I never mentioned that I've been in contact with Prof. Joseph Katz for the last year discussing the aerodynamics of my pickup truck. He was interested in my design and what I wanted to achieve with the vehicle. To cut a long story short, Joe put my project to his students and three of them took it on. Aero on a pickup truck is a nightmare and no one has ever written a white paper on the subject so I think this is what interested the parties involved. Based where I am and taking finances into account this gesture by the guys at SDSU was like me winning the lotto. What are the chances that an esteemed Professor (who is a car guy) would even get my email let alone reply?. I got lucky and I believe there is help from above, no!, big input because everything I've touched on this project has turned to gold.
When Joe asked for my permission for his students to go ahead with the project I was shocked. A student called Hoang got in touch with me with a list of dimensions they needed. I cut cardboard profiles of the whole car on all the axis'. This covered the whole truck and luckily I have a fairly large profile gauge that made the task that much easier. I ended up with about 40 profiles and each one was numbered, taped together and explanations attached. It took a long time but I just put my head down and grafted. Eventually I had the package together and put the whole deal into a cardboard tube that originally came with a roll of Carbon fabric. It's a sturdy piece and after it was taped closed and the postal address afixed the wife took it to the Post Office. They wanted 200 bucks in our local currency to get the tube to San Diego. She figures that it's too expensive and she's being ripped off so she brings the thing back home. I lost it completely. Everyone wants to believe that there's harmony and level headedness in a long standing relationship but that's the TV/media version. Things flew, the Jack Russels ran and hid and for a whole day I was on a mission. Eventually we cut the excess fat away from the templates and put them in a lighter tube. The wife promptly goes on her monthly business trip so I now have to go to the post office. The kicker is that I lost 2 days and on the morning I'm going to the P O it comes across on the news that there's a transport strike. They have at least three a day before breakfast here. WE have a saying here TIA. This is Africa. I get to the Post Office and they quote me the same price for posting the package. It seems that there's a minimum charge for packages up to a certain weight so I pay the 200 bucks anyway. "Strange" that the person behind the counter failed to tell the wife that this was the case. You guys wouldn't last 5 minutes in this country without blowing all your gaskets. The package leaves but I'm not optimistic. The student is on my case but I'm holding back on telling him what really happened. I'm thinking that the package will never get there based on past experiences with deepest darkest Africa and the news from San Diego is that if the templates don't arrive in two days the project will be canned. I don't know if your Postal workers operate on a Sunday but the news I got is that the tube arrived on a Sunday!. It was as though the timing was perfect. The templates got to their final destination in the nick of time. The chances of that happening are a million to one but as I said there is Divine Intervention involved. Everything was back on track. The brief was to build a quarter scale model for wind tunnel testing which they did. It was cut on a 3 axis milling machine. I just received the final report which is 12 pages long. I'm now looking for a rocket scientist at NASA to decipher the "Enigma Code"!!!
. It's all good and it seems I was very close on my initial design. Some images of the work carried out at SDSU. I bless them all for what they've done and I promise one thing. When I break this record I'm going to plant "Old Glory" in the salt when I get out of the truck. 100%.
