Tribute Act

[Renegadenemo]

In the worst case we have enough valves and carbon/kevlar bottles to replicate the system and keep the weight correct.

[Jordangbr]

Or we could use a piece of rope and start it like an old Seagull outboard...

[malcolm uk]

Just to come back to the website of K777 for a moment. It is a great mistake to write an opening paragraph/sentence for your website which is totally incorrect just to 'prove' some sort of continuous lineage between boats painted blue.

I have seen photos and film and discussed with the attempt observers the operation of a single viper jet engined hydroplane on Coniston Water in 1982.

It should be remembered that Bye Law six was confirmed in place four years before this particular date and the team did intend to go above 10 mph, even though planing was to become a big issue.

[Renegadenemo]

Just to come back to the website of K777 for a moment. It is a great mistake to write an opening paragraph/sentence for your website which is totally incorrect just to 'prove' some sort of continuous lineage between boats painted blue.

You mean this one, Malcolm?

Welcome to the K777 website, the home of the Team that has built and run the first pure thrust jet hydroplane on Coniston Water, England since Donald Campbell and his jet Bluebird K7 were there in the 1950's and 60's

Poor Tony must've only been a daydream...

[Mike Bull]

the authentic sight and sound

Just picking out a bit of quote from Bill there as it's funny, but I keep hearing this phrase ‘sight and sound’ from various quarters used in the supposed sense that the replica will provide the impression of K7 being on the lake, thus rendering running K7 herself redundant.

Well that phrase was also used when Jeff Wayne first toured the live version of his album ‘War Of The Worlds’. With actor Richard Burton being inconveniently long dead but his narration part being so critical to the original album, they made a giant polystyrene head, projected a look-a-like actor onto it mouthing along to Burton’s narration, and this became advertised as ‘Richard Burton on stage in sight and sound!’. Of course during and especially after that first tour, it hadn’t worked all that well and even the most die hard fans had to admit that it actually hadn’t been very good. So for the next tour, they tweaked it…and then again for the tour after that…and now the whole album is being re-recorded with new actors in it anyway. (Sacrilege!)

The point is, it looked a bit like Burton, sounded like Burton, but ultimately it wasn’t Richard Burton on stage at all and of course, never could be.

K777 can get up on the plane and whizz up and down the lake at three hundred and eleventy million miles and hour and it STILL won't be Donald’s original boat, with all it’s provenance, history and sheer bloody meaning.

[malcolm uk]

Yes.

Tony must have dreamt the Alton Towers / British Pursuit effort and the story in the December '82 issue of Powerboat and Waterskiing was probably mocked up too . They had planned to run fast in March '83.

The engineering trial of K7 is written into the bye laws and this will happen because it is not a record attempt, just an allowable statement that the real boat is at it was on the morning of 4th January 1967. [Bridgit should have retired from that form of attack].

As I was not there during the 66/67 attempt I would not know if the sounds I heard in November '11 from K triple seven were anything like the real boat. Except the cracker box starter sounds were 'naff' (compared with Vampire) and were not original. But many from around the World will know it is the real one afloat and powering up from being on the edge of the lake or from watching the news footage.

I find it interesting that you can claim a 'continuation' from a single unique build. In the car world a modern GT40 or Lola T70 may have lineage but the factories did build a whole series before there was a break until current times.

[Mike Bull]

Sounds wise, the replica winds up interminably like a sluggish underground train, compared to the sudden whoosh and immediate spool up that you can expect to hear from K7.

To correct something in the name of fairness though, it's clear from the pictures of 777 being built that the sponson tops are aluminium sheeting, not fibreglass. It's also clear that the sponsons- planing shoes and all- are welded together from box section ally; it seems they have (roughly) copied the shape of the real boat, but haven't really copied the functioning structure of the Norris design at all.

[Renegadenemo]

I keep hearing this phrase ‘sight and sound’ from various quarters used in the supposed sense that the replica will provide the impression of K7 being on the lake, thus rendering running K7 herself redundant.

I don't know why you fret about it. People can't wait to see K7 run, we hear it every day. Look at it logically for a mo...

Had our tribute act rolled out painted red, white and blue stripes and been sold to the media as Britain's new challenger it would have gone down a storm, they'd have lapped it up, press and public alike. But due to type-III activity the chance was lost forever and instead it came out as Tony Hopkins's old mount from the eighties and was therefore only reported on for three reasons.

1 - Some dozy reporter mistook it for the real thing, which of course is newsworthy.
2 - It got up a lot of peoples noses, most notably those of the Campbell family, (and you'd have to be pretty thick not to see that coming!)but even that wasn't enough to generate any interest until...
3 - It sank! And then the press suddenly had enough to print headlines like, 'You Blue It', or in plain speak, 'serves you right!'.

OK - so that's all water under the bridge now, what next?

Suppose it comes out again (and I'll be surprised if the good, Mr Morris throws too much good money after bad) and it works next time... big deal. All those people who remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of Campbell's accident don't care two hoots for a fake version. They want to see the phoenix rise from the ashes, the story to come full circle, a tragedy turned into genuine triumph, and when set against such a powerful backdrop I'm afraid a pretendy blue boat becomes awfully insignificant. Sight and sound, indeed... Don't make me laugh.

So we methodically continue our ground breaking museum conservation project until our title sponsor, Sky News, turns K7's triumphant return into something huge and global then we lock the damn thing away in the museum and bugger off to get our lives back and build an aeroplane instead.

At the end of the day, the tribute act amounts to little more than a mild embarrassment. We Brit's are supposed to be quite handy when it comes to engineering, problem solving, determination and our do-or-die attitude.
Look at Thrust II, SSC and Bloodhound then look at what's being toted as our best effort at regaining the WWSR - a poorly reworked facsimile of something we did to death (literally) in the 1950s and 60s. Wowee! So it's being billed as a stepping stone to a new boat, but we all know how it started as a man's private toy some years ago, and much better suited to that role it is too.
Were it necessary to apply for a license to represent your country I think there'd be a bit of a holdup in processing this one.

[Mike Bull]

I don't know why you fret about it.

I'm not!

[Renegadenemo]

Except the cracker box starter sounds were 'naff'

Don't we have a clip of the air start firing?