From here: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7968860.stm
A British engineer from Hampshire has broken the world land speed record for a wind-powered vehicle.
Richard Jenkins reached 126.1mph (202.9km/h) in his Greenbird car on the dry plains of Ivanpah Lake in Nevada.
Also a discussion here:
www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=49334
Wow!
Theres a mention of 14? GPS's being used at the end, and the one's you can see are Navi's. I wonder if a Trimble system was part of the World record validation or wether they have another agreement with just the Navi's?
I wonder what angle to the wind he was pointing? It looks like he sets off at 45 deg higher than a beam reach, where we head 45 deg off...
See the side ways front drag towards the end of his run
I want a go in that thing
Congrats all round for perseverance and determination
He did get a bit sideways there for a while.
the big problem he had was that Ivanpah is a bit short and his wing wasnt set for fast accel.. I f you read some of the posts from the day before's runs and check the plots its quite fascinating. All the runs are reaches rather than broadreaches
What got me is that in the video at the end of the run the rig is actually raking FORWARD of its resting position This basically means that the RIG is still accelerating and the only thing slowing it down is the yacht underneath. I really hope this is the start of some serious landyachting. There has to be at least one frenchman who has noticed the UnionJack on that wing
You were right , here are the Navi units
Richard worked with The Nalsa Officials and TRimble representatives on previous visits to Nevada , and was able to establish the accuracy of thes simple units as being suitable for this type of speed attempt
Last time he was sailing on Lefroy he had all sorts of brands of Gps fitted to the yacht and they were interfering with each other, batteries crapping out etc,leads to data loggers coming loose..
So silly old me says " have you tried one of these?"
Now I know the answer.
That little bank of Navis replaced a whopping Military unit,from a missile guidance system, whos slowest setting was 1 reading per second.
The timing gear would probably be the cheapest bit of gear, or "kit" as richard would put it, on the yacht
nice insight land yacht! are they mounted on the tail? the navis look to be an after thought or are they using low drag gaffa tape?
At first you get a sense that they were added as an afterthought, But Richard doesnt work that way. Everything has been planned, and he got better at it every time he came to Lefroy. I think that platform on the tail is there just for that reason. It is a great place to give constant clear vision for the satellite reception.
the previous model had a clear hatch with all the GPS units inside, protected from the salt, but had to be unscrewed evry time you wanted to access the gear.
This latest version is simply easier as he can rapidly set or read the speed gear.
The yanks call the stuff 100mph tape, so now they can change it to 126mph tape
there is some tape over some other joins on the yacht.
Iron Duck was vitually faired with the stuff
