Racing the Dream by M.T. Bass

Racing the Dream

by M.T. Bass 

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GENRE: Action and Adventure 

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BLURB: 

“If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” ~Mario Andretti 

Strap down the 5-point harness in the cockpit of a Formula 1 air racing plane and join Hawk as he chases victory! First on their amateur make-shift course over Antelope Acres, then on the re-emerging pylon racing circuit in the early 1960s. And finally, Hawk battles 7 other top-level pilots at the very first National Air Racing Championship event in Reno! 

Abandoning the cloth and his African mission, Father Bob returns to his slide rule to design Hawk’s racer. Sparks, his loyal yet surly mechanic, built it and wrenching both on the engine—as well as on Hawk—keeps them at the front of the pack. Home again in Los Angeles from behind the stick of a T-6 Texan as a mercenary in the Congo civil war, air racing is a new aviation adventure for Hawk. Ride along as he tangles with fellow pilots in “uncooperative formation flying” at two hundred miles per hour a mere fifty feet off the ground! 

And then one day cruising home to Van Nuys airport, Hawk spies Allison, a beach-blonde surfer girl, insanely wing-walking on the top wing of a Stearman PT-17 bi-plane. He quickly sets his sights on her. 

Fly low…Fly fast…and Turn Left… 

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EXCERPT 

Chapter 1 — Antelope Acres 

I chased Scotty down the long straightaway. Three hundred feet back. A hundred feet off the ground. One hundred seventy knots. 

Quick looks at the panel: Thirty-six hundred RPM. Look at engine oil pressure—green. Look oil temperature—green. 

All good. 

Banking hard into the “pylon” at W Avenue G and Myrick Canyon Road over the desert, a shadow on the ground to my left crawled toward my British Racing Green coloured wing. He had to be outside. You can’t look to the right. It’s just not safe. But the sun was behind us… 

I lofted a bit in the eighty-degree turn—climbed twenty feet or so—then quickly dove back down to close another hundred and fifty feet on Scotty, picking up a bit of his wake turbulence. 

Rolling out and down the front straightaway, I found smooth air twenty-five feet above his hot red Jensen Cassutt. 

We used the crossroads, a pile of rocks, a little hump in the desert sand, and a windmill water pump to set up our three-mile oval course. I knew Scotty from Van Nuys, but the other three guys were new, from other SoCal airports. We were all on “Company Frequency,” one-two-three point four-five. We joined up in a loose formation for a pace lap, then got down to business with a flying start. 

Like Henry Ford said, racing began five minutes after the second aeroplane was built. And that’s where Father Bob came in. There were a ton of modified Cassutts out there. Anybody could buy the design for $20. But Father Bob used his engineering skills to develop and, with Sparks’ help, build White Hawk Redux, an 85 horsepower, Continental C-85 Goodyear racer that we were pushing over two hundred miles an hour. 

It was all unofficial because, after fifty years of glorious history, aeroplane racing fell off the face of the earth for a while in the Sixties. There were no sanctioned races around anymore, so we made up our own course, kicking up dust devils and rooster tails over the desolation of Antelope Acres. Our version of California street drags. 

Of course, I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I was learning fast. 

Around the windmill and up to the forty-foot hump in the sand. I chased Scotty down foot by foot. I knew I could take him. 

Only two laps left. It was now or never. 

Banking hard into the crossroads, I juiced the power up near four thousand RPM and pulled back on the stick to take Scotty up and outside. 

But dammit, I missed him— 

In my peripheral vision, a Tweety-yellow racer on my right came toward me. 

I flattened my wings and rolled off the power sweeping below him to keep from colliding. But I caught the tornado of his wingtip vortices and involuntarily flipped inverted.

A Joshua tree bloomed overhead in my canopy as I arced upside-down towards the ground at two-hundred-fifty feet. Gravity pulled my shoulders down against the straps of my five-point harness. 

