Northwest now is supported in part by viewers like you thank you it's the ultimate game of one-upsmanship the land speed records somebody sets record you have to step up you know go faster what a radical new British effort is underway they're not going to take their brand new car and go 700 miles an hour the first time it comes out of the trailer they're not going to do it nobody does and if you do then you're an idiot now the quest for the unthinkable we believe this car will will 800-plus and all we can do is believe at this point in time time is our most precious resource and how we spend it makes all the difference for the team that spends its saturdays building the north american eagle jet car in an otherwise nondescript shop in parkland washington the clock is ticking and for the dreamers who started it all it's been ticking since the 1960s when hot rodding the dawn of the jet age and the quest for space dominated the culture at 75 ed Shadle has been turning wrenches for about 17 of those years in the belly of the North American Eagle hoping to break the land speed record of 763 miles an hour he's ex Air Force and a retired IBM field engineer but at his core he's a self-described pit brat who watched his father and uncle race on Okanagan before his family moved to Tacoma the kid across the street I was telling me about the soap box derby racing that goes on well that was back when they used to run down 38th Avenue there where now is the Tacoma Mall and so I just had to do that and that was my first race car and I think I was 14 or so Keith zengi was lost a drag-racing after reading his first Popular Mechanics magazine at age nine over time it morphed into a fascination with the land speed record and the Giants of the era like art our Fonz and his Green Monster and Craig Breedlove and his spirit of America cars setting record after record on the salt flats of Bonneville my dad bought me a camera for my birthday it was July 1st and he said come on we're gonna go up to the street I got something to show you guys so myself and my brother we went up to a Chevrolet dealership in the town of Berrian Washington and in the showroom was Craig Breedlove spirit of America car this was the sonic one car that ran six hundred point 601 in 1965 so I think this date would have been 66 and so that was a place I took pictures with this camera and so I took a picture with myself and my brother in front of the spirit of America car so after that I was kind of hooked Craig Breedlove and everybody else in the game were left in the dust in 1997 when the British thrust SSC car broke the speed of sound at Black Rock Nevada but thrust SSC shocked the world at 763 miles per hour time and circumstance had conspired to find Shadle and zenki together crewing on a california-based car called the American Eagle 1 so on a trip back from California Keith and I are flying on the same airplane and we were talking about the project and how we didn't think it had any real possibility at that very same time the Brits had announced that they had just set the record at 763 miles an hour what that did is that made that American Eagle one absolutely obsolete because it was not good past probably five to six hundred miles an hour so Keith and I we just the more we talked on the airline we said you know why don't we do our own thing and it goes from my Air Force background I knew about f100 force as well as a lot of other aircraft that Isis it's a small fast fighter maybe we ought to take a 104 if we can find one modify it and turn it into a land speed car and Keith says yeah I've always watched the f-104 s there are cool airplane so let's go ahead and do this so we shook hands on it and says let's move ahead so that's where we went with it so this is just a conversation on an airplane in which you committed to the project picked your target vehicle settled instantly on the f-104 and in your acquisition target and that's how long it took it was almost literally on the back of a napkin pretty much it was a one of those crazy ideas but the more we talked about it the more it seemed very feasible seemed maybe after more than a year of searching this is what $25,000 bought out of a junkyard in Maine in 1999 it was a wreck it was it looked like I've been rolled down a mountain it was punched full of holes B had been demilitarized it was a mess but you know I paid three thousand dollars to have it hauled from Maine out here we unloaded it out of spano Airport our friends and relatives and wives and girlfriends showed up and said what in the world are you thinking but within that wreck you can see the image of what we're going to develop so you had to have the vision and others that were interested in the project they were out there with us you can see them some would light up and go yeah and you see some others they've gone these guys were fools I remember inviting my dad over to see that and I said dad you got to come see the aircraft and I can't remember at that time we still refer to it as an aircraft more than a car and my dad came over and he's excited because I'm excited and he just looked at it and you could see kind of the disappointment in his eyes and thinking man you know what are you thinking he didn't say that because he supported me but you could you you know he's kind of wondering okay boy I mean this looks like an old piece of junk here I'm not sure how you see this as some super streamlined aircraft that could be a turn in no car but we sure had a lot of doubters in the beginning so a new clock started ticking to convert the f-104 into a land speed record car but just for a few ticks of the clock looking back in time proved interesting too that's when the historian at Edwards Air Force Base revealed that the plane was faced there for years