The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

[Leo]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

Many projects have failed to meet performance predictions over the years, I'd daresay a large percentage. Whether due to engine, propeller or airframe development problems, failure is failure I guess. I just do not think it's a reflection on Rutan that one idea did'nt work out.
I was'nt there when the idea was sold to Pond so I do not know what was done. I DID see the articles and predictions. But that is'nt unique to the Pond racer. I have heard great predictions from several of the racers under construction now. None are proven yet and are radical with as much potential for disaster.

[King]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

That one exception, BTW, was the Beech Starship, which got fat under Beech guidance.

Actually it got fat under the FAA quidance more than Raytheon. Too bad, neat airplane.

Concerning the Pond Racer, what gets me most is that the airplane was originally touted as a very safe airplane. All fuels, etc, routed away from the cockpit to keep the pilot safe. One of Ricks biggest problems was a fire in the cockpit.

[Ron101502]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

OK, I'll jump in. The engines for the Pond were the Nissan GTP engines that were actually developed by Mr. Devendorf of Electromotive. Geoff Brabham was kicking butt with that car/engine combo in the defunct IMSA/GTP competition, which was basically F-1 cars with fenders. On the tracks which hosted both CART and IMSA races, the IMSA GTP cars usually had faster lap speeds.

About the time the Pond came out, Nissan purchased the assets of the engine company and refused any support for the airplane. Similar to Jim Bede's BD-5, the promised engine support failed to materialize and the people involved with the airframe all of a sudden had to come up with a "power train". In both cases they failed, which in no way reflects poorly on either Bede or Rutan, but I do believe the bar was set too low for the Pond as that was the year Rare Bear ran the fastest race speed and had the fastest lap on the LAST lap, and I also recall-tell me if I'm wrong- that 3rd place Tsunami broke the existing closed course speed record for piston airplanes. May be wrong on that, feel free to correct me.

But we all know the Bear needs more speed to beat Dago-I think they can do it but not this year.

Ron Henning
RB "Fan Sponsor"

[Lowell]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

Brad,

I know Gary Levitz talked about putting G-6 Allisons in his P-38 but I never realized that it actually happened. Do you know what year they were installed and what races he entered with them? Are there any ex-crewmembers still involved in racing who had hands on with that conversion?

Thanks for any specifics,

Lowell

[Apteryx]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

While designers do engineering exercises on paper, Rutan builds airplanes, some better then others. (Seriously try to name them all...). The man puts his money (and epoxy) were his mouth is....His recent government project was ahead of schedule, and under budget, (something the government was certainly not accustomed to).
On both terms, he is in rare company. I've meet the man, and known people who have worked with him, and have nothing but the highest respect for him personally and for what he's done to drive this buisness' technology. (Remember tube & fabric airplanes ?)
Let's ENCOURAGE him to get back into racing.

Paul

[Race 29]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

Ron took the words right outta my mouth, but I do want to add a few more. I became interested in the Pond Racer when the drawings first appeared in Popular Mechanics a few years before it accually appeared at Reno. It became one of my favorites at the time so I always tried to get as much info as I could. I was (am) also a big Rick Brickert fan from when he raced "Mustang Fever" back in '81 or '82. I don't mean to ruffle anyones feathers at all, so please have mercy on me if I do. I don't believe the problem with the Pond was the design. The problem was (as Ron stated) it had a very technical powerplant package. The crew working their A$$es off on it were warbird mechanics, not F1 mechanics. The Pond racer NEEDED F1 mechanics that were better versed in the more computer based powerplants. I'm not saying AT ALL that the crew didn't know what they were doing! But that racer needed mechanics that were more educated/experianced in that area to fix the problems it had. Everyone on that crew was very frustrated with the project, and I heard it more than once from them. I talked to Rick in the pits one time, and although he never said anything blaitantly bad about it, his frustration was very obvious. Of course everyone knows what opinions are like, and this one is just mine. They just needed guys (or gals) that were more F1 and less 1945.

If I remember right Bob Pond went to Burt Rutan. I never picked up on any of the macho posturing about the project, but more that Bob truly believed his racer was going to be a success in the form of halting the "chopping up" of historic aircraft. He envisioned several Pond Racers duking it out on the course instead of pieces of history. He was very concerned about preserving the warbirds we had left. That's the idea that started the whole project, and very nobel if I might add. I do believe Burt did a great job though (and could probably do even better now that technology has advanced a few years). I seem to remember that Rick had qualified one year at (around) 300 mph with one of the motors at near idle. I could be wrong on that, so someone please correct me if I am wrong. But that seems to me to be some pretty good aerodynamics. In one of the Skyfire videos, Rick gives a "walk around" of the Pond Racer where he admits that the CPU for the engine management system (the most heat sensitive part of system) sat right on top of the turbo exhaust (the hottest part of the engine). Unfortunatly, because of everything needing to be so compact, it couldn't be done any other way at the time, but it was going to be changed in the next one built. Whether or not that was a factor in the crash, I don't know. Rick Brickert and the crew were always as nice as they could be to me, and the Pond was my favorite at the time. I didn't know him personally, but I felt his loss just as hard as any other fan did.

Again, if I offended anyone, or anyone that anyone knows, it was not my intention so please don't flame me.

