By Skies Magazine | August 5, 2013 Estimated reading time 2 minutes, 10 seconds.
Calgary, Alberta native Marty Abbott took top honours at the 2013 EAA AirVenture Cup on July 29 with his homebuilt turbine Legend, C-GUTT.
Abbott, an ex-Royal Canadian Air Force CF-104 pilot, outperformed 47 other competitors to win the cross-country race, now in its 16th year. With an average speed of 354.3 miles per hour over the course, Abbott far outpaced the second-place winner in the Turbine class (Rene Dugas, flying turbine Legend N95007 with an average speed of 307.36 mph) as well as the first-place winner in the Unlimited class (Lee Behel, flying GP-5 N501GP with an average speed of 324.9 mph).
The AirVenture Cup is the traditional kick-off for the aviation celebration EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, although the race was delayed for a day this year due to weather. According to Abbott, when competitors finally took to the skies, they still had to contend with headwinds of up to 70 knots, which were responsible for the lower average speeds this year compared to previous years’ races.
Abbott said that his Legend — built with Innovation Wings of Springbank, Alberta, and powered by a 1,200-horsepower Garrett Dash 10 engine — cruises at 370 knots true airspeed and climbs at 10,000 feet per minute, outperforming any World War II fighter, including the North American Aviation P-51 Mustang. With the exception of the Russian Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear,” it is the fastest turboprop aircraft in the world.
The 2013 race was Abbott’s third AirVenture Cup. In the 2010 race, he became the first AirVenture Cup racer to eclipse the 400 mph barrier in average speed, recording an average speed over the course of 401.09 mph in his Legend.
