Welcome to the December update of the Longbow jet hydroplane project as we wish everyone following our little venture a very happy Christmas and all the very best for the New Year.
This month we are very proud to announce a new engineering and product sponsor of the project by way of Novatech Measurements Ltd, who have been established in the U.K. since 1972, with their company based at St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex.
Novatech design and manufacture a very wide range of load cells for all manner of applications including but not limited to, research projects, biometrics, aerospace, military and marine applications, general industry and the Automotive / Motorsport sectors.
In the past Novatech were a sponsor and engineering partner of the Bloodhound land speed record jet car. Novatech load cells were chosen to test the safety critical components of the car’s structure and other vital systems in order to ensure they could withstand the extreme forces and vibrations during the very high speed runs of the vehicle.
Novatech’s Managing Director, Ian Papworth and their Senior Design Engineer, Gareth Purves could not have been more helpful, supportive and enthusiastic of our jet hydroplane Longbow as we work towards making a credible British attempt upon the Outright World Water Speed Record (WWSR) of 317.58mph, set in 1978 by Australian Ken Warby MBE with his iconic fastest boat in the world, Spirit of Australia.
Novatech this month have very kindly specified and supplied us with a number of their calibrated tension and compression load cells, along with respective leads and hand held load meters for example as shown below:
These will be used within our project for a range of tasks, for example confirming the weight of individual components as they are added to the craft during the build, determining Longbow’s all up weight at various stages of the build and how that weight is distributed upon each of Longbow’s three planing shoes. Information gathered from Novatech’s load cells allows us to calculate the position of Longbow’s centre of gravity and weight moment about her transom.
These load cells also allow us to see the changes in Longbow’s centre of gravity if we decide to alter the position of some components or systems within her hull.
For further information upon Novatech please see their company link upon our website sponsor’s page and also via the following link: https://novatechloadcells.co.uk/about/
We are so very fortunate to have attracted international support with Longbow and none more so by way of Fibermax who are based in the beautiful coastal town of Agria Volos in Greece where the company specialise in the supply of high performance composite materials and associated products. My good friend Dimitrios Apostolakis of Fibermax has and continues to be so very generous with his advice and guidance with the use of his company’s products on Longbow to date and going forward with the build of the craft. See: https://www.fibermax.eu/
This month Dimitrios and his colleague Katerina kindly sent our lead design engineer Paul Martin some of their product in order for Paul to compile his test samples of Longbow’s driver cockpit capsule composite outer shell.
Once Paul is happy with his lay up of these materials he will send them in the New Year to Simon Harwood, Director at another of our sponsors Testometric. See: https://www.testometric.co.uk/
Towards the end of October we had a very productive meeting with Paul Martin and from our partner Airframe Designs, engineers Chris Fleet, James Hodgkiss, Tom Baynes, Phill Le Mottee and Bailey Black, See: https://airframedesigns.com/
During this meeting Chris and James presented three cockpit capsule layouts detailing options for driver entry and egress from which we all then worked through the cases presented and jointly made our decision regarding the option we felt provided the best solution. In amongst all of that it was great for everyone to come together face to face to discuss the project as a whole and get to know each other. Paul’s recollections of the various projects he has previously been involved with including rocketry and some very high speed vehicles were an education, mesmerising and very entertaining.
The guys from Airframe Designs had asked me to provide them with our driver for Longbow, – serving RAF pilot Flt Lt David-John Gibb’s (informally known as DJ) anthropometric measurements. These are a whole host of figures used within the military to ensure the pilot fits as well as they can within the aircraft. Likewise in our case these measurements such as his weight, total height, height from backside to top of head, limb lengths, his comfortable reach, etc are vital to ensure that DJ will fit correctly within the driver cockpit capsule of Longbow. In addition the various governing bodies who sanction water speed record attempts set down within their various rules and regulations, minimum distances in relation to the amount of room the driver has within the cockpit at various points of their body, such as shoulders, feet, headroom, etc that we wish to comply with.
With all of the considerable time and effort currently going into Longbow by this group of very talented design engineers, their collective work is, at Paul’s direction now under a non disclosure agreement to which we have all signed up to. This being the case we trust those following the venture will appreciate that I am somewhat limited in the amount of information, drawings, etc that we feel is appropriate to put out into the public domain. Accordingly I hope the screen shots below showing DJ fully scaled for his anthropometric measurements and a little bit of the front of Longbow’s twin jet engines provide you with an indication of the standard of design work our team of engineers are now putting into the venture:
As Longbow’s team expands we very much welcome this month design engineer Andrew White who has very kindly come on board to lend a hand with the project. Andrew has a 40 year career in aviation, primarily at BAE Systems working upon the Hunter, the F35, the Future Combat Air Systems (FCAS) and sixth generation fighter aircraft, the Tempest. Andrew is a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Ambassador, a keen model boat and aircraft enthusiast and in the case of the latter he is a judge on behalf of the British Model Flying Association for university based flying events.
In the Autumn of his employment career Andrew moved from BAE Systems to work for Airframe Designs and from that was then busy enjoying his retirement. In the case of our jet hydroplane Longbow where both aerodynamic and hydrodynamic forces are at play, the chaps at Airframe Designs mindful of Andrew’s love of jet aircraft and boats recently reached out to Andrew to see if he would be interested in assisting with the venture for which with all his knowledge and experience we are so very thankful that he has chosen to do so in his spare time.
The following online link shows Andrew displaying indoors his superb model Vulcan aircraft, for which I hope you enjoy watching the video clip as much as I did:
Andrew is currently coming up to speed with the venture and once he has done so he will then commence the considerable CAD work involved with defining the outer mould line (OML) surfacing of the driver cockpit capsule.
So that is where we are up to at the moment folks and as we sign off for 2025, I take this opportunity to thank our website guru and dear friend Neil Morton of Progress Concepts (See: https://www.progressconcepts.com/ ) for all the time and effort he so very kindly puts into running the Longbow website, making sense of my draft rambling diary updates into something like legible for you folk to read, along with his very wise guidance in respect of the venture as a whole for which I am so very grateful beyond I can convey here.
All that is left to do is wish you all a very healthy, happy and prosperous 2026 as we roll into the New Year. I hope that I have not bored you too much with this little update and if you have not already done so please follow our Longbow jet hydroplane page upon Facebook for further updates as the project develops.