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

Yarborough School at Loughborough College
Winners Cup Mansel Lacy
Jo Salter presenting Nam Vu with his racing prize
On the grid
Knex racer model at Rockingham

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.