The air show is a busy time at Farnborough - at one point yesterday the tailback on the M3 reached back as far as the M25 and round that route past Staines - in fact the queue was almost as long as my drive home - some 20 miles! At Q Shed the team has been treated to the best of the displays and the hangar has been shared with a whole range of aircraft, including a beautiful Gypsy Moth. A Spitfire has often been parked outside.
State-of-the-art military jets continually taxi past - or roar overhead - including the Russian SU37 which was performing the incredible mid-air ‘tumble’ to the amazement of everyone watching. The famous - and ever popular - Red Arrows have been showing their formation-flying skills all week, while Concorde has paid a visit. It was touching to hear on the air show radio station that the trip to and from Farnborough would be the last duties of its pilot before he retired from service with British Airways. What better way to bid farewell?
The crowds have certainly been at Farnborough this week, but one begins to wonder if Q Shed is the place to go if one is a Royal... As our regular readers will be aware, the ThrustSSC Team were visited last Tuesday by HRH Prince Michael of Kent, a keen follower of the project - today we were honoured to have His Majesty King Hussein bin Talal of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as our guest!
The King’s connection with ThrustSSC is more than just one of interest - Jafr Desert, Jordan, will be the site of the forthcoming high-speed trials of ThrustSSC, and the ThrustSSC Team will be guests of King Hussein and the Royal Jordanian Air Force on the adjacent base at Al Jafr. In Farnborough for the air show, it was only natural that he should express a wish to see ThrustSSC for himself - a wish the team were delighted to accommodate!
Escorted by numerous police, military officials, MOD security and his own bodyguards, as well as a lady from the Diplomatic Corps, the King was greeted by Project Director and current holder of the World Land Speed Record Richard Noble. His Majesty was evidently deeply fascinated with the car and the concept of breaking the Sound Barrier on land - like Prince Michael before him, he took time to tour the hangar and meet each member of the team in turn.
Andy Green, the driver of ThrustSSC, explained the instrument panel that he had designed to the King - going into the details of why the various gauges were required, and how the all-important warning lights were arranged to give one unambiguous indication - "Stop" - in the event of a serious problem during a run. The unusual Thrust Balance gauge - showing how well the outputs from the engines matched - was explained, as was the equally unusual Machmeter.
Back at the car - which was stripped of its engines and bodywork for ease of access while the technicians continued to work relentlessly on it - Jerry Bliss, designer of the complex systems on ThrustSSC, showed the King the computers used to monitor and control the behaviour of ThrustSSC, as well as explaining how the active suspension is so critical for adjusting the pitch of the car to ensure the downforce on the car is right at all Mach numbers.
As well as the full-size car on one side, and the mockup taken to the early roadshows on the other, ThrustSSC’s Aerodynamicist, Ron Ayers, had a couple of models to hand to show how the car looks with the bodywork and engines fitted. The first was the large wind-tunnel model, while the second was one of the instrumented 1/25.4th scale models used for transonic aerodynamic testing on the rocket-track at Pendine. In fact, it was the example Ron usually prefers to show visitors which has a number of marks on the front - acquired during a supersonic bird-strike when a seagull landed on the track at the wrong time!
Both Ron and Leigh Remfry, who explained the operation of the car in more depth, seemed to have drawn the short straw on timing - I'm not sure what was performing to the public at that particular point, but it was right above Q Shed and making an tremendous noise! Several times one of them would begin to speak, only for the aircraft to make another reheated pass overhead! No-one minded, though - it was all a part of the occasion!
Mike Hearn, who will perform the role of fireman during desert operations, showed the King the superb 130mph Jaguar XJ-R firechase, as well as its specialised equipment for freeing Andy Green in the event of an incident.
Close to the firechase are four of the team’s Rolls-Royce Spey jet engines. Al Harkness was unable to be at Q Shed today, but the Engine Team’s Chris Cowell was on hand. He was able to discuss the differences between the standard 202 and uprated 205 variants of the engines, as well as how the team will use the former for test runs, and the latter for record attempts.
The King was particularly keen to understand how the team would operate the car, and all the specialised equipment they would be using to monitor and communicate with it and the world. Jerry Bliss and the Internet Team of Nick Chapman and Jeremy Davey showed His Majesty around the magnificent Operations Trailer parked at the end of Q Shed, explaining how telemetry off the car could be sent via satellite and the Internet to the UK for analysis. The use of the digital camera - which had been in action again - was explained, as was how the Internet is proving such a vital means of global communication for the project.
King Hussein was obviously impressed by all he saw and heard, and is looking forward very much to seeing the team and the car in Jordan for the test runs. Indeed, he bade goodbye to Richard Noble with the words: "See you in Jordan!"
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