I don't understand how this car works.

What a silly statement and one that just increase my opinion that your have a very cute perpetual motion machine on wheels and lord I am looking forward to the NASLA report on your runs with this magic machine of your.

You would not of course be the first owner of a perpetual motion machine to pass tests assuming you do so however to do it on a machine with wheels doing time trials is an interesting engineering challenge indeed.

I would have love to had taken the engineering drawings of your toy and compare it one millimeter and one milligram at a time to your craft just before the testing.

Oh well I am gone for now as the test results does not seem to be ready.

Bill,

Aren't you very vehement on the Moon landing thread about people dismissing empirical data?

What data am I dismissing so far I had not even seen a report by NALSA and neither had you right?

All you going on now is their words of the results.

Apollo Moonships did not claimed to used a Dean Drive or anything else that break Newton's Laws either.

You're not going to like the report because it will state that there is no magic involved (it's wind powered) and that it exceeded the speed of the wind while traveling directly downwind by multiples of wind speed.

Your bad.

JB

You are wrong I am going to be very very interest in the NALSA report no matter what the report state. This would be the first time your claims is back by someone not of your group and who everyone can assume even me are honest brokers.

Well if the report is as you are claiming it will be then we get to the point that either your machine broke the laws of physics and those laws need to be change or your group was able to pull some very impressed trick on the NALSA people.

I look at your driver pictures before the runs and he did not look so uncomfortable that it is likely that he had a model rocket tube up his rear end at least.

If this was a claim of scientists the next step would be reproducing the results from the released information by groups that have no connection to your of any kind. Perhaps the Mythsbusters will undertake this project as there is great interests in your wind car on their website.

Cold Fission claims by the way got into trouble at the point of fact when the information was check by outside groups

In any case I am sure I am not going to be the only one looking at any data the NALSA happen to be kind enough to put out in great great details no matter what the report say.

How interesting no matter how it turn out.

What is funny is that he is still not even considering the possibility that his understanding of the laws of physics is incorrect.

I am sure that I and even people with advance degrees in the field will be looking at that aspect also.

The hands waving of how you can couple wind energy to an object traveling with a vector velocity greater then the wind by this group had not been very helpful in that regards however.

In any case, the Blackbird is going to look at in details by a great many people I am sure if NALSA support the claims.

Very interesting no matter how it turn out.

Now we wait for the report.

No Bill,

Most of us who understand Physics have already figured out how it works and understand that this is perfectly in line with the laws of physics.

This is not even particularly controversial any more.

I am sure you have a deep understand of the physics of the wind car just like the people who brought into the Dean Drive or cold fusion or every other not true device in the last hundred years have a complete understanding of the physics involved and some was even holders of advance degrees beside.

Group pressure is a wonderful tool in getting people to agree that claims make sense when those claims clearly do not made sense.

You should pay more attention -- I didn't say you wouldn't be "interested" in the report, I said you are not going to *like* the report (because it will say you are wrong).

JB

Here is a very well shot video of our very first run in El Mirage.

Renown Brit Richard Jenkins, the builder and pilot of the world speed record holding Greenbird (http://www.greenbird.co.uk/multimedia/images) found out about our trip to El Mirage and flew down to watch the proceedings. He shot this excellent video sitting in the back window of the chase vehicle unbeknown to us. He just posted it today. He did such a great job showing the wind instruments switching directions just as the Blackbird blew through windspeed.

As one can see from the video, the Blackbird self-starts on this run and data shows it topping out at nearly 55mph. The vehicle was still accelerating but over the radio I asked the pilot to stop as this was nearly 10mph faster than any previous run and I was worried about the integrity of the vehicle. The multiple wasn't quite one of our best as the wind was in the upper range (~20mph). We set our best multiples in a bit less wind because we could let the bird run free without fear of breakage.

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CcgmpBGSCI&feature=youtube_gdata

Dude,

You do realize that the biggest difference between this and the Dean drive, is that there are no claims by the inventors that such a device is practical for any commercial or transport purpose whatsoever?

I don't know what you think the incentive would be for people to go to this much work to fake results, fake videos, build a fake car, everything.

