DONE @ p.5 +++ Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II скорость

[Mossie]

Woooooshh!  Weird enough to be Soviet.

[Gondor]

That is looking really really good 

Gondor

[major]

Just, Stunning! 

[kerick]

Well, I'd say you made an awesome silk purse out of a sow's ear!!

[loupgarou]

Well, I'd say you made an awesome silk purse out of a sow's ear!!

Hmmm... a new idea for next year: a SOW'S EAR GROUP BUILD!

[Dizzyfugu]

Thank you very much! The thing was finished yesterday evening, and the Panther wheels work VERY well! Even my calculations and guesstimates for a slight nose-down stance were correct, now I am looking forward to the beauty pics at the shores of Lake Baskunchak... 

[Dizzyfugu]

First photo session finished yesterday evening, now comes the editing phase.

[Dizzyfugu]

1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ",,скорость"" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ",,скорость"" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ",,скорость"" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr



Some background:
The Soviet Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles (LSA ChADI, today the Chardiv National Automobile and Highway University) was founded in 1953. One of the laboratory's founders was Vladimir Nikitin, a famous racer not only inside the Soviet Union but also around the world. The main purpose of Vladimir Nikitin's of was to build the fastest car in the world. This idea of creating race cars became the purpose of the laboratory and has been continued by students of Nikitin throughout the years, with research and prototypes in various fields of car propulsion.

The first car created in LSA by students was ChADI 2 in 1961. The body of the car was made of fiberglass, the first time that this material was used for a car body in the Soviet Union. This technology was improved and later used in mass-produced cars. Another famous LSA car was ChADI 7. To create it, Nikitin and his students used airplane wing elements as car body material and used the engine from a helicopter to power it. The highest speed of ChADI 7 – 400 kilometers per hour – was recorded on an airport runway near Chardiv in 1968, and it was at that time the fastest car in the Soviet Union, setting the national land speed record.

After this successful vehicle, Vladimir Nikitin started a new, even more ambitious project: a speed record car with the jet engine from a high performance airplane! The name of this project was ChADI 9, and it was ambitious. This time Nikitin and his team used a Tumansky RD-9 turbojet engine with a dry thrust of 25.5 kN (5,730 lbf), the same engine that powered the supersonic Mikoyan-Gurewich MiG-19 fighter plane. He expected that this needle-shaped car would be able to break the absolute land speed record, which meant supersonic speed at level zero of almost 1.200 kilometers an hour. The car was finished in 1981, but unfortunately ChADI 9 never participated in any race and no official top speed result was ever recorded. This had initially a very practical reason: in the 1980's there were simply no tires in the USSR that could be safely used at the expected speeds in excess of 400 km/h, and there was furthermore no track long enough for a serious test drive in the Soviet Union! In consequence, ChADI 9 had to be tested on the runway of a military airport in the proximity of Chardiv, outfitted with wheels and tires from a MiG-19, but these were not ideal for prolonged high speeds. Film footage from these tests later appeared in a 1983 movie called "IgLa".
The Automotive Federation of the United States even invited ChADI 9 to participate in an official record race in the USA, but this did not happen either, this time for political reasons. Nevertheless, the main contribution of this car was gathering experience with powerful jet engines and their operations in a ground vehicle, as well as experience with car systems that could withstand and operate at the expected high levels of speed, and the vehicle was frequently tested until it was destroyed in high speed tests in 1988 (see below).


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ,,скорость" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ",,скорость"" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ,,скорость" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


ChADI 9 was not the end of Nikitin's strife for speed (and the prestige associated with it). The know-how that the design team had gathered in the first years of testing ChADI 9 were subsequentially integrated into the LSA's ultimate proposal not only to break the national, but also the absolute land speed record: with a new vehicle dubbed ChADI 9-II. This car was a completely new design, and its name was deliberately chosen in order to secure project budgets – it was easier to gain support for existing (and so far successful) projects rather than found new ones and convince superior powers of their value and success potential.

