'Donald Campbell- The Final Record Attempt' by Neil Sheppard

[malcolm uk]

Great story using Neil's words in Motorboat and Yachting February 2012. As a bonus they have reproduced the Christmas Day run photo over two pages as the picture of the month.

[Graham Milne]

Regarding the Xmas Day photos, does anyone know where I can buy good quality copies of the images? I think I remember a link on this forum somewhere to a site that sold such a thing, if anyone can help me?

Cheers folks.

[sheppane]

The publishers have asked me to do a second edition of the book. It will be broadly similar to the 1st edition, but will have a soft cover. We will take care of a few typo's and discrepancies that appeared in the 1st edition. In addition, we hope to introduce a number of newly found images in both monochrome and colour. Not sure of the publication date, but I expect it will be in the autumn.

PIC 62ALT.jpg

Here is an image that Clive Glynn very kindly gave us permission to use, scanned and retouched by Metro imaging.

[Renegadenemo]

I notice someone has put some padding over the main spar. Presumably that's so people can clamber about up there when the lid is off the engine bay.

[sheppane]

I notice someone has put some padding over the main spar. Presumably that's so people can clamber about up there when the lid is off the engine bay.

Bill, Its there for another type of protection. This image was taken on the 5th November, a few hours before the disastrous static test. The padding and red tie are to help secure K7 to her cradle, via its frame and the front axle.
The hull was then secured to the slipway by heavy cable via the brackets on the rear 'ledge'

[Renegadenemo]

The padding and red tie are to help secure K7 to her cradle, via its frame and the front axle.
The hull was then secured to the slipway by heavy cable via the brackets on the rear 'ledge'

Ahhh, that makes a lot of sense.
Ken once told me those rear brackets were stressed to 10,000lbs each but I guess they weren't taking any chances. They won't have been able to pull her down too hard using the main spar either because its nose fairing is only thin material and hollow at its leading edge so even a small amount of forward pull would easily collapse it. Interesting historical snippet though and another thing we can try in the workshop one day.

[Mike Bull]

I suspect this is one that will rumble on until the beast is in one piece and somebody hangs a plumb bob off a plank across the top of the tail...

Just picking this point up again because following on from Damien's posting there, I've been making a study of this height issue both to satisfy myself and to help Neil with his second edition. At the moment the rear end of the boat is fully built up- tail cover bolted down, tail fin in situ- so it's been possible to make a much better job of measuring the overall height from the top of the fin, to the bottom of the planing shoe- the height between the yellow lines in this chunk from Damien's profile artwork-

K7 height.jpg

Allowing for perhaps no more than a quarter of an inch margin of error, the overall height comes to 93 inches- or seven feet nine inches. The rudder is still put away at the moment and we can't put it on anyway because the boat is still in her rollover jig, so for now we can't measure that too to see if we can finally make up that mystery 8 feet four inches. But that's our height- seven foot nine.

[Renegadenemo]

so for now we can't measure that too to see if we can finally make up that mystery 8 feet four inches

Doesn't work. The rudder is 15 inches deep so you're well over if you include the rudder.

[Mike Bull]

Ah right- well, at least the fin top to planing shoe bottom dimension has been clarified now.

[sheppane]

I suspect this is one that will rumble on until the beast is in one piece and somebody hangs a plumb bob off a plank across the top of the tail...

Just picking this point up again because following on from Damien's posting there, I've been making a study of this height issue both to satisfy myself and to help Neil with his second edition. At the moment the rear end of the boat is fully built up- tail cover bolted down, tail fin in situ- so it's been possible to make a much better job of measuring the overall height from the top of the fin, to the bottom of the planing shoe- the height between the yellow lines in this chunk from Damien's profile artwork-

K7 height.jpg

Allowing for perhaps no more than a quarter of an inch margin of error, the overall height comes to 93 inches- or seven feet nine inches. The rudder is still put away at the moment and we can't put it on anyway because the boat is still in her rollover jig, so for now we can't measure that too to see if we can finally make up that mystery 8 feet four inches. But that's our height- seven foot nine.

Mike,

Thanks for your help with measurements, over the last week. However, just to correct one discrepancy, the measurement in the book was 8.04' feet, or 96.48 inches which is approx 3.7% higher than the 93 inch or 7.75' measurement. The difference was never that great, and certainly not the 7 inches an 8' 4'' (100'') measurement would imply. We have made reference to the discrepancy between the two measurements (7.75' or 8.04') in the book, but in terms's of the use of the measurement to estimate the position the boat's track, this is well within the margin of error.

The measurement on page 242 includes to the bottom of the rudder and is stated as 8' 8.5'', or 104.5'' This implies that the rudder would extend either 11.5 inches below the shoe, taking the 93'' measurement, or 8.02' below the shoe, taking the 96.48'' measurement. An 8'' drop below the shoe looks more appropriate, so that would imply that the overall height of no less than 101.5' and no greater than 104.5''. It would be worth confirming how much the rudder drops below the shoe.

All the numbers we used were from measurements on Norris Bros. docs, the measurements Mike supplied were from K7 herself.