Saturday didn't happen. Rain in the morning and a lousy forecast meant that we called off the trip to Bruntingthorpe. Just can't run in the wet!
Pending clearance from the track, we'll try again at Shakespeare County Raceway in two weeks' time. 12th & 13th June.
Sunday, 30 May 2010
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
The Next Few Weeks
This coming Saturday, 29th May, we're puuting the car on display as part of the Rushden Power Fest, organised by Santa Pod Raceway. We're taking the opportunity to show our neighbours in the town waht has been built and engineered right here. Should be interesting...
On the 29th, we're off to Bruntingthorpe, a large active airstrip in Leicestershire, for a four-rocket running test. The runway is two miles long and very very wide, so it's a relatively safe environment for checking out handling and stopping. We'll be running bio-fuel rockets, not kerosene, as we really don't want all of that power for this test.
We have a few new team members, our fuelling supremo, David Rose can't make it, so we'll be going slow and steady to avoid any possible errors. The chillers are up and runnning. So, if it's a hot day, we should be able to keep the temperatures in the car well down into the safety zone.
Dave Burditt, from Datron Technology, is comiing up middle of next week, to install GPS and other data recording equipment. For the first time we'll be able to collect hard data on exactly what the car and rockets are doing in the real world.
Nerves are already starting to jangle... so slow and steady is the order of the day.
On the 29th, we're off to Bruntingthorpe, a large active airstrip in Leicestershire, for a four-rocket running test. The runway is two miles long and very very wide, so it's a relatively safe environment for checking out handling and stopping. We'll be running bio-fuel rockets, not kerosene, as we really don't want all of that power for this test.
We have a few new team members, our fuelling supremo, David Rose can't make it, so we'll be going slow and steady to avoid any possible errors. The chillers are up and runnning. So, if it's a hot day, we should be able to keep the temperatures in the car well down into the safety zone.
Dave Burditt, from Datron Technology, is comiing up middle of next week, to install GPS and other data recording equipment. For the first time we'll be able to collect hard data on exactly what the car and rockets are doing in the real world.
Nerves are already starting to jangle... so slow and steady is the order of the day.
Sunday, 2 May 2010
David has been a very busy boy. We've wanted to put brakes on the front for a while, and now it's been done. Putting brakes on wheels that were not designed for brakes is no easy matter. We've put on quite small twin, opposed-pot motorcycle brakes. The front tyres are too skinny for anything more. They will help with stopping and especially holding the car still when the rockets first fire up.
We've added a big chiller unit to the transporter, so now we can chill both the gases and the car itself. The colder it all is the better it runs and the safer the operation is.
We've also added more ballistic protection around the throttle area and under my backside.
That's just about all the jobs we wanted to get done before we take her out for a full four-rocket burn. As this is being written, we're trying to organise a date and location to be able to have the best crew available for a a private test,
We haven't yet decided which fuel combination we are going to run. The kerosene rocket has so much power, we may have to work up to running four of those.
So, sometime, in the next month, we'll see what she can really do!!
Fingers and toes crossed!
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