Runway Denial Weapons Mark 2: No Fly Zone Arizona October 2016

Long-time readers might remember that I took my R35 to a half-mile runway event last year called No Fly Zone in nearby Gila Bend, Arizona. I wrote about it in this post and shared the following silly video:

Straight line events aren't really my thing, at least as a participant, so this year instead of running my car I rounded up several of my friends to just spectate. At ten bucks a head it's not a bad way to spend a morning if you're a car nut so early on Saturday we all gathered up at a local McDonald's for some breakfast before heading out to Gila Bend.

Going to No Fly Zone would also be a great chance to get some more photography practice especially to try out panning shots which I hadn't had a chance to do before. I had my gear all packed up and just after 9 am we lined up at the gate for Gila Bend Municipal Airport to get in. Incidentally, if you're curious, nothing much has changed in the small town of Gila Bend since I talked about it last year except now the welcome sign doesn't just talk about the 1700 residents and 5 old crabs - instead it now proudly proclaims that solar panels outnumber the people. No clarification there on whether that includes the crabs.

This year's event certainly seemed to be even more crowded than last year's. I don't know if they added to the car counts they allowed but there were certainly a lot more spectators lining the viewing area than I remembered from last year. Participating cars ran the gamut similar to last year with a lot of muscle cars, Corvettes, a few exotics, and seemingly every bloody R35 in Phoenix plus a few oddballs. Notably there seemed to be a big upsurge in Cadillacs being run with a lot of them putting out very serious numbers.

Yeah, I don't believe for a second that CTS-V coupe is just running eight horsepower - eight hundred maybe what with needing those fat drag tires.



The setup was the same as last year. Line up in pairs or solo depending on how things play out, start out slow up to about 50ish mph, then try to shove the loud pedal through the floor once you hit the line. 

The first runs were affected by heavy dust on the runway - to be expected on a rarely used airstrip in the middle of the Arizona desert. That didn't stop several cars from starting things off with 140 to 150mph runs.

There was a Ferrari there but it didn't run so the line has to be changed to "More than you can afford, pal. Lamborghini!" Didn't see any Paul Walker lookalikes either.

Here we have the aforementioned Ferrari. A beautiful black 488 in its natural habitat - hardparked and trying it's damnedest not to burst into flames.

The 488 was kept from being lonely by this also-pretty Mclaren MP4-12C Spyder. Neither self-immolated thankfully.

This gorgeous white Huracan did wade into battle though and it was a sight to see!

 Another exotic that wasn't afraid to mix it up a little with the commons was this stylish Aston Martin Vantage. Not my personal favorite DB9 but still very pretty!

This Ford GT also went out but sadly stopped after just a few runs and went straight back onto a trailer.

A lone R8 and a bunch of Porsches rounded out the gaggle of exotics.

This is a GT-R blog though so let's see some GT-Rs. This Nismo was no less rare than the European stuff, and just as fast. But other cars were much faster!

I've shown a photo of this Yuma-based R35 before when it was at our local Cars and Coffee. It's running about 1200hp so it was easily trapping in the 170s.

The real monsters were a pair of Alpha 12x cars tuned by Joe Bach from Phoenix. They were both running 1500hp Streetsweeper packages and easily going over 180 mph. Check out the gorgeous AMS carbon fiber-and-billet intake manifold on the white one!

 That's Joe seated behind this blue R35 - nice guy and a great mechanic. We chatted about my car for a bit and I'll probably hit him up for a Flexfuel setup in the future.

Oh yeah, Joe also had this other customer there with a stripped-out 1500hp drag beast complete with parachute, small fuel cell, and straight dump pipes. Bonus cool points for being owned by a super-thin Arab dude that looked like a slight breeze would bowl him over. It didn't get a good run in because it had trouble getting all that power down but it still gets two thumbs up and a snap from me for sheer awesomesauce.

Another of Joe's creations. This one was "only" running Alpha 12s instead of the newer 12x setup.

A lot of other R35s ran of all types of appearance and levels of tune.

It wasn't that huge an exaggeration when I said it seemed every R35 in Phoenix was there. Scottsdale Vault even had Nismo R32 #551 sitting at its tent - my friend Dana's old car.

 And hiding out back was this R33 GTS-t. Montana-plated of course lol.

Even more of an odd sight was this forlorn R32 GTS-t that was asking for anyone to make an offer on it. We joked about pooling together some coins and pocket lint but it wasn't to be.

Speaking of odd sights, I had to snap a pic of this GMC pickup that was in the paddock. You don't see purple anodized intake trumpets drilled through a pickup headlight every day.

Also flying the Nissan flag high was this nice Nismo 370Z. Unfortunately I didn't get a good pic of it going down the runway.

Several other imports had a go, mostly a small group of Imprezas and this lone FR-S with a turbo and Rocket Bunny kit.

Domestics were of course plentiful with a predictably huge gathering of Corvettes and pony cars.

As I mentioned earlier Cadillac seems to have had a surge in popularity. No surprise with them shoving boosted V6s and V8s in everything in their lineup. Not bad Caddy, not bad.

A few more "vintage" domestics were scattered around the paddock. Love the plate on the Camaro.

Did somebody say "vintage"? This awesome rat rod may have looked heavily patina'd but it still got up to 103 in the half-mile. I'm sure that must have felt like Ludicrous Speed in that open cockpit.

If the rat rod must have felt like ludicrous speed then this Ariel Atom must have been "going plaid" while it was on its way to a 130mph trap.

BMW was also well-represented with a variety of 3 series cars there. The black M3 looked particularly tasty on what I believe are SSR GTV03s.

You know I love GT cars though so this M6 was my favorite Beemer of the day. 

There were a lot fewer of the other German marques at No Fly Zone but Audi and Mercedes still had some representation.

Sadly the Gila Bend FD fire truck didn't give us the run we wanted :(

Normally I'd cap things off with one last Nissan but this time I'll end with shots of some two-wheeled beauties. Unfortunately the bikes weren't set to run until the following day but they were still very pretty sitting in the paddock under a tent. Had a hard time walking after seeing that sexy F4RR.

And that raps up my No Fly Zone Arizona photodump for this year. It was still hot that day here in southwest Arizona so we packed up early at around 130ish. Omega Motorsports will probably be back in February when the weather will be nice and cool so hopefully I can bring you another round of photos then!