flying chase during the Golden Age of high-performance testing we had this SF 104 and that that tail numbers long he looked it up and he found pictures of the aircraft so he called me and he said I have photos of your 104 and so he sent them to me and here's pictures of it flying with the x-15 the xb-70 that's our 71 and then he did some more research and found in the maintenance logs that some of the pilots that flew the airplane and they were the who's who of the era of the 60s Joe Walker and Scott Crossfield Pete Knight bill Dana you know Joe angle all these the who's who of the era flew the airplane big time testify big time test pilots and so we knew right then we had we'd hit struttin gold and I think the fella back in Maine if he had known that he would have never sold us the airplane so it really adds an historical element to this not only that but the land speed record was 763 and the tail number 763 we said huh there's got a definitely a connection the airframe took endless repairs and custom fabrication but it's nothing without the power and the good news is that the team was able to buy a j79 jet out of surplus from another f-104 the bad news is that it promptly blew up in early testing but SN s turbine in British Columbia volunteered to rebuild it setting up a 312 mile per hour test run at the airport in Toledo in 2005 so it was pretty exciting six or eight months of really hard intensive work but we got the engine mated to the fuselage and made runs and this j79 you've got because of that rebuilds actually a little hotter a little better than original equipment right yeah we've hopped the thing up a little bit it has the enlarged fuel ducts we also later on to install the dash 19 afterburner so it's it's it's makin stock this engine would make fourteen thousand five hundred pounds of thrust we're making eighteen thousand seven hundred eighty right now according to the testing data so it's it runs nice it's it's a very smooth running engine you're still building hot rods though still building hot rods this spring the North American Eagle team traveled to the airport in Shelton for another in a long series of engine tests and then we'll go ahead and do a full poll full afterburner fans and supporters from up and down the west coast attend the test sessions which are by no means for the noise sensitive the crew is all volunteered and made up of lots of folks from Boeing the military and in the case of Shawn Rhonda's bet the fire service I met these guys almost 14 years ago they did a little statics play at the PIO fair and they were just putting an engine in and I was talking to him and I used to do engine work when I was in the Air Force and I just yes I've been with about fourteen years just kind of came on and what ever since Rhonda's fat is part of the propulsion systems team and during testing suits up to manage fire suppression should it be needed even standing still being next to a j79 in full afterburner consuming 160 gallons of fuel per minute really brings home the radical and dangerous nature of the land speed record on this day getting the afterburner to light reliably was an issue but you can sure tell when it kicks in when this gets in a full afterburner you feelin such it's a big something powerful I mean it's 42,000 horsepower if you kind of put it in that aspect I mean 42,000 horsepower compared to you know normal truck is you know 500 so it's it really just pushes you back the persons in the cockpit gets shockwave back it's it's powerful using a j79 this way is so radical ge wouldn't even supply the shop manuals not wanting to associate with anything so far outside the intended use envelope of their product but that doesn't slow down crew chief Wes home who's right in the red zone during testing leading a team of people with a wide range of knowledge and skills I asked him if GE is maybe a little right is this the best and proper way to use a souped up after burning j79 out of a fighter plane I think this is the best way to use a j79 not a lot of guys get to be hands-on on the ground and get to do what we do engine run guys do in the military and there's a lot of people out there that have done this but a lot of guys this is their first time they've ever been around something like this but in reality there's never been anything like this a homegrown amalgamation of an f-104 designed with slide rules in the early 50s and a new platform that relies on supercomputers to prove its design and overall safety Steve Wallace is out of the flight test industry and is responsible for gathering data and managing a wide variety of electrical systems on the car for years the generator wouldn't reliably come online as the jet started now it finally does the challenges that you have they seem insurmountable and if you just think about them and and just trust that there's going to be an answer if you if you just explore everything eventually you work it out sometimes it takes a decade but eventually we work it out and and do some pretty impossible things that problem-solving spirit is the only thing that keeps the North American ego going with 48 test runs under its belt problems emerge every time it's a high-speed game of engineering whack Amole problem solving is all like that make sure you know where you've been while you're going somewhere and so when you're solving a problem whether it be steering or whatever you're moving ahead with solving the problem but remembering through documentation you know how you got there and that way it's it's if you've made the mistake it's not that hard to go back and say okay let's think of this a little differently there's a lot of creativity in this to write a great deal of creativity because you know who's gonna draw the picture before you know one so you