stay, you know, out of that headwind. And there's a lot of variables, you know, that you wouldn't have in normal racing, you know, like, you know, when I say normal racing, I mean, you know, something where you're racing on a piece of pavement or a certain specific track. There's nothing that says, you know, that I have to stay on this same line. I just have to go from this gate to that gate. How I do it, you know, and normally that would be a straight line, but how I do it is left up to me.

• 46:15Gary O'Reilly?

  If I had to say to you, we have listeners who love sport and love their science, but they've never seen a Red Bull air race before, what would you say to those people as to why they should?

• 46:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, I mean, I've heard things, you know, like, oh, you know, well, I don't fly, so I don't know that much about airplanes. It doesn't really matter. I mean, if you know about racing, you know, it's the, it's the fastest guy that doesn't get any penalties and, you know, and the coast is going to be, going to be very tight. And, you know, you're going 230 miles an hour, you know, you're pulling, you know, over 10 Gs and gates are whizzing by and with these point of view cameras anymore, basically it puts you back in the seat with me. And then also, you know, in some of the motor speedways that we fly in, I mean, you're up elevated and you're actually looking down on the airplane's racing. You know, usually you have to look up and see an airplane. In this situation, you actually look down on this while we're racing down inside.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  That motor speedway. So I think it's super exciting. You know, it's a pretty easy to understand once you know the basic rules. And yeah, it's I'd say come on out and you're going to see something that you've probably never seen before. And I think most people would definitely enjoy it. And it's also an awesome thing for, you know, your whole family to come out.

• 47:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Kirby Chambliss, thank you so much. Twice world champion. And I dare say you feel like you want number three, don't you?

• 47:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure.

• 47:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, good luck to you, sir. Thank you to Kirby Chambliss. And thank you to Jim Clash and Jim Reid. That's our Extreme Flying Show. Hope you've enjoyed it. And if you do get a chance to watch the Red Bull Air Race, do so. It is absolutely breathtaking. And you will come away from that with so much admiration from the skill and acrobatic flying of the pilots. Until next time.