Fast and the Furious
7 comes out this week and we are very intrigued by this trailer which has
our heroes jump out of a plane in cars.
You have to love how the guys in the Fast and Furious 7 find
innovative ways to get their cars to weird locations. Were there other ways?
Yes, but this is cool isn’t it?
If you decide to make a similar drop for yourself, may be to
crash a party in style
or drop straight into a major sporting
event here are the top 5 things you must check for.
1) Get your Parachute pick up point correct
It
is critical for you to get the place you latch the parachute onto your car
correct. As cars are designed to run on four wheels it important that it lands
on its four wheels so that you can saunter off to do what you want once you
have landed. This can be easily established by working
out where the Center of Gravity (CG) of the car is, and the chute pick up
point must be directly above it. A convertible will probably not work.
2) Get your parachute size correct
It is
important you have a soft landing not wrecking your suspension. Road cars can
be modified not too much to continue operation post approximately a 1 meter jump. This gives
the car a landing speed of 6.26 meter/sec.
The
parachute must be at least 550 square meters per ton of the vehicle and driver
weight. The diameter of the chute for a 1000kg (1 ton) vehicle must be at least
26.5 meters.
3) Reinforce your roof pick-up point
The roof
of a car is not designed to be connected to a parachute [citation needed].
It would be a good recommendation to add a roll
cage to your car and attach the chute pick up on the top of that to avoid this
situation –
4) Make sure you have a system to steer the parachute
A car is
useless if it lands on the top of a tree or in the middle of a lake. Parachutes
can be steered by steering
toggles. Make sure you have them inside the car before you set off from the
plane. Even better if you can connect the toggles to the steering rack.
5) Make sure you check your oil levels, tire pressure, coolant level and fuel
After
you have done all of this, you don’t want your car to break down because you
did not have brake fluid in your cylinders, right? So please check these basic
things before you jump.
