Prompted by several folk that our website diary blog for the project was overdue I had to agree, so here I am at the keyboard to keep those following our little venture happy and up to date with where we are with things.
Firstly we are proud to announce a new product sponsor of the venture by way of Scan Computers International Ltd who are based at Horwich, Greater Manchester:
The company have been a sponsor of our partner Mike Newman and his Speed of Sight Charity during Mike’s previous very successful blind person speed records in all manner of cars and boats so when we needed a new workstation capable of supporting complex 3D engineering CAD work, Mike suggested that we approach Scan Computers to assist with the venture.
Following a meeting with Reece Webster and Andrew Sherrington, along with Rebecca Fairclough, Matt Taylor and Elliott Fishwick of Scan Computers it quickly became apparent that the company do far more than computer hardware. For instance they are heavily involved Nvidia Omniverse and providing a hub of computing power far in excess of what could be achieved with a home office based hardware system. For myself who is something of an IT dinosaur brought up with learning the skill of engineering drawing with Rotring pens in hard copy on a draughtsman’s table, the capability of Omniverse is quite mind boggling so for those who like me have never heard of it here is a little taster:
So whilst in the first instance Scan Computers have so very kindly sponsored us a high end laptop capable of running complex 3D CAD geometry which arrived this week as shown below, we have also opened the project up to the company to work with our education partners under the STEM initiative and to assist in so many areas of the design, build and development of our jet hydroplane Longbow in the times ahead.
Dimitrios Apostolakis of our existing sponsor Fibermax (https://www.fibermax.eu/) is currently compiling a list of materials / consumables as required by our design engineer Paul Martin in order that sample composite panels that will be a representative of the driver cockpit capsule can be formed and tested under load.
Some of the materials required for these composite panel samples are outside of Fibermax’s product range and so Warren Penalver of Easy Composites based in Stoke-on Trent (https://www.easycomposites.co.uk/) has kindly been able to supply some elements of the product we require at a discounted rate for us. In addition to that we have gone out to manufacturers of specialist adhesives used in the composite aerospace industry which as you might imagine are eye wateringly more expensive than your home project pot of glue.
For those following the venture they will know of the ongoing dialogue we have been having with the Union Internationale Motonautique (UIM) who historically have homologated previous international Unlimited Outright World Water Speed Records.
In January of this year Tom Stanley resigned as Chairman of the UIM Safety Cockpit Committee and as is not unusual with such organisations it has taken some time for Tom’s successor to be formally appointed. In the meantime UIM Secretary General Thomas Kurth kindly wrote upon our behalf to the UIM legal advisor in Germany, Kimon Papachristopoulos for clarification on some of the procedural rules in respect of formal submission of our design engineer Paul Martin’s cockpit analysis work to the UIM. That in turn took some time for a legal opinion to be given but we are glad to say that Kimon has now provided that to us through Thomas.
The upshot is that Kimon has now confirmed that we can submit Paul’s cockpit engineering analysis and outer shell composite specification direct to the UIM Safety Cockpit Committee and we have written assurance from the UIM that such information will be treated by them as confidential.
Further to this a new Chairman of the UIM Safety Cockpit Committee has now been formally appointed by the UIM and that is yacht designer Sergio Abrami who has considerable experience with powerboats and specialises in composite structures along with marine grade light alloys. Following his appointment to the UIM Safety Cockpit Committee, Sergio kindly reached out to us explaining his background, his considerable amount of work over many years in striving to improve safety of those out on the water and his thoughts upon the Outright World Water Speed Record.
We have gone on to discuss with Sergio the reasons why the British manufacturer of ejection seats Martin Baker had in our previous communications with them been of the opinion that their seats would not be appropriate for this particular application. Following that decision we then explained why we had arrived at the choice of designing a breakaway driver cockpit capsule similar to that used by the drag boats in the USA. Other discussions with Sergio have included but not been limited to the use of high tensile tubular steel inner cages within powerboat cockpits compared to all composite construction, risk of manufacturing defects with the latter, etc.
Chartered Marine Engineer and Chartered mechanical Engineer Rob Irvine who heads the Osprey Powerboat Rescue Team has been to visit us and see Longbow in person where we had a very productive and helpful chat about the project. Rob obviously knows the various people within the UIM and has been of considerable help with that ongoing dialogue. Currently Rob is compiling a hazard log spread sheet for us where he can then populate it with as many risks that we can identify then we can put control measures / mitigations in place to manage those risks within acceptable limits.
Gary Atkinson from Preston UCLan Engineering Department has been 3D printing some engine steady mounts ready for machining as part of our STEM education partnership for the project as shown below.
For my part I have been doing some CAD drawing of the cockpit so once Paul Martin approves that it can be passed on to our sponsor Accles & Pollock to fabricate the tubular high tensile steel cage for the cockpit.
Since the last update and on a personal level the family has been on something of a rollercoaster ride with our granddaughter Annabelle having major abdominal surgery at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, then the joy of my youngest son Robert marrying his fiancé Caitlyn, my other son Thomas flying the nest to set up house with his girlfriend Lil that landed me a heap of DIY at their new abode and lastly the joy of puppies arriving in the middle of the night from one of our dogs. So to say things have been a little hectic over the last couple of months would be something of an understatement. Hopefully things will settle down now on the home front and I can focus more upon progressing Longbow especially now we have a clear path to cockpit submission with the UIM.
Lastly I believe Bluebird K7 will be making an appearance in the car park adjacent to the steamer jetty, Glenridding at Ullswater in the Lake District on the 23rd of this month in order to commemorate her first water speed record which was achieved there in 1955 at a speed of just over 202mph. That being the case if you have nothing better to do you might consider trotting along to enjoy the celebration.
So that is all for now folks and if you have not already done so please follow our page on Facebook for updates as the project develops.