Tsunami Racer

Tsunami Racer
Role	Racing aircraft
National origin	United States
Designer	Bruce Boland John R. Sandberg Pete Law Ray Poe
First flight	August 17, 1986
Primary users	John R. Sandberg Steve Hinton Skip Holm
Produced	1986
Number built	1
Unit cost	$1million +

Tsunami is an experimental purpose-built racing aircraft. After 6 long years of building the aircraft was first flown August 17, 1986 by test pilot Steve Hinton, Tsunami was designed specifically to break the 3 km world speed record for propeller driven aircraft by a private pilot and to compete in the Unlimited class at the Reno Air Races. The aircraft was designed by Bruce Boland an aerospace engineer employed by Lockheed Martin, John R. Sandberg owner of JRS Enterprises Inc, that rebuilt Allison, Rolls Royce, Merlin aircraft engines along with Lockheed engineer Pete Law and builder Ray Poe. Powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine that was designed and built by John R. Sandberg and the JRS Enterprise Inc. team, Tsunami exceeded 500 mph.

Originally, it was designed as a light-weight racer with a single-staged supercharged Rolls-Royce Merlin. However, as speed increased in the Unlimited Racing Class, a higher powered two-stage supercharged Rolls-Royce Merlin was installed. An attempt was made in August 1989 to break the 3 km world speed record at Wendover Utah with John R. Sandberg (a private pilot) at the controls. Due to a landing gear collapse the aircraft was unable to beat the existing record.

Despite being very fast, in its racing career from 1986 to 1991 it only won one Unlimited Gold Race, in Sherman Texas in 1990.

The program ended in 1991 when the owner John Sandberg lost his life while ferrying the aircraft home. The NTSB report states that the airspeed indicator was off and a mechanical failure in the flap system, causing the aircraft to roll on final approach into Pierre, SD on September 25, 1991.

Data from Air Progress

General characteristics

Performance

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