September, for me and for almost as long as I can remember, meant one thing more than any other. It could be summed up in a single, unambiguous, near-magical word:

Reno!

As in the National Championship Air Races held there for a span of sixty-one years, concluding in 2024. Likely having had it raised in my consciousness by dirty, dog-eared issues of Air Progress or maybe FLYING when I was a kid, Reno was a shimmery desert vision haunting me starting way back then. It still does, in a way.

You mean there is somewhere they actually race planes around pylons? I would have likely asked Dad. I suspect he may not have known much more than I did, but having inherited fifty percent of my avgeek genes from him — the rest of them from my mother,2 of course — good old Dad was quick to be engaged by the idea. Back then, though, we were living in Montréal, which seemed like infinity, and beyond, from The Biggest Little City in the World.

As the years rolled by and the family home was relocated to Vancouver — and I also discovered my California relatives had a place at Lake Almanor, which is just two hours from Reno on US 395 — the dream of watching the thundering Unlimited class racers chase each other down the Valley of Speed was crystallising into reality seemingly by the minute.

But Septembers in school years were not a time to be flitting off to gorgeous Northern California and nearby Nevada. Once the school years went out with a whimper, September was still a busy time. Besides, by then, Mum and Dad had a standing flyfishing date at the Metolius in Central Oregon. Having finally gotten rid of me, the last of their kids, some well-earned time for just the two of them was something for which they had been waiting many years and they were going to make the best of it.

In the early nineties, Dad’s ticker started to fail and as the prospect of quadruple bypass surgery loomed, I had the fleeting good sense to say to him Pa, how about this year you and I hit the Reno Air Races? What I didn’t say to him was I was thinking there was a good chance if we didn’t go in ‘93 we may never — in the most permanent sense of the word — get a chance to go.

In September of that year, we did. Mum came, too, but only as far as Almanor to spend time with her beloved sister Marie and her equally beloved husband Gene. Gosh, I miss the two of them, too. They were all at their best back then.

On the Friday morning of the races, Dad and I were on the road before the California dawn so we wouldn’t miss a second of the event. It turned out to be everything Dad and I had imagined it would be and so much more.

What I didn’t realise at the time was Reno was as much of an airshow as it was a race. Cool, I was always up for an airshow, which was outstanding even by today’s standards. In particular, I remember the exceedingly warm welcome the Royal Canadian Air Force Snowbirds received. The Snowbirds were already flying impossibly tight formations which entranced the primarily American audience. Their signature lag back cross manoeuvre drew audible gasps and the occasional scream from the crowd. The Snowbirds were, and still are, amazing ambassadors for those of us hailing from Upper Canuckia.

This was also in the relatively short window — about a decade — when Delmar Benjamin was flying the note-perfect replica of the Gee Bee R-2 he built with Steve Wolff. The original 1932 Gee Bee had a reputation for being difficult and dangerous to fly. Del was having none of that: he tossed the elegant R-2 around the airshow box like a Citabria on a Sunday afternoon. His inverted passes right on the deck made spectators fear for his life, his sanity, or both.

However, the unmatched and unquestioned stars of the show were the Unlimiteds, of course. In particular, I remember the first lap of Bill ‘Tiger’ Destefani’s Strega, an almost unrecognisably hopped-up P-51, as it came over the crowd side of the course. The vivid memory I have is that it was so fast, and so low, Strega was virtually silent until it was overhead, at which point the glorious Rolls-Royce Merlin howling symphony, tweaked up an octave, was unleashed everywhere, all at once.

Contrasted with Strega was Dennis Sanders' Dreadnought, a more modestly modified Hawker Sea Fury. If Destefani's aircraft was a stiletto stabbing its way through the rarified Reno skies, then Dreadnought was much more of a blunt instrument, which announced its arrival with a kind of thump you felt in your chest.

In what amounted to the only disappointment of the entire weekend, Rare Bear, an F8F Bearcat in name and lineage only, and an even blunter instrument, while reportedly at the airport remained mysteriously curtained off from curious spectators. It never flew that race weekend of ‘93.

