August has almost gone and we are still at Farnborough - but there is a great feeling of achievement now because we all know that the end of the 24 month build is only a couple of weeks away. I am typing this on my laptop at the Museum of British Road Transport in Coventry, sitting just opposite Thrust 2 waiting to go on for a BBC Breakfastime feature. Thrust 2 had a very painful creation too, but I guess with hindsight you tend to forget the crises, failures and the ever present nail-biting tension. If all goes well this season, today will be the last time I sit in Thrust 2 as the World Land Speed Record holder - in two months it should be Andy's title. It mustn't be Craig Breedlove's!

August is the month I have come to dread with these projects, sponsor's directors tend to slow down in July to the point when they become stationary and totally uncontactable in August. Each month we have to pull in at least one major deal and in August 95 we nearly lost the project because of this August Factor. We had decided to expand the project substantially against a falling cashflow - it was absolutely the right thing to do but is not the sort of policy you'll find being carried out by an executive with long term pension plans. John the NatWest bank manager saved us then. But this August our problems are very different. The objectives for the month are daunting - get the engines running in ThrustSSC at Boscombe Down - get the Tiltec transportation trailer complete - finish the Pit Station truck - somehow find 240,000 litres of fuel for the Antonov - somehow find the funding to start developing the Spey 205 engines on the test bed at Pyestock - somehow get the ThrustSSC onto the runway for slow speed runs - oh and together put in around 2,700 man hours on build. And each month we start with a clean sheet of paper - if there isn't a near debt situation and a panic stricken bank manager at the start of each month you just aren't trying hard enough!

Of course it seldom works out as planned - but this month there is a major change ThrustSSC is coming alive - part by part it's becoming operational and we are beginning to learn just what we have built - and what we have to live with! The first sign of this was at DTEO Boscombe Down where we all took a day off to see the car run up to max reheat power. The objective is to prove the car systems on tie down - essential so that if we get engine problems later we can always tie the car down again and check out the systems with the engines at full power. This time we were in for something completely different. With both engines running Andy took the left hand engine up to military power and there was a flash of flame and a loud bang. The airflow into the engine had become unstable and caused a compressor surge. A run up of the right hand engine produced the same effect. A1l Harkness and the engine team scratched their heads - Rolls-Royce were mystified.

A further visit to Boscombe with anti-vortex mats in front of the car achieved an identical result, though Andy was able to reach max military power before the surge - this was probably because there was no tailwind. It seems that the huge suck of the engines is pulling air from all around the car and generating a vortex underneath which then migrates forwards into the intakes and causes the instability. This is not an effect which will dog ThrustSSC, for once the car is travelling at over 60mph the forward ram effect of the intake will overcome the vortex. But we still have to prove the car at full max power on the static tie down. There was only one solution - the long suffering Mike Horne would have to build a huge composite bellmouth intake. This would be used as a temporary add-on intake used only when the car was on tie down test, and it would stabilise and smooth the flow going into the intake. Faced with this huge task, Mike just shrugged his shoulders as I've seen him do so often before - and then got on with it.

Back at Q Shed work pushes on at a tremendous pace, Jerry Bliss never seems to sleep at all - and together with the British Airways volunteer team, we generally have some 10-15 people on the car at all times. Jerry's electronics shop has amassed a huge volume of equipment - so much so that its getting difficult to get through the door. When you do, the first person you see is Robert or Rod, soldering on yet another huge multi cable connector. Glynne now stays with Ron in Surrey during the week, abandoning all hope of making it back home to Solihull each night. Andy can be seen tackling the parachute system having given up his entire summer holiday entitlement to the project and now becoming a specialist on parachute strops and splicing the 2" nylon braid. Normally Q Shed work starts at 7.30am and continues through until around 10pm.and you find an atmosphere of steady calm determination punctuated with the whine of the pneumatic windy drills.

