The Mach 1 supporters club in Jordan evolved again last night as Murray left us and today Suzy left us for the UK. However Robin Richardson, the Mach 1 club founder joined us. The day for us was fairly quiet as the car was in the hanger being worked on by the technical teams. As we write all systems are go for running in the desert tomorrow.
All the club members have been carrying out various duties. Roger and Jason dropped Suzi off at Amman airport, swapped hire cars and then toured (or handbagging in Thrust team talk) back to Petra via the Dead Sea. They are off to the air base tonight to work on the logos on the car.
Our three older (age is a relative thing) Mach 1 club members have been off sight seeing today whilst Neal and John have been around the air base.
One of our members, Neal, was cleaning the firechase Jaguar away from the hanger, with the usual crowd of servicemen around asking about the car. When he heard frantic calls to return to the hanger and could see lots of activity about the hanger. Many thoughts went through his mind, is the base about to be invaded? Our has someone made a real boob and we are to be confined to the hanger? No the answer was that there was an approaching sandstorm and all equipment was being placed in the hanger and the doors sealed. Unfortunately the doors to the hanger had not been used for some time and so some instant reconditioning and heavy shoving by a large proportion of the team was required to get the doors closed.
As it happens the sandstorm bypassed the air base and only a little dust was blown around. The desert was however closed for a couple of hours as visibility on the track was very poor.
Later on the wind died down and it was possible to go back onto the desert. In the strong wind a number of the large marker posts we had brought out from England had blown over. It was therefore decided to fill the bases of the markers with stones as designed.
The fodding teams were a bit alarmed at being told after days of removing stones from the desert to pick up piles of stones from the edges of the desert, where there are very many stones, and take them onto the desert to fill up the marker post bases. There were mutterings of "sounds like prisoner of war work to me" as work commenced on all the markers along the track and around the pit station.
Work on the marker posts continued all afternoon with Discovery's (Land Rovers) racing around the desert picking up piles of stones and servicing marker posts. At the North end of the track some half a mile beyond the end we found the remains of what appears to be an old missile or maybe the remains of some past land speed record attempt?
To draw this report to a close we are all eagerly awaiting tomorrow to see the car run on the desert for the first time. By the time you read this many questions will already have been answered. How deeply will the car sink into the desert? How does the car perform on this surface? Tomorrow we will begin to find out these things. We are all hoping for the best.
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