Quicksilver

[f1steveuk]

I pretty certain the BBP project got all it's stuff before Mike took the archive to Beaulieu, as I warned him, once stuff goes in there, like most museums, it suddenly becomes theirs, and access becomes imposible.

Now as for the diff boxes and the bit of rudder that had been trimmed off etc, all vanished........................

[quicksilver-wsr]

My heart sinks whenever I hear of any archive stuff going in there.

As far as the vast majority of the outside world goes, it's "Bye-bye, forever"

One day, people will wise-up.

Nigel

[Gareth Hayes]

It's quite interesting having a look around Quicksilver's website. There's certain similarities between the design & that of K7. But at the same time, Quicksilver just doesn't have the same elegance that K7 has. But by the sounds of things Quicksilver is purely a speed machine, looks & elegance come a very distant second here.

[quicksilver-wsr]

Hi Gareth,

The earlier concepts for Quicksilver were more elegant than the one we finally settled on. Having a big engine, mounted very far forward, with a large pitot-style intake to feed it with air, we inevitably wound up with a rather brutish (ugly?) front end to the boat.

I don't think looks ever came into anyone's thinking. It was all designed to work a certain way, and no-one placed any real emphasis on appearance. I think it will have been much the same with K7.

In my view, K7's not that pretty from certain angles. From other angles, though, it looks very elegant. When it was first unveiled it looked rather "boxy" and not particularly lovely. It's all a matter of perception. I don't think Pininfarina would have designed K7 that way! But it was a boat designed to do a particular job, with function dictating - not styling - as is Quicksilver today.

Regarding the similarities between the two craft - yes, they have quite a bit in common. That wasn't the original intention, but through a very circuitous route of development, that's what we ended up with. A big Bluebird! But away from the superficial similarities, there's a lot that's different.

Nigel

[Gareth Hayes]

Good gracious someone from the actual project actually replied to little me!! Firstly please don't think I was having a go at anyone involved with Quicksilver as that was not my intention. As you point out both K7 & Quicksilver are built to do a job. That is to go as fast as possible over water anything else is purely secondary. As far as looks are concerned. We all know where beauty is said to lie don't we

[quicksilver-wsr]

No worries, mate - I didn't take it personally.

There is a one-tenth-scale windtunnel model of Quicksilver here and I can't kid myself it's the most beautiful shape. But like you say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder - and, of course, the old racing-car adage is "If it wins, it's beautiful!"

In terms of its "presence" when it gets on the water, I think the actual boat will be a crowd-pleaser.

Let's see, when we finally get it there.

Nigel

[jonwrightk7]

" I've got this peculiar feeling of deja vu"

[quicksilver-wsr]

The story was entirely concocted by the media.

I'm doing a talk for the IMechE in Inverness in a couple of weeks and a local newspaper contacted me to ask about the project. They asked me if there is any chance that the boat could run on Loch Ness at some point and I said yes. There's a chance. It could run on any lake of reasonable size.

That's it. Everything else came from the media building it up into a story.

It's simply the "Conniston Waters" syndrome, which everyone on here should be familiar with by now. We have never put out a single press-release in the entire history of our project. I keep it as low-key as is humanly possible.

All of the media hype comes from the media alone.

Nigel

[Renegadenemo]

Has much happened with the project lately?

[quicksilver-wsr]

Has much happened with the project lately?

Good question, and thanks for asking.

The biggest task that's occupying us is the construction of the outer hull structure - or external "shell" of the boat. The predictable route would have been to add a sub-structure of aluminium bulkheads to the spaceframe and then a semi-stressed aluminium skin over that, like K7. But we opted for something more ambitious, with what is essentially a one-piece composite structure, and we're using materials that have never been used together before. It's prototyping on a large scale and it's taking a lot of time to get it right, because if we screw up the manufacturing process, we'll destroy the pattern (made specially for us) and the materials (all donated) in one uneasy lesson, and I don't suppose anyone will thank us if we go back afterwards asking for more to make another try.

We've had to do lots of samples-testing. All time-consuming. All necessary. It's driving me nuts at regular intervals, but one thing I've learned is patience.

The publicity that arose recently in the Daily Mail, Sun, Daily Express, Scotsman and elsewhere caught me by surprise, because it came from nowhere. It was the week before last, actually, that the Loch Ness story cropped up, so it's come and gone now. I guess they couldn't resist the "Loch Ness Monster" headline. It's a nice place, but I don't know much about it. Perhaps I will by the time I come back. When it's ready, the boat will need to be tested. Where that will happen is in the lap of the gods at the moment, because it's not the priority.

Nigel