Speaking of lift I flew the C182 up to Bonneville the first year that
Jim Mederer attempted to capture the E class land speed record
with a three rotor, three turbo 3rd gen RX7 with ice water intercoolers.
When I saw the car for the first time at the salt I asked Jim what the
lift distribution on the car was and he told me it had two hundred pounds of
down force on the nose and nothing on the tail. In my characteristic best
diplomat mode I said "WHAT THE HELL....that's not going to work Jim!!!"
I then said: "At least tape up the slot under the spoiler with duct tape."

He got a bit mad at me for being so blunt and told me he was not allowed
to modify the shape of the body. He later told me I did not know it all :-)

After I made a few calculations on the back of an envelope I told him this
thing is going out of control right around 250 MPH. Don Sherman and Csaba
Csere where standing right there and heard every word.

Sure enough Jim got it up to 250 MPH and got sideways. The angular acceleration
and consequent and subsequent angular velocity was a site to behold. The car
lifted off the salt to an altitude of ten or fifteen feet and did a Lomchavalk(s?).
The RX7 wound up spinning down the salt on its roof at over 200 MPH.
A Japanese film crew just happened to be near where this event took place
and got excellent movies of the whole thing. Jim was not seriously hurt.
The car was repaired, the aerodynamics fixed and it later went
on to capture the E class land speed record at 268 MPH as I recall.

I happened to visit Racing Beat just a few days after that happened. It was the first (only) time I met Jim. We spent quite a long time discussing all kinds of things, and I was really struck by how low-key he was in general, and specifically about the Bonneville incident. The whole time we were talking one of his employees was busy shoveling salt out of the car right behind us.

Jon Lauter
Rotary Power Marine Corporation

Never let them see you sweat :-)>

Paul Lamar

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