From F.R.D.R
Waldo Says: March 2009 Update
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Things are moving right along this month. Ken Mason is building a 250 Watt DPSS Diode pump laser. It will have a very powerful green beam that will be easily visible to the eye in moderate light. The SSDP laser device is about the size of a shoe box and will be fired out the nose of Imagine LSRV in order to give the driver a better sense of vehicle direction and help the driver point the car better.
The beam will be set at the horizon and the driver will simply line it up with his direction of travel. Sort of like using a laser pointer or laser target designator on a weapon. It will make driving such a fast and quick accelerating vehicle a bit easier. The only problem it presents is that it is powerful enough to burn just about anything at close range or blinds a person at a good distance. So it will only be switched on high in the speed range as a driving aid and will be fired down course where there will be absolutely no spectators.
Ken Mason originally received his degrees in laser technology with liquid rocketry as his sideline. So he is building this high powered laser himself. Here is a photo of the laser being built by Ken Mason.
In a simple description it is a ΒΌ Kilowatt (250 watt) DPSS Green Laser. In the photo at the top are 11 100 Watt 808 nm pump Laser diodes. In the middle is the actual source of the Laser beam a 7mmX 126mm Nd: YAG 0.8% (dopeant level) Laser rod. At the bottom is the coolant flow tube around the Laser rod.
While Ken has been playing with the Laser I have been working on our new website with Ed Torsello and getting it ready for its debut next month. The weather in California has been dismal, raining and unseasonably cold so I haven’t been working on the actual vehicle as much. But that will resume once I get the new site up. The new site will feature the last design model for Imagine LSRV. This is the vehicle we are building with no further changes as after five years I can’t think of a single modification to make the overall design marginally better.
I have told you all in the past that I look at land speed record design as a sort of martial art, with a skill development that takes literally a lifetime to master. Most of the best land speed vehicles were designed by older men because it takes many years of knowledge and practical experience to design what will be considered the best in the World of anything.
I have always felt that the most innovative LSR car of all time was the 1960-1964 Ken Norris designed Proteus Bluebird which was driven by Donald Campbell. It was an incredible design and built to standards which were superior to many of the fighter aircraft of the time. Its structure was a monocoque of aluminum honeycomb and aluminum sheet plates cut to shape and bonded by an epoxy like material called Araldite if I remember correctly. It was the absolute cutting edge technology for it’s time (built in 1959). I had always hoped to get out to England some day and look at it in person and someday I definitely will.
I have always thought that the best designed jet car of all time was probably Thrust 2. The Brits have a way of working with very little and making huge strides. I had always thought that John Ackroyd could probably build a viable record contender powered by a rubber band if he had to.
It is sad many people didn’t appreciate Bluebird CN-7 for the amazing machine it was. Maybe because its speeds were quickly eclipsed by much simpler and cheaper jet powered American thrust driven cars. The reason CN-7 was gas turbine powered and wheel driven was that the Brits at that time thought that a “car” had to be driven by its wheels. That type of vehicle entails a lot more effort and technology than simply blasting down the course under jet thrust because you have to balance the amount of drive thrust to the track without overpowering the surface. This is very difficult thing to do.
Every now and then a racer will contact me and tell me to review his LSR vehicle design and critique it. Some are class vehicles and some are not. Most designs are very similar in look. If it is a subsonic class vehicle it always looks like an airplane fuselage of some sort with a semi pointed nose and a tall tail at the rear. If it is a supersonic LSR design it almost always looks like a missile lying on its side, usually with out rigged rear wheels. Again with a tall tail at the rear and a slightly more pointed ogival nose.
I stopped going to Bonneville back in 1996 because there was nothing more for me to learn there and going to Bonneville for me had only one purpose and that was to enhance my education. Since then nearly every LSR streamliner was nearly identical to the one next to it as where all the motorcycles. At that time the bike liners were the only machines that tried to reach into the future with slightly more innovative designs. Sam Wheeler was the cleverest and greatest innovator followed closely by Denis Manning. But all the other vehicles were simply a long parade of very similar machines in different paint schemes running slightly different engines.
As you all know I consider the LSR a martial art that has to be mastered and the accumulated knowledge has to be nurtured and passed on. This was always the sole purpose of this website that is until now. Now it has to be morphed into a marketing tool as well.
Masters of various martial arts from the Orient live for their art whether it is Jiu Jitsu, Karate, Kung Fu, Origami (paper folding) or basket weaving. From the day they take on the art to the day they are laid into their graves they are on a constant learning and teaching quest.
