by : Naomi West

Great! Once again, I’m lost in the middle of farmland. Whenever I leave the city, I’m lost – even with explicit directions. Everywhere I look, there are cattle, horse, sheep and lama ranches; acres and acres of potato, beet and hay farms. But the great thing about an agricultural basin is that there are always Ag pilots. Whenever there are Ag pilots, there is bound to be a racer! And that’s what I’m looking for today.

My first clue came just south of the California border, when we finally came across a windsock near a big open field. The second clue was quite obvious, under a classic weathervane, a sign that reads: "Macy’s Flying Service". I knew we finally had reached our destination.

Climbing out of the car and looking around, it seemed ominously quiet but then again, it was the end of October and most of the crops were done for the year. As we came around the side of the building, there was a row of hangers filled with private airplanes and 4 or 5 Ag planes parked in a row on the ramp, but no AT-6 racer!

We asked the first person we saw as to where our subject was and she lead us right to his office. Inside, standing tall, a quiet man with a firm handshake, a beaming smile and a curious sparkle in his eyes. Here was the two-time Reno National Championship AT-6 Class winner...

...Mr. Nick Macy, of Race #6, "Six-Cat"

The son of a B-24 instructor in WWII, Macy grew up in Tulelake, California, flying Ag planes with his father from the tender age of 10 or 12. Nick first soloed when he was just16 years old and has gone on to accumulate many thousands of hours flying spray planes for his family’s business.

Moving to Air Racing from the thrills that Agricultural spray operations can offer doesn’t seem too much of a stretch but we wondered how he got hooked on racing?

Macy told us of an interesting twist in his flying career that explained it all. "I got my pilot's license when I was 18. I went the University of Nevada in Reno, so I did all my flying affiliated with the college there. The flight school was in same hanger as Lear – Bill Lear and his operation – he actually had the flying school and contracted it out… and had a contract with the university... So I was always at Reno, I would always go to out to the Air Races and I was there all the time, so that’s how that kind of got started"

Nick’s introduction to Air Racing was much earlier however. "My Dad actually took me out to the Air Races when I was like 10 or 12 years old and I fell in love with it. I always wanted to do that."

As we mentioned at the beginning of this story, the Klamath Valley, (Nick’s home town of Tulelake, CA, is at the southern end of this valley) is a rich agricultural area. Those of you familiar with Air Racing history, undoubtedly remember the Late Bob Yancy, who was also an Ag pilot, doing his flying out of nearby, Klamath Falls, Oregon.

"Yancy actually got me going." Thinking of his old friend brought a smile to Nick’s face as he continued, "Bob kept saying ‘come on, come on – let’s go, let’s go to Reno!’... Everybody was so excited when we got down there and Bob’s Corsair was such a crowd pleaser. And [later] when Bob sold the Corsair and had his Yak"

At this point in his aviation career, Macy had a stock T-6, painted bright yellow. Finally, bitten by the bug to go racing, he took the airplane to Reno and gave it a try.

"I went down in 1986 and basically, what we did was [just] slapped a number 6 on the airplane… I just went down to see if I could pilot it through qualifications basically was what that year was. I made it through the qualification period and from there it’s been an adventure… It’s been a real adventure for me."

We wanted to know more about the 1986 "Six-Cat." Nick’s beautiful, black T-6 that won the last two years at Reno is certainly not your basic "stock" T-6! We asked Nick if "Six-Cat" was the same airplane he’d begun with.

"Yes, same plane." Adding, "we brought the airplane back and started tearing it down... repainted it." Smiling again, Macy elaborated on the evolution of his racer, "it was basically a real bright yellow and white. We painted it black… 87 was the first year it was black and we took fourth in the Silver... and then we just kept working on the airplane."

Nick has obviously come a long way from that first year racing at Reno, as our conversation with this two time winner continued, Macy talked about what it feels like to get to the top. "When I first started, I just thought ‘geesh, if I could just stay in the Bronze or Silver... you know, that’s probably where I’ll end up at… and then we started getting up towards the Gold race, I never thought we’d get that far.."

Nick’s climb to the top has not been an overnight success story. His record at Reno shows a 13 year effort before his first win, Macy explained to us that it’s all about constant improvement. "Each year, everybody is in they’re own realm, working on their airplane. And then you get left behind if you don’t try to improve what you are doing. If you think you’re really fast and everybody starts catching up with you, you have to continue to try and improve yourself."

