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The Pylon Place - April 2012
Secret Pete Law
By Marilyn Dash
Pete Law tells his tales for the NAG membership.Last month, the attendees of the National Air Racing Group’s annual meeting had a real treat in the form of guest speaker, Secret Pete Law. The aviation engineer has helped nearly every winning unlimited racer and even some sport racers along his amazing career path.
Starting in 1959 at Lockheed when Law worked on the F104 program he was immediately identified as someone worth knowing, and quickly recruited by Ben Rich to join Lockheed Skunk Works. To be brief, Pete is a specialist in heat transfer and systems. Commonly referred to as “ADI” in the air racing community, it is much more than that.
ADI stands for Anti Detonation Injection. Detonation occurs when a fuel/air charge within a cylinder ignites by something other than the sparkplug. The flame front in the burning charge collides with the flame front initiated by the sparkplug. Where this collision occurs, the pressure rises much higher than would normally occur when the cylinder is firing properly. The added pressure has a runaway effect, causing the fuel/air in that zone to burn so rapidly as to appear to detonate. The pressure spike caused by this can damage pistons, valves, connecting rods, etc.
Kelly Johnson at the Lockheed “Skunk Works”
By Alan Smith
Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson, a true genius of high performance aircraft design.Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson was, without a doubt one of the most, if not the most prolific and ingenious aircraft designer in the worlds of both civil and military aviation. During his 50 years at Lockheed (now Lockheed-Martin) Aircraft Corporation, Johnson single-handedly designed and built ten high performance aircraft and participated in the design and building of 11 others. His own designs included the twin-engine P-38, which was the first 400 mph fighter, the XP-80, the first Air Force jet fighter, the F-104 Starfighter, and the U-2 and SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft. The XP-80 was designed and built in just 143 days!