draw on your own picture I like to think of it as a it's a science project this science project has produced a one-of-a-kind set of magnetic breaks that could have wide application in aviation and transportation just one example of how the project serves as a dynamic testbed for a wide variety of new ideas but this science project also produces its own set of problems perhaps the biggest being non-technical finding cash money support to fund travel and testing while the team has attracted a lot of media over the years sustaining attention and enthusiasm among funders is almost impossible in 2016 do you think people here in western Washington are even aware that this is happening in little ole parkland a very few because if they did they'd be lined up here because where you've got two Americans plus about 50 more Americans and a number of Canadians that want to bring this record back to the United States the British have held this record really since 1983 and we feel it's our civic duty to bring it back to America this is where the automobiles started and we just feel there's a lot of you know if we'd have done this 25 years ago with 13 channels okay maybe we would have more people knocking at the door but when you're competing with the internet and football and baseball and soccer and now car and drag racing and the 17,000 other things that are on the internet you know we're just one small part but I really think everybody that's ever came here when you start talking to us about what we've done for the students and stem you know science technology engineering and math I think they'd be very proud of these two guys from parkland Washington I don't want to make you squirm we're not gonna ask you the pointed question how much do you have into this project well I'd say personally if you're just talking broad dollar it's probably 250,000 I'd say Keith is probably a hundred thousand maybe Steve green probably close to that so yeah so you're putting your money where your mouth is when it comes to this passion in this hobby yeah for better or worse right or for worse yeah like my wife said we can have a nice house not that we have a bad house but yeah could be a nice ride gotcha yeah with a wonderful view kids a sound or whatever we understand what's being said there yeah yeah in human terms time is represented by the passing generations which sometimes don't see eye-to-eye or share common understandings and interests most Saturdays are spent at the Parkland shop we're a team that hovers around 50 strong has spent almost 17 years building fixing and improving the car while generational differences are bridged here old-school car guys like lars peterson notice how things have changed with the young who no longer seem to live and die with each issue of hot rod magazine like he did they're not into using their hands and tools they want to sit there and work the computer it's there in there in that computer world and that's what they want to do I know my son he's going up close to 40 that's absolutely no interest in cars never did never had one and uh when he got his first car I made him help me put an engine in it okay hey you're gonna learn he learned he didn't want to work on him but all is not lost there are a few young people here like parachute specialist Christopher green responsible for the drivers life and needing a perfect drag chute deployment every time he for one likes rubbing elbows with this crowd yeah I mean I noticed that there's a lot of older people on our team I always try to tell my friends to come down and hang out with us and try to tell them like hey it's a bunch of old guys and you learn stories and you get to learn a lot of history about not just any racing but just a lot of history over all of everything another young guy really into the North American Eagle project is Andrew Kirk a Bates Technical College student who like most of the guys here got into cars and speed because the generations before him were he admits to playing video games a little bit but that's about it I like more of a hands-on experience than a lot of other kids do today they like more of the virtual he said more of the real world which is what I grew up with with my dad being carpenter and less came up and he says you know are you really screwed up I said what do you mean he said now they know you can stick well to be honest sometimes it's little wonder the efforts been 17 years in the making because at least half the time is spent telling stories but that intimacy and a culture that promotes piping up if there's a problem is part of why this all-volunteer group considers itself family and if you look at all of our team members today they don't call this Keith and Ed's car they call this their car they bring their parents up here they bring their wives up there they bring their children up here and their neighbors and they say this is my car this is what I do on it week to week you know maybe electronics might be painting might be mechanical abilities that they provide but this is their car second-by-second 17 years have come and gone and now the North American Eagle project is very possibly losing its window to hold the record the greatest threat again comes from the British building a radical rocket-assisted car called the Bloodhound it's a multi-million dollar effort aiming at 1,000 miles per hour which might quickly knock even an 800 mile an hour run right out of the limelight we still wind up just being footnote somewhere in there you know we may be the guys that they're looking at going yeah they finally did it and I think a lot of people are in that position right now they're still waiting to see if we're gonna do something real I don't think we ever would a foresaw that this thing was going to take 20 years I mean