Eagle's Lair
Members Roster

April 26, 2008

Ladies & Gentlemen:

On a beautiful Saturday Team North American Eagle™ consisting of Von Armstrong, Rich Pengelley, Steve Wallace, Omar Chramosta, Tim Finley, Sam Yellowbird, Jon Higley, Gino Sanfilippo, Keith Zanghi and Ed Shadle assembled for another day to work on North America’s next world land speed record challenger.

Jon applied a plethora of identification tags supplied by Impact Laser Services of Puyallup, WA. Impact Laser Services supplies all of our plastic identification labels for the Eagle using a sophisticated laser that etches the plastic, leaving a clear, easily identified label.  Many of our labels are diagrams to help clarify internal electrical, pneumatic, and hydraulic systems.   There must be several hundred examples of Impact Laser Services labels on the car. During the week Jon has been making numerous enhancements to the website.  We have been getting a lot of compliments in our email.

Rich prepped some lower panels for painting that we rebuilt earlier in the year.  Ed feathered some areas in the back of the car which will need to be repainted.  When we first started doing test runs, the area surrounding the afterburner heated up and caused the paint to blister up ance crack away.  We always wanted to repair it, but just never got around to it.

Von removed the windshield so Steve and Tim could get easy access to the electrical system.  Steve has been integrating our Topcon Global Positioning System to our PCB Piezotronics data acquisition system.   The PCB onboard computers gathering 3.2 million measurements per second can now be identified to the exact location on the course.  He also installed a remote on-off switch for our Falcon Electric UPS system.  This will save a lot of work in the future.  In the past Steve has had to open the UPS / battery compartment to turn the Falcon Electric UPS off at the end of each run.  Tim worked on the oil transducer unit on the gigantic S&S Turbine Services turbo jet engine.  During our last engine test at Spanaway, we noticed an anomaly in the oil pressure and we traced it to the transducer.

Ed dropped off the American Valley Aviation M32-60B start cart so Omar could do some preventative maintenance to it.  The AVA cart is an integral part of our operation.  It supplies not only the air to start the car, but the 400 cycle electricity.

This weeks’ employee of the week award goes to Gino who completely rebuilt the team’s barbeque system (calling it a system sounded technical).  It is estimated that we probably made over 3000 hamburgers since our first test session in November 2004 when Discovery Cameras captured the ritual.  Speaking of Discovery, NAE fans can watch yet another re-run of our favorite television show Mega Builders - Worlds Fastest Wheels on The Science Channel this Monday April 28th.  The show will air at 12 noon EDST.  You will have to check your local listing depending if you have cable or satellite.  During the INCAT 2008 North American  PLM Conference two weeks ago in Ypsilanti Michigan, Keith was quoted as saying the show has re-ran 37 times in America and we never get tired of seeing ourselves on TV!  The one hour show directed by Dugald Maudsley follows the team leading up to our first successful test run.

Around the country, Ernie Husted at Verisurf Software of Anaheim California is finishing up details on our digital dataset.  Our aerodynamic team of Mike Thoe, Rex Walter, Ron Doll and Don Mitchell are manipulating the CATIA V5 model and designing our aerodynamic structures. On the other side of LA in Pasadena, Steve LaBrecque and Rex Ridenhoure from Ecliptic Enterprises Corporation have been providing technical help on our RocketCam™ onboard cameras.  Rocket Cam is the industry leader in video capture systems for use onboard rockets and spacecraft.

Next week we will be making announcement of a new partner on board the project as we work towards our goal of breaking the 763 mph world land speed record.

If you've not yet visited the mystery photo page for this month, check it out now, as there's not that much more time to get your guess in for the free image of the NAE™ in action.

We invite you to add a comment, or remark, about our program or the site.

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