April 2012 Update

This last month has been an unusual one to say the least. Besides all the television work I have been involved in I also made the time to start bolting the bottom Aluminum and steel sheets to the underside of the Sonic Wind LSRV chassis. This is being done with hundreds of Allen head bolts which will be sealed into their retaining nuts with Locktite. I also painted the new section of chassis and sealed up every seam with red high temperature RTV Silicone to keep pulverized salt from getting in between all the steel pieces. It was quite a job but I am glad it is done as I am really concentrating on corrosion control and resistance as I build the chassis. Here are a couple shots of the work.

The El Ranchito Rokette has been lucky to have some very distinguished visitors in the last month. First Ky Michaelson, AKA the “Original Rocketman” stopped by with Captain Ed Ballinger and Ky’s girlfriend Tina Oberfoell. To all us real rocket guys Ky is the original rocket man no matter what anyone else claims as he has been building rocket powered machines long before anyone. Ky a mentor of mine has taught me a lot through the years. Ky wanted to see how Sonic Wind LSRV was coming along and was also down in Hollywood working on a possible television show of his own.

Now, Captain Ed Ballinger is the undisputed, absolute fastest and quickest man in drag racing of all time. He was the driver of the Conklin Comet a car that Ky built which was a hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) fueled rocket dragster that set and still holds the fastest speed and quickest elapsed time ever set on an official drag strip. No dragster to this very day has ever gone faster or quicker no matter what you have read or heard.

Craig Breedlove and Kitty O’Neil (Ky also built Kitty’s car) have run faster in the measured quarter mile on a dry lakebed but Captain Ed was the fastest on an actual drag strip. Go to Ky’s website at www.the-rocketman.com to learn more about Ky and Captain Ed Ballinger. Capt. Ed really needs his own website to do his life real justice. Here are some shots of everyone just hanging out at the ranch. It was great to see everyone again, they all looked great.  As always you can go to our Sonic Wind Archives site set up by Ed Torsello and see more photos on any subject covered in the text on this site. The archive site is www.sonicwind.com

Later on in the month I was visited by another famous racing Captain, Captain Jack McClure. Capt. Jack is actually a sea Captain based in Florida who takes people out on his huge fishing boat to deep sea fish. But what he is really famous for is driving the first and most famous rocket powered go cart of all time.

He stopped by to tell me that he had reacquired his H2O2 fueled rocket powered go cart and was planning on driving it again on the 1/8th mile drag strips around the country. The Captain is 86 years old but you would never know it as most people think he is barely in his 60s. Ky had the rocket cart restored to running condition for the Capt. by some buddies of his.

The rocket go cart used to run 200-220 miles per hour in the quarter mile in the early 1970s. Now when we talk about rocket propelled drag racing vehicles you must always remember that the drag race organizations (IHRA, AHRA and the NHRA) never let us run a load of fuel in the rocket dragsters that would allow a full power run for the full 1,320 foot length of the drag strip. The most they would let us run was enough fuel for a full power run of about 900 feet.

So ALL of the rocket dragsters would usually be coasting the last 420 feet of the quarter mile and they were still a full second faster that any conventional dragster of the day and still faster by a long shot than the nitro fuelers of today. Capt. Jack’s tiny rocket go cart was matched raced against some of the fastest nitro fueled dragsters and funny cars of the day and the Capt. said he NEVER LOST A MATCH DRAG RACE, EVER!

Captain Jack McClure was actually just lying in the rocket go cart just like any other go cart driver. He had no roll bars or roll cages, no safety straps or 6 point harnesses or safety equipment of any kind. He didn’t even have an on board fire extinguisher. He was kept from sliding around in his seat with a bit of Velcro sewn onto his seat and the back of his racing suit. The cart which was built by Glenn Blakely weighed 200 lbs. empty and nearly 500lbs.with fuel and the Captain aboard. The engine which was built by rocketry legend Arvil Porter wicked up could make nearly 1,500 lbs. of thrust for four or five seconds. You can do the math on that one.

He wore a small parachute pack device around his neck designed by Jim Deist who recently passed away. The neck pack was attached to his cart with a lanyard. In the event he was thrown from the cart it would automatically deploy a tiny parachute. The idea here was that the parachute would slow him down as he slid across the tarmac in his slippery silver suit.

Thank God that in the four years he ran the rocket cart it was never needed as no one knows if it would have actually worked or not. A rocket biker used something similar a decade later but he was killed in his crash so it didn’t work very well for him now did it?

