Hello Wes,
Again I'm no expert but I think the big difference is those dragsters have
probably several thousand puonds of downforce at 300+ and the chute
deployment is unable to upset them like it does on of our cars. We can't
stand that much downforce because of the drag and rolling resistance it
creates. I'll bet if they took those wings off they would experience some of
the same frightening problems.
Howard Nafzger
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wester S Potter" <wspotter@jps.net>
To: "Keith Turk" <kturk@ala.net>; <land-speed@autox.team.net>
Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2000 7:14 PM
Subject: Re: Parachute
> List,
>
> This braking parachute question always leaves me wondering why the drag
> racers can slow from 300 mph passes with a parachute time after time
without
> very many incidents. What is the big difference in slowing from 300 at a
> drag strip and slowing from 380 or so on the salt? I'm sure I'm missing
the
> point here somewhere but something is at work on tethers and chute design
> for land-speed applications that is primarily solved in drag racing. The
> discussion early this year on how to find the optimum point for placing a
> tether connection made sense as I read it. The cars that have problems on
> the salt are primarily placing that connection in the wrong place and
> disturbing the balance of the car at speed. I realize that drag cars
differ
> so little that once someone gets it right it's easy for everyone to do the
> same thing. Not so with land-speed cars. The basilc ability of getting
the
> parachute to deploy and do it's job seems to be the same however. The
> tether straps are able to handle the same loads on dragsters, ribbon
chutes
> and the cross panel chutes hold up, what is so different on the salt? The
> Burkland's car certainly had enough thought in the design area for
braking
> but now Tom has gone back to the drawing board to see what he missed.
> Obviously the deployment of the chutes was at speeds higher than he had
> intended. What's the answer?
>
> Wes
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