President: Norm de Grussa 2013 - 2014

Club of

WANNEROO M A Y 5 T H 2 0 1 4

B U L L E T I N N O : 3 4

MEETING at AUSSIE INVADER’S Workshop with Rosco McGlashan

Wanneroo Rotary Club Committee 2013—2014

President: Norm deGrussa

Secretary: Graeme Smith

Treasurer: Bill Kell Youth Services: Owen Douglas

International Service: Debbie Singh

Club Service: Phil Cousins

Vocational Service: Neil Cook

Membership: All Members

Sergeant: Phil Cousins

Attendance: Jacob Etoka Belgrade Village: Colin Griffiths

Program: Peter Miskelly

Bulletin, Publicity

& Photography: Ray Perkins President Elect: Bill Kell

NEW WEBSITE: www.rotarywanneroo.org

Apologies: If unable to attend meeting, an apology is to be lodged with President Norm before 3pm on Fridays.

Contact details for President Norm: degfam@iinet.net.au or mobile 0411043889

DISTRICT 9455

P.O.Box 47, WANNEROO 6946

MEETING 12th May at Café Elixir

EARLY CHANGEOVER MEETING

Due to President Elect Bill Kell will be away at normal time. President Norm de Grussa will

carry on until the normal Changeover Date.

6.00 for 6.30pm

Chairman Owen Douglas

Duty officer Peter Miskelly

Duty officer Debbie Singh

Vote of Thanks

Reserve Jacob Etoka

Reserve Andrew Kininmonth

Fellowship

Guest Speaker

Topic Inductions

Duty Roster 12th May 2014

May 2014 Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

1 2 3 4

5 AUSSIE INVADER MULLALOO 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 CHANGEOVER: PARTNERS NIGHT 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31

The Rotary Club of Waneroo held its 5th May Vocational Meeting at Rosco McGlashans home and workshop where he is building his Rocket Powered Car AUSSIE INVADER to beat the World Land Speed Record for a car.

Present were most of the Club members, some partners, past Rotarians and guests.

It is a massive project undertaken by Rosco, his wife Cheryl and his other 2 co-workers. They all devote so much time building and developing this fantastic car with no pay except for cups of coffee, tea, ham and cheese sandwiches. Although there was some grumbling that the ham and cheese sandwiches has slowed to a trickle. Time the guys started making their own lol.

We all had a good look around the car and Rosco's workshop that is huge for a suburban back yard while the evening meal was being setup.

Before we had our meal Rosco gave us all a talk on where he had come from and what has happened over the past years to present day. Here are some notes taken from Rosco's speech.

Rosco welcomed everyone to his workshop and expressed his thanks for us attending.

Rosco mentioned that it was his wife Cheryl's birthday today and that he had promised to take her out for a meal so here it is.

His lifes ambition has always been to set the world land speed record and when he was 12 years of age raised in Perth he attended the Swanbourne Senior High School and Sir Donald Campbell came across in 1963 and started running his Bluebird Car but there was a lot of weather around at the time. When he was at school he said to his mates that this bloody Pommie has come over here but said that his car will run heaps faster than that. His mates laughed at him but this gave him the opportunity to quit school and follow his dream.

At 12 years of age he had his first car a Customline which he drove to school and parked in the parking lot. His headmaster was standing beside his car when he was going home and said that if he catches him driving to school again he would have him locked up. With that he went through Greenmount and some country towns where he ended up finding a chap putting together Wheat Silos which he started to assist for a time.

At 16 he made his way back to Perth and started a mechanical apprenticeship with successive workshops due to his fiery nature. His 5 year apprenticeship took him across the length of Subiaco workshops. He became very proficient in automatic transmissions and applied for a job with Borg Warner and got the job as service manager in Queensland. One of the first jobs was to overhaul an automatic for a race car. When the car was to be tested the driver hadn't turned up so Rosco was offered the job of test driving the car. That was his first experience in driving a fast car and the result was that the car had gone the fastest that it had ever gone before. The next car was a drag racer and it became a winner in every race with many trophies won. The big lesson he learnt was that if you wanted a $1,000,000 drag car you needed $2,000,000 behind you.