in fact I got to be honest with you if you said Keith and Edie we're gonna do this and it's gonna take 20 years before we're able to break the record I don't think Edie or I would have done it I think honestly we probably always thought we were maybe three or four years out and so you're keeping adding at three to four years out all along and in as the project matured you know it's always next year next year next year next year what's the bloodhound won't run for a while and nobody knows when it will so the North American Eagle team is trying to strike a safe balance between rushing toward a record run right now and taking a more measured approach with some record breaking intermediate steps along the way which if things go as planned include the cars female co-driver California based car builder and race driver Jessi combs this next test session we're going to be doing is going to be amazing for two different reasons one we're gonna get a couple records we're gonna get Jessi make her the world's fastest woman on earth we can do that by going 512 miles an hour or faster we've already gone faster than that with the car so we know that can happen the next is to make this car the world's fastest single-engine car ever and so we'll put it in the car and he'll run something over 633 miles an hour but what's more significant it's part of our test program at 630 is when we start developing these transonic shockwaves and so we'll be gathering a lot of data off the car we got 16 static air pressure ports on car were gathering millions of measurements we need to take those data measurements and put them in our computer model and see if they look like the computer model and if they're different then we'll change the model because the CFD analysis that we do in this car is what keeps this project safe part of our test runs is also gathering data to match that against our computer model and when you know you've got a good match then you feel a lot more secure that you're going to do this and walk away from it when it's done despite your technology do you think there are some demons that exist at 750 775 800 that you don't know about I'm sure there are demons out there but we don't know what they are until you go there that's why we've done so many test runs working our way up slowly many people will make the comment like well once you just go out there and go for it well oh yeah we could do that if we wanted to but we don't want to because I'd like to be able to tell the story after it's all done I don't plan on going out there to kill myself there's other ways to kill yourself and not destroy a perfectly good airplane so I'll be honest with you if you go 400 miles an hour and you don't feel comfortable then that's where you need to stop because if you don't feel comfortable doing what we're doing then you need to pull back and you need to rethink what you wanted to do and we've had those conversations with Jesse you know even ed has had those conversations with his family about going six seven eight hundred miles an hour and that's why we that's why we've done so many runs that's why we've done 48 runs with the car we've done 48 runs ed and a wide range of speeds for that reason anybody that thinks you're gonna get in one of these cars and go six seven eight hundred miles an hour the second time you're in the car is lying to you and I'm just honest they're lying to you if they say that let's talk about death you cannot do something like this and have this goal and not contemplated not explain it to your family and not have it in the back your mind I understand you're trying to engineer around it how do you come to grips with that what do you tell people when they say you know something ad this could kill you well I I guess part of my my background has put me into harm's way many times and maybe it's a matter of ignorance ignoring the fact or hoping that I have mitigated all the risk to a point where it's acceptable I don't think about death I don't think Edie thinks about death we both enjoy flying airplanes and snow skin we're not on any death mission here and so that doesn't that doesn't enter it you're too often we just plan and run our test program to eliminate and mitigate any kind of problems a problem they can't mitigate again involves time for five years the team has been locked in a battle trying to get DLM permits to run at Diamond Valley California so the final record attempt may have to happen in Australia if they can get the last burst of funding the goal in 2017 is 764 miles per hour averaged over two runs through a measured mile one hour apart but truth be told the nice round number they all really want is 800 I think if we run 764 now I don't know what how it answered this but I think you'd have to really twist my arm hard in order to go risk anything so I think we set the record and then we sit back enjoy the fruits of victory and then maybe we'll talk about it next year 800 800 or whatever according to the computer we're able to go 835 miles an hour you know once we do that if we set a record at over 800 and we can say you know we finally did all those things many people are saying well then why don't you go after a thousand miles an hour and my take is I've been on this thing for almost 20 years I think it's time to give up and just say okay let somebody else take it so if you can hold that record in your hand for a moment that's a goal achieve that's a goal and though I think the whole team I mean we're gonna well have one hell of a celebration but the other thing down the line after the fact is now we'll probably have to take this thing on a tour and go to some major events show off the car clad in a lot of people say and brag about what we did and that's the fun part that's the payback the glory yeah
