Hitching a Ride in the AirVenture Cup

Annual 430-mile cross-country race is not run in a straight line but in a series of straight legs forming a circle.

Wednesday, November 13, 2024 at 12:04 PM ET

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Feeling the need to feel the speed, Tim Slater smoked across the AirVenture Cup finish line at 330 mph. It was a zippy flourish to a day mainly spent at altitude. [Kitplanes file photo]

Key Takeaways:

The AirVenture Cup is a unique 430-mile circular air race, initiated in 1997, designed to simplify logistics by ending at the starting point before AirVenture.
The race has increasingly attracted fast kitbuilt sport pylon racers, demonstrating their capability as cross-country aircraft, as exemplified by the author's ride in a Glasair III.
Participating is a demanding experience, requiring pilots to actively manage navigation, traffic, and advanced electronic engine systems to optimize performance in a competitive environment.
Achieving high race speeds comes with a substantial increase in fuel consumption, significantly higher than these aircraft's normal cross-country economy, illustrating the cost of speed.

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Started in 1997 by Eric Whyte and Erik Anderson, the AirVenture Cup offers its own twist on the traditional point-to-point air race. Namely, it is not run in a straight line, but in a series of straight legs forming a circle. This allows participants to end up where they started, reducing logistical headaches and easing the transition from AirVenture Cup on Sunday to hopping down to Oshkosh for AirVenture proper by Monday.

Still, this is a cross-country race covering 430 miles, so something more reliable than thumbscrew power settings and the-world-ends-in-20-minutes fuel consumption are required. Lately, sport pylon racers saw that simply pulling back the loud lever could make them good cross-country racers as well, so a majority of the faster Sport folks joined the already multi-class AirVenture Cup this year.