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

Episode Date: November 15, 2018

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. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And 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 stuffed. Because today, we have the need. The need for speed. 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. 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 Clash. Jim Clash!

Yes, who I am pleased to say is with us in the studio once again today. Hi, Jim. Welcome back. Thank you, Gary. Thank you, Chuck. It's always great to be here. That's right, man. He says the nicest things, doesn't he? I know. Jim Class, the man whose name was made for adventure. Yes. 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.

I've flown supersonic four separate times in four separate planes. What are the planes? Please list. The first was the MiG-25 Foxbat, and actually I went Mach 2.6, which is two and a half times the speed of sound. That is a Russian fighter jet, right? Exactly. That's Clint Eastwood.

Yes, that's right. It is, yeah. I flew in an English electric lightning. I remember those. Yes. Okay. I'm not familiar with the English electric lightning. It's kind of like a delta wing aircraft, but it's got a strange contraption at the front

with a cone. Oh, is that the one with the, and it's got the big rod that comes out of it? Oh, no. That's like an AWAC. That's a Nimrod. That's a surveillance aircraft. Oh, you don't have to be mean to it. Don't call it a Nimrod.

Okay. Well, it's called. Carry on, Jim. But go ahead. The English Electric Lightning in South Africa. I also flew in the Concorde, believe it or not. One of the last flights in the Concorde. The real one.

Yeah, the British Airways. A.K.A. British. Yeah, it was the British one. And there we went. And what was the flight from New York to London in the Concorde? How long did that take? 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 land in Bermuda, but we went around. You just went around. Yeah. Oh, so you went to Bermuda and back in an hour and 10 minutes. Just long enough to chill a champagne. I love it.

It was something like that. It was insane. That thing is fast. Mach 2. Mach 2. Wow. I mean, 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. They were a joint venture between them. One of our rare moments of Entente Cordiale. Also, there was the russian tupolev or there's the british dubbed it konkord ski and um there there was a lot of uh industrial espionage considered because when the russians unveiled their aircraft it was like that's ours it just has it just has a russian name attached to. But they had these winglets at the front. Yeah.

Right. Which were very, very intelligent and then changed the wind draft over the main wing itself. Okay. Which was allowed for fuel economy, made less noise. And they were saying that if they were ever to develop Concorde 2, they'd have had those winglets in and they'd have stolen back some of the stuff. I love it. There's improvisation by the Russians. Oh yeah.

And, and a little bit of a James Bond espionage. Exactly. Always, always a good story when there's espionage. Love it. And the fourth aircraft was the F-15, which of course was the,

is the great American fighter jet. The American fighter jet used to be the flagship of the American fleet. Yeah. Yeah. But all, all, all four of them were, were heart-stopping experiences. I have to say, most pilots have never even flown supersonic, so I was lucky.

Yeah, there's not that many supersonic aircraft to begin with. That's right. What are you pulling in terms of G? I mean, straight up vertical, or you're just horizontal at those sort of speeds? You know, the G depends upon the turn and the speed. And the most Gs I pulled, I was in the F15. And I remember the guy said, okay, we're going to do a turn. I'm going to 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 going to ramp it up to seven are you ready for seven and i said okay let's go to seven which is it's not really an option i'll get out here no but i could tell him no and he took me to seven and then he said do you want to go to nine i said nope i'm fine with seven now maybe what is happening because i mean probably everybody by yourself involved in this broadcast and listening, and I'll see the listeners as an involvement,

have never had that kind of experience. 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 Gs. The experience is, it's like if you had seven times your body weight on your chest, and it's difficult to keep the blood in your upper extremities. Yeah, especially your head. So you have to do this. And do you wear the flight suit?

We wear G pants, and that helps you by about one G or one and a half G. So you still have G pants. That's not really helping. No, it's not helping. The same people that design hammer pants. Okay. Those of you who know what hammer pants are. Honestly,

I don't know what hammer pants are, but it must be funny. We'll draw you a picture. Okay. But, but you have to tense. There's a, it's called the heck breathing. Right.

