Well Saturday turned out to be a rather great day. The family and I went to
visit a friend of mine (yeah I have a few of those) up in Mooresville, NC.
He works at new Wind Tunnel facility in the heart of Nascar country. They
have just finished construction and were holding an open house for friends
and contractors. I had been there several times during construction, but had
never seen the tunnel operate. They had a 40% size Monte Carlo Winston Cup
car setup for running. The tunnel is an open plenum (no walls in the real
world) rolling bed capable of 200mph speeds. For demonstration they ran it
up to about 100 mph for the guest and we were allowed to actually watch a
test cycle being performed based on pitch and yaw of the car. We then were
able to step out of the control room into the plenum area with the wind
blowing. Can you say hurricane force winds. After they shut down the tunnel
we were given a tour of the actual fan and tunnel area itself. I decided
earlier in the day to stop and pick up my 2 grandson's who are 7 and 9. I
figured this would give them the opertunity to see something that most
people are never able too. The greatest enjoyment of the day was not seeing
the tunnel, but to see the boys really interested in what was happening and
asking questions with meaning. I also found out I have lots to learn about
aerodynamics, but now have a good resource for information.
Now if I just had $30,000 for a half size model of the Firebird and
$10,000/day. I could go testing in the wind tunnel.
Bill
///
/// land-speed@autox.team.net mailing list
///
|