The Antonov fuel crises was eventually resolved by Royal Jordanian Airlines, who have very kindly agreed to fund the fuel bill. This is a huge boost - because it now means that we actually can be sure of getting to Jafr! The deal was put together by Andrew Noble and Mr Munib Toukan who later explained that story behind the fascinating Royal Jordanian Airlines aircraft livery - almost certainly one of the smartest and most original of any airline. The idea was exactly that - they wanted the smartest and Mr Toukan decided that the design should be based on the smartest of male clothing - a dark blue/black blazer worn over light colour trousers. Having come up with such a simple and ingenious idea, they handed the concept to Landor for the final touches. And as you will know, the Royal Jordanian livery stands out in grand style.

We had moved ThrustSSC to Boscombe using the huge Tiltec trailer which has been built by Jim and Matthew Cramp. This connects to Brian Palmer's Scania 144 unit but requires police permission to travel on the UK roads as its not so much a wide load - its much more like a beached aircraft carrier. The trailer is coming up really well now and we expect to have it complete and operational next week.

In the 1970's I was very privileged to spend an evening with Leo Villa, who had been chief mechanic to Sir Malcolm Campbell and later Donald Campbell. Leo knew it all - he'd seen the land Speed record up from 171mph to 403 mph as well as countless waterspeed records. The evening went on till around 2am, by which time Joan Villa and I were exhausted - Leo on the other hand was just getting into his stride. I remember driving back from Redhill in the fog trying to remember everything I could. The key point was that all the Bluebirds had underperformed and therefore Leo's rule was to insist on at least 20% more power than was designed. I had made myself incredibly unpopular by insisting on an upgrade of engine for Thrust 2 which had meant considerable rework - and it paid off, for we had just scraped home with a new record. For ThrustSSC we had managed to get two of the very special 202 engines modified with DS HP turbine blades which meant that we could run the engines 50degrees K hotter than the 202. Rolls-Royce felt this was good for at least a 10% increase in thrust - but the penalty would be a whopping reduction in turbine life to just 10 hours.

Nobody seemed to know for sure how much the benefit would be - so we had to find out, borrowing the Glen test bed at Pyestock at times when it was not needed. With Al Harkness, Chris Cowell, Steve Wiltshire and the DRA test team under Graham Stokes a second series of engine tests was started - this time with the special engines (not to be confused with the hybrids which we ran in July). This time we have to health check both engines and then turn up the core temperature to see just what thrust we can get. At the time of writing we have one engine checked, one engine to check and both to raise operating temperatures on. The budget is desperately limited - the costs are frightening coming on top of the huge expenditure we are already incurring and the job has to be finished by September 7th come what may! Rolls-Royce are being incredibly supportive with a performance engineer ready at two hours notice. The big question is simply this: Are we going to get significant more and reliable power - or are we going to melt the HP turbines in the process. If we get the power then these engines will be fitted for the final highest speed runs. If the power is not reliable then we will have to run with normal settings - that is of course if we have any turbine blades left!

Oh and there is one last point, I have signed a disclaimer so that if a Spey blows and takes out the testbed, I guess we are all going to have to sweep floors at DRA for the rest of our lives!

Back at DRA Farnborough, we needed to run ThrustSSC on the runway, preferably before the Farnborough Airshow absorbed all the runway time. The Bank holiday weekend of the 24th, 25th and 26th seemed to be the best time. If we could achieve three days of runs and ThrustSSC was reliable, then we could reach 200 mph and consider the low speed testing complete. But it wasn't to be. We lost Saturday, as we were late with completion of preparations, Sunday looked promising but then we hit a hydraulic snag which left us with only 1000psi in the system and no brakes. Looking more dead than alive and surviving on Chinese takeaways Jerry and his team nailed the hydraulics problem that night. So Monday was to be the day.

Monday came together with the 130 Gold Card members whom we had promised an opportunity to see the car run. What they hadn't expected was to see the cars FIRST run. We also had the ITN News team with Norman Rees who is taking a huge personal interest in the project - even parting with £25 for his signature on the ThrustSSC inside cowlings.

