Why Not Red Bull Air Race for Canberra ?

dr phil said :

this is the city that banned fireworks…mmmmmm

Yeah many years after the rest of the country.

And there’s still plenty of porn on tap, so we’re still famous for something.

Get over it.

this is the city that banned fireworks…mmmmmm

grunge_hippy said :

the bridges are far too low. a nice idea, but LBG is not big enough.

The proposed immigration bridge would be high enough for a plane to fly under.

If there were complaints about a circus tent in the Parliamentary Zone, can you imagine the complaints about some tall inflatable gates?

Hmmm… let me see. Outdoors, Fun, Makes noise. Never in Canberra. The NIMBY’s have seen to that.

I went to the Red Bull race in Perth, 2008. The gates are very specialised inflatable material. No permanent or solid structures would be suitable either as gates or anywhere near one.
The entire race is fully over the water due to the flat and clear space, it also covers a supripsing small area between all gates. The lake might be large enough but the bridges would be a problem. They are also way too low for purposes of using them as part of the race.

The airport would also not be suitable for use as a takeoff/landing strip.

So that’s why, question answered?

What a stupid idea.

Incidentally I like magpies far more than idiot hobbyists with too much money and no sense…

That’s why not.

indigoid said :

Can you imagine the NIMBY outrage over a bunch of radials?

they don’t run radial engines. All the redbull air race aircraft run flat 6’s from Lycoming.

as others have said the bridges here are far far too low to even consider it, on the bright side it gives me an excuse to go to perth

They have raced Red Bull air races over land several times, especially in England and also Monument valley. The lake may be big enough, but these races are becoming so popular the amount of money the government may have to fork out would be too much. Plus they get crowds of anywhere between 100,000 to around a million in Brazil.

I hope it stays in Perth. I’m sick of Vic and NSW trying to pinch everything after another state has done the hard work to get the event up and going.

why ‘over’ the museum OP? Why not through the orange loop?

Why not wait for the New, Improved Cotter Dam if it must be run over a large volume of water.
That way us rate payers can get a little more back from the extra dollars we will have to pay to foot the bill for it.

While I don’t know the height of the chain bridge they flew under in Hungary (when they only had ~1m of clearance above and below their “safe-flight area”) or the depth of the river Danube at that point, the fact that the Commonwealth Ave Bridge is only ~6-7m above water level, and that the lake is only a few meters deep might be a bit too much risk of death in case something goes catastrophically wrong.

(And besides, spectacular events leading to fatalities at Lake Burley Griffin helped bring down Kate Carnell, I imagine Stanhope & ACTGov might be a little bit wary of letting history repeat itself)

There was one event in Monument Valley in the US in 2007 that wasn’t over water, but currently all the races are. There is no way they would fly under any of the bridges, they’re just too low. I think LBG would be big enough, as long as you used the entire lake, scrivener dam to kingston forshore.

the bridges are far too low. a nice idea, but LBG is not big enough.

A fantastic idea that will never happen.

We cannot even have a Birdman rally let alone an air race. Someone will end up saying that we have had too many aircrashes in Canberra (Air disaster memorial, Mig crash in Woden…).

I’d say the lake would be too small, as already noted. If the size of the lake was suitable, the nimbys would see that it never happened anyway.

Move on, nothing to see here…

Here are some mock ups of what it may look like.
I made these up after seeing the air race in Perth last year and I would love to see it in the nations capital, but I don’t think that it would every happen.

http://users.tpg.com.au/tatealec/pics/RedBullCanberra.jpg
http://users.tpg.com.au/tatealec/pics/RedBullCanberra2.jpg
Hope this links work.

I understand that the gates for air racing must be on large open calm waters. So, your route is impossible. Also, the lake might be too small to create an appropriate course.

The lake has so many vantage points on either side, and the 2 bridges for them to fly under, it would be the logical choice.

These races would bring their own crowds, so having it in its own time slot would spread out the tourist benefits for the city.

Lots of international exposure for Canberra as well.

driving over commonwealth ave bridge on sat and the news was talking about a race in Geslong? and i thought what a great place to have it over the lake here. i dont know if it is a big enough area but id love to see it happen.

I would have thought the Carillion island would make for a spectacular “gate” …. maybe with those inflatable pillars on either side of the bridge to the island? And they could set the water fountain to start and stop randomly, increasing the level of difficulty.

All the races in that series that I’ve seen have been flown exclusively over bodies of water, which leads me to think it’s probably a requirement for them (I’d guess for safety reasons if nothing else). That kind of restricts any course in Canberra to LBG. Not saying you couldn’t do it there – after all, it’s relatively close to the airport, but I’d also think it’d probably have to be over the Western end on account of the bridges.

Having said that, I’d love it to come here 🙂

Can you imagine the NIMBY outrage over a bunch of radials? The Canberra V8 400 was bad enough… and that was only a bunch of bog-slow boganmobiles.

It might actually be worse than the clowns the other night who had made up “I don’t want to grow up in a microwave” (ie. near a new telecomms tower) signs for their uncomprehending kids to carry for the TV cameras