ChADI 9-II's conceptual phase was launched in 1982 and it was basically a scaled-up evolution of ChADI 9, but it featured some significant differences. Instead of the RD-9 turbojet, the new vehicle was powered by a much more potent Tumansky R-25-300 afterburning turbojet with a dry thrust of 40.21 kN (9,040 lbf) and 69.62 kN (15,650 lbf) with full afterburner. This new engine (used and proven in the MiG-21 Mach 2 fighter) had already been thoroughly bench-tested by the Soviet Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles in 1978, on an unmanned, tracked sled.
However, the development of ChADI 9-II and its details took more than two years of dedicated work by LSA ChADI's students, and in 1984 the design was finally settled. The new vehicle was much bigger than its predecessor, 44 ft 10 in long, 15 ft 6¾ in wide, and 9 ft 10¾ in high (13.67 m by 4,75 m by 3,02 m), and it weighed around 9,000 lb (4 t). Its construction was based on a steel tube frame with an integrated security cell for the driver and an aluminum skin body, with some fibre glass elements. While ChADI 9's slender cigar-shaped body with a circular diameter and the tricycle layout were basically retained, the front end of ChADI 9-II and its internal structure were totally different: instead of ChADI 9's pointed nose, with the cockpit in the front and ahead of the vehicle's front wheel and a pair of conformal (but not very efficient) side air intakes, ChADI 9-II featured a large, single orifice with a central shock cone. A small raked lower lip was to prevent FOD to the engine and act at the same time as a stabilizing front spoiler. The driver sat under a tight, streamlined canopy, the bifurcated air intake ducts internally flanking the narrow cockpit. Two steerable front wheels with a very narrow track were installed in front of the driver's compartment. They were mounted side by side on a central steering pylon, which made them look like a single wheel. Behind the cockpit, still flanked by the air ducts, came two fuel tanks and finally, after a chamber where the air ducts met again, the engine compartment. Small horizontal stabilizers under the cockpit, which could be adjusted with the help of an electric actuator, helped keeping the vehicle's nose section on the ground. Two small air brakes were mounted on the rear fuselage; these not only helped to reduce the vehicle's speed, they could also be deployed in order to trim the aerodynamic downforce on the rear wheels. The latter ware carried on outriggers for a wide and stable track width and were covered in tight aerodynamic fairings, again made from fibre glass. The outriggers were furthermore swept back far enough so that the engine's nozzle was placed in front of the rear wheel axis. This, together with a marked "nose-down" stance as well as a single swept fin on the rear above the afterburner nozzle with a brake parachute compartment, was to ensure stability and proper handling at expected speeds far in excess of 600 km/h (372 mph) without the use of the engine's afterburner, and far more at full power.


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ",,скорость"" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ",,скорость"" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


Construction of ChADI 9-II lasted for more than another year, and in May 1986 the vehicle was rolled out and ready for initial trials at Chardiv, this time on the Chardiv State Aircraft Manufacturing Company's runway. These non-public tests were successful and confirmed the soundness of the vehicle's concept and layout. In the course of thorough tests until July 1987, ChADI 9-II was carefully pushed beyond the 400 km/h barrier and showed certain potential for more. This was the point when the vehicle was presented to the public (it could not be hidden due to the noisy trials within Chardiv's city limits), and for this occasion (and marketing purposes) ChADI 9-II received a flashy livery in silver with red trim around the air intake and long the flanks and was officially christened with the more catchy title ,,скорость" (Skorost = Velocity).

Meanwhile, a potential area for serious high-speed trials had been identified with Lake Baskunchak, a salt sea near the Caspian Sea with flat banks that resembled the Bonneville Salt Flats in the USA. Lake Baskunchak became the site of further tests in 1988. Initially scheduled for May-July, the tests had to be postponed by six weeks due to heavy rain in the region, so that the sea would not build suitable dry salt banks for any safe driving tests. In late June the situation improved, and ,,скорость" could finally take up its high speed tests.

During the following weeks the vehicle was gradually taken to ever higher speeds. During a test run on 8th of September, while travelling at roundabout 640 km/h (400 mph), one of the tail wheel fairings appeared to explode and the ensuing drag differences caused heavy oscillations that ended in a crash at 180 km/h (110 mph) with the vehicle rolling over and ripping the left rear wheel suspension apart.
The driver, LSA student and hobby rally driver Victor Barchenkov, miraculously left the vehicle almost unscathed, and the damage turned out to be only superficial. What had happened was an air pressure congestion inside of the wheel fairing, and the increasing revolutions of the wheels beyond 600 km/h caused small shock waves along the wheels, which eventually blew up the fairing, together with the tire.  This accident stopped the 1988 trials, but not the work on the vehicle. Another disaster struck the LSA ChADI team when ChADI 9, which was still operated, crashed in 1988, too, and had to be written off completely.


