As you may already have gathered from "The Action Starts Now!", then ThrustSSC team are now in Al Jafr, Jordan, to perform the high-speed tests of ThrustSSC. It is proving an experience of a lifetime for everyone!
Since the ThrustSSC Team arrived, there has scarcely been a spare moment - the huge amount of equipment has all been unpacked and the computers set up in the Pit Stop Trailer, personal belongings have been unpacked, and the satellite dish has been erected and aligned with Hughes geostationary satellite to give the team telephone and Internet communication with the UK. The radios have been installed in the team’s Land Rover Discoverys and the long antennae erected on the PST - providing communications between desert, houses and hangar.
Al Jafr is a small village near the Royal Jordanian Air Force’s King Feisal Al Jafr airbase, and the team have been generously provided with four excellent houses on the base. The car itself is housed in one of the airbase’s hangars - it’s just like being back at home in Q Shed at DRA Farnborough only warmer! The weather is absolutely perfect - daytime temperatures are like a hot English summer with low humidity, while the nights get quite cool. Half the team are turning brown, the other half red…
Everyone is now asking: "When will the car run?". The ever-friendly and helpful Jordanian air force personnel are particularly interested - there is almost always a small group outside the hanger looking at the car and watching the work in progress. There are two critical paths before ThrustSSC can venture onto the playa for the first time - preparation of the car, and preparation of the desert.
Work on the car is well underway. Static tests to full reheat on Monday in the airbase’s tie-down cell revealed a problem in the fuel system which is now being rectified - the Pit Stop trailer is parked right next to ThrustSSC, so getting in touch with the UK on the ‘phone for any special parts required is proving extremely easy - these are then flown to Jordan through the all-important supply line.
On Sunday Andrew Noble took the team for their first look at the 10 mile long desert track that he and the Royal Jordanian Air Force have prepared. The first 10 minutes’ drive was pleasant one through Al Jafr village where all the local people wave frantically to the visitors, under the main road to Ma’an, and on to the desert entrance at the desert police’s fortress. The next ten minutes took the vehicles along the specially built access road through the outlying scrub bushes - passing a local Bedouin with his truck and herd of camels, and being ambushed by three mad dogs on the way. After that it was onto the desert proper and along a line of oil drums to the ‘pits area’ opposite the middle of the track.
The first words that come to mind are that Al Jafr is like nowhere on Earth, but that is not correct: there are numerous alkaline mud playas on several continents. It would be fairer to say that it is totally unlike anything in most people’s experience - a vast expanse of absolutely flat, dried mud. The curvature of the earth is clearly visible - one only has to squat down and the horizon is suddenly only half as far away. The surface is a pattern of polygons in the hard crust. The experts in mud playas are delighted with the hardness - the Californian Bearing Ratio of 14 surpasses that of Black Rock Desert where ThrustSSC Director Richard Noble set his current World Land Speed Record in 1983.
Nothing lives on Jafr - only Bedouins cross it in their trucks on their way to places unknown. Occasionally one finds a dried beetle or camel droppings, but otherwise it is utterly devoid of organic material - a perfect record site. ThrustSSC’s track runs North to South, seventeen white lines stretching for 10 miles - each marking one lane for Andy Green. The great danger to a jet-car on such a track is F.O.D. or Foreign Object Damage: a loose surface stone sucked into the engine can destroy it, while the solid aluminium wheels could be badly damaged by a loose one embedded in the surface.
The only option is to meticulously walk every foot of every lane, picking up every stone, every tin can, and every part that has fallen from a passing truck. ‘Defodding’ as it is known, can be both a tiring, frustrating, tedious exercise, and a chance for a stroll and peaceful reflection in unpolluted air. If a stone is knobbly or pointed, pick it up - if it is round, step on it first and if it crushes, it’s baked camel droppings that you can leave!
Everyone not required for other duties is now at work clearing the tracks for use - no-one is excepted. Water and suntan lotion are used in great quantities: water is particularly vital - you don’t sweat in the dry air and can become dehydrated before you know what’s happening. Depending on the time of day, a wind may be blowing: in the morning the air is still, but in the afternoon the wind picks up with a regularity you can almost set your watch by. The risk is the wind blowing too hard - a sandstorm will quickly obscure everything from view. While this will not be a problem for ThrustSSC which will run in the mornings, the ‘fodders’ need to be aware.
By 4pm it is time to go. The sun sets with an incredible speed as the Discoverys race across the desert back to the main road - finding the way off in the dark would not be easy even with compass and Global Positioning System.
Driver Andy Green’s callsign is "Dead Dog" - as the song almost goes: "Dead Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun"…
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