I grew up knowing Dr. Richard Tracy, he was part of the engineering staff on our World Record holding raceplane Rare Bear. Among many other items he designed and built the wingtips on the clipped wings.
Being based at Stead was perfect for his love of fast planes. I think Rare Bear still holds a couple records. I haven't seen he and Ursula in years. Last time I saw him he was working on hypersonic stuff for .gov. Very talented, I'm sure his little composite Formula plane would have been competitive but he couldn't get any high angle CA joints to run the rear prop.
The NAA has since changed the sporting rules allowing among other things GPS verification of the record runs. This makes the record runs much easier to verify for speed in a straight line, for example the 3Km record (1.864 mile) at the time August of 1989 my Dad had to fly the airplane with a 1Km entry area go through the 3Km course, exit the 3Km course without breaking out of the 1Km distance on the other end turn the airplane around without gaining more than 500' altitude, re-enter the 3Km section continue through to the other side of the course in the opposite direction once again turn around without gaining more than 500' altitude until 4 consecutive passes were made. The speeds on these passes were verified by flying over a narrow window that equated to synchronized cameras that were timing devices that had to have the film developed before the record could be confirmed. During the record runs the altitude through the 3Km course could not vary more than 300' from entry to exit of the 3Km section of the course. So back then if you went fast enough, but couldn't get through the narrow "frame" of the camera it didn't matter the record runs could not be confirmed. My Dad said that it was the hardest flying he had ever done. Due to the rule changes his record was retired, in addition to the 3Km record his time to climb record was retired as well from a standing start to 10,000 feet in 91.9 seconds.
The weight classes were changed as well a couple of years ago Steve Hinton in Voodoo exceeded the speed that my Dad had set in 1989 by the new rules. However if it were apples to apples he would not have the record because he did not exceed the required 1% increase in the speed. I am very happy for Stevo as he is a good friend and I designed the brackets for changing the wing angle for them. So technically Rare Bear holds the retired record under the old rules, while Stevo and Voodoo hold the record under the new rules.
It's all about going fast in an unlimited machine.
John