AIRESHELTA has helped to put the Thrust challenge one step in front of the Americans.
For while US speed ace Craig Breedlove parks his car, Spirit Of America, under an awning between test runs, the British have the world's largest blow-up garage to protect their supersonic car.
And team leader Richard Noble is in no doubt that the awesome 60ft by 25ft cream-coloured inflatable building gives the Brits a vital edge for September's head-to-head race between the two teams to break the land speed record and sound barrier in Nevada's Black Rock desert.
"It definitely puts us ahead of the opposition," he said. "It means we can work on the car for more hours each day and run it more. All the Americans have is an awning."
But, in a strange twist of fate, it was sheer bad luck that led them to use the pioneering Aireshelta in the first place. The team was doing test runs in the Jordanian desert last Autumn when Thrust developed a suspension problem and engineers needed to hard to fix it.
Loading the 10-tonne, 52ft-long monster car on and off its trailer before towing it 12 miles each night to the Al Jafr air base would waste several hours a day. West Yorkshire speed freak and businessman Richard Bailey had followed the Thrust project right from the very start. He'd invented an inflatable garage for sidecar racing to protect himself from the wind, rain and cold while fixing his bikes at the trackside and was certain one of his Airesheltas could give Thrust, well, a big thrust forward.
He contacted Richard Noble who at first thought he could do without one.
He had to think again quickly when things started to go wrong and rang 40-year-old Mr Bailey at home one Saturday teatime with an urgent SOS for help.
Mr Bailey had an Aireshelta which would do the job and worked all Saturday night and Sunday to locate it, pack it and get it to the airport. The speed of the operation was such that the Aireshelta travelled 2,500 miles and was out on the Jordanian desert covering Thrust on the Monday so the car could be repaired quickly and complete more test runs.
"We loaned them that Aireshelta for nothing," said Mr Bailey. "It was our way of making sure we'd done our bit for such an important British engineering project." And the Huddersfield company has now sponsored the huge new Aireshelta it has specially made for September's bid to get Thrust into the history books. It takes a mere 20 minutes to blow-up, just over half-an-hour to deflate and can be packed away into a Transit van.
Airesheltas are now used all over the world, mainly by the armed forces and emergency services. In the wake of the official report into the Lockerbie bombing when the Pan Am jet was blasted out of the night sky above Scotland in December 1988, the emergency services realised they needed highly mobile, instantly-inflated shelters for use as casualty clearing stations and rescue control headquarters. Airesheltas meet all these needs and the ambulance service covering Lockerbie became one of the firm's first customers. They are used at all kinds of major incidents. Others are used by the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in Bosnia to protect mechanics from the harsh Balkan winters while they repair and service trucks.
More bizarrely, Airesheltas have been turned into inflatable opera houses big enough to seat 450 people and small enough to be used as portable dark rooms at outdoor film and tv sets.
For more information please contact Managing Director Richard Bailey:
Aireshelta Ltd, Jubilee Works, 10 Dale Street, Longwood, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD3 4TG. Tel: +44 (0)1484 646559 Fax: +44 (0)1484 644450 Email: Richard@airshel.demon.co.uk
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