WINDSOR, Ontario – Yoshi Muroya of Japan was forced to find a replacement airplane for the Red Bull Air Race in Windsor after his Edge 540 suffered slight damage when the canopy came unlatched on its first test flight at the Race Airport shortly after being reassembled, Race Director Drew Searle said on Thursday.
“The canopy came off in the test flying area, got caught in the wind flow and went back and hit the tail,” Searle said. “It landed on the grass in the test flying area. It’s a specific test flying area. It was the first flight and it was the ‘shake down’ test, what we call the ‘post-assembly check flight’. It fell harmlessly to the ground. It’s not cool but the system worked. It’s no big deal. We’ve had a canopy unlock before in Interlaken.”
Muroya’s team was unable to repair the damage on the horizontal stabilizer in time for Thursday’s training session. They decided to borrow the Edge 540 that Hannes Arch used during the 2009 season. They traveled to Oklahoma to pick it up.
The team was racing the clock to be back in Windsor in time to complete a technical inspection needed to be eligible to take part in the race. Muroya said in a telephone interview he would be back in Windsor in time for Friday’s training session. He will need to complete at least one of Friday’s two scheduled training sessions to be able to take part in Saturday’s Qualifying.
“I will be in Windsor tomorrow,” Muroya said. “The canopy just came off — it unlatched somehow and was gone,” Muroya said, adding he was not hurt.
American Kirby Chambliss’s latch had opened at the very start of a training run in Interlaken, Switzerland in 2007. He said he had just taken off and was still flying at a relatively slow speed so he was able to land again without any damage being caused. “Mine opened at slow speed — I had just taken off,” Chambliss said. “I kept going slow and didn’t lose my canopy.
Muroya has been plagued by misfortune in Windsor. Last year he hit a pylon during training that caused some damage to a wing’s surface and was not able to race.
