Frankly, I would never have believed it. I believed we had chosen the one place in the World which would not flood and which would give us plenty of time to get to grips with the development of ThrustSSC- after all they say that the Jafr desert had not flooded since 1991. Lawrence of Arabia was never photographed in gumboots!

So October saw us to Jafr the operations set up and 30 highly enthusiastic people all bustling to get the operation set up and ThrustSSC onto the desert. There was a very high level of confidence - after all had we not somehow busted the system and made it to Jafr against all odds?. Had we not the greatest LSR car of them all? Had we not a highly professional and very highly motivated team? Had we not a very highly rated driver? Surely this is the moment when all this huge effort comes together in a highly spectacular way! But there was another side to this - people were very tired - we had been working non stop for the last five months at fever pitch seven days a week-there had been very few days off. We had managed to give the build team three days off before we left, but very few other team members had been able to take advantage of the offer.

The first thing to do on arrival was to get everyone out on the desert. Land Rover had provided five Discoverys which were pristine clean - they were not to remain that way for long! This was very much the moment of truth - only Andrew Noble and I had actually seen and checked the Jafr surface - how would everyone else react? Their view was that the track was superb but the surface harder than expected.

Ahead of us at Jafr were two challenges which we thought could be achieved simultaneously - complete the last details of the ThrustSSC build and get the desert tracks defodded. With a bit of luck both would be ready together and then we could forget the defodding and car building and concentrate on the car running.

Things started to go wrong almost immediately: 'I can't understand why Al Harkness and the engine team are insisting on engine check runs before we take ThrustSSC to the desert - surely the engines were fine at Farnborough?' Jerry Bliss was concerned that this was just overcautious and a waste of precious resource - and time.

But Al was right. The precautionary engine tests revealed a failed non-return valve which simply meant that when the engines and fuel pumps were running, fuel transferred from one tank to another. The entire system would have to be torn down in the Jafr hangar and new non return valves sourced. What seemed to be a relatively simply problem rapidly escalated to a crisis - parts would have to be located in the UK or the US - machinings would have to be made in Farnborough and the whole lot got to Jafr and fitted - everything would have to be right first time. Flight Refuelling in Dorset came to our help and the NRVs were in a taxi at the crack of dawn the next morning to catch the daily Royal Jordanian flight from Heathrow to Amman.

In the meantime Glynne had schemed up the fittings and these were underway at DRA Farnborough. Back at Jafr the fuel system was coming apart ready for the new parts, while Mike Horne and his team were completing the fairings around the front wheels.

Around this time realisation dawn on us just what an appalling task we were faced with the fodding. At Black Rock this had simply meant walking down the tracks and picking up the odd stone on the surface. But at Jafr although it was not immediately obvious - there were a lot of stones. Small stones could be sucked into the ThrustSSC engines and wreck them and the large stones were wheelbreakers - many were half buried in the surface and had to be dug out with screwdrivers. There was nothing for it, everything would have to be picked up. The temperature was hot, people were tired and yet we now had 2,000 man hours of work ahead of us to prepare the tracks. Martyn Davidson organised everyone into shifts and the endless programme began: up at 6am, out on the desert by 0830 and keep going until 1630 when the sun went down. Enthusiasm was high, the humour was tremendous, a totally new application found for Trivial Pursuits but the work was tough and the constant exposure to the desert sun started a cumulative process of fatigue and exhaustion.

There was also great affection for the journalists who came out to help with the fodding which including Der Spiegel, Daily Telegraph and Playboy.

Back in Amman I was summoned to meet His Majesty King Hussein who was due to inspect the entrants of a British classic car rally which had made its way to Jordan the hard way. His words were memorable: 'Richard, I understand that you might be concerned that I might want a drive in ThrustSSC.' There had been a rumour to this effect and His Majesty is a keen rally driver as well as jet pilot. I wasn't quite sure what to say. 'Don't worry, I have no intention of asking you for a drive!' There was huge relief all round - and much laughter.

Back at Jafr, the ThrustSSC engine trials were now been completed - the huge noise could be heard five miles away by the fodding team on the desert. This raised eager anticipation and gave comfort that solid progress was being made.

And then we discovered the next hit. Amazingly we found it almost impossible to load ThrustSSC on its transporter with the desert wheels attached. The loading took 8 hours as the rear wheels cut into the conveyor belt surface we were using on the transporter. There was now no way we could base ThrustSSC in its hangar - it would have to live out on the desert. And we needed an inflatable hanger - the need was filled in minutes by the indefatigable Richard Bailey of Aireshelta Ltd in Leeds, who despite having done his back in the day before, had the 25ft x 40ft Airshelta erected on the desert within 48 hours - 24 hours after ThrustSSC made its first run. 'It's a quick erect rapid intervention product!' he explained.

The enthusiasm was strong the committment tremendous but the fatigue was beginning to show with a series of injuries. Rob Hemper fell off the transporter and broke his arm, Robert Atkinson was installing his pneumatic pit station aerial when he allowed too much pressure to build up and on opening an upper clamp the top of the aerial took off like a rocket injuring his hand when it fell to earth. Ninetta Hearn burned her hand in the kitchen and both Dee Campbell-Coombe and Glynne Bowsher fell over whilst exploring Petra. Dean Smith and Joe Fuga met with an accident in a Discovery. No one was seriously hurt, but we were appalled by the series of needless injuries which were taken care of by our good friends at Jafr base and at the local medical centre.