And you, you tense up your legs Your glutes And you go heck Heck And also your chest And it keeps the blood up into your head So you don't pass out

Right But at 9 G's I probably would have been close to passing out So I stopped at 7 And I started to gray out You could literally start to see gray In your vision So what does an astronaut experience

Once they're trying to leave the Earth? They don't experience that much more I mean, I think in the shuttle They only pulled about 3.5 to 4 Gs on launch And then coming in re-entry I think they probably Maybe 5 or 6 Gs So it's not all that different

From what the astronauts pulled But the fighter pilots technically Pull more Gs than the astronauts do 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 84,000 feet. Holy.

Yeah. Gosh. At Mach 2.6. 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 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 2.6, the camera felt like it weighed 20 pounds. And I was looking at it going, that camera doesn't weigh 20 pounds. It does at the moment. But I probably only pulled a couple of Gs in that flight up to 84,000. But in the F-15, when we were doing the sharper turns, we pulled more Gs.

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 carrying, there must be some sort of hangover of having had that experience. Part of it is,

you get dizzy, you get a little nauseous, but you have enough time in the plane, like when we had F-15, I think we flew two hours, so we did the G-force stuff in the early part of the flight,

so I had time to recover, but I had that barf bag right there in my elastic of my pants in case I needed it. It wouldn't have been anywhere near that far from my mouth. 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? Isn't that what the suit is for? Well, no, the worst part of it is you have an oxygen mask on. Well, yeah, you don't want to throw up in there. No, 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. and wow nothing to talk about here i don't want to talk about it no no that's we appreciate that and thank you for not sharing 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 okay so the speed of sound because air the air pressure changes the higher you go, 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 speed becomes to go through the sound barrier. 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, the speed of sound changes. So Mach 1 at sea level is different from Mach 1 at 30,000 feet. Wow.

And that's the sonic boom. That's the sonic boom. And you don't feel it in the aircraft, I can tell you that. But if you were on the ground and an aircraft going supersonic or just about to escape and go through the sound barrier, you would boom. Yes, depending upon how high up the aircraft is. Yeah.

I mean, that was a thing in Russia. They don't care if you break the sound barrier over land. No. So I'm sure the boom. Here in the USA, they're picky. No, they don't let you do it unless you're on a military base or out in the water yeah so they're very that's why it's so hard to go super that's why concord didn't really make exactly they could they couldn't fly to california from new york 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. The boom itself can be quite damaging. It's actually, if I'm not mistaken, the way you fly the aircraft and the angle at which 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 science-y tricks that a pilot can incorporate to diminish things. Absolutely. And to Chuck's point, when that meteor came over Chelyabinsk and that was going supersonic. Yes, it was.

And a huge sound boom. And what it did, it smashed all the windows. Blew out windows everywhere, along all the entire flight path of the meteor. Blew out all the windows. That's because it was going through the sound barrier and the boom came. 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. Well, no, I think the races have two. There's a master class and a challenger. And I think for each category or series, whichever you'd like, there is a slightly different aircraft. Right. So which one did you fly in? And those planes look like they're really moving they move uh uh now part of that is they're so close to the ground so they move several hundred miles an hour uh you know I was in I think it was the Challenger class and uh you know we went on a flight we went through the pylons we 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. 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 a novice.

I rarely leave the ground unless it's a commercial flight but you you're an experienced sort of yes compared to me most definitely i would say compared to most people period how many people have flown in four different supersonic crafts that's amazing but go ahead 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 experience is 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. It's a bit unsettling. You see the ground coming up real fast.

The trees go by very quickly because it's all relative. Yeah, because you're low. 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… There's no point of reference. No, no point of reference. And did you hear lord lift us up where we belong playing in your head while i'm sorry go ahead i was praying there's actually there's three there's three sayings

about the lord when you go supersonic 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 please let me die and then the third one is oh my god i'm glad that's over gotcha so there's three sayings about god when you're when you're in one of those aerobatic planes nice 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. How much is plane? How much is pilot? It's both, really. Last summer, I flew in a T-38, which is a supersonic plane that they used to train the

shuttle pilots and also the U-2 pilots, which, by the way, still flies. Oh, the T-38. That's the small little plane. Oh, man, it's like so small and tight. It actually looks like a toy. Exactly. It's a L man. It's like so small and tight. It actually looks like a toy. Um, it looks like a toy. Mike Massimino,

astronaut, Mike Massimino, who was a friend of star talk. Yeah. Um, actually trained in the T and, uh, imagine him.

