News release: 17 November 2005, FIAT Wind Tunnel
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The primary purpose of this visit to the superb FIAT wind tunnel facility was to test the new Woody Valley harness incorporating a transparent nose cone. Potentially this can increase the effeciency of the hole glider enormously, but it's rigged in such a way that Angelo can't get his hands inside the cone, so does it fog up in extreme conditions?
By dimming the lights of Turin for 2 days, the temperature inside this wind tunnel can be brought down to -43c, and then they turn on the fan. Conditions are extreme, at 100 Km/h the wind chill is effectively -73 and bare skin will freeze in under 2 minutes. We did several tests. First with Angelo not wearing an Oxygen mask. Does it fog? Well.... yes, it does. We tried various different ventilation holes in an attempt to provide at least a small clear area and these were a bit more successful, but not perfect. Next we tried it with Angelo wearing an oxygen mask. This has been modified with a pipe leading exhaust air away from the nosecone. Potentially this will work, but the hose we were using (a stock hoover part...) was badly affected by the cold and became much too rigid. Angelo's exhaust valve also froze quite quickly, something we hadn't experienced over Everest, but then it was much warmer - a mere -25c. Since the test a new exhaust hose system has been prepared and NELTEC are sending us a revolutionary new kind of heated windscreen to try but there's no time for more testing so we're off to Argentina with the new kit and we'll try it there. |
RMH 
info@angelodarrigo.com