9 November 2009

Why Not Red Bull Air Race for Canberra ?

| duckylucky
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Some of you may have read that Victorian Opposition Leader, Ted Baillieu, is talking about bidding for the Red Bull Air race to be held in Geelong once the contract for Perth runs out.

Why Geelong when Canberra would be a far better venue???

Just picture it – the planes take off from the airport and head for Lake Burley Griffin… once under Kings Avenue bridge they take a sharp right at Commonwealth Park …they fly up Anzac Ave, over the war Memorial and left at Mt Ainslie (buzzing them hard-at-work Satanists)… then a beeline straight to Black Mountain heading over the rich yuppies in O’Connor listening to their folk music…. left at Black Mountain, down the peninsular and left at the lake…. over Australian Museum, Under Commonwealth Bridge and through the Captain Cook Jet…. and one more lap…

Coinciding the race around Floriade would be the ideal time, and with any luck, those planes may take a few of those nasty magpies plaguing the lake bike paths…

Does anyone have any ideas for an alternate race route?

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If we cant have a Bird Man Rally,what chance have we got with the RB Air Race.
God Canberra is so shit these days,Remember when it used to be fun to live here…
Im off to get a soy latte,and look at art on the GDE..(that was a good use of tax payers money!)

How big is the body of water behind Googong Dam?

do eeet, it would be awesome.

same old fuddy duddys in here saying no to everything rather than giving something a try.

…..if you build it they will come

tate_alec – great mock ups! Would love to see a race one day and Geelong isn’t too far away.
duckylucky – I like your race route.

Phil m said:
The airport would also not be suitable for use as a takeoff/landing strip

Why not? In Perth they use Langley Park as the airport.

The planes wouldn’t be destroying peoples mail boxes and cars at 3am?

Well they are piston engined aircraft, and they’re nothing but trouble!

Um, TIC… ;-P

thanks for the comments….

I did have some thoughts about including the Bunda Street Canyon and fly under that Canberra Centre crossing, but my imagination was running too hot…

dr phil said :

this is the city that banned fireworks…mmmmmm

The planes wouldn’t be destroying peoples mail boxes and cars at 3am?

Though agreed that the NIMBY’s would shoot the idea down before the person who first had the idea to stage it here had time to finish his or her thought.

moneypenny26127:33 pm 09 Nov 09

Coincidentally I saw one of these red bull races in Budapest last year. Never seen it before.

The Danube river is not very wide where they held it (outside the Parliament). Guessing around half a kilometre tops. Probably less. The course was long rather than wide.

I think LBG’s bridges might be too low. I could be wrong. The chain bridge in Budapest has a clearance of around 10m – the pilots navigated under that.

Once upon a time we used to have Floriade, Taste and Sky Fire on at the same time, go to Floriade, look at all the pretty flowers, try a few wines/cheeses/meats/preserves at Taste stalls spread through Floriade, stock up on goodies, secure a bit of grass and party into the evening for fireworks with Sky Fire. Then stagger home full of goodness and smelling of fireworks. Or booze. But all that fun on one night? The horror! So they moved Taste to another time, it died, it died, meanwhile Sky Fire in another slot still tries, it tries.

Red Bull air race in Canberra would be great, but at the same time as Floriade? Herr Stanhope would have conniptions of the populous being over-stimulated…

As for the thoughts of under the bridges well no, even the aerobatic aircraft flown by incredibly skilled pilots like Matt Hall would have trouble a) fitting and ii) getting permission to try and fit under the bridges.

Now, the beer is on its way brewing, time to make me a pie!

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.

grunge_hippy9:42 am 09 Nov 09

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…).

Holden Caulfield9:37 am 09 Nov 09

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

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