After awhile of racing the car, stripping it down every week and having it ready each week took its toll on the owner who reluctantly pulled the pin on the project as he felt he was not getting the exposure that he wanted. Rosco asked if the team could have the V8 motor out of the drag car as someone in his team wanted to make a Drag Bike. Everyone was stunned with the idea but after a few challenging engineering issues with having the motor East West and getting the power to the rear wheels it was a success.

This was a big draw card for the Drag Strip and for a change he and his team were being paid to appear. Rosco explained how dramatic it was to drive this beast that used up both lanes of the drag strip laying rubber all the way down the track and the method of stopping was very dramatic by putting the bike sideways. His pit crew when they travelled down the strip to find Rosco could hardly see through all of the rubber smoke and they had to drive slowly as they weren’t sure if they would find him in one piece and not all over the strip.

Sponsorship was a huge part of being able to maintain participating in car racing. The bike was well travelled over to New Zealand and all over Australia with many experiences one in which he actually left his ear on the racetrack one night. It is quite an experience sliding down the racetrack on your belly at 170mph. Parts of your body heat up so you have to rotate around when one part gets too hot. Once you come to a standstill with bark off everywhere you stand up and generally are in one piece.

Rosco then came up with the idea of having something safer to ride and when the guys asked him what are you thinking he said a Rocket Bike........ It was a steep learning curve with an introduction into Hydrogen Peroxide powered rockets. He was having trouble getting the rocket bike to work well especially when the Americans had succeeded in running the rocket powered cars at the drags suc-cessfully.

Ken Warby came on the scene and he made Rosco realise that it wasn't just a case of being the fastest down the quarter mile the spectators came to the events to see a show. The more spect-acular it was the better. Ken convinced Rosco to go over to the states to help him build rocket powered drag cars and promised he could drive one. Ken also mentioned about the land speed record.

After a spell over there Rosco came back with the idea to build a Jet Powered race car to make an attempt on the land speed record. He had bought some tubing and had just set it out on the ground for a basic shape when the news crews from Channel 9 and Seven and 10 got wind that he was building a land speed car. All of a sudden there were 4 TV Crews with cameras that came to film the car and all he had was the 4 bits of tube on the ground. He sad it was a work in progress.

Pete has been with him for 30 years and Chris have been working with Rosco for a long time. Ken and Rosco knew a lot of friends at the different air bases as they were both building jet powered cars. Rosco was chasing an Australian Jet engine that was made in Australia and these were installed in the Mirage fighters. When one became available at an Auction he was able to secure one for the measly sum of $500.00 which was a real bargain. They did sell for $1,500,000 each when they were new.

When he had built the car he took it to Lake Eyre where he set a world land speed record on salt 643mph but to get the record you have to travel in both directions within 1 hour. He did however get the Australian Land Speed Record and was presented with the OA. The bottom line was that they crashed the car and brought it back and transformed it into a beautiful car with a one piece composite body which everyone said couldn't be done but the did succeed. The new car is a culmination of his life's work.

The car is built to certain standards. The difference between a jet and a rocket is that you need an air intake with a jet, you have to compress the gases introduce the fuel and then you need to ignite it with a spark. With a rocket it is completely different as there is no intake required, and you don't have the dramas with supersonic air entering a jet engine. In a car over a short space of time a jet just wont do the job. With a rocket there is no air intake, no moving parts as there are only two differ-ent chemicals. This allows the car to accelerate with full power in 5 milliseconds which means that you can go from a standing start to 1,000mph in 20 seconds. He is aiming for a 6 second burn time to achieve his run and then a quick turn around within 1 hour after refueling and repacking all of the chutes etc required to slow it down.

Rosco explained the various methods they use to slow the car down gradually with air brakes, droge chutes, main chutes disc brakes and if all else fails a Flintstone brake that sounds rather extreme by driving a post into the ground in front of the front wheel to slow it down.

When the car has been analysed and tweaked then the times of the runs can be extended to 8 sec and 9 sec and at each time they are still breaking records. $1.5 million is tied up in the car and they are competing against the English who has a huge budget. Rosco still thinks he is miles ahead of them.

Helium, Liquid Oxygen and Kerosene make up the propellant. The car is long to house all of the tanks for the different propellant tanks. Visit the website www.aussieinvader.com to see more about the project. Rosco explained how he used to fire his previous car up outside his workshop before moving to the Ocean Reef Marina. Very humerous tales.

