April 2010 Newsletter
After a long cold winter schools, colleges and privateers are now dusting off their racers, modifying them or starting a rebuild. The racing season is now very close.
We have a lot of events now on our newly designed website. Do check when and where and book EARLY to avoid disappointment. Gravity racing is becoming very popular and it is hard to get an entry if you leave it to the last minute. It is also a good idea to talk to the organisers to check that you meet entry requirements as well. If you are entering a school or college team make sure that the event is suitable. Again talk to the event organisers.
Good luck this season. Keep safe.
Over the winter we checked our sources of equipment and have found some great new parts. Do check with us by email if you are having trouble finding things.
Hopefully our own wheels with stub axils will be available. Watch the web site.
Unexpected great result
A few months ago I visited Loughborough College Engineering Department to meet the new intake of engineering students. Keith Large from Loughborough College and I introduced the students to Chloe Hampson from the Barn Door Theatre. The idea was to get the students to write a play about gravity racing and engineering and act it out in Primary Schools to interest younger pupils in engineering. All went to plan, but then one of our students, Brian Fury was ‘spotted’ and has now entered a new acting career. We wish Brian all the best. Engineering’s loss is drama’s gain! More information on this link. http://www.loucoll.ac.uk/news/news-detail.aspx?id=268
Gadget Show Links
The Gadget Show phoned us up a couple of months ago wanting a water jet propelled dragster. I took the idea to Graham Parish Engineering Ltd where a design was born. Once again we used our gravity racer spaceframe and running gear. After some modifications we had our first ever AQUADRAG. Many wet trials later we had a great dragster. The venue to run was a cold, windy and wet RAF Wattisham air field.
The program went out on the Gadget Shows 150th show. Our top speed was some 25 mph. We achieved a World Land Speed Record of 16.65 mph. (we had to run both ways within an hour and take an average) So Guinness Book of records here we come. You can see the program on the Gadget Show web site.
Gadget Show Live Gravity Racing trials
The Gadget Show kindly provided us with a stand at the Gadget Show Live at the NEC Birmingham. We took our latest kit car with us and invited some teams from schools, colleges and race teams to build a running car against the clock. The times were amazing. Well done everyone.
1st UK Gravity Sports Ass. - 24 mins 39 sec
2nd Birmingham University - 28 mins 14 sec
3ed Welbeck College - 33 mins 40 sec
4th Loughborough College - 38 mins 00 sec
5th Gosfield School - 62 mins 20 sec.
A handsome prize was given by Black and Decker
Graham Parish Engineering as our Demonstration Team - 12 mins 46 sec
This build can be seen on the Gadget Show Web site.
The future
As mentioned in our last letter we are now also working with NESTA and have developed a ‘kit car’ for schools with all the parts engineered and included. A sure success for any school or college. To build a racer with all parts provided can start at £1500, engineering parts yourself. For the kit car fully engineered for quick assembly that we used at the Gadget Show Live £2000 all in. You are then racing. You just need to design and build your bodywork. We can help with lots of ideas. Contact us for details.
Remember our Running spaceframes already have two different World Land Speed Records.
Show events
We will be at the Duxford Big Bang Show. More about that nearer the time.
We will also be at the MTA MACH 10 show at the NEC 7-11 June Stand 4476
NESTA’s idiscover program has been great with Schools from Manchester and London building our kit cars.
Links
You might like to look at some other links.
www.ignitefuture.org.uk
and the Hethel Centre at Norwich H-Stem engineering.
July 2009 Newsletter
Hi followers of the great Sir Isaac.
We have crammed so much into the last couple of months that I feel that a brief newsletter does not do justice to the individuals, organisations and events that we have been involved in. So I start by thanking all those who have helped and been with us. I know that together we have made a difference.
Mansel Lacy
The annual pilgrimage to Hereford was marred by the weather. We spent an interesting night in tents. In the morning the organisers decided to cancel the festival to the public, but the gravity racing would continue as a club. By mid day the weather had improved and we all got in a good day’s racing with five runs each.
Rob Austin from Formula Schools headed a team of ten gravity racers from oxford and Cherwell Valley College. A magnificent sight of all the racers in one place. The young students did so well and drove like professionals taking most of the junior prizes. Congratulations to all of them.
Our own team racing the Gadget Show ‘Lotus Eater’ built at Loughborough College won the overall fastest racer. We were well pleased with the day.
