Speed Record Attempt

[speeddemon]

Care to witness a run at the record books? This Saturday (March 13th), the Miss Budweiser Unlimited Hydroplane is going to attempt to break the Kilo record currently held by Roy Duby in the Miss U.S. set back in 1962. The record is 198 mph.

Don't confuse this with the Mile record, which is held at 205 mph by Russ Wicks in the Miss Free-I. This is a shorter kilo course. The place they're using isn't large enough to support a mile course.

The run will be made at Thermilito Afterbay in Orville, CA (just outside of Sacramento). The course opens at 8:30 Saturday morning, and will remain open through Sunday. It is actually an "open course", so there will be several boats of all classes there trying to set records. But the Miss Budwieser will be the most spectacular.

Scuttlebutt I hear is that they will be running full fuel on their T-55, and the crew has said they will be going 'all out'. I wouldn't be surprised to see something in the 230-240 mph range. And if they don't keep it on the water, it's going to be a pretty spectacular crash.

Speeddemon

[hattend]

Re: Speed Record Attempt

For those people looking for Orville on their maps, do you mean the afterbay in Oroville? It's closer to Chico than Sacramento and sits just downstream from the Oroville Dam.

It had me confused... and I lived in Nor Cal for a long time. Wish I could be there, I love the thunderboats.

Don
Here's a map

[RandyGoss75]

Re: Speed Record Attempt

http://www.kenwarby.com/

[mayday51]

Re: Speed Record Attempt

....Warby has the speed record....by jet (thrust) power....
the Bud team is using a prop drive.....
.....to me the old Miss US record is still the one,
Merlin power,prop drive.

[RandyGoss75]

Re: Speed Record Attempt

Hmmmmmmm.........

Kinda like the Stan Barrett/Hal Needham Budweiser rocket "car" vs. the team "Thrust" effort.......

Didn't Barrett go faster than "Thrust".....(supersonic I believe),
yet "Thrust" is in the record book as the fastest and first supersonic "car"??

Are there classes for the water speed record- for weight and engines etc.?

I bet Prospector and Griffonsrule would know.......hmmmmmmm....hehe RG

[Unregistered]

Re: are they???

Are they going to change the course distance so the boat goes faster???

Hehehe

[speeddemon]

Re: are they???

Are they going to change the course distance so the boat goes faster???

Hehehe

Hah....no, they didn't change the course distance....but they almost wrapped the boat up into a ball. They set the record (220 mph), but as they were exiting the traps on their second run, at an estimated 230 mph, they lost the rudder. It took out the prop, shaft, and transom of the boat....and by the grace of God, the boat stayed upright. Ordinarily, when you take the 'lift' out of the back end at those speeds, the nose comes up, and it's all she wrote.

Villwock will probably claim it was his extraordinary skill as a driver that kept it on the water. I say it was PURE luck.

So the record got blown away. But hey, to quote 'Super Dave' himself...the record was pretty low-hanging fruit.