Craig Sawyers

Bloodhound LSR completes its program for this year with a 628mph run. So back to base to fit the rockets for 800mph+

Next time my better half moans about my collection of classic era test equipment, I'm gonna show here this https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worlds-largest-collection-fighter-jets-france-wine-country-michel-pont/ A collection of 110 fighter jets.

Needs some carpets and soft furnishings. Just sayin.

Nonsense. It is all just part of the increasing delusion and decent into madness of Jack Torrance. Anyway, whenever Torrance sees these delusional things he is looking at a mirror or something reflective. All part of Kubrick's plot devices.

https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a1oEy3G_460sv.mp4

California and Western Australia and in long term drought and burn, and here in Britain there are major floods in the midlands (a whole month's rain in 24 hours, in a county that is no stranger to rain)

Jeeze. That is a shit load of bad luck with work on your house Knucks. Bricks and mortar is a real money pit though. We've just had our roof de-mossed. I could hardly lift a sack of the stuff - and there were 20-30 sacks came off. There was a lot of moss! Took two guys two days to do it - manually scraping it off each roof tile.

He opened with Gandalf - with the section with the Balrog "Fly, you fools!". Then he hauled Glamdring out of a massive box on the stage - and the pointy hat - he was given both at the end of the shooting. He then got a young person from the audience up on stage to draw the sword, and signed a program for her. No Magneto though.... He did make a comment about Dumbledore though. Apparently Michael Gambon (who played Dumbledore) was frequently mistaken for McKellen, and asked for an autograph - so he didn't disappoint the fan and signed it "Ian McKellen". We're lucky enough to have seen him on stage quite a few times, most recently (2017) in King Lear in the 250 seat Minerva theatre in Chichester. Also Richard III in Bradford (1991), Waiting for Godot (in London with Patrick Stewart, 2009), No Man's Land (in London with Patrick Stewart, 2016), and a Godfather type of play translated from the Spanish called The Syndicate, again in the tiny Chichester Minerva (2011). He flew back from New Zealand during a break in shooting Gandalf in The Hobbit to do that. We've also seen Stewart, again in the tiny Chichester Minerva. The best Macbeth (2007) I've ever seen by a mile, that then went to the West End, then to Broadway, and then was made into a movie. And a not so good Twelfth Night as Malvolio (2007). In fairness he was miscast as Malvolio. And in a rather weird play called Bingo that Stewart is obsessed with (2012), about the late life, and death of Shakespeare, and the family squabbles around his death bed about the will. This is an outtake from the superb Macbeth movie. Follows the stage play perfectly, including the goods lift you can see in the background that Banquo's ghost uses to arrive. Get the DVD. If you like Shakespeare you won't be disappointed.

This was actually Saturday night, but we went to see Ian McKellen in London, who is doing his 80th birthday tour. A mixture of personal recollections from his life, and chunks of Shakespeare and poetry. Awesome. He did not even take a rest in the interval - he just got off the stage and mooched around the audience. Then climbed back onto the stage for the second part. A total of three hours of total awesomeness. https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/ian-mckellen-on-stage

Yeah - they are going to do some further runs to "probe the trans-sonic region", whatever that means. After which I guess it is back the the UK to start fitting the rockets and all the gubbins that is necessary to hold the propellents and pump them into the nozzles. They have not said so, but they must have mass dummies in the car for these runs to mimic the weight distribution of the rocket stuff. The design spec is once lit they should take Bloodhound from 500 to 1000mph in 17 seconds. We are not the only show in town in the quest for 1000mph. The Aussies have an entirely rocket propelled car using concentrated nitric acid and keronsene, called Aussie Invader SR which is specced to go from rest to 1000mph in 20 seconds. And another in NZ. And another possibly from the West Coast of the US. But there is no evidence that any other of these vehicles has entered the testing phase.

I had one of those CD players back in the day - it was a thing of beauty inside. That pic brings back memories of the superb construction standard. It was not lightweight!

I've done the falling asleep thing too, with much more inedible consequences. I then faced around an hour of cleaning the carbonised mess off the bottom of the pot.

Bloodhound LSR hits 461mph on just the jet engine. Next is to add the two rockets that will take it from there to 1000mph. Bloody amazing how quickly it gets to speed (and back down to rest too). The driver, Andy Green, is a fighter pilot, and was the guy who took Thrust SSC to beyond the speed of sound in 1997. Bloody awesome!