Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Looked it up. The Stanleys set a record in 1906 of 127 mph.
Interestingly, in the very early days, land speed records were
dominated by electric cars, the fastest of which was 65.79 mph in
1899..



Bertie



Can you imagine what it must have felt like for those early guys
at 127 indicated on that frame and chassis? Those guys had guts!!

They don't call it the heroic age for nothing. I have driven a 1911
car at about 70 and that was actually not too bad at all. Braking
was not what you could call the best . I once drove this car dwon
the side of a mountain with the wrong gear selected at the top and
didn't dare try to change once i had ealised I was going too fast.
It had a transmission brake as well as the tiny rear wheel brakes,
but they were all on fire and almost completely useless by the time
I reached the bottom. The cars handled better than you might
imagine, though. There were no shocks on them, but the leaf springs
were very long and very supple and that damped out the ride better
than you might imagine. The steering was fairly good on many of
them as well. Tires were skinny, but they were usually about 45 psi
or moe on the larger cars so didn;t deform much on corners, so that
was usually OK. the brakes, though...

the other big concern was that if you had artillery wheels (wood)
they could collapse under side loads. IIRC this was th ecause of
the very first auto fatality.

Bertie

Sounds exciting. Best I've ever done on land was a souped up 500
Kawasaki racing cycle. I got it through the gears balanced on the
rear suspension then took it out to well over 100 and developed a
"vibration" in the front forks. I'll tell you the truth, it was as
scary as I've ever been in or on a machine :-) How those guys ride
those things at Daytona, fall off and survive is beyond me. You see
it happen and watch them get up and back on a bike. More nerve than
sense I guess. I really shouldn't talk. Putting a fighter on her
back at 100 feet didn't scare me a bit.....but I wouldn't want to do
it TODAY
:-)))

Yeah, it's all what you're comfortble with. I've been over 100 on a
bike and it felt fine, but the terrifying aspect is other road users.
All it takes is some asshole in an SUV to be at the wrong place at
the wrong time!
I can;t even imagine doing aerobatics below 500 feet nowadays.. In
fact, i doubt I'd do them below 1500 when I get going again. (the
airplane is moving along anyway.. )


Bertie
That's good. Stay up there out of the marbles. It's a lot better on
your health for sure. If I had it to do over again I'd take it up
higher myself as the average air show fan wouldn't know the difference
anyway.


Well, I won't be doing any shows anyway!


Bertie