Honing the airplanes year after year becomes increasingly difficult, as Macy explains, "We’re at the point now with our airplane that we can’t afford too much more on the engine, so now its back to the aerodynamics and back to the finer points; of making sure the weight balance is correct, and we’re down to really small items but it all adds up in this class…"

AT-6 racing is the most restricted class in the National Championships. All airplanes must be stock and some modifications can result in disqualification. This is a class that really tests a pilot’s skills and the finesse of the crew, not the size of the engine. The rules for AT-6 racing make for some of the closest competition seen at Reno, yet this class has some of the closest camaraderie of any group racing there.

Macy confirms this with his comments:

"I get down there early and I’m talking to Bob Jones ( Race #8, "Crossings Aviation") this year and it’s his 20^th year, and we all showed up on the same day…and ya know, he didn’t have to come and neither did I and he’s like, 'What are you doin here?' – and I said "what are you doin here?' – and he says 'I can’t not come,' and I said, 'I came down here to enjoy the whole week,' so we go to the briefing every morning and start getting into a routine…

...like it’s a habit, you wait a whole year for it to come and you don’t want to miss any part of it."

Macy also told us about all the children running around at Reno. He has two boys and a daughter all under the age of 10 that love to fly with Dad in his airplane. His wife also accompanies and encourages him to Reno for the races. "It’s like a big family get together with all the kids (from the crews) running around in the pits"

I had to ask whether he would be encouraging when his sons or daughter came to him in 8-10 years, saying that they wanted to be a Racer, like Dad? Macy responded, "Well yes, I’d help them at anything they wanted to do."

When we asked about the crew for "Six-Cat", he told us, "…with the air application business, we have A&P’s here…. [and] the guy that originally started, Bob Stern, our crew chief… We have the rest of the crew we take out of Tule and then we have another crew down in Reno that we all combine together. Those are the guys I went to school with down there in Reno; we kind of mesh them all together.."

Sounded like quite the party to us!

No question, Reno is fun for crews and pilots alike but it is also hours and hours of hard work, Macy acknowledged the contribution by the crews in getting the airplanes race ready at Reno, saying, "You watch the AT-6 guys working on the airplanes, I cross the lines and they are all working on those airplanes at the end of the day. You really have to hand it to them for how much work they do and how much they get out of it. There’s a lot of work involved."

That inspired us to ask if "Six-Cat" had a new engine this year (for R2K) and surprisingly, Macy told us, "No, the engine we had on there has been on there for – this will be the fourth year. It had an overhaul – two overhauls – and we then had a problem with the cylinders and we re-honed three of the cylinders this year – Larry Klassen came down and did a mini-overhaul."

Imagine winning the AT-6 Gold race two years in a row with the same (overworked) engine but Macy calmly assured us, "yeah, but we take a real hard look at it every year…when we get it back, the first thing we do when we get it back from Reno is to do a complete check; compression check all the cylinders; look for oil; make sure there’s no metal and things like that. If we deem necessary we’ll take it off. But Larry Klassen is actually our engine guy – from about 1997 on – and what he says pretty much goes."

Nick continued, explaining the important relationship between the race pilot and his crew. Stressing his very high regard for his engine man, Larry Klassen, Macy related an incident where a problem with the airplane was causing him concern.. "We had some oil [problems] and we pretty much had it narrowed down -

He (Klassen) said, ‘we got a pretty nice runway here and you can handle the airplane, so concentrate on racing, and don’t worry about it.’ When you’ve got someone like Larry telling you that, it makes you calmer and makes you a little more confident in what you’re doing."

Back to pilot stuff! We were curious about what it’s like in the cockpit; are there any air-cooling or ventilation systems? Macy told us, "We don’t want any air moving in there, because if air leaks in, you get parasitic drag and so you should caulk it up; there shouldn’t be any air moving. When you close that glass and the sun beats down and it’s 90 degrees outside, it gets pretty hot!" He continued with, "..by the end of the race, you can really feel the heat coming through the firewall, because you’re sitting right behind it."

We commented that with all that heat in the cockpit, we notice that Nick is one of the pilots in the T-6 Class who always wears a helmet.