Race 29

[John H]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

The problem was (as Ron stated) it had a very technical powerplant package. The crew working their A$$es off on it were warbird mechanics, not F1 mechanics. The Pond racer NEEDED F1 mechanics that were better versed in the more computer based powerplants. Race 29

Great post....yes that is true I remember Jim Dale telling me that getting both powerplants to work properly when they were that close together was creating a lot of problems with the electronics. When the powerplants were in the Nissan cars and on the race track it wasn't an issue, but both of them bolted to an airplane it was a problem.

John

[Unregistered]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

Dash,
You are right, perhaps a simpler way to put it is that they were to get !000 horsepower out of each of these engines. The best they ever did despite many engine problems was around 600 horsepower.
As far as pointing blame, Rick knew the Aircraft's problems , and they were not new , before he ever chose to try "push the envelope"
in the aircraft......``hats off to RICK,BOB and BERT.

[Alpine]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

Is there anything left from the project? Any of the molds still around? could another be built?

[Ron101502]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

Let's get Steve Fosset and Richard Branson to Reno-they will get Burt Rutan to build a record breaker!!!

Just dreaming,

Ron Henning

[Unregistered]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

A couple of recollections on the Pond Racer.

The idea of the airplane having a center pod for pilot safety was a bit glowing.The fact was the fuel sumps and pumps were at Ricks feet, inside the cockpit.

The airplane had no natural escape system, as I recall. There was an explosive cord around the canopy, but no pilot extraction system so some kind of maneuver must have been planned to escape the damned thing. The canopy was held closed by forward motions slipstream.

The crew chief told me the engines were developed by a car racing engine builder that didn't grasp, and after a while his understanding was, wouldn't grasp that there was a different type of operation from a car borne set-up to an airplane set-up. The builder couldn't grasp the concept of operating at a constant power setting for a set period of time, hence the constant failures. The qoute I remember him giving me from the engine builder was" You should see it accelerate out of the corner..." . Hardly applicable to air racing. Probably the reason for Rick's palpable frustration.

(I feel the same way when drag racing engines are compared to air racing engines. Durability, longevity, smooth constant torque application to a big prop's reduction gearbox are what makes airplanes go).

Just my observations of 15 years ago, I hoped it would work.

Chris...

[speeddemon]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

Brad,

I know Gary Levitz talked about putting G-6 Allisons in his P-38 but I never realized that it actually happened. Do you know what year they were installed and what races he entered with them? Are there any ex-crewmembers still involved in racing who had hands on with that conversion?

Thanks for any specifics,

Lowell

I think that Ron Fortune and Little John Brooks are the only members from Gary's crew that is left. Big John Rader, Vernon Thorpe, and Richard Rasnopher are all gone. Sandberg did the engines for him.

I want to say the year was 1978. But the thrust line for the G-6 didn't match the line for the standard engines, and it was all messed up. Lefty told me that, to him at least, the plane got slower because they couldn't use the power. I don't think that experiment lasted very long. Maybe just Reno '78?

[kenf]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

Hey Guys, I truly don't want to be a hard nose about this, and nobody is saying that Burt hasn't designed some truly great, historic aircraft. But I feel that you are still cutting him too much slack for the Racer. If he didn't bellieve in the design parameters laid down for him, he should have, and I believe would have, backed out of it. At this time he had already designed a number of very significant aircraft and had no reason to have to prove anything about his talent. This was an ego deal, he was going to show that the state of the art in the 80's could blow away that of the 40's. And with regard to him "putting up his money to prove his point", this was a "for profit" project. All the risk was shared by Pond (his money) and Brickert (his life).

It was clear after the first year with Dick (Rutan) managing the team, that the Rutans knew they were in trouble and wanted to cut their losses. Probably only Bob Pond knows if there was any offer to compensate him for missing the target. But it didn't take an aeronuatical engineer to know that the plane was trouble. After Steve (Hiinton) tookover the project, Karen (then his wife) told him that if he ever broke ground in the plane, he shouldn't bother coming home (or words to that effect). Karen knew that plane was going to kill someone and she wanted to make sure that it wasn't Steve.

[First time Juke]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

I think any aviation engineer who is promissed to be delivered two racing engines each weighing 300-400 lbs producing 1 000 hps each would take the challenge to design a plane around them. The engines produced half of what they should have. They also consumed more fuel as what was intented.

Certainly at some stage they should have said; ok it will never do 450 mph period...not to mention brake 528 mph record set by Bear.

Certainly Rick Brickert took a risk when he flew it and paid it dearly.

All in all MA II and Tsunami have showed that coming up and trying to win with a new record braker is a hazardous task with each new prototype.

Rutan like any aeroplanedesigner who is in avantgarde does take calculated risks when exploring something new. John Denver died in a Vari-Eze accident when his kite did not recover from a spin which was a result of the poor canard foil in the early Vari-Ezes.

Just think of Lilienthal brothers or Howard Hughes.

best regards,

Juke T

[King]

Re: The Pond Racer.....Rutan's Watergate

John Denver died in a Vari-Eze accident when his kite did not recover from a spin which was a result of the poor canard foil in the early Vari-Ezes.

You are very incorrect on this assumption or your research found is flawed.

John Denver ran out of fuel. He was unable to switch his fuel tank valve due to the location that it was installed in by the previous owner. He was working his problem in the cockpit and not flying the airplane....unfortunantly.... he crashed.

And the rest of your post......................you didn't really write that did you?

King