History in the Construction of Sonic Wind

      Sonic Wind began as a concept for a Hydrogen peroxide rocket powered, streamlined, super sonic motorcycle. It was long, thin and had a diamond frontal aspect. The concept aerodynamically was to split the oncoming air into four equal sections around the body thus balancing the vehicle and adding to the stability. Super sonic shocks would be split by the underside of the vehicle or bounced away at the V bottom. I was 17 years old when I began researching this idea. It was 1973 and hydrogen H2O2 rocket cars were running at the drag strips and at Bonneville. The advantages of running on two wheels are intriguing especially considering the vehicle I envisioned had an overall frontal area of 2.3 square feet and was about 30 feet long. Inside the diamond shape were housed two long tanks one on top of another. The bottom one carried the LOX which weighs about 11 lbs. per gallon and the top tank carried Kerosene at about 6 lbs. per gallon. The purpose of this was to keep the Cg low for balance. Two smaller long, high pressure tanks were fitted into the spaces on either side between the two fuel tanks. These contained high pressure Helium. The Helium was used to blow the fuel and Oxidizer into the four rocket engines arranged into a cruciform in the tail. It had stabilizer or training wheels mounted on the tips of long horizontal wings installed at the Cg ( slightly forward of the middle)of the bike. The wings were on a centerline pivot, powered by a pneumatic bungie so they bent down 45 degrees while the vehicle was at rest and lifted up into the horizontal at about 50 miles per hour when the bike was stable. Sonic Wind stayed as this concept for 8 years while I learned everything I could about motorcycle streamliners and rocketry. I designed the body for the "Concept 1" rocket dragster of Brent Fanning ( "Instant Insanity" as they finally called it ran a best 5.20 et 280 m.p.h. at Great Lakes Dragaway with Larry Bostick at the wheel) at this time and built fast street bikes with weird aerodynamic devices on them to get my speed fixes. I also played "Rat Race" ( a game of 80 to 100 m.p.h. tag with hot rods) with my friends on the streets of Park Ridge and Desplaines Illinois. Drag racing was neat to watch but it couldn't have been as much fun as Rat Racing! I was a Mopar man and ran a 1970 Barracuda and a 1970 Challenger 383 Super Commando. Back then we would through on a set of headers, a manifold with a four barrel, maybe a cam and jack the back end up with shackles or Gabriel Highjacker shocks, a pair of Mickey Thompson 50s on a pair of chrome reverse rims and look out!

     In 1981 I read an article about Robert Truax in Omni magazine and called him, he is a brilliant man and a father of American rocketry much like Goddard. I went to California to meet with Robert Truax and we talked for two days as he convinced me to abandon H2O2 for engines of greater impulse. LOX-Kerosene was his favorite and at the time he was working on a secret project for Evel Knievel, a sub orbital flight rocket using for LR101 rocket engines which were used as vernier engines on the Atlas and Thor ICBMs .Twenty years before the X-prize, Truax was building a sub orbital manned vehicle. Evel Knievel being a bit on the ornery side and always pissed off about one thing or another beat up a guy with a baseball bat and lost all his notoriety and toy deals. Checks to Truax bounced or never came in and Truax pulled the rocket from Knievel. Later the project was passed from one would be astronaut to another always running out of money or unable to finish the project. In 1984 I packed up my wife and three kids and moved to southern California from Dundee Illinois. A few months later Truax and his protégé' Ken Mason did a demonstrating static engine run of the rocket they had originally built for Knievel at an airport near Freemont. Truax called and invited me to watch and meet Ken Mason. After the static burn Ken and I went to a friends house to talk rockets. Ken was just a few months older than I and a twelve pack,a bottle of Jack Daniels, Vodka and a few other things later we were friends for life. He has been my rocket technician and adopted big brother ever since. I could never thank him enough for all the help he has given me as I chase my allusive dreams.

     By this time Sonic Wind had been simplified to a three wheeled streamliner rocket car. It still had the diamond frontal aspect but I had decided to run it on a course prepared on the ice of a frozen lake. The thought being that the ice would be level because water seeks level before it freezes and the lake ice could be shaved with a plane and a Zamboni for a perfectly, smooth flat course. The wheels became thin rings running around a 270 degree internal track with a hinge point to collapse the internal track in order to install or remove the ring wheels which I now called "Skeels". It is good that I moved away from a two wheeled rocket powered vehicle to three wheels. Years later while working with Kenny Lyon on the Becker-Lyon streamliner (This was a BMW powered streamlined motorcycle running on Touleene and turbo charged. It ran a best 273 m.p.h. one run and never duplicated that again. It set 17 records in the 230 m.p.h. range running various displacement motors) I learned a valuable lesson about two wheeled streamliner. What I learned in those five years was that all motorcycle streamliners fall over!. It may not be today or tomorrow but some day it is going down on it's side and probably real hard too! A rocket is basically a fuel tank with it's tail on fire and if it were to fall over..... well, It would be all over but the shouting. I believe two wheeled vehicles are the ultimate design because of the tiny frontal area they offer. It will take an offshoot of the type of gyro technology pioneered by Dean Kamen for his Segway to actually make that work. This will be a multi-million dollar project that no sponsor will touch. So for now three and four wheeled rockets will dominate unlimited LSR.