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ,,скорость" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ,,скорость" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ,,скорость" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


In mid-1989 and with only a single high speed vehicle left, LSA team appeared again with ,,скорость" at the shores of Lake Baskunchak – and this time the weather was more gracious and the track could be used from late June onwards. Analyzing last year's accident and the gathered data, the vehicle had undergone repairs and some major modifications, including a new, anti-corrosive paintjob in light grey with red and white trim.
The most obvious change, though, was a completely re-shaped nose section: the original raked lower air intake lip had been considerably extended by almost 5 feet  (the vehicle now had a total length of 49 ft 1 in/14,98 m) in order to enhance the downforce on the front wheels, and strakes along the lower nose ducted the airflow around the front wheels and towards the stabilizing fins. The central shock cone had been elongated and re-contoured, too, improving the airflow at high speeds.
New tireless all-aluminum wheels had been developed and mounted, because pressurized rubber tires, as formerly used, had turned out to be too unstable and unsafe. The central front wheels had received an additional aerodynamic fairing that prevented air ingestion into the lower fuselage, so that steering at high speeds became safer. The aerodynamic rear wheel fairings had by now been completely deleted and spoilers had been added to the rear suspension in order to keep the rear wheel on the ground at high speeds.

This time the goal was to push ,,скорость" and the national land speed record in excess of 800 km/h (500 mph), and step by step the vehicle's top speed was gradually increased. On August 15, an officially timed record  attempt was made, again with Victor Barchenkov at the steering wheel. The first of the two obligatory runs within an hour was recorded at a very promising 846.961 km/h (526.277 mph), but, at the end of the second run, ,,скорость" veered off and no time was measured. Even worse, the vehicle lost its parachute brakes and went out of control, skidding away from the dry race track into Lake Baskunchak's wet salt sludge, where it hit a ground wave at around 200 mph (320 km/h) and was catapulted through the air into a brine pond where it landed on its right side and eventually sank. Again, pilot Victor Barchenkov remained mostly unharmed and was able to leave the car before it sank – but this fatal crash meant the end of the ,,скорость" vehicle and the complete KhAGI 9-II project. Furthermore, the break-up of the Soviet Union at the same time prevented and further developments of high speed vehicles. The whereabouts of the ,,скорость" wreck remain unclear, too, since no official attempt had been made to save the vehicle's remains from Lake Baskunchak's salt swamps.




1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ",,скорость"" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ",,скорость"" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ",,скорость"" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:72 Chardiv Laboratory of High-Speed Automobiles ChADI 9-II ",,скорость"" experimental high speed/land speed record vehicle (final form); Lake Baskunchak (Soviet Union), August 1989 (Whif/kitbashing) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


I am very pleased with the outcome, despite the not-so-perfect finish – the ,,скорость" looks purposeful and does IMHO blend well into the line of spectacular USA and UK jet/rocket car designs that broke the 800 km/h barrier. I also find that, even though the MiG-21 ancestry is certainly there, the vehicle looks different enough so that the illusion that it was designed along the jet fighter's lines (and not converted from one, like the real world "North American Eagle" which was built from an F-104 Starfighter) works well. I also think that the vehicle's livery works well – it looks quite retro for a vehicle from the late Eighties, but that just adds to the "Soviet style". An interesting project, outside of my normal comfort zone.

[Old Wombat]

Looks fast just sitting there! Great job, Dizzy!

[Dizzyfugu]

I had good reference literature for such vehicles - I can highly recommend the books by German author and LSR enthusiast Ferdinand C. W. Käsmann, which have, AFAIK, even been translated into English. There's a very good anthology about the history of the Land Speed Record (where I also found much information concerning ChADI 9), and there's also a book about the air speed record (covering the piston-driven record and the absolute speed record).

[Tophe]

Great!

[zenrat]

Excellent piece of work Dizz.


Anyone interested in reading about the last (IMO) "real" Land Speed Record attempts (ie using cars built in sheds from surplus parts) should look at Speed Duel by Samuel Hawley.
https://www.fireflybooks.com/catalogue/adult-books/transportation/product/10614-speed-duel-the-inside-story-of-the-land-speed-record-in-the-sixties
https://www.fireflybooks.com/catalogue/adult-books/transportation/product/10614-speed-duel-the-inside-story-of-the-land-speed-record-in-the-sixties
A great book which I thoroughly recommend.

[ericr]

 

[NARSES2]

Seriously stunning 

[FAR148]

Wow!! How flipping cool!