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Show SALT FLAT NEWS, NOVEMBER, 1970 By Herbert B. Laughner A late morning sunrise, warm and golden with only a few gray-blac- k clouds, blushes to its fullest spectrum. on the salt dampened by autumn rains, the Already crew of the Blue Flame is well into mental checklists, equipment movement and the myriad of details unknown to spectators who view such an accomplishment as only two runs averaged to become a land speed record. It's a contrast to yesterday and the innumerable days like it since the rocket car and its human companions n came together as a dollar team at Bonneville in late September. Yesterday we spent in the mobile office van beside the timing stand midway into the measured mile. We waited for a sunrise which never came; instead the sky became a slightly brighter gray, Rain, winds, quiet gray sky. More rain, winds, more blank sky. Late in the afternoon a cold sun brightened spectators hopes, but sporadic winds dashed the prospects almost as quickly. But today today is reassuring, confident, definite, You KNOW if will be a record today. Fuel is added for the first run where the Flame roars off from a standing start in front of a plume of white smoke. That run on straight hydrogen peroxide warms a catalyst pack inside the rocket engine for proper functioning when higher runs are made using a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and liquified natural gas. Driver Gary Gabelich, a thirty-year-ofrom Long' his shoe off covers, perches on Beach, California, slips his Bronson trades the needle-lik- e Flame, image Navy blue wool cap for a metal-flake- d helmet and rubs his tmriHg briskly to ward off the morning chill before squeezing into the cockpit. His smile and anxiety exude record. Today. When the Flame's crew, headed by Project Manager Dean Dietrich, first arrived 'more than a month ago, today was to have been within the first week. The salt was perfect, weather dry and warm and all systems appeared d GO. But the car was beset would of which the first problems plague its builders, by Reaction Dynamics, and its sponsor, the Natural Gas Industry, for weeks. Runs at increasing speeds were made daily and reached d more than and forty miles per hour in a car which was wind tunnel tested for up to miles an hour. When the Flame failed to reach m.p.h. even at full throttle the variable throttle on a rocket engine itself was a first of its kind it was found or backfired, in the the fuel components had half-millio- ld thirty-eight-fo- hand-crafte- ot four-hundre- one-thousa- five-hundr- pre-ignite- d, ed engine. The Flame was dissected, its engine trucked one- hundred and twenty miles to Salt Lake City and the record attempt postponed. A box full of sheet metal vanes and plates were replaced, a tiny crack inside the venturi-shapeengine was welded and ground smooth end, days later, the Flame was ready again. Next came braking parachute failures, with lines being singed by heat from the powerful engine and Gabelich once riding the car into the marsh at the end of the salt track. A mixing valve failure warranted a few days delay. Fuel nozzles in the engine were too small, so it seemed, and were reamed out to a larger size which proved unworkable and new nozzles had to be shipped in. On one run which could have spelled record the LNG fuel was not added in correct proportions, a technician later accidentally admitted, because a crew member had forgotten to turn a valve in the heat of preparation. But a major problem which could have scrubbed the entire effort did not make itself apparent until the very high speed runs. Engineers had simply not provided for enough fuel to be carried under the Flames streamlined skin. The Flame ran out of fuel at the measured mile! .Dietrich then enlisted the aid of a freelance cameraman from California, Dana Fuller, whose high powered van was the only vehicle capable of pushing the leaden Flame to miles an hour and then pulling speeds of over Mast. rearward from the rockets away no seems be there to looming problems. The Today last change in the braking parachute system was made yesterday; metal reshaped in a vise bolted to one of the many trailers on the salt. Today is different from the previous morning, when we tensely relaxed with Dietrich in the van waiting for a possible change in the weather, Its different also from the afternoon and its sun, when Gabech talked enthusiastically with the many spectators who drove onto the salt in hopes of seeing what a record nin looks like, but were just as pleased to find a personable driver. Gabelich played a tape recording of communications between him and the crew and the timing booth Were bolting the cockpit now . . . Hes being pushed off and Gabelich reading off speeds from the large air speed indicator in a dial-an- d switch filled Between are the the calm readouts asthmatic cockpit. sounds of Gabelich inhaling and exhaling through an oxygen mask necessary for breathing at those speeds, Gabelich told of the tube pulling loose from the mask as he entered the mile at top speed, and how he calmly pickfed up the tube, placed it in his mouth and continued, The fans put forth questions Gary had been asked over d . one-hundr- ed -- . and over, but he answered as though it were the first to explain fully every answer with time. He took-pain- s his warm smile and quiet demeanor; he loved being with these people'. Today all goes, smoothly, despite a sky which darkens more with the warm up run and the two subsequent runs and twenty-tw- o which average out at m.p.h. Before the announcement which brings cheers to spec tatois at the timing stands, newsmen and photographers join the crew at the coarse end of the salt. The head of the parachute specialists produces a battery powered shaver and crops a respectable beard he has grown with the admonition it will not be touched until the record is set. Gabelich joins his father, a U. S. marshal in Los Angeles who flew in for the run, in an emotional embrace. Photographers accustomed to. more organized publicity shooting jostle for smiles and shout unheard instructions for posing. A wire service reporter alone in a car screams into a mobile telephone to overcome a poor connection with Salt Lake City. The frenzy ends in a motel press room with a round of champagne, congratulations among crewmen and telephoned plaudits from speedsters such as Mickey Thompson. Gabelich will be in Los Angeles two days later for a press conference and television interviews there and later in New York. He will also receive a lifetime membership to the 200 Mile Per Hour Club. His sandy hair, so unruly on the salt, later was trimmed and tamed like the interviews which elicited the same responses for the same questions. One point he constantly pushed forth, however, was that the Blue Flame or Gabelich of both intend to break the sound barrier next year. Gabelich said privately he would make the sound barrier attempt either in the Flame or in another streamliner lie was offered, then publicly announced it would be the Flame, The cars heart-shapedesign is expected to deflect waves generated by the breaking of the sound barrier. However, the potential problems the waves may have on persons or electronic timers remains uncertain. Now the salt flats appear destined for another first, the sound barrier on land, especially with the reported return next year of Craig Breedlove, whose m.p.h. record was shattered by the Flame and who made flights to Bonneville during the record attempts, along with Russian and Australian teams. Until then Gary Gabelich remains one of the fastest men in the world even though his town car is a six-hundr- ed d six-huhdr- ed Volks wagon. . . |