Cycloptichorn

Brit Richard Jenkins, builder and pilot of the world speed record ship Greenbird just sent us this for our blog.

*******************

"So, one night, I was happily drinking my beer and tending to my inbox of endless boring emails that had be answered but were of no real consequence, when Lester, my landsailing buddy texted me a link to fasterthanthewind.org. Lester knows a lot, and if he says this needs my attention, then it gets it. I am not sure if it was how many beers I had had, or simply the inane nature of the quest, but I laughed enough to email all my friends to share the absurdity of their mission. My heart is split between belittling idiots, and saluting eccentrics, and this downwind quest lay somewhere in the middle. These loonies were pursuing a pointless goal, doomed to failure, but there was some genuine merit in the myth and their enthusiasm.

I dismissed it as utterly impossible. Traveling through zero apparent wind, with no stored power? Impossible. Why would you even attempt it? (Though I'm no stranger to that question myself!) But had I been asked to bet at that moment, I would have just lost a lot of money.

A few months later I actually met the idiots in question and, to my surprise and concern we not only have a few mutual friends, but they seemed to be rather technically credible. But, everyone makes mistakes, and I let them off as decent people with a blinkered view of fundamentally flawed engineering....

A few months later they were claiming success and if it was not for another great friend, Bob Dill, advising that they were actually correct, I would have discarded their claim as an April fool. I thought about the possibility that I was wrong, and then considered that as Bob was getting on a bit and had a bit of a shake with his stopwatch finger, maybe it was he who was mistaken. There was, however, a growing momentum of technical people (who should have known better), saying that these idiots have actually proven that it is possible to travel faster than the wind going directly down wind.

Not content, I had to witness this myself. When I heard it was on for the official record at El Mirage, I jumped on a plane and went to check it out.

The video speaks for itself. These guys are not idiots, but sincere, genuine, technical people who took a myth and made it real. It works. It starts from rest, trundles to true wind speed, then powers to a multiple of about 3 times the true wind speed. Bob will confirm the final number I am sure.

To all fellow skeptics, start baking that humble pie, or eat your hat. Your choice."

Richard Jenkins - Greenbird - 126.2mph

Grants for one thing as they did not build this machine out of their own pocket or that is my understanding at least.

In any case there is some flow of funds to them if I am reading their own comments correctly and one of their backers is deep deep pocket google also if I read their comments correctly.

So without having a look at their books I have no idea and neither do you if there is a possible finance reason to fake results.

Yes, we have put more than 2,000 hrs into the Blackbird and have collected almost exactly $10,000 in sponsorship money (not nearly enough to pay for the effort, but we are grateful to the sponsors anyway).

Forget the hours, I have put far more actual $$$ into the project from my own pocket than I have received from the sponsors. This has been a very low funded and expensive (for us) labor of love -- not some profit center.

To have highly competent designers and engineers like Richard Jenkins, Bob Parks, Larry Page, Bob Dill, JoeBen Bivert, Chris Uhleck, Stan Honey (google them all) and countless others demonstrate open minds against common intuition has been well worth it.

This really has become a psychology experiment considering that the physics are rather trivial but the BillRMs of the world can't see past their flawed intuition and accept the simple and long established formula "work = force * distance".

JB

Yes the physics is simple and straight forward that is why a fast google search will find people that are holders of degrees in Physic are pulling their hairs out all over the net concerning this matter.

With such statements as spending a sleepless night writing forces diagrams.

Cold fusion and the Dean Drive Physics was similarly simple and straight forward.

BillRM, I see you still haven't done the "force * distance" calcs. Try them ... they work.

LOL

Sorry my friend the force is zero when the relative wind velocity is zero so no need to work a F*D equation as that would also be zero.

First order/rough equation used for pressure on an object is Force per area=constant*v^2.( v is relative wind)

Total force=the area force * total area.

Total force is zero when v is zero.

Reality disagrees with you, Bill. The force isn't zero when relative wind velocity is zero. The force is a constant one pressing from behind on the sails, which are at an angle to the wind, which are constantly tacking in one big circle.

Cycloptichorn

Now I am waiting for along with the NALSA report for references to physics texts that support your claims..

Once more Physics texts not new ages texts.......