Quote of the Day

A quote from my favorite "Red Bull Air Race" pilot, Peter Besenyei:

A part of your happiness is satisfaction. Whatever you achieve or whatever good fate has to give you, as long as you are not satisfied with it you are doomed to be unhappy. But satisfaction does not mean you can rest on your laurels and need not strive to improve yourself.

What is the Red Bull Air Race? The coolest motorsport on the face of the planet, that's all!

Ok so get this. You pilot a single-seater high speed aerobatic plane around these giant inflatable paper gates, like a big obstacle course. The catch? Well some of the gates indicate you have to go through them perfectly level and others indicate you must go through knife-edged (wings perpendicular to the ground, very difficult because lift is not generated). Some pylons are colored to tell you within how high you must pass through them or in which direction you need to roll.

Oh, and you are doing this while pulling up to 12Gs (12 times the force of gravity) about 50 feet off the ground, at 230 miles and hour. Loops and direction-changing maneuvers are sometimes needed. In a propeller driven plane... For comparison the average fighter pilot experiences 7-9Gs.


Check it out RED BULLS WEBSITE
Here is some cool video that has some ultra-slow motion CLICKY CLICKY


Edge 540 Airplane specs:
General characteristics

* Crew: one pilot
* Capacity: pilot only
* Length: 6.27 m (20 ft 7 in)
* Wingspan: 7.42 m (24 ft 4 in)
* Height: 2.87 m (9 ft 5 in)
* Wing area: 9.1 m² (98 ft²)
* Empty weight: 531 kg (1,170 lb)
* Loaded weight: 703 kg (1,550 lb)
* Max takeoff weight: 816 kg (1,800 lb)
* Powerplant: 1× Modified Lycoming IO-540, 254 kW (340 hp)

Performance

* Maximum speed: 426 km/h (265 mph)
* Rate of climb: 1,189 m/min at 425 m (3,700 ft/min)
* Power/mass: 0.472 hp/kg (0.214 hp/lb)
* Roll rate: 420°/sec