Last evening my Civil Air Patrol squadron had its weekly meeting. As the aerospace education officer it was my night to have the program. The plan had been to work on astronomy and celestial navigation, but it being Northeast Ohio the weather didn't cooperate, as usual. Luckily I had a back up lesson - air racing.
Air racing played an important roll in the development of the air plane, and since we are close to Cleveland, air racing is a part of our local history too. Naturally I thought a game would be a good addition to the lecture. Luckily I have a copy of Golden Age Air Racing by Dave Schueler from from the Air-Pirates Yahoo group. I had an idea that I would be using the game for a class in the future, but two weeks ago having realized that it would be a full moon and March, I had better have a fall back lesson ready.
So I raced to JoAnn Fabrics for a piece of green canvas for a play mat, slapped some paint on for background and used my 4" hex template for spaces. I found some paper pylon patterns and a Bendix tower at Fiddler's Green. The bleachers I modified from a paper model for slot car racing (I thought more era appropriate advertiser signs would look better). The stands for the planes are 2" hex tiles from Lowe's turned upside down for texture and painted with acrylics. The planes I designed from various 1930's air racer schematics I found and made them into approximately 1/144 scale 2.5D paper models. I also designed record sheets that would allow my cadets to learn the game quicker.
A big help and inspiration was from Kevin Smyth's Air Racing at Enfilade article on his A Gamer's Tale blog. He was also very helpful in answering my questions I had about his game.It was a success. With the wind and snow pelting the hanger it was a fun evening of racing planes and learning about the history of air racing (I like to teach as the game is progressing.) I even had airplane trophies I had found at Oriental Trading Company that I relabeled for the winners.