And he's a big dude. He's a giant. Yeah. And it's like, it looks, it looks like a toy plane though. 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 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 going to stay aloft. But it did. It was a really nice flight. We did some rolls and things like that. But it's very agile.

More like the Red Bull planes. It's a much smaller plane, and it can turn a lot more quickly. So what's the difference? I mean, we're getting to this with Jimbo Reed. I'm going to call him Jimbo. Jimbo. Yep. Although he's 6'4 and built like a tank.

Oh, my God. I'm still calling him Jimbo. Yeah. He'll probably crush me. What is it in the design that makes it just so good for aerobatics from your point of view? You got me there. I don't understand the science of why they're able to do that. Then we can edit it.

It was like, I just fly in the planes. And 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 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 don't see as much um i have to say i thought it would be scary but it was pretty cool 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 a little trip to dubai huh uh-huh uh-huh and um it's fascinating to watch and it's captivating. But you sat in the front of one of these things. Between pylon, pylon, trick, trick, how long in terms – because people watching it can be desensitized because of the distance from where the camera actually is to the plane itself.

You get – the time becomes elongated. Yeah, no, it's true. But when you're in there, what is it? What is actual time for you? You know, it looks like everything slows down, actually. As you're coming onto the pylons, you're thinking, okay, those wings are going to be really close to those pylons. But as you go through the pylons, it seems to slow down.

I think it's like anybody who says when they're in an accident or something, time slows down. It seems to slow down. But then it's like anybody who says when they're in an accident or something, time slows down. 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. That's awesome. You just,

by the way, explain how my parents described my birth. Time slowed down. More therapy. Right. Let's, while Chuck gets the therapy he needs, we'll take a break. Thank you to Jim Clash.

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. 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. Jim Boread, 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 favorite name of a company, the Spaceship Company. Yay. Yay. And former engineer at Virgin Galactic, of which Jim has a connection to, because Jim, class, you have a ticket for Virgin Galactic. 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. Is he nuts? Is he nuts? Should he

sell it, cash in? No way, man. I'd hang on to it. I'd ride every ride. All right. I got mine for $200,000. Now they're up to $250,000, I think. Yeah, so that's a decent investment return. Yeah, there you go. So, all right, Jim Reid, it'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. Okay, the Masterclass run, well, first off, I guess guess challengers and masters run the same engine propeller and exhaust this is to keep them all fairly uh similar performance uh we derate the challengers down to 2750 rpm from 2950 uh to to manage the speed a bit better the the challenger airplanes are stock as far as uh the cowling the canopy and wingtips the wheel pants the things you usually

see the masters modifying are all stock uh on the challenger airplanes but otherwise they're all except for amica brajo they're all uh edge 540s either v2s or v3s all the challengers are v2s 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 yeah um i'm looking to make sure everybody survives uh after that we are looking to uh i it's it's very it's kind of nascar-esque so we have it regulated down uh it being the airplanes um like i said with uh stock power plants propellers and exhausts and so uh 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 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. But it was interesting. When I was a tech 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 going to go faster on race day so wow 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 him yeah we checked everything we found a couple things fix them and off it goes And it's a second faster than it was the day before. Wow. 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. Yeah. parachute-type material so if you hit it, it just slices it and doesn't make the plane crash? Yeah, 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 we 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 uh pylon pressure is actually being higher uh decrease 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 in the makeup of the pylons but it's a it's kind of a nylon material and it tears super easy. Not quite like paper, but very nearly. Do you have like an F1 pit crew?

Once one of those pylons gets taken down, they immediately reassemble it? Yeah, they're probably the hardest working guys on the airport and they are a bunch of legends. They can, I don't know what the 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 60 seconds so they can that's amazing deflated 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 and we carry on racing.

