The Bluebird Project

Ha Ha!!

Canopy frame complete brought a lump to my throat. That moment is not too far off (hopefully within my lifetime), when you will reveal a finished cockpit canopy and we will cry seeing her true profile at last. Running Bluebird on Conniston might be the ultimate in engineering goals, for myself I will be in rapture just seeing her look how she was meant to be, whole.
As a child of the 60s, learning to read and developing an appetite for it, my memories (worldly memories, not family, friends etc) are overwhelmed by sadness. Commonest printform to learn new words? Newspapers, then as now not exactly brimming with happy tales. Newspapers leads to watching the news on tv, or they go hand in hand. So Aberfan, Apollo 1 and Bluebird are burned into my psyche...I really cannot recall a happy news event before Apollo 8.
This is more than just about Bluebird, in a way it is healing some wounds. Ok i know that sounds melodramatic but I bet mine won't be the only damp eyes.
There may be a mountain of work to do yet but the night is drawing to a close.

its a real shame we have to ruin the canopy by adding a windscreen wiper....... health and safety strikes again !

eh?....
and what would that be used for?

A wiper...nah! Much better with one of the old Kent Clearview Screens...an age appropriate one with a hefty electric motor screwed down above the instrument panel and the whirly bit driven by a worn old link belt. A thing of beauty and a joy to behold.

This is more than just about Bluebird, in a way it is healing some wounds.

That's the very reason we set about this journey in the first place. For me personally it was because I'd missed it, having been born in May 67, then it became Gina's wish to expunge the fact that her dad and K7 were only remembered for their one spectacular failure despite their many successes.
We're not far away now...

I am fully in accord with all of the above as motivation for being involved in the rebuild. Also, though I never met him, Donald Campbell was one of my boyhood heroes and aged 14, I was lucky enough to see K7 running on Coniston some time in early December 1966. I will never forget the sight and sound and feel tremendously privileged to be taking part in the rebuild.


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Richie wrote:its a real shame we have to ruin the canopy by adding a windscreen wiper....... health and safety strikes again !

Could you modify one of these beauties? very authentic, timewise, or perhaps do away with the canopy & fasten one to Ted's head?


bizarrely, you can still buy them!!
http://www.itakashop.com/gb/turbo-visor ... visor.html

What they leave out of their advertising blurb - and I know this from several karting people who've tried them - is that the gyroscopic effect means that as your head goes around a corner your spinning visor keeps it facing in the original direction and you crash...

neigh an active demonstration of gyroscopic precession methinks.....