Rocket dragster

[bobjeffreson]

Recently a guy here in Sydney contacted me about bringing his home built rocket powered dragster to our track to show the members. He brought this out....




and this is what happened when he fired it up.....



Scared the bejesus out of everyone that normally fires up a 2 stroke...
Car was recently run down a dragstrip in Sydney. On a lazy pass it was clocked at 113 mph, at 60ft I think, with still more enough throttle left to do serious damage.

[Juiced Drag Racing]

Well I am not standing anywhere in front or behind it....
and I am not too sure about being beside it either!!!!




Juiced

[M.R. Ogle]

I'm a board member of the ISC (www.rc-isc.com) and we were struggling with the question of whether to allow thrust vehicles (non-wheel driven) into our competitions for safety reasons. We initially voted "no" as there were too many examples of idiots just strapping an Estes to a Hot Wheels and firing it at ground level, most of the time just crashing. It advances the technology level RC car hobby not one bit, and was just not controllable or safe.

Our final decision point was that the car had to have both steering control AND throttle control during the run for safety. Solid rockets have no throttle control, they burn till they're done, whether they're speeding down track or lodged in someone's skull. Radio CONTROLLED means, at minimum, throttle and steering.

We are looking at possibly allowing turbines in, though, or any kind of thrust where you can demonstrably cut the throttle if you get into trouble. And, we're always reviewing the insurance at any given facility to see if we're covered with these types of things.

[InsaneMB]

That looks like an old "Pulse Jet" type engine....they used to use these on control line planes. They would sit in a chair similar to a barstool and the thrust from the engine would spin them around untill the fuel ran out....crazy stuff man. I've seen these engines in action, and to say they are unsafe would be an understatement!!

[Juiced Drag Racing]

Turbines????????????


Me Likie!!!!!!!!!




Evil Juiced....

[smithy]

Hey Gents, (and ladies if there are any),

I'd like to introduce myself, my name is Brett Smith and I'm the guy who made this little dragster. I live in Sydney, Australia and it is indeed an after-burning turbine powered machine, it is NOT a "rocket" nor a "pulse jet" and I can assure you, it is quite safe if operated correctly. Static thrust is just on 9.1kgs (20lbs) without the burner and has ~30% augmentation with the afterburner @ 100% depending on ambient conditions and how much fuel I wish to pump through the A/B . The car itself weighs in at 6.5kgs (14.3lbs), so as you can imagine it has plenty of mumbo available.

To be honest, it will in no way be able to compete over a scale 1/4 mile with the electric and gas/nitro powered machines of similar scale, it's just too slow off the line, but it is capable of quite high terminal speeds, to date it has been officially clocked at 183.56kmh, (114mph) at WSID, (Sydney Dragway). I had to start from half track and run it through the timing lights at full track, the poor thing doesn't carry enough fuel to do a full 1/4mile run....

It is actually quite controllable with throttle, gyro assisted steering, twin disk brakes, twin 24" parachutes and an emergency electronic engine shut-off. I've just ordered a 1/4 Top Fuel dragster body from Mike Casey at LRU, should be arriving in a week or three..! I'll be sure to post some pics when she's all together and in one piece.

I'm happy to field any questions if any

Cheers to all,
Smithy.

[c103110]

How many RPMs does the rotor turn at full throttle? What's the EGT?

-Thanks.

[smithy]

C103110 writes:

"How many RPMs does the rotor turn at full throttle? What's the EGT?"

The engine's maximum rpm is 125,000.... it idles at ~35,000. Max EGT is ~640-660c depending on the ambient conditions. I normally run in the 50-90,000rpm range for doing flame shows etc...!

Engine fuel consumption @ max rpm is ~560ml/min without A/B. The Afterburner consumes a ridiculous amount of fuel, It can drink over a liter of fuel in less than 30 secs of continuous use The car has two fuel tanks and two fuel pumps, obviously one of each for the engine and one of each for the A/B. Engine run time is ~2min at various throttle settings before I'm looking to shut down.

I use a "hot streak" injection system to ignite the afterburner via a separate channel on my TX, I found the exhaust gas temp wasn't quite high enough to light the A/B unless the engine was accelerating hard

Cheers,
Smithy.

[c103110]

That's certainly a nice machine. I worked at Pratt & Whitney for over 20 years and have a lot of experience with design, build and test of the full-sized engines. I've always wanted a model GTE to put in an R/C streamliner. It sounds like you and the site contributer from Malta are a step ahead of me. Here's a video of the Lockheed Martin FA-22 with dual, P&W F119 engines. The video at around 2:30 gets quite interesting...It's amazing this thing doesn't stall out of the sky.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WojSqPB ... re=related

Again, nice job on the car.