5 HS Thunderbirds
 

So Steve, do you want to part with any of those HS Thunderbirds?

There is a different goal between F1 cars and Velodrome racing aerodynamics. The coefficient of drag for F1 cars is considerably higher than your everyday car. The amount of downforce is also considerably higher on the F1 cars.

We did a lot testing - and I remember the lowest drag body was a Bolink Thunderbird. We went down to the Dominguez Hills Velodrome and immediatly set a new track record - but the car was a handful to drive. We eventually went away from that body as the combination with a wing didn't have the downforce and low drag compared to other bodies.

:eek: thats cool.

Joe
They are not for sale. But I do have one Bolink T-bird I might part with.

SKJ

b4maz have you seen a 1/24 wing slot car? basically it is a speed run class. they run on an eight lane track you race 8 heats one in each lane against each other and the highest lap total in 8 three minute heats determine the winner. i will get some pics of mine after some sleep and i get home from racing tomorrow for all to see.

basically the cars are door stop shaped at the back the body is only about 5/8" above track surface and it has lexan sides the whole length of the car and a lexan rear wing. the world wide track for these cars is called a blue king, its is 188' racing length with 6 corners,one very high bank around 70 degrees, a hair pin,40 degree banked, a 90 degree turn, a carousel,and a 120 degree turn. the unlimited motor class runs laps in the 2.65 second range i think is the new record now. and the national and world record is 1132 laps in the 24 minutes of racing, combination of the 8 heats.

when these cars are running the lexan sides and rear wing layout almost touching the track surface. they have another class with the same chassis and a motor that is the 3rd out of the 4, still very very fast. the bogy is a gtp body, formerly the IMSA world class sports cars, open cock pit. well without all the lexan on it those cars run 4.7 seconds a lap and that chassis with wing body on it runs 3.95 a lap.

basically what im getting at is that shaped properly i think a slightly thinner lexan than what the bodies are made of, that distoration would be better and create more downforce. in that you could in theory run a smaller wing than normal that would work in low speed situations and with high sided end plates on the wing that would really layout under higher speeds that it would make more downforce with the larger surface are and less drag. if any of you have seen the vidoes from the worl record straight line high speeds run from bask around june the car was very similar to the wingcar design.

When I was younger I used to go to the slot car track. I remember seeing those crazy fast wing cars. I can see that those wings work very well with a car so small. I dont think it would work as well on a much larger car. A lot of that has to do with reynolds number. Its why a hummingbird wings are different than an eagles. The shape or function of a wing has much to do with what reynolds number regime it operates in. Its hard to explain here, but reynolds number is how you can test a small scale model in a wind tunnel and have that data be relevant for the life size counterpart.

Here's a BLAST FROM R/C PAST - The Dominguez Hills Velodrome in Carson CA - Home of the R/C THUNDERDROME

Oldie from the Encino Velodrome



And...Joe Blackburn and his 1997 Expert Modified NAT'S WINNING ride.(above) and The TROPHY (below)


SATURDAY MARCH 15th, the SWTour will be back at the Encino Velodrome for our First VELO race of the year...

Our race from last July (The one featured in the pics taken by Jason) was on "INSIDE R/C" on the Outdoor Channel this past weekend. Keep an eye on their schedule to see if they aire it again.

For those who like Touring Cars...
http://s10.photobucket.com/albums/a1...h_DSCF0014.jpg

http://s10.photobucket.com/albums/a1...h_DSCF0021.jpg

That is cool. I wish our facilities had that capability at the time. Some flow visualization always helps. Where was that done JRXS chris?

Sorry it took longer to get these up here. this is the wing car i was describing, had to use my fingers to show how the body distorts when it is running, they go so fast that there are no pics of it running down the straight. also a pic of the chassis of the car. it is 100% titanium. back to the point of the design of a wing that holds shape under low speed and yet flexes under high speed creating more downforce. the cless motor i run in this car on the track i talked about earlier takes me 4.549 is my fastest and with the other body i can run on it in the next post it goes to 5.276 seconds a lap.

here is the other body style. also in the wing car there are two faster classes of maotors you can run in that chassis and body design. the unlimited one is the one i talked about in my first post with lap times in the 1.768 sec. a lap range.

b4 - I did that at my Uni. I'm workin on my own bodyshell and wanted to have a comparison.

AZbobby,

The problem with using material on the SLOT cars that does not have that kind of flex is WEIGHT. You can get a TON more downforce w/o the flex, but on a slot car...it's just wayyyyyy too heavy.

We've got a really cool pair of Slot tracks here in town, and the guy who owns the shop has his own distributed line of body shells. ( TOYTECH )

He's bigtime into Slot DRAG bodies, but makes a ton of different stuff.

i agree about the weight issue for sure. but instead of using .020 lexan that a stock body on touring car comes in maybe using .015 or even.012 to build the wings from to achive what happens in slot cars could create more high speed downforce and less high speed drag by not being up so far in the wind. im no rocket scientist it is only my observations and some amount of reasoning. its kool if im wrong or way off, it was just my thought.

yea we used to have a nice track in chandler, so i move not more than four months later right behind it only to find it closed. and now i have to drive an hour out of town after spending and hour going across town to race them. :( but it is such good trigger training.