| Date: | April 24th 1997 |
| Location: | DERA, Farnborough |
| Occasion: | ThrustSSC Press Day |
I was having a quiet evening in front of the T.V. - watching Top Gear as it happens - when the call came. John Lovatt asking if I would like to assist his anti-press-gang on the Thursday Press Day. No problem. Then he explained the plan for the day and how early he would like me to be there. But I don't get up that early to go to work….
In the end I made it. Just. Of course I had failed to allow sufficient time to compensate for the rush hour traffic. It is in those moments when you are trying to gain a bit of time by bending the speed limit to somewhere around 100 m.p.h. that it comes home to you just how fast SSC is. You are not even doing one eighth of the projected speed of SSC! Mind you, I can cover slightly more than ten miles to the tankfull.
I managed to persuade the security people at the gate at Farnborough that I was not too much of a risk, got issued with an accompanied visitor pass with my mug shot on it and got escorted to P8 shed. Everyone keeps going on about how marvellous the new shed is. This may be true. Unfortunately I get a rather nasty feeling of deja-vu from it. I used to go to Farnborough Technical College (many years ago) and we had some buildings which were in a similar style. I keep getting the feeling that one of the lecturers will pop out of somewhere and demand that homework that I never did complete or ask why I am not in a lecture. It was not unknown for us to get so bored during maths lectures that we would sneak out to The Swan pub by the North Gate for a pint and get back before the end of the session - without the lecturer noticing we had gone AWOL!
Not much chance of that today! No sooner had I shown my head than I was put to work assembling Fechers, some still coated in Jordanian dust, and taking them out to where the car was parked. This was the first time I had seen SSC in its new paint job and very smart it looks too. It has a definite aura about it. Where the white Breedlove machine looks sleek and elegant, the (BASF Supersonic black) SSC looks extremely purposeful but also a little sinister. It really looks like it means business!
I had a swift look at the Pegasus Microlight, which was parked in front of the car - the new sub-sonic transport you may have read about. I think the sponsors were having a little difficulty setting up a photo of it against the car as it is so small! Its wing was inside the new big Airshelta hangar out of the stiffening breeze.
Question. How do you keep an inflatable building attached to the ground when you can't use tent pegs? You park two (BASF supersonic black) Land Rover Discoveries on its flaps! Thank you Rover, I knew they would come in handy!
Now it was time to usher in the visitors, taking care to make sure none of them strayed off in search of a story in some classified area of the airbase. And to arrange to usher out a couple of journalists who were complaining about having to pay for food and so on and wanted to leave, having obviously missed the point about SSC not having any money as it is only funded by donations and sponsorship.
I never did find out how many journalists and Gold Club members turned up, but there were a lot of them. There was even one film crew from a Japanese T.V. company.
No sooner had the presentations begun than the call came out to come and rescue the Fechers around the car as they were starting to get blown over. We solved that problem with a little help from a passing airfield fire truck (I want to have a play with one, please!) by filling the bases with water, not normally an option in Jordan, I suspect!
Presentation over, everyone was guided out to have a look at the car and I was dispatched to the North Gate to take over checking in the stragglers. I had a chat with some of the sponsors as they passed through the gate and came to the conclusion that Richard must have squeezed them dry. I completely failed to persuade the people from Trimble that they ought to give me one of their rather smart looking GPS units for my paragliding! And the people from Taxan didn't seem to be too sold on my kind suggestion that if I were to take a couple of their rather desirable flat L.C.D. computer monitors home it would save them the annoyance of having to pack them up at the end of the day.
By the time I had finished my sandwiches and had checked in the last of the latecomers, the car was out on the taxiway. I stood there with a couple of the security guards exchanging aviation anecdotes while the team lit the engines. At last the big moment arrived. The engines spooled up, the brakes were released and the car shot off like a scalded cat. Unfortunately, there is a slight catch with being behind the car, in that we could hardly see it for the smoke! Until the reheat lit and then, for a brief moment, there was a bright orange circle cutting its way through the murk. It was all over so quickly that the right hand engine never really got into reheat. However, being downwind of it, we were treated to the glorious sound of two Rolls Royce Spey engines on full power shortly followed by the smell of burnt aviation fuel, if you like that kind of thing!
Now that the fun was over, the visitors were escorted straight out. But not before I had had a chance to make a "declaration of intent" with some of the other Gold Club members to meet in Black Rock for The Big Event. Somehow.
Then it was back to the shed to tidy up. Amongst other things, there were the video wall and the sound system to take down. Then it was all hands to the Airshelta. For something that is essentially an inflated plastic bag, it is pretty substantial when it comes to putting it to bed. The first problem was locating The Man Who Knows How To Fold It. Then there was the small matter that, despite there being at least a dozen of us, we were still struggling under the weight of it. An hour, a couple of false starts and a few ribald comments later, ("I've got the wet patch" etc.) we managed to get the thing folded down into a sausage about ten feet long by five feet in diameter. Finally, we trussed it up in a cargo net before it managed to unroll itself. Then it was down to the trusty Merlo forklift once again.
The final bit of excitement was being driven out to the viewing area in the SSC transporter by Jeremy Davey to collect the last of the Fechers. We all know that he got his H.G.V. license to allow him to help by driving one of the trucks but I am assured that the vicious rumour that he got it in Woolworth's is completely unfounded.
And that, apart from Richard Noble telling us what a "bloody marvellous" day it had been, was it. So we all sneaked off home quickly before someone found another heavy something that needed moving.
The "authorised version" of the day can be found in God Bless The Mach 1 Club!
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