DDWFTTW - Directly Downwind Faster Than The Wind

Very impressive. Congratulations. It takes a long time to get moving but certainly starts to pick up once the prop gets into an efficient regime.


Surely you can get mythbusters or discovery pay you to do some footage for them. It is not an intuitive outcome.

Have you got any response from the skeptics? I doubt there will be any here willing to accept the evidence.

Rick W

 

Here are a couple more clips:

Second run: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDzWh9J1dk4&feature=channel
last run: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5VlX-xEk00&feature=player_embedded


Over on talkrational.org our skeptics are more energized than ever.

No word from the Mythbusters, but we got a message from the Discover channel. Don't know yet what it is.

 

Congratulations!
A great piece of work - well done and thankyou.

 

Thanks everyone. It's been quite a project and a lot of late evenings.

JB

 

My word! And I thought *this* forum got silly sometimes...

 

When do you aim to do official measured runs?

Is there any other teams working on a cart?

What impressed me is how the cart pulled away from the tacking land sailor. It looks like you get a better speed to windspeed ratio than a fast land sailor on a reach. With decent enclosed transmission and aerodynamics you might crack the 200kph mark - not that I would want to be driving it.

The prop torque presents an interesting issue for the wheel loading. You may have an advantage with two props. Would keep the vehicle a bit lower as well.

Need to get to Bonneville for a really long run in 50kts of wind. There are some good places in Australia for that.

Rick W

 

We're hoping for something rather local to us -- either the long abandoned runways at the former Alameda Naval Air Station here in the Bay area or perhaps the similarly abandoned runways at Crow Landing (just over in the Central Valley). It's possible that we'll end up however at a dry lake bed. Every location has it's advantages and disadvantages.

None that we know of.

Interestingly enough, our greater than anticipated success has led to an entirely new round of design discussions. We're becoming convinced that with the proper budget and team, a DDWFTTW vehicle can be built that can take the outright wind powered land speed record from Greenbird (126mph). It's an open topic with us right now, but for the moment we're going to stay focused on getting a NALSA ratified record. It would be rather entertaining for sure to hold the outright record in a vehicle that there are still educated folks claiming it can't reach windspeed. LOL

Two props have been discussed, but actually getting the vehicle lower has it's disadvantages -- due to the gradient, you want to have the prop and chassis as high as possible.

That's the sort of thing we're considering - if we can build a vehicle that will do 4x and run it in the same conditions that Greenbird set the record in, we would smash that record.

JB

 

You know the fastest round the world boat is a sailing boat.

If you can build a really strong transmission and get gale force winds you might threaten the land speed record - maybe not. But even thinking about 4X windspeed is terrific.

Rick W

 

You know that record was set just a few days ago by our old boss Stan Honey? I think he finished on the same day we did our first run in Ivanpah in an attempt to eclipse our meager accomplishment

 

Yeah, Stan couldn't let us have our day in the sun without an attempt to crash the party.

At least we can say it didn't take us three tries and we didn't end up turtled off the coast of NZ during one of those.

JB

(kidding of course -- big props to that incredible team and their amazing accomplishment)

 

Sail magazine is featuring a piece on the "Disaster in the Desert" (so called by our skeptics) http://www.sailmagazine.com/ (tab #1)

Full story here:

http://sailmagazine.com/racing/running_faster_than_the_wind/

Also, Discover Channel Canada will be talking to us this coming weekend for their program "The Daily Planet".

We're currently making upgrades that will hopefully improve the carts performance (and looks), and we'll be proudly displaying our sponsor's logos very soon.

 

We spent Saturday with the crew from Discovery. They're doing a segment for a Canadian program called "The Daily Planet". It won't air in the U.S. but hopefully I'll be able to post the video after it airs there.

We've done a number of upgrades to the cart, and added airfoils to reduce drag, painted, and added our sponsors' logos. Still more work to do before we go after an official record, but we're getting closer.

In honor of the paint and some of the aesthetic upgrades, we've also upgraded the name from BUFC (big ugly ******* cart) to "Blackbird".

As always, you can see the latest at www.fasterthanthewind.org

 

Nice job

 

Wishing you all the best but 20 big ones says you're wrong.

 

Is 45mph in a 15mph wind not quite enough for you? LOL

Just for clarity, exactly when in this process are you willing to give up your "20 big ones". In other words, what is it exactly that you are looking for before you say "Ok, I was wrong"?

Best wishes.

JB