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Recent test flight of the ungreened Precious Metal, the Griffon powered P-51 racer
(3 pix, all from Precious Metal pilot Thom Richard's facebook page)
The Unlimited racers for Reno 2011 (Sept 14-18) are lining up to make this an incredible year of racing. While I'm certainly no expert on all the aircraft that'll be racing, I have spent some time soaking up some info on several of the most notable... and the Rolls Royce Griffon powered mixmaster P-51 (with counter-rotating props) known as Precious Metal is certainly one of them. The airplane is now based at the Kissimmee Air Museum in Florida, where it can be seen when it's not at Reno. I had the pleasure of talking with PM's race pilot Thom Richard on the phone Wednesday about how progress is coming along for one of the most unique P-51 racers ever built. Here's some of what I found out.
On Wednesday 8-30-11, the PM team put two test flights on the airplane totalling about an hour of flight time. They were testing out a variety of mods to the airplane that they've been working on for a while (sorry, no specifics to share) and everything worked! That's a pretty critical test to pass with the races starting in about two weeks. You may know that PM has been around for quite a few years but it's never really lived up to the potential that's packed into the front end... and the dreams that Don Whittington had for the airplane. The new Precious Metal team is hoping that these mods they've been working on will move the airplane from being a fascinating and entertaining novelty at Reno to being a real contender in the fast pack along with Strega, Voodoo, Rare Bear and last year's new kid on the block: Galloping Ghost...
(click pic to enlarge) Precious Metal... highly modified P-51 looking pretty mean in flight
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