The members had been phoning in on their access line for weeks, and had come from all over the country. ThrustSSC was now only a couple of hours away from the completion. The members stood around in the hangar and we gave them talks on the project, showed them the Kidde Jaguar XJ-R Firechase 160 mph firefighting vehicle, the huge Pits Station truck and then demonstrating the six wheel drive Supacat tugs. It rained, it thundered, and then it stopped.

As soon as it stopped raining the engine team hit a snag - the last thing on the check out is to pressurise the LP fuel system to check for leaks. You guessed it - the fuel system developed a leak at the critical LP interface joint between the right hand engine and the car. Paul Remfrey, Al Harkness and Chris Cowell, gave it everything they had and after another two hours we were ready to go.

Towing ThrustSSC out to the runway was a major undertaking with the nose on, since the ground clearance has to be watched all the time. By the time we got there there were only 30 minutes left of runway time before the airfield closed and the Farnborough fire crew had to go home. If the firecrew were to stay on unpaid then their insurance lapsed! The DRA very kindly consented to keep the runway open for another hour - and we were go.

Or that's what we thought. Andy climbed in, the recovery team took up their position at the far end of the runway, together with the ITN crew. Peter Ball from Castrol had given up just about all his Bank Holiday weekend and had taken up station with ITN. The start team fired up the ThrustSSC engines, and then we discovered a small but growing fuel leak - and then no hydraulic pressure from the RH engine which had just been plumbed into the system. We could expect the RH engine hyd pump to prime on shut down, but the start crew felt unhappy about restarting the RH engine with the fuel leak. So we shut down both and returned to Q Shed.

I went to apologise to the Mach 1 members who were not phased in the slightest. "We understand!" they said, "When do we come again?" The ITN film crew were not phased either. We now understand what a big and complex project this is - and we'll be back!

Back at the hangar Al found that the leak had come from a high pressure fuel junction on the engine. There never was any doubt that the right decision was taken.

Now this leads to more problems - the huge Farnborough Air Show was now starting. The runway was needed for practice during the rest of the week and for the Air Show the following week. It was quite clear that we might have to wait a very long time for a 30 min runway slot.

A careful look at the pre-Jordan workload showed that to prepare the car for runway runs which might never take place during the show, would cause even more delays to the overall completion - so we chose to delay the runway runs until after the 10th September, concentrating on getting ThrustSSC ready for Jordan.

So to get to Jordan, we have first to complete the high power static tests at Boscombe, using Mike Horne's intake bellmouth. Then we have to complete a series of test runs at Farnborough to 200 mph, hold a press day to show everyone what's going on-and then and only then call in the Antonov and go to Al Jafr.

So now you have the true flavour of record breaking - so near and yet so far - five steps forward and three back - and all the time a backbreaking schedule which depends on a huge personal committment from every family. It's very tough on everyone and from time to time you do find yourself questioning your sanity - but not for long. There's a World First achievable here and it just needs a few more months of rigorous personal discipline and absolute commitment.

And of course there's yet another side to this - how long can we keep this going forward - how long can we keep the money flowing in at sufficient pace to carry out all this work under extreme pressure. Well the response is demonstrated by the internet - since Microsoft's sponsorship and Artewisdom's work, the site accesses have risen to 146,000 per week and we have passed the 2.1 million mark. Suddenly it is becoming clear to sponsors that a huge number of people are very genuinely interested in whats going on - and that those site accesses are not involuntary or random acts - the story is building.

It is going to be interesting to see how Craig Breedlove fares - he has announced he is into a Bonneville Record attempt in September and is even fixing visitors travel. At least we have a proper high grip runway for our first development runs - not that terrible combination of new car, solid wheels and slippery salt. So, unless Bonneville plays its normal weather game, Breedlove will turn a wheel first. I suppose its not a huge psychological step, since we will be very close behind but I keep reminding everyone who will listen that ours is a 60,000 man hour project which started 2 years after Breedlove began his build. The two projects are now just weeks apart.

The Thrust 2 record probably has just a few more weeks left - Breedlove says he's going to win. I think he'd better keep his money in his wallet - he's going to need every dollar he can lay his hands on!

	Sponsored by	This site best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 3