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May 31-June1 was the first appearance of the Red Bull Air Race in Detroit. To be honest, I have never heard of this sport before but after visiting their website, I was pumped! I highly recommend that you visit their site. There are several movies explaining the sport. It’s basically the Formula 1 of the sky. The pilots actually take as much as 10G in acceleration, which is twice what a Formula 1 driver sees.

They basically setup a course of inflatable pylons on the ground or on water depending on the venue, which are only about 15-18m high. Then the highly skilled pilots are racing against time in high performance acrobatic airplanes. Depending on the gate color, they have to pass them according to a certain style: horizontal or vertical flying.

For the Detroit venue, they setup the course on the Detroit River between USA and CANADA. This was the first time the race was sitting on a border between 2 countries (that must have been a mess to organize all that!). Here is a picture of the course, which probably looks much better in its larger version.

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I was really looking forward to the event, but I got very unlucky. Let me explain. It ended up that I had to travel for work on the day of the actual race (Sunday). So I bought tickets for the Saturday qualification. Since it’s a race against time, I was expecting the show to be very similar. However, after several thousands of people showed up on the river sides for the qualification and few air show type demonstrations, they cancelled the qualification due to gusting winds over 100 km/h. Safety of the pilots first… Flying so close to the ground, the smallest mistake can be fatal. Still, I was really bummed to miss the actual official event.

I was lucky enough to witness few planes doing practice runs for 20 minutes during lunchtime few days before the event. Here are a few pictures of the practice runs:

Also, here are some pictures of demonstration and features from qualification day, before the event was cancelled.

You have to give it to the organization: it was really well done and they were very successful into entertaining people and getting them involved. I understand that the race was really successful. Over 720 000 people showed. I really hope they come back next year! As usual, larger versions and many more pictures are available in the Photo Album below.

2008 Red Bull Air Race Detroit

Sometimes, you do not need to get far for good opportunities. 3 weeks ago, we caught this cute little baby American Robin in our backyard. I guess he was too young to be afraid, so I could get so close that I could not focus anymore with my 100-400mm IS lens. Hope you like!

Time runs fast! Newton is now over 15 weeks old and he just started obedience class since a few weeks.

 We walk him almost every night in the park along the Detroit River: we found out that if we burn him good before going to bed, everybody has a better night of sleep!

Here are a few pictures taken during one of these walks when he was 14 weeks old.

Bigger versions available here.