Loughborough College
Loughborough College incorporated their gravity racing TV success as the cornerstone of a special Engineering Day to celebrate 100 years of the subject being taught at the world famous College. Schools from all over the UK attended the event that also included a ‘drifting’ demonstration by Westfield Cars, driven by Jamie Morrow, ( CV pdf below) a presentation on the 1000 MPH car Bloodhound by Dawn Fitt and a sell out talk by the day’s special guest, Britain’s first female fast jet pilot Jo Salter.
The finale of the day was a gravity racing time trial competition. Winner 12 year old Nam Vu of De Lisle Catholic Science College won a £900 Tool Kit for his school that was kindly donated as a Centenary Day prize by Draper Tools.
Loughborough College Curriculum Support Technician, Keith Large said,
‘It was great to see so many pupils travelling from all over the country to our event. We’d like to thank David Ackroyd for making gravity racing so popular and so inspiring for tomorrow’s engineers.’
Thanks to Aggregate Industries, Flotec and Draper Tools for their continued support.
Our joint success with Loughborough College was more than I could have hoped for. There were so many spin offs. It was rather like throwing the proverbial stone in a lake.
Poetry completions, Writing Completions. Talking to an assembly at Castle Rock School. Charity involvement. And a very honoured moment for me as I presented Tom with his well deserved engineering student of the year prize at Loughborough Town Hall
http://www.loros.com/fundraising/Default.aspx?id=419156
Learning Grid’s Rockingham Festival
We joined the Festival for two days setting up a Knex challenge for students to build and race model gravity racers down a track. This was great fun even in 91 degrees in the tent. Many strange designs were built and raced.
Overall over 3000 people attended the Festival which featured many of the Learning Grid projects. It was nice to see my own school Samuel Ward Upper School and Technology College there. They had brought along some of their feeder primary schools with whom they are working in a cluster on technology who are using Primary Engineer..
Gossip
I have now had some millions of hits on the web site since the Gadget Show program.
If anyone out there would like to advertise then please get in touch.
We have a ready stock of Spaceframes and suspension parts now, so if you want a set now is a good time. Overall cost of a racer is about £1500. Time to build about 100 hours.
We are still around with the Gadget Show. Our next project will be finished about September. Again engineering students are providing leading edge help. Sorry no more information at the moment, but this is ambitious and not with gravity racers.
Keep tuned in.
Formula Gravity will be at the ASE Norfolk meeting 10th October as we are booked for an hours presentation. This should be great fun.
Try the ETB’s Competition www.nationalsciencecompetition.org/partners.asp.
Cairngorm Extreme
25-26th July two days of racing on the Aviemore Cairngorm road. Too good to miss. We will be taking the Lotus Eater. Unfortunately we do not have more school/college entries but the summer holidays are upon us. We will be trying a set of Schwalbe Kojak tyres kindly donated by Schwalbe. BBC Scotland have already done a nice write up on us.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/8142928.stm
March 2009 Newsletter
Hi followers of the great Sir Isaac.
We have again had lots of fun with building and racing.
EVENTS
We have updated the website and added the known events for this year so far.
GADGET SHOW
We were asked by the Gadget Show to build them a racer in four days to take on the Lotus at Cadwell Park in a head to head race. So with the help of Loughborough College Engineering students we built one in four and a half days.
We called it the ‘Lotus Eater’.
More information on:- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/environment/4524999/Racing-without-engines.html
The program goes out on March 30th Ch5 at 8.00. I have already seen a preview of the program, it is great.
BLOODHOUND
Bloodhound is the new British attempt to achieve a record 1000mph. You can find out all about it at www.bloodhoundssc.com The project has a strong educational element for primary schools with www.primaryengineer.co.uk The links to middle and upper schools with the Primary Engineer scheme are great. Especially for Technology Colleges. Schools get Software for whiteboards and work schemes for pupils. Find out more from their website if you are interested.
GRAVITY EVENT - LOUGHBOROUGH COLLEGE
This year we are having our event at Loughborough college 24th June.
This promises to be a mega event with a workshop for teachers on the build of a racer as well as famous speakers, events for schools, colleges, pupils and teachers. Engineering and curriculum talks. Companies with products and networking.
This is now building up to be a really great event. More information nearer the time. Please let me know if you would like to be involved or visit.
ENGINEERING UPDATES
We have improved the specification of the rear upright. More information from me on 01284 830428 if you would like more information or the higher spec ones.
DATALOGGER
The search is back on for a good data logger. We have found one in the USA but it is about $350
CHATROOM
I have opened a chat room about soapboxes on the new ‘groups’ on Friends reunited.
This might be an interesting experiment. |