Macy responded: "Even in the air, when we hit severe turbulence, and you bang your head on the glass…I think the safety end is well worth what you get out of it."

We noted earlier that the AT-6 class provides some of the closest competition at Reno. This year, the "T-6’ers" had extremely close qualifying times, less than one second apart for the top 4 contenders at R2K.

Author’s Note:

Race 47, "Frostbite" Jack Frost Qual Time = 76.20

Race 6, "Six-Cat" Nick Macy Qual Time = 77.36

Race 21, "Mystical Power" Tom Campau Qual Time = 77.80

We asked Macy about the competition this year and immediately, he mentioned Tom Campau, pilot of Race #21, Mystical Power.

"That airplane has always been fast…and he was right there, not that far away from us and actually, Jack (Jack Frost, pilot of Race 47, "Frostbite") was faster then we are but he was not that far away either. That’s one thing about down there that makes it so exciting, we are all so close. Because qualifying is very important for our class, we are always trying get the best day the best [qualifying] period.. and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. "

Interestingly enough, when we talked about how perfect the AT-6 starts are, and how close they race – almost like formation racing – the topic of camaraderie comes up again.

According to Macy, "That’s the one thing that’s so nice... I mean, everybody does a good job, and the camaraderie that you get – everybody’s a good pilot and it makes it a bit more comfortable, because you know you can trust the people that you are flying with. They wouldn’t be out there if they weren’t good pilots in the first place. They all do a good job."

It’s no surprise that Macy is so highly respected and is known as "genuinely" one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet in air racing!

We talked about Steve Dilda, president of the AT-6 class, and possibly the hardest working man for the class. Macy gave us the big smile and said " Yeah, he does a really great job, and I think that you get in to it – and guys, you get into a certain amount of politics that goes on because of the competitiveness between people – and Steve does a such a good job of overhearing that and picking through that...plus the fact he’s interfacing with Reno and all that that goes on...I don’t think those guys get enough credit for what they put out for…they don’t get enough thanks for letting us go out and be the glory hogs, is what it comes down to."

Macy added that, "He (Dilda) doesn’t get any recognition out if it, but he’s really the guy that we rely on. If we don’t get good starts, then everything is screwed up. He’s also the guy there, that if you have a problem, then all you have to do is call him and he’s there to help you out and he’s a good pilot. So that takes a lot of pressure off you."

(Author's Note: Steve is also the voice on the radio that lines up the AT-6 starts. If you haven’t ever listened to the pilot chatter of an AT-6 start, you are really missing out. One has to wonder if Steve Dilda wasn’t an auctioneer in a previous lifetime. Steve has also been one of the key players in gaining more attention for the AT-6 class by enlisting Mark Johnston [Official website of the Reno Air Race Association webmaster] to update and retool the AT-6 website for the Internet at http://www.racingt-6.org)

We talked more about the AT-6 Class and the changes throughout the years. Macy told us, "The most exciting thing about that is, Reno is growing and when I first started – we didn’t know exactly when our slot was in a race and I know one time when we launched, we launched for the next start and Bob Hoover had the number one and number two acts – we launched before the number one and he thought he was supposed to do all his acts, so we had to fly around till he finished all his acts before we could come down.

We were out there flying around trying to waste time and we didn’t have a minimum fuel requirement then – and I was like the number four guy in the pack – and I was even sweatin’ it! I had my hand on it, because I had minimum fuel – like Bingo fuel in one tank and my race fuel in the other tank and – and I was watching the bingo tank and wondering: 'Gosh, if I run out of fuel in this tank, am I’m gonna have enough fuel to finish the race and everything ?' And that’s when we came up with the 50 gal minimum fuel. Now, it’s so nice when we take off and join up, go out and turn around, and come back in – we all know it’s only a couple of minutes and we could probably get away with less fuel."

After a week of flying one of the fastest T-6 racers in the world, in competition at Reno, we wondered what is the ride back home like?

Macy smiled again and said, "It’s amazing! All week long you’re listening to that tune of 2500 (rpm) and when you hate pullin' the power back, because as soon as you pull the power back, you start wondering if the thing is still running – because you’re always trying to run-up on that other guy. And the worst possible trip is on the way home, because you're running at half-full power settings, and you’re cruising along, and I swear you can almost count the blades going around. That’s how it feels...

