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You may remember last year when we went out to an event called “The Night of Fire” to record jet cars, but I forgot a cable? Well, we went back this year and grabbed some wicked recordings!
The “Night of Fire” is an absolutely wonderful night where a bunch of Jet Car Drivers from across the country come together to show off what they’ve been working on – jet powered dragsters!
First off, putting a jet engine inside a car is a crazy feat of engineering. These things are crazy powerful! The smaller cars had 6000+ horsepower, and the big rig (yes, a semi truck cab), has 18,000hp! Enough to propel the 4 ton beast to 209mph at the 1/4 mile. That’s insane.
Now, the sounds they make? Even cooler! When else do you get to gather around that close to a jet engine? At air shows they keep you far away from the runways. Here, I was less than 75 feet from the engines. There were people closer – I can get within 25 feet if I get a press pass for next year.
These guys are insanely loud too. I was positioned just in front of the staging area, so I didn’t get the brunt of the SPL until just after the cars launched and passed me. It was that type of loud where your chest hurts and teeth rattle. I brought an MKH60 with me and had the pad engaged, so I could handle up to about 145db. Even with that, I had to put my 744T in line mode (essentially a 60db pad) to get proper levels (didn’t have any inline pads).
There were 7 jet cars in total – all were slightly different. There were two funny cars, two standard chassis dragsters, a semi truck, and two complete custom cars (The Chattanooga Choo Choo and the Cannonball Express) No wheel standers this year, which was a bummer, but it was still a great show!
They did two heats, so 13 runs total (one car only did a single run). I recorded the first heat from the staging area, and the second one from just past the 1/4 mile marker. My buddy Mark came along too, and he had a second rig to capture other perspectives.
Here’s a video (sound from the MKH60) of the Semi Truck putting on a show and then launching:
Here is the recording of the Chattanooga Choo Choo passing by the 1/4 mile marker at 261mph:
Here is the recording of the Interceptor Police Car Funny Car passing by at 290mph
So much fun to record this stuff! Everything was done at 192/24 into a 744T.
Special thanks to Mark for his help!!