Rare Bear® Update
January 12, 2004
by Lyle Shelton

Bear Facts® New year update 2004

This short update message is to wish everyone in the Rare Bear "community" as happy a New Year as possible and a very successful year in 2004.

We are trying to get a running start on plans, projects, mods, etc, for ’04 and will outline/summarize these. But recently we have had some tragedy in the world of Rare Bear.

Greg Shaw, our crew chief of many years, lost his wife recently due to cancer. Pam was a great person and will be missed very much. A memorial ceremony is planned for 24 January in the Lompoc area and a missing-lady fly-by is scheduled at Camarillo airport on the 25th. Our deepest condolences go to Greg and their families.

My old friend and long time supporter of Rare Bear, Oscar Margraff passed away in December due to cancer. Oscar helped us a lot through the years.

Also in December, we lost our long time friend and R-3350 mechanic, Mac McKinney to cancer. Mac had worked for the last 25 years or so with Mel Gregoire At Aircraft Cylinder and Turbine in Burbank.

In addition to the loss of these fine people, Greg lost both his dogs to cancer earlier in the year. And, I lost my big female lab BJ on January 1st to cancer. What a terrible plague cancer is!

We did not get the Bear to the air show and demo race at Nellis AFB, Las Vegas, in November. John encountered too much weather for the VFR Bear on a Thursday flight out of Reno to Nellis. The next day, John had to turn back to Reno-Stead because of mechanical problems.

We are working on a definite plan for maintenance and possibly a mod or two for ’04. As usual, the budget is below what we had hoped for and so will be limited in what we can do to increase performance and reliability.

We definitely need to decrease drag but we might not be able to do much in this area. We need to do lots of engine work – especially with valves and cylinder conditioning. The R-3350 engines are getting harder to get and more expensive every year – as fewer shops and good radial engine mechanics and technicians are available to repair and maintain these.

We are having to change crew chiefs in ’04. Stacy Thomas has been transferred to Chicago O’Hare by American Airlines and won’t be able to travel back and forth to Reno as he did in the past year. Our new crew chief is Elliott White, with American also, at Reno-Cannon. He came on board with most of the present crew in 2002 and he is the crew’s choice for the job. Many thanks to Stacy for the outstanding job he did! Elliott has a lot of energy, motivation and capability and he will be great for the job.

Sharon Coates and I met a few weeks ago to get the Rare Bear Corp. records, minutes, etc, in order – and to talk about jobs and mods possible with the "incredible shrinking budget". Dennis Kira, my tax accountant, and some other people met with us on Rare Bear topics.

John Penney has been flying his senior pilot international schedule with United and continues working for potential Rare Bear sponsorship and other projects.

Ray Din was in the L.A. area last week end, and we loaded his pick-up and a rental trailer with about 3,000pounds of old cylinders, pistons, other engine parts and materials for hauling to the Reno hangar. We can pick some of the best cylinders and other parts for overhaul, repair and possible future use. Ray is our main do-it-all, get-it-done, nothing-is-impossible crewman – with the singing voice! No other racing team has a multi-talented guy like Ray!

Recently, Chief Engineer Bill Hickle (since 1969) and I have spent a lot of time discussing modification possibilities to go faster in the future. Bill and I have had an on-going discussion for 35 years and I am sure we will keep it going for a while longer. We will talk to other engineering people about making the Bear ‘go’ with the least dollar-cost per mile-per-hour speed. This is a cost per mile number we have excelled at for most years of our racing since the early 60’s.

We will need to continue to work on sponsorship revenue from our FanSponsors and others. We need sponsorship for the hangar at Reno, for example, as I personally can no longer pay it. Want to be a number of the "Hangar Gang" to raise $9,000 per year to pay the Reno hangar costs?

Thanks to all for a successful 2003. We will plan to do better this year.

Fly fast!

Lyle Shelton