Here is something many people don’t know about martial art history. A student’s white cloth belt worn on the Gi as a beginner martial artist would never be washed and through the years it would get dirtier and dirtier from being tied around the waist of the student day after day after day. Eventually it would get filthy black from the sweat and dirt of the hands of the student. This is how a student was considered a “Black belt” or master of his art and someone to be reckoned with. The colored belts of today awarded at DO JOs are a sort of marketing bastardisation of this ancient tradition of the self marking of the knowledgeable.
The black belt of the past illustrated that you had paid your dues. Simply put…”You are what you are and not what you would like to present yourself to be.”
My LSR designs are my dirtying belt as I present them to you. Some of the designs like Sonic Wind evolved over ten years of changing and gaining of knowledge. Imagine LSRV took five years to evolve from the original Constitution LSRV and Freedom LSRV designs. When a design is finally right I know it and I can go no further with it no matter how much more I think about it. It is as efficient and purposeful as I can make it with my wealth of knowledge and any knowledge another master will share with me.
My “Single Plane Force” streamliner designs were offered to LSR car and motorcycle builders twenty years ago “gratis” to see where practical application would further evolve the design. I have never had any intention of building a wheel driven car personally but the study of them would not go away nor could I ignore the concepts that constantly flooded my head and notebook.
I keep a notebook, camera and tape recorder with me always in order to record ideas and vehicle designs and changes. My designs do not simply get drawn on the coffee table one night and then put into practice the next season as most current race cars are. This is why LSR vehicles are the fastest in their class as they are simply the best on the planet, period.
That said here are a couple of photos of some old models of the “Single Plane Force Streamliner” designs. The models are over twenty years old yet I haven’t changed my ideas on them since that time. Forgive the yellowing of the paints and chips and nicks on their little bodies. They are simply showing their age as am I.
In my opinion they are the pinnacle of streamliner car/motorcycle design concepts and I have seen nothing better built or campaigned by anyone anywhere in the world even to this day. They like all my designs use ALL the substantial dynamic and aerodynamic forces acting on them in order to keep them going straight and standing on their wheel’s contact patches.
If you are an aerodynamicist or a well educated and seasoned engineer. You will instantly understand the beauty of these designs. They are beautiful because they are simple and absolutely purposeful with every component serving duty to accomplish the mission of setting a land speed record. The sidewinder mounted piston or turbine engine along with fuel and coolant are kept in the forward pod. The engines are mounted sidewinder so that their torque will load the front wheels which are lined up three abreast forming a steamroller effect giving plenty of traction and creating a low pressure area under the front pod. While the driver is in the back pod in a blast proof composite wrapped capsule which can be automatically separated in a crash scenario. Both the car and the driver pod have their own staged parachute decelerators.
The white model #69 was a free air test model which I tested to 110 M.P.H. on route 15 while it was attached to a pivot pin at it‘s Cg. It was so stable in fact that the rear of the model actually climbed up an incline to align itself with the airflow. So the inherent stability force was phenomenal.
I free air test my model ideas on a fast truck or sports car (it has to be capable of hitting 110 to 120 M.P.H.) on the freeway. Sometimes the highway patrol puts a premature end to my test at last count I have paid 14 speeding tickets through the years but most times I get all the data I want. I mount my models at their Cg. on an arched shaped plate made from an arched door threshold aluminum foot plate which is mounted on the hood of a fast truck or sports car. This keeps the model from getting too much air underneath it which would give erroneous lift readings. It also makes the model work to prove its stability. As the rear has to be forced up an arched incline in order to align itself with the leading edge of the model. This leaves no doubt as to the vehicle design having definite inherent stability.
In these designs the two pods are separated yet connected by adjustable, extendable booms which can be lengthened or shortened to assure perfect placement of Cg versus Cp between runs. The tapered aerodynamically clean front pods and narrow booms create a Venturi effect which accelerates and pulls the air tight and downwards towards the rear of the vehicle.
The driver pods act as a center lined rear pulling aerodynamic device aided by “pre run tunable airfoils“. These rear airfoils use “WIGE” or wing in ground effect (look it up) technology borrowed from the Russian Ekranoplans so they keep the back of the vehicle from wanting to induce a rolling moment into the vehicle while adding drag to give the vehicle an overall dart like handling feel. The overall idea with this vehicle design is that all the forces working on it allow it to only have lift deviations thus the name “Single Plane Force Streamliner”.