To that point I had always wondered, at the great opera houses around the world, why grown men would weep openly when Pavarotti sang. I guess it makes me an incurable avgeek, or maybe just hopelessly sentimental, but the sound of old planes with big engines going flat out in the Nevada desert had the equivalent effect on me. It’s a mystery I can’t unravel, nor do I want to. But weep, I did. I still do, even at the mere memory.

So Dad and I did make it to Reno before it was too late. In fact, we went back again in ’95 but, sadly, you can only hear Strega and Dreadnought for the first time but once. In fact, and to my delight, Dad lived another twenty-three years beyond that. Important years where he was able to look after my mother, as she looked after him, as they both aged to see their children and grandchildren grow and flourish.

I went back to Reno one more time, with my wife Michelle this time, in 2001. I wanted her to hear Strega and Dreadnought streak over the crowd for the first time, too. Alas, this was mere days after the time that would eventually be known as 9/11. Reno was a very strange affair in a very strange time. The entire place was set up for an event that never actually happened.

We eventually made for Elko on I-80, and while the roads were empty and the Nevada desert was stunning in rose-coloured, late-summer, crystal light on this particular evening, I had no idea that as the Reno Air Races faded away in the rearview mirror, it would be forever. I’m glad I didn’t know. I’m terrible at goodbyes.

Ultimately, though, it’s a story with a happy ending. While I have a hangarful of regrets about not doing enough for my parents in their dotage, missing out on Reno with my Dad is, thankfully, not one of them.

Having built up a track record of nearly 4,000 Bluesky posts over a period approaching two years — not to mention the hundreds more from our Trusted Contributors3 — BluFly is finally at the point where some bespoke, aviation-specific Custom Feeds are in order. Each time BluFly accumulated an Emojitagged4 post, a little bit of capital was going in the bank for a day — well — like today as it turns out.

Before these new feeds are rolled out, if you’re unfamiliar with Custom Feeds, a quick catch-up: they’re like spreadsheet filters where you can specify various criteria that must be satisfied in order for a row to appear while all others are hidden. Or, if database terminology is more familiar to you, they are like SQL queries for social posts.

For example, since BluFly’s inception, it has had a single, ‘double curated’ Custom Feed consisting of only those Bluesky posts from our Trusted Contributors (that BluFly maintains, ie. the first curation) along with the 🛩️ Emojitag (that the Trusted Contributor optionally includes, ie. the second curation). It’s the superset from which all of our other Custom Feeds are based.

Given an illustration is worth a thousand words, without further ado, check out the unimaginatively named BluFly 🛩️ Custom Feed, if you haven’t done so already.

Here’s where it gets interesting: if you’re only interested in military aviation, here’s the BluFly 🛩️ Military feed. It’s everything in the superset above, except it’s also filtered for only posts that also include the ⚔️ (crossed swords) Emojitag. The logical opposite of this is the BluFly 🛩️ Civil feed, which excludes posts if they have the ⚔️ Emojitag.

For something completely different and because I really like gliders and other kinds of motorless flight, here’s the BluFly 🛩️ Motorless feed. It looks for all posts that include the 🪽 (white wing) Emojitag and, incidentally, doesn’t care one way or the other about the ⚔️. It’s the feed I use to obtain a moment of motorless zen amidst all the sturm und drang constantly surrounding us all these days.

Keep in mind that there’s no magic to any of the above. We are absolutely not using artificial intelligence (AI) to determine what to include or exclude in these feeds. Therefore, if an Emojitag is either left out or inadvertently included in a given post, the Custom Feeds dependent on these Emojitags will simply continue to do what they were told in the first place. If an occassional post is ‘misfiled’ as a result, it’s a miniscule price to pay for keeping ‘humans-in-the-loop’ and AI entirely out of it.

