The team prepare for day two of testing.
Frantz Nehammer, engineering manager, explains the reassembly of Bloodhound LSR, which begins in earnest with the fitting of the fin (complete with 36k names).
Stu Edmondson, head of desert operations, details some of the complexities of setting up base.
Official launch of Bloodhound LSR takes place.
Jess Kinsman, run controller, plays a key role in the safe operations out on the desert. She tracks the movement of Bloodhound and the support vehicles at all times using Spinnaker GPS trackers and radio comms.
The Bloodhound LSR team took the car out onto the Hakskeenpan for the first time. They had two attempts to start the EJ200 jet engine, but there was no ignition. Engineers tracked down the problem to a fuel pump issue. Once fixed they could fire the car up again. This time the inhibitor fluid that the jet engine was filled with for storage was burned off (that’s the smoke you see in the photo!). However, the start-up cycle took four seconds longer than the 60 second start process and automatically shut down – as it’s designed to. We’re confident next time out it will run without issue. Nobody said land speed racing would be plain sailing!