...you’re just loping along."

This brings us to the other part of our story, "Macy’s Flying Service." Living in an agricultural community, you quickly become familiar with the sight and sound of the ever busy crop dusting airplanes but what is it like being a "crop duster?"

Even though they are a familiar sight, we were still curious as to what a day in the life of an Ag pilot would be like?

Macy quickly told us, "We’ll fly all day as long as the conditions let us go. We’ll go until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, if we can go that long. Most of the time, we’re going to 12, or 1, or 2 o’clock – that’s about it here – because, we’re like at Reno. When it gets warm, the vortices pick up and the winds start picking up, and we have to worry about drift off. So we get here– the guys and planes get here around 4:30 in the morning – and they pre-flight and get everything ready. Then we move into the office and work on (deciding) which fields we’re going to, and brief everybody on what we're going to do that day. And then they’re sitting in the airplane and we’re working from that point on until we shut off. They are showing on their air hours that they are in the airplane for 6 or 7 hours."

We wondered if the skills developed in Ag flying transfer over, besides just flying close to the ground and the control aspects?

Macy responded, "Yeah, I think that that’s been a big help to me. I’m running the same engine and I think it’s worked both ways. Air racing has helped me with Ag flying because we have 2250 rpm [limit] and don’t go over that. When we get to the Air Races, we do almost exactly opposite; we go past the old redline. We usually run from 2000 to 2100 (manifold pressure at 28-30 inches) in Ag airplanes and redline at 2250. When we are running at Reno we run at 2500 to 2600rpms and we’re trying to boost up as much manifold pressure as we possibly can. You can see the pounding it can take down there so you know – ‘geesh’ – after I’ve raced for 13 years, and when I come back to Ag, I know the airplane/engine is very reliable and you could run it that hard – and if I ever needed a little more rpm – that we could get it out of it, for extra, so it works both ways."

The hot topic in Ag flying lately is with the Turbo props, so we had to ask if Macy’s Flying Service had converted to turbo props as well? Nick answered, "We have one turbo prop (a Thrush, powered by an Allied Signal Garrett w/980 shaft HP). And we’d like to get another one in the near future. But we still have 3 airplanes here that aren’t." He added that, "it’s more consistent, when we get into heavier loads, we have a 500 gal airplane and the other one is a 400, and it’s got almost 500 horsepower more…it’s more consistent to go out in the field and maintain airspeed…because you're really heavy in the morning, and later in the morning it starts to get really hot and your starting out slower…but the turbines stay real consistent all the way through. And when you ferry, you can bump it right on up and push it hard."

Nick’s obvious enthusiasm for the Turbo engine prompted our next question: Would you enjoy seeing a turbo-prop class at Reno? Macy quickly and firmly answered, "No, it’s like the Unlimited Boat races – when they went to turbines – and you hear this whispering thing flying on the water, and you’re just watching speed."

Macy took over the family business in 1985, but as he says, "My mother is still the boss."

When we asked if he still does a lot of Ag flying, he told us, "My Ag flying days – since this last year – are starting to wind down because I’m running the operations now...and we hired on another pilot two years ago...so now I’m kind of phasing out of Ag flying, and hanging on to the Air Racing as best I can."

So Nick Macy – in your future – you don’t see yourself quitting air racing anytime soon?

Macy responded, "Well, I’d hope not. I'd like to keep going on…I take it for what it is. I enjoy it. I’m lucky to be able to do it and have the chance to do it. I’d miss it a whole lot if something happened and I couldn’t do it."

We wondered if he would miss all the Ag flying, and Macy said, "Yeah, you know it’s funny – all the years I got to do a lot of Ag flying – you get into that routine and now that my hours are dwindling away, I’m really starting to miss it, you know. You take it for granted – how you hone yourself out. It’s like Reno. You get into that groove, and it’s sad thing at the end when you have to come home, because you just really start getting to your best."

That prompted us to ask about whether the lack of Ag flying will affect his racing? Macy assured us that it would just allow him more time in "Six-Cat."

So, watch out residents of Tule – you are about to get buzzed!

Special Thanks To:
Neal and Birgitta Nurmi for their help in preparing this article and Nick Macy for taking the time to share with us his experiences in Air Racing.