Also, don’t think you need to wait for BluFly to come up with even more of these types of feeds — even though we do have interesting plans in this regard. Create your own with a tool like SkyFeed, as BluFly does, and aided by the list of Emojitags. The code associated with the feeds above is all open source, so you can start with it if you like. Custom Feeds are one of Bluesky’s most important features — I’m constantly left wondering why the folks behind the scrappy little social platform don’t talk about them more.

Finally, please don’t forget to like and pin any and all of the BluFly feeds above, and/or bookmark them with your browser. It’s the best way for them to get noticed and continue to build a rich resource of aviation goodness for all to enjoy.

Last month, I lamented the constantly dwindling engagement on the Bluesky platform. Through squinty eyes, it’s possible for me to see this worrisome trend might have bottomed out and things have improved a little recently. Hopefully, this trend continues. My fingers are crossed, and if I can get you to cross yours, too, that would be great.

That said, the never-ending search for additional channels to help get the word out about BluFly continues. When I was thinking about this recently, and as I browsed through the latest mailings from the beautifully executed Creme de la Crumb mailing list from Tiffany Azure, the slightly too frequent Lee Valley emails — where do they find all this cool stuff? — and the edgy and fun weekly one from Fiasco Design, as examples, I began to think a mailing list might be something worth considering.

The common thread for these I mention, and a ton more to which I subscribe, is the varying amounts of delight associated with their arrival. I look forward to them and tend to stop what I’m doing for a brief moment to see what Tiffany is cooking up today, for instance. They’re quick and easy to consume on virtually any kind of platform to which they’re pushed.

On the negative side, there are some real abominations out there which, in the spirit of fair play and maintaining positivity, I shall not name. But I suspect they know who they are and must not care, I guess. I usually maintain my subscription for a while just to see if their mailings are always consistently terrible and learn what I can about what not to do. Once I’ve had enough of that, Apple Mail makes unsubscribing a single-click affair.

I think if BluFly can even come close to the level of excellence and execution of Creme, Lee Valley or Fiasco, launching one of its own is something that should be considered. But, to some degree, it depends on you as much as it depends on me. What do you think? Is a BluFly mailing list something you would value?

If you would value the regular arrival of future BluFly emails, what would it include to result in the aforementioned ‘delight’, and not dismay, when it arrives? Would it be instead of, or addition to, following BluFly on social? Also, importantly, how often would you like to receive it? I’d love to hear from you on any of these subjects or others, either good, bad, or indifferent.

Effective immediately, you’ll notice our profile banner simply says « BluFly 🛩️ » as opposed to the heretofore « BluFly 🛩️ Media » which was rolled out back in March, 20255 edition in this column which, coincidentally, also talked quite a bit about Custom Feeds.

Suffice it to say nothing has actually changed other than the name. It’s simply what the kids like to call focusing the brand a little — streamlining it, you might say. In my fertile and hopelessly optimistic imagination, I think of our audience saying I saw it on BluFly 🛩️ wherein the word « Media » doesn’t really add very much. It was just something to trip over and confuse readers.

At the time I felt it was important to create a tangible distinction between the organization behind BluFly and the Custom Feed of almost the same name. Turns out it wasn’t important at all, but for probably not a very good reason: Bluesky users think so little about Custom Feeds there was really nothing about which to get confused.

Of course, I’d like to think you’ll be justifiably thinking more about Custom Feeds with the rollout BluFly 🛩️ Military, BluFly 🛩️ Civil and BluFly 🛩️ Motorless, as above, but only time will tell if this is actually the case.

Do you have your own Reno recollection you’d like to share? If so, I would love to hear it as would many other readers as well. Or some other event in your life with an aviation angle that stirs up some vivid memories? If so, why not consider writing it down and BluFly will help get it published then get the word out about it. Or something else aviation-related on your mind? I'd love to hear from you.6 For the time being, thank you so much for reading and also for engaging with BluFly’s posts on Bluesky and LinkedIn.7

Until next time, as always … fair winds and blue skies.

Terence C. Gannon
Managing Editor

This is what we managed to put together for you for September, with most recent at the top:

Note that the embedded posts above are from the Bluesky 🛩️ Custom Feed 8 which is the reference feed for BluFly.