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 that serves as a prelude to AirVenture, increasingly attracting fast sport aircraft and former pylon racers to test their cross-country capabilities.
Participating in the race demands intense pilot workload, including constant traffic management, precise real-time engine tuning (e.g., cylinder-by-cylinder fuel adjustment), and strategic decisions regarding altitude and fuel stops.
The race experience highlighted a significant trade-off between speed and efficiency; the author's Glasair III achieved 287 mph at 28 GPH in race conditions, a much higher fuel burn compared to its normal 230 KTAS at 11 GPH for efficient cross-country travel.

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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.