Sonic Wind & Constitution LSRV

Waldo Says: August Update

This has been a great month for the Constitution LSRV project. Ken Mason and I have been scrounging tanks and valves for the propulsion system, which is based on the LR-99/ X-15 rocket engine. It looks like we have most of the components we need to build the propulsion system. I also contacted Tom Daniel by telephone after I ran across his web site on the "American way" land speed record car project of the 1980's. Tom and Gary Gabelich were working on a concept for a Mach 1 plus car powered by a bi-propellant rocket engine. The primary fuel was to be Hydrogen Peroxide with a secondary fuel, which was not specified. They never raised sponsorship, Oh what a shock, so we were deprived of seeing one of the most beautiful designs to ever reach the model stage become reality. Gary was the driver of the Blue Flame rocket car and was the last American to hold the LSR (622.407 m.p.h.). He died tragically in 1984 in a motorcycle accident and Tom shelved the concept. Some of you will remember Tom as an industrial designer who was famous for designing model cars for various model manufacturers. Some of his creations were the Red Baron, Tarantula dragster and the Munster coach. I personally have built six of his designs when I was a twelve. Check out the "American Way" on his web site at http:tomdaniel.com/index.html for a blast to the past. Tom said he would help our Constitution LSRV project and came on board as a consultant. With a creative mind like his we can't help but succeed.
I am going to post photos of the hardware we are collecting so you can see where we are in the program soon. We have lots of powerful stuff. At the end of July I went back to my home town of Carpentersville Illinois for my thirtieth high school reunion, it was a hoot! It's good to know where you are going in life but never forget where you came from. For all you class of 1973 classmates visiting this site for the first time. Long live the Vikings! We were the kind of high school class that had open campus but after no one would come back to class after home room check in, open campus was suspended. Hey, what can I say it was the seventies! A sad note was visiting one of my old cafe racer buddies Don Norman. He is in a care facility and has been in a coma for quite awhile. Twenty years ago Don pulled on to the side of the road to help a stranded motorist. He was that kind of guy and a great mechanic, he figured he could help. A car struck him from behind at seventy miles per hour as he was working on a Volkswagen beetle on the shoulder. His life seemed to spiral down from there. Just goes to show you "No good deed goes unpunished" but If ever there was a cafe racer hellcat he was it. Don and I were some of the early cafe racers in Illinois. Cafe racers were street bikes modified to look and handle like road racers. We would lower the bars, hop up the engines and gear them tall for top speed. Riding in a hunched over position, regular motorcyclist would laugh at us but I knew that some day all the manufacturers would build cafe racers. The future bore us out as most sport bikes mimic road racers nowadays. Don rode a modified Kawasaki GPZ 550cc and later a modified Kawasaki 900cc "Cow" as we called it. I rode a modified Yamaha RD 400cc that could hit 120 m.p.h. He could flip that big Cow inside me and my RD on twisty farm roads and make me look like a novice rider. We loved "Rice burners" (Japanese bikes) Harley Davidson motorcycles were so undependable and slow at the time we would not even consider owning one. They are a lot better now but we used to say " Ride a Harley, Ride the best, Ride a mile, walk the rest... We rode without helmets in those days and in the great state of Illinois you can still do that. The image of Don wheeling (on the rear wheel only) away from me at over 100 m.p.h. while looking over his shoulder at me and smiling will forever be in my memory. All men live but very few men really live! I went to St Michael's Cathedral in Chicago said a prayer and lit a candle for him...........Waldo