Without thinking, back pressure on the stick moved quickly forward to illogically raise the nose with a nudge of the left rudder to roll level and max out the power…   

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“I feel the need for speed…” 

Try to imagine flying over 200 mph only 50 feet above the ground in a steep turn while battling 7 other top-level pilots to take the checkered flag for first place.  When Hawk straps into his Formula 1 airplane against Scotty, Ax, and others in Racing the Dream, he is competing in the oldest form of air racing. 

The “Goodyear Midgets” debuted at the 1947 Cleveland National Air Races, when the tire company offered $75,000 in prizes for the event. Pilots immediately started building their own planes to compete—because, yes, these racers are built in garages and private hangars by the pilots and their crew chiefs, just like Father Bob and Sparks do for Hawk. 

Competing aircraft must follow strict racing association rules, including a 500-pound minimum weight, 660 square feet of wing area, fixed landing gear, and a fixed-pitch propeller.  Most importantly, is that the engine is limited to the exact same standard four-cylinder powerplant as is found in a Cessna 150 training aeroplane. 

The C-150 cruises at 94 miles per hour.  But Formula 1 pilots push their engines well beyond the normal 2750 RPM limit to well over 4000 during races. In 1947, the winning speed of Bill Brennand's plane, Buster, was 165 MPH.  Lowell Slater, in Fraed Naught (the white plane in the picture above), logged a speed of 256 miles per hour winning the Reno National Championship Gold Race in 20XX.  The creativity and inventiveness of the designers, crew chiefs, and pilots to reduce the drag on their aeroplanes have contributed to a nearly 100-mile-per-hour increase in racing speeds. 

When Goodyear ended their sponsorship of the races, the class of aircraft was renamed Formula 1, and they continued to compete throughout the 1950s, though interest waned until there were no official races held from 1960 through 1963. The situation changed when Bill Stead, a Nevada rancher, pilot, and hydroplane racer with a passion for aviation, organized the first National Championship Air Races in Reno, which have been a huge success thrilling aviation fans for the past sixty years. 

Formula 1 is the most exciting and innovative form of air racing. And when Hawk straps into his cockpit seat in Racing the Dream, you are a witness to history in the revival of the “World’s Fastest Motorsport.” 

For more information, please click on the following links: 

The National Championship Air Races: https://airrace.org/ 

The International Formula 1 Air Racing:  https://www.if1airracing.com/ 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links: 

M.T. Bass is a scribbler of fiction who holds fast to the notion that while victors may get to write history, novelists get to write/the right reality. He lives, writes, flies and makes music in Mudcat Falls, USA.

Born in Athens, Ohio, M.T. Bass grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, majoring in English and Philosophy, then worked in the private sector (where they expect “results”) mainly in the Aerospace & Defense manufacturing market. He is the author of twelve novels, two novellas, and a book of verse. His writing spans various genres, including Mystery, Adventure, Romance, Black Comedy and TechnoThrillers. A Commercial Pilot and Certified Flight Instructor, aeroplanes and pilots are featured in many of his stories. Bass currently lives on the shores of Lake Erie near Lorain, Ohio. 

M.T. Bass Author Links

Website:  https://www.mtbass.net

Blog:  https://www.owl-works.com

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/owlworks/

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/Owlworks

Amazon Author Page:  http://www.amazon.com/author/mtbass

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5270962.M_T_Bass 

Racing the Dream Purchase Links

Author Web Site Info Page: https://mtbassauthor.wordpress.com/racing-the-dream-white-hawk-aviation-stories-3/

Amazon (Kindle Unlimited):  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CCSVMSQV

 Stories by M.T. Bass

 White Hawk Aviation Adventure Stories

My Brother's Keeper

Jungleland

Racing the Dream

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Murder by Munchausen Sci-Fi Thriller Series

Murder by Munchausen

The Darknet

The Invisible Mind

Motherless Children

Murder by Munchausen Trilogy: Books 1-3

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 Article 15

Somethin' for Nothin'

In the Black

Crossroads

Lodging

Untethered 

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

 M.T. Bass will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

 

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