The bottom line for the timeline to make the speed record attempt depends on many things as the whole project is self funded and it all takes time. You just cannot put a timeline on this type of pro-ject. Corporate Sponsors are a major key to assist in achieving the goal.

President Norm congratulated Rosco on his great project and wished him every success with a small donation from our Rotary Club of Wanneroo.

The Vote of thanks was given by Clive Bain from our club and presented Rosco and his wife Cher-yl a couple of our glasses to thank them for a wonderful vocational visit. Clive also presented a Pride of Workplace sign that Rosco can display in his workshop.

We all enjoyed a lovely meal and each other's company talking over many issues that sparked our imagination from Rosco's talk.

A very enjoyable night. We didn't have our National Flag on display so we did not sing the National Anthem but we did sing Happy Birthday to Cheryl :)

I did like Rosco's terminology of describing the end of the Rocket Cars run as being Downrange. A very apt description if you have been shot along the ground in a needle nose projectile that takes you for the wildest ride of your life…..

I take my hat off to him and look forward to him achieving his dream.

BBQ Sizzle and Wine Tasting

5.00pm Friday Night 16th May

at Paul Conti’s Winery

Breast Cancer Care - Purple Bra Day 20th June 2013 Members are asked to look into their underwear draw to find their Bras and ensure they are not overworn. Please let Peter know if you need them replaced. We must look our best on the day. A roster will be available shortly to see how many brave souls we have.

MEMBERS BIRTHDAYS MAY

JAN DUFFY 17TH

WEDDING ANNIVERSARYS MAY

Norm and Penny 8th

GIGGLE’S CORNER

Help To Make Her Feel Better

Susan was having a tough day and after returning home she started complaining

She said to her husband, “Nobody loves me….nobody cares for me..the whole world hates me!”

Her husband, watching TV said casually: “That’s not true dear. You are not that famous that whole world hates

you.Some people don’t even know you.”

Male Assertiveness

A mild-mannered man was tired of being bossed around by his wife so he went to a psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist said he needed to build his self-esteem, and so gave him a book on assertiveness, which he read on

the way home.

He had finished the book by the time he reached his house.

The man stormed into the house and walked up to his wife.

Pointing a finger in her face, he said, “From now on, I want you to know that I am the man of this house, and my

word is law! I want you to prepare me a gourmet meal tonight, and when I’m finished eating my meal, I expect a

sumptuous dessert afterward. Then, after dinner, you’re going to draw me my bath so I can relax. And when I’m fin-

ished with my bath, guess who’s going to dress me and comb my hair?”

“The funeral director,” said his wife.

Marriage Conclusion

A woman’s husband had been slipping in and out of a coma for several months, yet she stayed by his bedside every

single day. When he came to, he motioned for her to come nearer.

As she sat by him, he said, “You know what? You have been with me all through the bad times. When I got fired, you

were there to support me. When my business failed, you were there. When I got shot, you were by my side. When

we lost the house, you gave me support. When my health started failing, you were still by my side… You know

what?”

“What dear?” She asked gently.

The Power of Woman

There were 11 people – ten men and one woman – hanging onto a rope that came down from a helicopter.

They all decided that one person should get off, because if they didn’t, the rope would break and everyone would die.

No one could decide who should go, so finally, the woman gave a really touching speech saying how she would give

up her life to save the others, because women were used to giving up things for their husbands and children, giving

in to men, and not receiving anything in return.

When she finished speaking, all the men started clapping.

Wish Granted

A couple came upon a wishing well. The husband leaned over, made a wish and threw in a penny. The wife decided

to make a wish, too. But she leaned over too much, fell into the well, and drowned. The husband was stunned for a

while but then smiled and said, “It really works!”

A Healthy Life

Grandpa John was celebrating his 100th birthday and everybody complimented him on how athletic and well-

preserved he appeared. “Gentlemen, I will tell you the secret of my success,” he cackled. “I have been in the open air

day after day for some 75 years now.”

The celebrants were impressed and asked how he managed to keep up his rigorous fitness regime.

“Well, you see my wife and I were married 75 years ago. On our wedding night, we made a solemn pledge. Whenev-

er we had a fight, the one who was proved wrong would go outside and take a walk.”