High Desert, Low Riders

LANCASTER â€”  They came to the high desert, racing fans hungry to watch hot-rod planes scream low around an oval course.

“The race course was away from everything,� Steve Irving said. “If the airplane went out of control, it crashed into the desert. You didn’t take out anyone’s house.�

Irving was 8 years old back, a boy drifting among the crowds that gathered in the 1970s for the California National Air Races in the town of Mojave. People sat in lawn chairs along the home stretch. The finals would draw as many as 15,000 spectators.

Nearly 20 years have passed since the last of those races. Irving is assistant manager of the General William J. Fox Airfield in Lancaster and air racing has finally returned to the Antelope Valley.

The Fox Field National Air Races, which run Friday through Sunday, promise to be a modest event. The high-priced monsters of the unlimited class will not be there. Nor will the sport biplanes or the AT-6 World War II trainers. But the Formula One planes, the sport’s fourth major class, will be racing for the season points championship.

These custom-built craft begin their races on the ground. With the drop of a flag, eight planes taxi down the runway and take off directly into the first turn. They must complete eight laps around a three-mile oval, working their way to top speed at some point during the third lap.

“They haul around the pylons at 250 miles an hour,� said Chuck Stewart, associate editor of Pacific Flyer Aviation News, an Oceanside-based publication that covers air racing. “The planes get pretty close. It’s dramatic.�

Pilots like to compare the event to the Indy 500--elevated 50 feet off the ground. Like race cars, the planes are computer-designed, built sleek with high-tech materials. The cockpits have been stripped of nearly everything, including seats, to save weight.

Formula One racers run flat-out, banking almost 90 degrees around pylons that mark the turns. As the race progresses, the planes inch upward in preparation for a final dive to the finish line.

“There’s a lot of passing, a lot of jockeying for position,� said Jon Sharp, a Lancaster pilot who has dominated the class for the past five years. “We go fast.�

The crowd gets to watch from less than 200 yards away.

“That’s why it is such a good spectator sport,� said Dan Gilbert, a top-ranked racer from Detroit. “The course is small enough so you can see the airplanes all the way around. Even on the backstretch, you still have a good view.�

Said Sharp: “It’s not like the Long Beach Grand Prix where the cars go by you and disappear.�

During the 1960s, the races were marred by a spate of accidents. The sport’s governing body instituted tougher rules that have made crashes rare.

Sharp explained, with a smile: “You try not to swap paint like Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt.�

The Formula One circuit varies from year to year, with most of the races taking place at air shows around the country.

This year, the season began in August, traveling through towns such as Oshkosh, Wis., and Vancouver on its way to the mid-September national championships in Reno. There, 145,000 fans and a nationwide television audience watched racers compete for $500,000 in prize money.

With its $19,000 in prizes and a hoped-for attendance of 30,000, Lancaster cannot hope to approach such hoopla. But it boasts a rich aviation heritage.

The region has been known for its flying ever since the mid-1940s when test pilots came to Edwards Air Force Base, just north on Highway 14, seeking good weather and wide-open spaces.

In 1947, Chuck Yeager streaked across the desert sky to become the first man to break the sound barrier.

Years later, in the 1960s, Lancaster hosted several air races, Sharp said. The Mojave races subsequently became a major event with $50,000 in prize money, competition in all the major classes and aerobatics displays by legendary stunt pilots Bob Hoover and Art Scholl.

“Reno had its grandstands and so forth,� Irving recalls. “Mojave was more of a grass-roots thing. People could bring lawn chairs. People could walk in and out of the area where the planes were parked.�

But over the years, the airport attracted more and more commercial tenants. The flight line grew too busy to shut down for an annual event that never seemed to turn a profit.

It wasn’t until last year that Sharp and his wife, Tricia, met with Fox Field officials to discuss reviving the races. The pilot wanted to compete on his home turf; the airport saw an opportunity to expand its annual open house.

“We kind of joined teams,� Irving said.

This weekend’s event could have much the same ambience as the old Mojave races. The pit area will be open to spectators. There will be food stands and aviation displays.

The schedule includes qualifying runs on Friday and demonstrations by 1940s racers, aerobatics pilots and radio-controlled models throughout the weekend.

As for the racing, the season finale will feature Sharp and his closest competitors in the standings--Jim Miller of San Antonio and Ray Cote of San Diego.

Gilbert, a Detroit resident, is one of several racers who are airline pilots. Others are crop dusters. The late Donald K. “Deke� Slayton, one the original Mercury astronauts, raced Formula One planes for many years.

With such talent in the air, Gordon Nauta, president of the Fox Field Pilots Assn., insists that fans will not feel cheated by the absence of the unlimited class’ giant P-51 Mustangs, P-47 Thunderbolts and Grumman Bearcats.

“All those guys do is buy bigger engines,� said Nauta, a former biplane racer. “They make a lot of noise.�

Formula One pilots must use identical 100-horsepower engines with minor modifications allowed.

They squeeze extra speed from new designs and stronger, lighter materials. And those little engines churn out plenty of decibels.

“Well tuned,� Sharp says. “Not obnoxious.�

Said David Hoover, a Northern California pilot: “It’s definitely not something where you’d stick your fingers in your ears.�

Said Nauta: “They sound like a bunch of angry little bees.