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. Yeah, it's just not exciting, right? When I was there, they actually let us get inside of one of the pylons and look up, and it's pretty daunting how high these things really are. Yeah, they're, what, 25 meters. Wow. You've been an engineer for several Red Bull teams. Now you're the other side of that particular line. 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 most likely to cheat check his plane or her plane 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 13 other teams because there will be a bunch of eyes out there say hey look did you see his tail wheel is smaller than everybody else's you know something like this uh but i spent yeah for i think my first air race was 2009 and until 2015 i was on a team and all of that time devoted a massive amount of energy to figuring out how to cheat effectively and not get caught any way we could.

Because that's, you know, whatever. I'm not the smartest guy out there, but. You admit it. I love it. You admit it. He can because you're on the other side. Absolutely. So before we, you know.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Continue. Sorry. Oh, I was just going to say. So we have a, 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 the 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 and they would download the data from your engine we have an rpm limit we have a few other limits uh that the engine must operate inside of to have a valid flying session at the end of the race they would download the data from the engine monitor and uh standard operating procedure on race day to set it to record once every 800 seconds so you can set it to five hertz you could set it to once anywhere in between that and once every 800 seconds and we'd get in a park for may they'd come download the data, and they'd say, wow, man, there's no data here.

I said, yeah, shit, I cannot make that thing work. I don't know why. 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. So I believe Volkswagen did the same. No, I'm joking.

Yeah, exactly. There goes my chance of a decent VW. Thanks. 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 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 break that down for everybody listening? Yeah, I'll give it a try anyway.

Like standard aircraft, you fly around on just general aviation stuff, not giant jets, are usually somewhere between just have an operating kind of limitation of maybe plus 3Gs and minus 1, something like that. So they're meant to be flown along on a Sunday afternoon. Standard aerobatic category airplanes, the biplanes you see at the air shows and other things you'll see, lower levels of similar aircraft to what we fly will be plus 6G and minus 3 is their envelope. These airplanes are built solely for maneuverability. They're unlimited class aerobatic airplanes, so they're plus minus 12G. So you can thrash it around as you want, roll rate of 420 degrees per second,

so it'll more than one revolution per second if you smash the stick over. Just immense control surfaces, the bits that pitch and roll and yaw the airplane, are just massive on these airplanes. And it's super harmonic. So it's, I don't know, you can make it as wicked of a roller coaster ride as you like. I never worry about hurting the airplane. How does the pilot not pass out at 12 Gs? It's a training just like anything else. It's repetition at Gs.

So if you spend an hour at 2G in an airplane, then you'll be ready to go to 3G and not have an issue. If you spend an hour at 3, you can go to 4, and you just work your way up that way. But they all have other airplanes, and they have to maintain a G tolerance for sure. Or, yeah, you definitely have that risk 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 that they're further forward did you say correct yes thank you

yeah no it's um it's just a aircraft plan form thing it's uh 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 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. 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 a large wing in the back. And they do all the same stuff. They just can't do it at these rates that this particular configuration. same stuff they just can't do it at these these rates that at this particular configuration 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 exactly it's it's the same reason that f1 car looks like an f1 car not a mercedes i'm interested uh and 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?

Yeah, no. The organization, Red Bull Air Race race uh us the dark side we have tm that comes down uh that gives us engine uh data 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, 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. So they can run up to the airplane as soon as it's landed with a laptop and Bluetooth off of it and grab all the data quickly that way.

But our data stream is the only one coming down live. 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, 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. And you also have to be between the candy corn looking part of the pylons. You can't be 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 don't do it 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 uh no we have a bunch of uh really clever kids that sort out the onboard position reporting stuff and the judging terminals that essentially the human judges are oversights or overseers of the automatic judging systems. is, hey, look at this airplane at this gate. 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. So the vast majority of it is automatic. But then there's a human oversight.

