Eagle's Lair
Members Roster

Ladies & Gentlemen:

July 1, 2008

The El  Mirage Test Session was made possible through our 50+ sponsors, and especially Aerial Machine and Tool, Small & Sons Petroleum, B&I Market Place, Interstate Wood Products,, McVay's Mobile Welding, UREMET, and Wolfe Air.

For the past week, many of the North American Eagle™ team spent their days conducting test runs at El Mirage Dry Lakebed in the high deserts of Sothern California. We are pleased to announce that our goal of achieving a speed of 400 mph was successful. For an account from the Everett Herald, use this link.

We had several deliverables for this test session.  The purpose of these runs was to: (1) deploy the high speed parachutes, (2) system integration of all of our electronic components to see how they work together. This included our PCB  Piezotronics Data Acquisition System, Falcon Electric UPS, Topcon GPS, Space Age Control's transducers and Tropos wireless broadband, (3) engage the afterburner (AB) during a run and analyze the effects of that activity (4) further refine how operations will run when we spend an estimated 3 weeks in the desert at Black Rock to break the 763 mph World Land Speed Record, (5) practice erecting our WRS Cover-All 32' x 65' shelter, (6) gather video from our RocketCam™ and Olympus iSPEED HG™ on-board cameras to use in an upcoming Sundance Film Festival documentary, (7) gather air pressure data around the car to compare with CFD analysis, (8) measure the rolling resistance of the car on the lake bed and (9) finish filming the CBS News Production for the Discovery  Channel called Future Life series which will air in late 2008.

Attending the test session were Ed & Elaine Shadle, Keith Zanghi, Jerry Lamb, Dr. Dave Thomas, Mark Moore, Jon Higley, Bill Eckberg, Bernard McVay,  Doug Schwartz, John Drury, Cameron, Rachel, & Alex Shadle, Steve & Dave Green, Ray Noel, Dave Selby, John Zambrano, Tim Finley, Steve & Libby Wallace, Tom Pengelley, Von Armstrong and Jerry Lamb.  Also joining us was the entire El Mirage gang of George Callaway, Monte, Butch and Greg.  Ron Main and a large contingent from the Sidewinders Auto Club were present and were invaluable for their vast experience with land speed racing and maintaining course safety through out the four day test  session. Special thanks go to Jeff & Darlene Gagne, as well as George, who helped Jon Higley lay out cones on the 3.5 mile course and F.O.D. it for debris.

During the week the team had some celebrities from both the aerospace and automotive worlds.  Present for the week were Sally Crossfield-Farley, daughter of Scott Crossfield who flew 56-0763 multiple times, and her son, Adam Farley.  Also stopping by was SR-71 Test pilot Bob Gilliland and Instrumentation Engineer, Hal Weber.  Tony Landis, author of 12 aerospace books and photographer for NASA Dryden stopped by also.   Tony was the person that first contacted us with the unique background of 56-0763 and some of the greatest test pilots of all time who flew her, like Scott Crossfield, Joe Engle, Pete Knight, Bill Dana and Joe Walker to name a few.

From the automotive world, George Barris from Barris Kustom stopped by to see the Eagle.  George is the custom car maker to the stars.  His creations include the original Bat Mobile, Munster Coach, Kitt Car,  The Green Hornet car and thousands of others.  George brought along his daughter Joji and her fried Barry, and Barris Kustom Production Manager Tony Woods and his son Justin.

A number of NAE™ sponsors came out to visit. Mark Moore, of UREMET flew in on his bi-plane to watch a run. Mark Flubacher from Faro Technologies was on hand.  Mark was part of the team from Dassault Systemes and Verisurf using Faro Laser Tracker and FaroArm to digitize the Eagle for use in CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), FEA (Finite Element Analysis) and detail and assembly components.  Carlos Mullay from Olympus Industrial stopped by as well.  It came in handy as  team members Dave (DoD), John Zambrano (USAF), Cam (Boeing) and Bill (Boeing) inspected several areas that were inaccessible using the iPLEX Borescope.

Wolfe-Air pilots Dave Stevenson, and with him, Joiwin Alexander, were present on one of our test run days to catch some aerial shots with their wing-mounted camera from overhead of a run. We thank them for their patience and were sorry they had to be off on a job getting images of a Navy missle launch using their aircraft.

Another long time sponsor that dropped by was Tom from What A Shine Products.  What A Shine cleaners, polishes, waxes, detailers, and wash products are used exclusively on the North American Eagle™, making it shine and looking good.  Tom applied some of his Mirror Shine Instant Detailer and made the 50 year old NAE™ look like it was off the showroom floor!  It was great to see Tom again.  Check out his website and you can make your car look like a million bucks too!

Special thanks goes to Waldo Stakes for supplying and setting up the course flags and providing track patrol during our test runs.

(Photo Gallery coming soon.)

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

[Privacy Policy]