I am little slow in getting this update posted, sorry. With the salt at Bonneville being less than ideal we have decided to pass on running the car this year. I visited the salt in late July and determined that without some moisture so the crews could properly groom the course we would not run. As most of you know it has been extremely dry in the west this summer and we have not gotten any precipitation on the salt to any degree. As of this week the crew prepping for the World Of Speed event reported the salt was so hard they could not get the drags to “cut” the surface, consequently the racing surface is pretty rough commencing around the 4 mile. In fact the long course at the WOS will have the final set of timing lights at the 4-mile location instead of the usual 5-mile position. So, plans are now we will shoot for attending Speedweek 2017 in mid August.

 

The car is ready other than a little “race prep” and a coat of wax! We are installing a safety gizmo in the event the pilot (me) is a little slow on getting the laundry out should the car misbehave. I have been thinking about such a system for a while and the incident at Bonneville earlier this summer prompted me to move it up the priority list. We have designed a roll/pitch/yaw system that will automatically deploy the parachutes in the event the car gets crossed up and exceeds preset limits. We have “weather vane” type device on the nose, (kind of like a stall indicator in an airplane) which will provide a trigger to the chute system. We are testing a pretty cool solid-state device consisting three accelerometers and three gyros that combined provide a signal relative to roll and pitch. We need to provide an interface device between the sensor package and the chute deployment system. Hoot is working on designing and testing that interface and we are pretty confident it is going to work. Assuming the total system works as planned we will likely have one of the best systems for this purpose in motorsports. Pretty cool.

In order to satisfy my need to “do something” I am going to start repacking the storage bins for the trailer. Will be ready to load and go next August.

Please feel free to drop me a note or question at roger@clickllc.us.