The newest class of racing at the National Air Races is STOL. Short Take Off and Landing. And there is a bit of a league for these flyers. In 2019, a group of racers showed up at Reno to demo the STOL race, and the fans loved it. The class is now official, and in 2021 the STOL race was on.
The race is essentially a drag race run in two segments. The racers start at the same time. They fly approximately 2,000 feet, land, stop, turn around, take off, fly 2,000 feet, land, stop. The first one to stop wins. If it was only that easy. Most of the aircraft are working aircraft. Some are souped up racers. All are very good at this.
Photographically this race is fun to watch, and to plan. First, with normal winds the first leg of the race is west to east. Right into the morning sun. Most of the races seem to be scheduled for the morning, as the winds are generally light. But the light is perfect. Because the runway is basically a hump, you can't see one end from the other. At both ends, there is great action. Visually, you win everywhere. But I like to stand at the end of the first leg. From this point, you can see the racing aircraft begin a slip in order to lose airspeed. Usually slip to the right. You are looking right at them. And if you catch it just right, you can still get the prop at somewhat full speed. There is a point where the engine power is cut and the prop is frozen on its own. A photographer has enough issues shooting a prop at 1/80th without the prop freezing on its own. For myself, I shot over 100 shots and only 10 are close to being OK. But it was fun, and when the shots came out OK - awesome. So I'm posting three shots today. Two are really crisp, and one is pretty close. I used Gigapixel on all three shots and I think it helped. All three shots are aggressively cropped. And all three are great screen backgrounds.
This aircraft is in a full slip. The sun is catching the props just right.
This one is really good enlarged. The pilot can be seen in the sunlight. Good prop effect and really sharp.
This one came out super sharp, probably the best of the bunch. You can really see the rudder deflection.
I have a few photos with two aircraft in the shot that I'll work on later. This is a great class of aircraft to photograph and to just plain watch for fun.
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