Home of the North American Eagle - World Land Speed Challenger

This site will be experiencing its 1.5 millionth visitor sometime this coming week. Who knows, you just may be that "lucky" person. We feel this to be quite a milestone in the project's existence and want to take this opportunity to thank all of our visitors and followers of our project for making it happen.

With three weekends left before the North American Eagle™ is brought back to life again, work around the hangar is starting to resemble a "2 minute drill" in the NFL. On hand this weekend were Steve Wallace, Bernard McVay, Earl Gratzer, Omar Chramosta, Tim Finley, Jon Higley, Keith Zanghi, and Ed Shadle. Security specialists Meeko "the Moocher" and his trainee, Sparky "the Raccoon Hunter" were on hand to clean up any food that fell on the floor.

Steve spent most of his time in the electronics bay. Some over amperage circuit breakers arrived that will be used to protect the onboard electric fuel pumps. Preparations were made to make that change later in the week. When the old circuit breakers trip, it was not fast enough to prevent damage to occur to the electric fuel pumps. These new breakers won’t allow over-voltage or over-amperage surges to damage these highly valuable fuel pumps. Steve also worked on some laser switches that will operate with the PCB Piezotronics / Larson Davis Data Acquisition system to tell us tire rotation. This will give us an accurate measurement for calculating speed.

Tim finished wiring the Rapp Hydema hydraulic servo units that will actuate the LevX Magnetic Braking. He also installed a new ground terminal box. For the past three weeks he has been building custom clevis and mounting brackets to incorporate the servo mount. It is now complete and came out great. It looked like it came right off the Lockheed Production Floor. In the upcoming week Tim will be building the parachute load cell device. This piece of equipment mounts between the car and the parachute. When the parachute opens, we will get real time analysis of what loads are being generated. Ed Drumheller II can use the information to adjust our parachute system to match the cars speed and compare the actual values with the calculated model. The parachute load cell is provided by PCB Piezotronics.

Keith spent a great deal of time working on the new Olympus i-SPEED 2 camera mount. After several attempts it was decided the original housing design was going to be too bulky. Ed and Tim came up with an alternative that will be made of Lexan. Keith will off-load that work to a local company on Monday and get it back by next weekend for a test installation. The Olympus Industrial i-SPEED 2 High Speed Video Camera will be a great analysis tool the team will use to monitor the parachute deployment. With the ability to capture 33,000 FPS (Frames Per Second) the camera has the ability to capture the parachute opening, which takes about one second, and slow it down so that the entire opening sequence can be analyzed. Keith is building a robust camera mounting so that it can be placed in any number of locations to capture the event. Plans are now to aim the camera at the parachute deployment tubes and see exactly what happens to that piece of equipment. Unlike the old film cameras in the past that were bulky and very expensive, the Olympus Industrial i-SPEED 2 system is retained in digital form. Specialized Olympus Software will allow the team to view these events on the computer and help us make improvements along the way. This data may someday change the entire Drag Racing and Landspeed Racer's methods of parachute deployment. Speaking of parachute technology, at last years Bonneville Speed Week, National Geographic® Television and Film videotaped parachuted deployment sequences on the 828 Lakester. The video was captured on onboard MotoCam® cameras. This video will be seen in an upcoming National Geographic Special this summer. We’ll be sure to let you know when it airs.

Earlier in the week Keith contacted Tim Ennis (center in photo above) at MotoCam®. He will be installing his latest onboard cameras with higher resolutions. The team is really excited because the MotoCam® cameras can be placed just about anywhere on the car during a run. Tim wired the car last summer prior to our Edwards AFFTC runs so that we could place up to three cameras in the aft 30 % of the car and two in the drivers compartment looking forward and aft. These kinds of videos are exciting to watch and give the team insight as to what’s happening to the car. MotoCam® has been traveling all over the United States recently adapting their small lightweight cameras. Go to their website and check it out.

Ed Shadle and Earl Gratzer finished repairing the damage to the belly area of the front wheel box today. Also, Sam Yellowbird, of OneMoreTimeSupply.com worked on mixing his paints for the correct viper red color he would be using to do some paint repairs to the car.

Ed, Omar and Earl spent some time working on the hydraulic system and tying up loose ends in preparation for our upcoming runs. Ed talked to Johann Sigurjonsson (left in photo above) from Rapp Hydema who said he will be bringing down a team of engineers and technicians later in the week to get things finished.

During the day, after much coaxing, Tim switched from his soldering gun to his Nikon D100 digital camera and photographed two highly attractive models who came by the hangar to model some NAE™ Gear. Alexa and Desirae posed for several shots that Tim said he needed to take in order to get that one great shot. The ladies were super cooperative and did a fantastic job. Later this month we will put those up on our NAE™ Gear page. It is anticipated NAE™ Gear Sales will climb to new record levels. Thank you ladies for helping the project out.

A big thank you goes out to one of our sponsors, The B&I Marketplace in Tacoma WA featured the project in several ads in the Tacoma News Tribune.

Those folks living in the Lancaster, Edwards AFFTC, Rosamond, Mojave, Victorville and Palmdale area will be able to see the car on display at the City of Palmdale Plant 42 Heritage Airpark on June 3rd. Then on Saturday June 9th and 10th the 56 foot long Eagle will be on display in the streets of Burbank at Autobooks-Aerobooks. Bring your hot rod, super bike or your father’s Buick and say hello. On hand will be celebrities and of course Team NAE to answer all those landspeed questions. Cross out all those wedding and graduation ceremonies and come by and say hello.

And finally, congratulations this week goes out to Dugald Mauldsley of Infield Fly Productions and Director of the Discovery Canada / Barna-Alper Production Megabuilders: Worlds Fastest Wheels. Discovery Canada has extended the show throughout the summer. You can see the show on Canadian Television. We can’t encourage you enough to write Discovery USA and ask them to air the show in the United States. You can leave feedback for Discovery on their Discussion Page.

Interested in helping us make history and bring the record back to North America? Here's how!

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