Eagle's Lair
Members Roster

October 23, 2002

Ladies & Gentlemen:

The North American Eagle™ is a former USAF Lockheed F-104 Starfighter that is being converted into a race car to challenge the Unlimited-class world land speed record.

The project is the brainchild of Ed Shadle, 61, a career IBM executive, land speed race driver and Beech Skipper owner from Spanaway, Wash. In addition to being the team owner and project manager, he will also drive the Eagle when it's ready to run.

Shadle's partner in the project is Keith Zanghi, 48, a manager for the Boeing Co. A land speed racing fan since the age of 14, he is the team's director of operations and engineering tech rep.

Work on the jet fighter/race car is underway at Shady Acres Airport in Spanaway. Because of the magnitude of the project and the team's moderate budget, Shadle doesn't expect to complete the Eagle until 2004.

Getting Started "Since we weren't able to spend enormous sums of money on R&D," explained Zanghi, "we decided the fuselage of an F-104 would make the ideal platform."

And from there, the search for a surplus Starfighter began.

After being turned down by the Air Force, Shadle met with SoCal jet owner Al Hansen, who had two 104s in his Mojave Airport hangar. Shadle offered him $55,000 for a 104G without the engine but before he could get the money together, the plane was sold.

To console Shadle, Hansen put him in contact with Steve Alex, a Belfast, Maine surplus aircraft dealer. He had an F-104 that had just arrived from California but it was in sad shape, with holes punched in it, lots of missing panels, the wrong tail cone and a price tag of $25,000.

"He was the only show in town we could afford, recalled Shadle, "so I passed the hat among the team. We offered $15,000 up front in September '98, with a $5,000 payment the following January and the final payment in July."

Until Shadle stripped the paint off the 52-foot-long fuselage, he had no idea what he had on his hands. When he found the number 56-763 stenciled on the tail, he asked the Air Force Historical Research Agency in Alabama if they could identify it.

The Eagle was an NF-104A that had spent most of its life as a research aircraft at Edwards AFB, Calif. It was put in storage at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz. in 1970 and sold off a year later.

A company in Los Angeles bought it to use as a template to make F-104 replacement parts. It then spent years in a back lot covered by layers of dirt, grime and graffiti until Alex bought it.

By the time it got to Shadle, it had extensive structural damage. The cockpit was gutted, the electronics bay was empty, all the glass was broken, and the wings, horizontal and vertical stabilizers were missing.

The Objective Although it will never fly again, turning the hulk into a jet-powered land speed race vehicle is still a monumental task. The team's goal is to beat the 763.035-mph record set by Andy Green in Richard Noble's "Thrust SSC" in October 1997.

Shadle will need to go 1% faster than Green, or about 770 mph -- possibly supersonic, depending on the temperature.

Shadle will have to drive the Eagle on a measured one-mile course twice, once each way (within a certain period of time) to compensate for any tailwind. The average of the two runs will determine the final speed.

The key to success will be the engine: a General Electric J79-15 turbojet out of an F-4 Phantom supplied by S&S Turbines of Fort St. John, B.C. The J79 is 17 feet long and weighs 3,600 pounds; it puts out 18,500 lbs. of thrust and gulps 10 gallons of JP4 per minute in afterburner.

"That equates to .02 miles per gallon, or about 105 feet per gallon," exclaimed Shadle.

Despite all that power, the Eagle will need help getting off the block. A small 6,000-pound-thrust liquid propellant motor will be used for an extra boost at the start, Shadle said.

Initial road testing up to 500 mph will be done at Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. But because it offers only about seven miles of useable "runway" and the Eagle requires 11, the record attempt will most likely be made at Black Rock Desert in Nevada, Shadle said.

Since regular rubber tires are only good up to about 300 mph, Shadle said, the Eagle will run on aluminum wheels machined from a block of billet. Five braking systems, some hold-overs from its F-104 origin, will help bring the racer to a stop after the run.

When the throttle is pulled, a small drogue chute will deploy and hydraulic speed brake doors on each side of the fuselage will open. At 300 mph, the main chute deploys, slowing the car to 125-150 mph, at which time the disk brakes can be applied. If anything fails, Shadle can steer the car into an aircraft carrier-type arresting barrier strung up at the end of the course.

The Eagle team's main competition for the land speed record will be five-time record-holder Craig Breedlove of Rio Vista, Calif. and his "Spirit of America" jetcar.

After thousands of manhours reskinning and building a new empennage from a discarded F-104G, the Eagle's fuselage was ready to paint. The design was by team member Russ Garlow, with the painting done at Bates Technical College in Tacoma, Wash. and 3D detail work by airbrush artist Eddie Harris.

Still to be done is the fabrication of the rear axle suspension, installation of the nearly completed front suspension axle and liner box, and reinstallation of the cockpit and seat.

"I've tried to build it so that when we're done with the land speed project, we can put the wings and horizontal stabilizer back on and display it as the real thing." Shadle said.

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