Gotcha, gotcha. So now what are the qualifications? Suppose I want to be a Red Bull pilot. 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 want to do that. How would you go about being a Red Bull pilot? go about being a Red Bull pilot? You need to start out in aerobatics. So go get your private pilot's license and then start flying aerobatic maneuvers 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 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 i like the idea of an envelope appears like harry potter it appears as a red ball invitation all right let's 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? Yeah, I think there's a really large drive to try to get it to be competitive, to showcase the pilot's abilities.

be competitive to showcase the pilots 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 and places where we're in a motorsports like setting we have more area and we can we can make the track uh you know more turns and you know tighter gates uh and so you can uh you can get the pilots to where the best pilot 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 at 11.99 G, because we have a 12 G, knock it off, you're done racing, fly back to the airport, we have to have a look at the airplane limit. So if you can get 11.99 on those long straight tracks you're going to 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 then you're out so it's nice to have uh more than three tiny chunks of the track determine

who's going to win you know so that the turning tracks kind of the bumblebee in a glass jar kind of tracks are more fun i think and and showcase the abilities of the pilot better. Cool. You just mentioned something that 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 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 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 went from the west that day and it was just this massive mechanical turbulence over top the track smashing all the air that was coming in went from the west that day, and it was just this massive mechanical turbulence over top the track, smashing all the pylons around. You could watch the airplanes go through the air. It was really fighting to keep it in that envelope you described earlier,

trying to make clean passes on the gates. So there's a bunch of that stuff comes into play, little tiny rain clouds, rain showers passing by. And if you get stuck in a rain cloud or underneath a small shower in the hold, 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 small shower in the hold not enough to go home but then you get into the track with a wet airplane wow you know it's just bad luck you know wow all of this is super exciting oh yeah uh jim reed it's been a pleasure sir even if it was just to look at your beard like Like you, it's awesome.

Thank you, sir. 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? I'm doing great. How are you? Thank you for having me on. 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. Yeah, I mean, so, you know, I tell everyone, you know, I was 21 years old. I was flying a business jet.

And our chief pilot, it was for La Quinta Motor Enz, our chief pilot, Jerry Anderson, was a really smart guy. And he said, hey, if the jet ever ends up upside down with the 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 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. 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. Yeah, I mean, I love these airplanes. I was on the Edge 540, the one that basically was 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 switch the Edge 540 version three. And I was a test pilot on that airplane from the time it started in 1993 until 2005. And it's become 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 and 12 g's that's it's working g and uh it's capable of even more than that how do you read your instruments flying over 200 miles an hour upside down and you are experiencing four or five g at times even more probably and how do you structure your thoughts because you 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. Yeah, I mean, you know, the thing is, it's like anything else. You know, we're pretty good at adapting and it's whatever you get used to, you know.

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

Yeah, I mean, with the exception of the tire pressure, because maybe when I rolled onto the runway, I could tell if it was a little bit flat. But once you get in the air, then the tire pressure doesn't matter anymore. But yeah, I mean, I can tell you a lot about the airplane, just by the way that it's running, by the way 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, as it goes through the slipstream.

But again, you know, 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 taken a penalty. But, you know, other than that, again, everything is outside of the airplane and these gates are coming out and you have so fast, you know, and you need to be so close to them and you're trying to carve those fraction 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? And 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. 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, once I'm up there flying, I'll decide how I do this. 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 OK 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 they're on the water on a barge, you know, and one rope gets a little bit tight, you know, there'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 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 in 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. 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? 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're looking at you at 1,500 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 hundredths of a second.

So it's two-tenths or three-tenths of a second for 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. So it's super tight. So a one-second penalty or two seconds for sure is going to take you out of the whole thing. 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. 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 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, we're normally on one of the turns that you would go flat. And now there's a really strong wind, you know, maybe it's better to go up and over and pick up that tailwind going the other way or, 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 a normal racing, you know, like, uh, 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 that left up to me. 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? 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 fastest guy that doesn't get any penalties. And, you know, and the coast is 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 airplanes 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 that motor speedway. So I think it's super exciting. You know, it's 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 your whole family to come out. Kirby Chambliss, thank you so much.

Twice world champion. And I dare say you feel like you want number three, don't you? Yes, for sure. Well, good luck to you, sir. Thank you to Kirby Chamless 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.