Windjet team turn efforts to new water speed record

Well, spring is certainly upon us and with the light summer winds looming, the Windjet team has now stood down from 'land record ready' status and will be turning all energy towards the next step in the project, the radical new Windjet water craft.

This does not mean the end for the Windjet Land craft, far from it! The craft has a hectic schedule of shows to attend during the summer, starting at the home of the land record challenge, RAF Waddington, where the craft will be the star attraction for the 7th Waddington International Air show. Following the exhibition season the craft will return to record challenge status once again at RAF Waddington, when the autumn winds set in.

This winter has been an exciting time for Windjet, seeing an evolution in many parts of the project, including the steady improvement of the land craft performance, which has been possible due to the superb facilities at RAF Waddington. "Being able to wheel the vehicle out of the hanger at a moments notice has enabled an extremely rapid evolution of the technology. This really is a high tech challenge and the land craft performance is now staggering, with record speeds now being reached in almost all test sessions" said James Fitch, the support team manager.

This improvement in performance is hardly surprising considering the land craft has now clocked up over 3000 miles, equivalent to an incredible 17 Formula One races, or one entire F1 season, all at MAXIMUM load! Not a bad record for reliability! We have also welcomed some new technical partners including the Thales Group who are providing the team with high accuracy satellite tracking and secure frequency radio communications. Trimite, one of Britain's leading industrial paint manufactures has also stepped in to provide a paint system for all the Windjet craft. The paint they have suggested is a very hard two-part polyurethane, that has a 'slip' additive making the craft as low drag as possible, very similar to the paint that Trimite supplied to Thrust SSC for their supersonic challenge back in 1997.

The winter down time has also enabled massive strides to be taken on the web side of the project, and this will be brought to you very soon, with a fully interactive members section of the web site.

We have also secretly started construction of the radical water craft and news of this will be brought to you in the near future!

All in all, very exciting times, watch this space...

More Information:

• Windjet Website