Anyway Captain Jack and I talked like a couple of school girls all day and into the night. He is one of the most interesting people I have ever met. He told me all the stories about his life before the rocket cart as a precision driver for Joie Chitwood’s thrill stunt show, as a go cart racer and as the unofficial test pilot for Turbonique Inc. Turbonique built strange and exotic high energy turbines and tiny rocket engines which burned Oxygen and “Thermolene” which was the Turbonique trade name for the chemical Normal or “N” Propyl Nitrate. The casings for the turbines and rockets were made of cast iron. The turbines were made of cast Inconel and the rocket nozzles and rest of the parts were manufactured from high grade stainless steel so the propulsion machines were well built.

There are a lot of legends surrounding the mysterious Mr. Middlebrook’s Turbonique Company and its products but I think there is also an endless amount of B S involved here also. Some of the guys who actually used and ran the components (and I have known a few) who didn’t die in the process sometimes called the components “Junkique.” I am kind of torn on this fantastic bit of racing history and this is why:

Say what you will about those little Turbonique motors. One thing is for sure, those little bastards made a hell of a lot of power! I saw a dragster called the “Odyssey” which ran only one Turbonique turbine attached directly to the rear wheels and it was nearly as fast as any nitro fueler or jet powered dragster of the day. The turbines also made the weirdest noise you ever heard at over 120 decibels in the stands for crying out loud. I saw this turbine car run personally at least a dozen times so I can vouch for its speed and quickness. You can Google “Turbonique” as it is all over the web and come to your own conclusions about this one.

Captain Jack said that he needed some small parachutes for running his cart again and I had a couple of about the right size and strength. So I gave them to him as a Thank you for all the entertainment he had given me as a young man as I watched him scorch the quarter mile!

He is coming back through California in a month or so and I told him to stay with Denise and I for a few days so he can tell me more stories and teach me more about his interesting life. Here are a couple of photos of him and I as well as a link to his website which is at http://captainjackmcclure.com for more information about his racing life. Or you can just Google his name as he is all over the web nowadays. You won’t believe this guy is for real!

This month I also worked a bit on Mad Michael Hughes steam rocket. It needs to be better insulated in order to build the heat needed to generate the steam he needs in order to create the thrust he will need to get him over Granite Mountain. Granite Mountain is the mountain he plans on jumping over in a few months. I supplied some metal sheeted insulation panels similar to the stuff aircraft use to keep their jet engines from melting the back of their planes off. I think it might be what he needs to get his steam rocket engine over the top.

Lastly, I was invited by Professor Stanley Settles of the University of Southern California (USC), the home of the USC Trojans, to lecture his automotive engineering class on the land speed record, supersonic automotive aerodynamics and liquid rocket propulsion. Professor Settles is not only a learned and practical professor but he is also a Bonneville Salt Flats racer and campaigns a big block Chevy powered Lakester. A Gear Grinder (SCTA club) to boot. So he really knows his stuff in and out, books as well as on greasy hands. He is a real Salt Dog and my kind of racer.

The lecture turned out to be a ton of fun and those senior engineering students were as sharp as tacks. I told them to challenge me on anything they thought I was wrong on. No one did and the lecture lasted nearly three hours. Here is a shot of USC Professor for a day Waldo Stakes AKA Dr. Landspeed at work. {HH}

One of the students told me that he was working on the math to prove the concept of turbine shaped wheels for formula 1 race cars. As they would turn they would evacuate the underside of the race cars at speed. I told him coincidentally I had just finished submitting that idea to Racecar Engineering Magazine writer Simon Mcbeath. Simon said he would possibly do an article about the idea for young engineers to work on. I haven’t heard back from him as of yet and it has been quite a while so here is the text I sent him and the ideas I laid out in it. You guys with half an engineering brain run with it as I think this ideas’ time has come. Read it and tell me what you think. {Link to turbine wheels idea} Now take this concept and go on and change the World!

What is amazing about all this education stuff is that I barely got out of high school and only spent barely a whole month going to Elgin Community Junior College. During my street racing years if someone told me that someday I would be lecturing at USC I would have laughed out loud. Oh well, so is the mystery of life.

In the past I have lectured engineering students from California Poly Pomona (Cal Poly) at my shop as well as numerous high school science classes throughout the years and I never tire of educating the young. This time some of my family wanted to see me lecture so nine of my family and friends were there cheering me on. What a day it was and what a World we live in! Some LSR guys and Michael Hughes sometimes like to call me Dr. Landspeed. Maybe there really is something to that knick name after all……Waldo