Now to that first run: The design team had specified a simple profile - accelerate up to 120mph, select idle and measure deceleration, then accelerate again up to 220mph and decelerate using the brakes up to 700C and then a final burst to 320mph using the triple parachute to stop if necessary. The idea was to get fixes on the ThrustSSC rolling resistance and therefore for Ron to calculate the maximum speed possible in safety on the Jafr desert.

But there was another question to answer before this: as the ThrustSSC came off the ramps and onto the desert for the first time -how far would the wheels sink in to the desert surface? The answer was surprising- they barely sank in at all.

With the suspension set at full hard, Andy set off on the first dry power run - the car accelerated really slowly as he used minimum power to reach 100mph to avoid sucking in huge areas of real estate ahead of the intakes. He then spooled up both engines - there was one hell of noise and he had gone.

The run was not uneventful - the car tracked straight and true until he hit a filled desert crossing track at which TSSC leaped into the air and landed heavily after which the steering became confused. In fact this was to be the start of the steering problems which were to dog us in the days to come.

With suspension set soft and the steering beefed up, Andy set off on the second run on the 16th. The car ran far truer and Jerry's Citroen-like hydraulic suspension worked a dream. But the video cameras showed major shimmy (violent oscillation) of the rear wheels with considerable deflections at speed. The extraordinary thing about this run was that Glynne and the workshop had become confused under the pressure and welded additional struts to the moving rather than static parts of the steering legs thus almost locking the steering.

Thus Andy had gone for a 300mph run with a well damped and very limited steering system. The car had run straight but the oscillations were still there. A short follow-on photo run was made for our friends at Paris Match.

The fourth run was to be a 400mph run using minimum reheat and an undamped steering. Again Andy set off in high hopes, but the steering oscillation was still there and the car started to drift left against a right hand steering input. Wisely Andy aborted the run at 300mph though he had managed to engage both afterburners which lit together and smoothly.

The damage to the steering system from the last run had been considerable and replacement components were turned out by John Getty of PDS Engineering in Lancs within 90 minutes of receiving Glynnes drawings by fax - and together with specially made steering dampers by Spax, the whole consignment was on the next aircraft from UK and arrived in Jafr 48 hours after Glynne completed the drawings.

Great effort went into rebuilding the rear suspension, repositioning the legs to give greater trailing castor and adding the steering dampers, but the run was never made due to intervention by the Rain God who was working to a different agenda. It was an incredible disappointment - after all the heartache and struggle we had reached a point where the car could most probably steer safely and we had completed 100 miles of track for 10 high speed runs. Most of the team felt that we were about to make the breakthrough but the rapid flooding of the track made this utterly impossible.

The flood itself was absolutely unexpected. The last time Jafr had flooded was 1991 and by sheer good fortune Martyn Davidson was in the overnight team sleeping out in the desert that night. The night had been stormy but not a drop had fallen on the desert - the next morning he found the flashflood water a kilometre away and moving in at 1ft every second. He immediately got the evacuation underway and in under three hours ThrustSSC and the Pits Station were clear of danger. There then followed a frantic effort to clear the remainder of the site including the famous Aireshelta-fortunately the Royal Jordanian Air Force supplied two large trucks and we left with the water just 200 yards away.

The drive out was interesting to say the least. By the time we were ready to leave the pits area we were cut off from the desert exit by several miles of water flow. Andrew Noble had found a crossing point for the convoy which required just ¼ mile of wading. For a few hours after the water flows onto the desert the surface remains hard under the water - then it suddenly loosens to the consistency of porridge - and nothing can pass. Nobody seems to know how long this critical period lasts! Together with the two Supacats, the Merlo and another Discovery we set off wading through the water. Peter Ross found it difficult to steer the Merlo in the flood, and I found that just a slight touch on the throttle would spin all four Discovery wheels. We probably made it just in time!

Frankly this was land speed recordus interruptus - we had made three development runs and only reached 331mph. On the face of it, it doesn't sound good - but in fact the project had achieved a great deal. We had cleared and prepared 100 miles of high speed track, we had completed the car, we had proved engines data systems and operational arrangements. The car stability was fine and the parachute systems worked well. Most of all we needed the data from that 5th run to prove that the steering fixes were fine and with this denied to us we were faced with a cruel disappointment.

But one or two other things had happened in a most extraordinary way. The Internet operation had built right up until we were running 50,000 access per day and back in UK the demand for Jordan models was reaching a point where we are going to have difficulty in coping. These are the last of the silver models - next years model is going to be in our special BASF supersonic black colour. The electronic PR effort run by ICL Sorbus was making the breakthrough with nearly 1000 journalists registered and producing vast amounts of copy. The electronic photos are now being bought by the media and the electronic PR system is running well!

So now it is back to the cold UK to get the funding machine wound up again to enable us to make changes to the rear suspension, paint the car and get us back to Jordan in the spring when the Jafr desert dries again. We have a lot of new ideas and now a great opportunity. Royal Jordanian very kindly flew most of the team home leaving just a scratch crew of five with the car at Jafr - waiting for the HeavyLift Antonov which is booked in for the 14th December. A short break is way overdue.

But we plan to be back in Jordan in three months - and that's not not long at all!

So neither Spirit of America nor ThrustSSC have gained the record in 1996. This leaves the door wide open for our Australian friends whom we understand will start runs in January at Lake Gairdner. Nothing is predictable in record breaking and we wish Rosco McGlashan a series of safe fast runs - no adverse transonic effects and no wheel shimmy!

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