The driver could drive in a comfortable shirt sleeves environment because all the fire, explosion and scalding hazard is in the first pod and not in the cockpit with him. The rear pod’s pull is low and centered in order to aid in directional stability, generate negative lift and added traction to the front pod. The driver pod is slightly tilted up at the rear so that the driver has excellent visibility over the entire length of the vehicle using it as a directional guide. Even the gauges were to be mounted in the back end of the engine pod so the driver could see them in his line of sight.
As superior as these designs were, no one has of yet built them into actual vehicles. These designs would change the face of wheeled driven land speed racing and possibly drag racing but the guys running at Bonneville would rather risk crashing, being scalded and burning in their barely stable dinosaurs which they run year after year. If their vehicles are unstable they usually want to add a bigger rear tail fin and that is about as deep as they get. As I said before a racer’s ego is his worst enemy and is the only thing that actually hinders his achievements.
I have had ignorant racers tell me that these “Single Plane Force Streamliner” designs are simply copies of Jocko Johnson’s triple nickel design and that is simply not the case. These designs were more influenced by the twin pod designs of the Italian record setter Piero Taruffi, the early twin pod designs of Chet Herbert as well as the Pollywog and Goldenrod of the Summers brothers. The Triple Nickel was simply the catalyst for the integration of the best ideas from all these vehicles which were all important pieces of the big picture.
Speaking of models, I was e-mailed by Big Edd Mildenhall. Edd is a land speed vehicle modeler in Great Brittan. He sent me photos of models he built of some of my designs which he thought were exceptional. So here is some of his work, they are models of the Sonic Wind rocket ice racer, the Silver Surfer jet LSR car and the Imagine LSRV rocket car. I believe a man’s time on this planet is priceless. So when someone spends his valuable time honoring my ideas, this humbles me and deserves recognition. Thanks Edd I am quite impressed with your work.
I know I complain about NASA from time to time because I get a bit disappointed in our country’s ability to do very technical things like perfect spaceflight. Ken Mason sent me a link that shows what the NASA boys are up to as far as the new Orion and Aries moon mission vehicles. Here is the link
www.leenks.com/link156609.html After seeing this web site I have to say I EAT CROW and I will shut up in the future. When you see what they are doing you will see what I mean.
On February 26th Denise and a friend of mine saw a rocket plane launch from the coast. It seemed like it was launched from either Vandenberg Air Force Base or Point Magus Naval missile testing station. The rocket plane blasted up to the edge of space and then it flew North west right over our house. Denise took a nice photo of it in boost phase with her cell phone camera. Denise who has 20/15 vision said it was a grey colored airplane which looked like a squat airliner with long swept back wings. I showed her models and photographs of various aircraft and the one she thought it looked most like was the Bell X-2 of the 1950s from underneath. Even though it was moving Denise said many times faster than an airliner and flying twice as high as an airliner(60,000 feet plus). It made no sonic boom as it passed overhead.
An electrician friend of mine named David also watched it and said the exact same thing Denise said about its speed and height. Even though they were in two different places in the high desert. They were both calling me on the cell (I was down in the Los Angeles basin) at the same time.
My analysis:
The fact that they saw the rocket trail form a squiggly trail tells me the aircraft was rocket boosted to tremendous altitude. The erratic exhaust trail is caused by the various wind directions at different altitudes. Pushing the exhaust trail into squiggly shapes. This tells me the vehicle was boosted probably to the edge of space. The fact that they could see the definition of the aircraft a couple of minutes later tells me it was descending over the high desert. Denise said it took two minutes to go from horizon to horizon. That tells me its horizontal speed was about Mach 2.5 to 3. Yet there was no sound or sonic boom to be heard. At 60,000 feet the boom would take about a minute to hit her and she may have not noticed a faint boom by then.
The fact that they could see such definition of the aircraft even though it was so very high tells me that it was big. It would have to be if it was rocket boosted as it had no first stage booster so it carries all it‘s own fuel. No one would ever launch a staged rocket over a populated area because the booster would have to fall someplace and with my luck it would land on my house.
It’s course tells me it was coasting down towards Las Vegas with a final landing probably at Groom Lake Nevada the infamous “Area 51“. My guess is that it is a swing wing, turbojet and rocket or scram jet very large aircraft which swept in from the Pacific Ocean to launch over the L.A. Area. Why the free show? Maybe Uncle Sam is getting into the space tourist business. As that is what the flight resembled. The only thing odd was that it had a very long glide down. That part I haven’t figured out yet but give me some time. I have only been thinking about this for a couple of hours. God, I love this country! Waldo…