Salt Flat Dreams

Our friends at Popular Mechanics have published an in-depth article on Bonneville's 2005 Speed Week. Click here to read it.

Pete Miller

DaimlerChrysler Hires Buckeye Bullet Grad

Watch how the Buckeye Bullet propelled Ohio State Mechanical Engineering Student Ed Hillstrom to one of THE BEST jobs in the automotive industry.

Ohio State mechanical engineering student Ed Hillstrom had two dreams: (1) To design the fastest electric car in the world; and (2) to get a good job after graduation. Through lots of hard work and long days and nights of studying for his ME degree, while simultaneously designing, building and testing what would become the Buckeye Bullet, Ed (and his original Buckeye Bullet team mates) achieved both dreams.

The Buckeye Bullet set land speed records on the Bonneville Salt Flats and became the fastest, wheel-driven, electric vehicle in history by clocking an official top speed of 321 MPH at Bonneville.

But to a college student, setting land speed records is the fun and "easy" part. Finding a good position in the highly competitive high-tech engineering job market seems a much more daunting challenge.

When Ed walked into the DaimlerChrysler Technology Center in Auburn Hill, MI, his Buckeye Bullet experience (problem solving, design challenges, team work and record breaking success) landed him one of THE BEST JOBS in the automotive industry, designing cars and trucks for global, multi-national DaimlerChrysler Corporation.

Ed's success story is typical for most students who participate in the Buckeye Bullet program at The Ohio State University's College of Engineering's Center for Automotive Research. Ohio State made a short video for TV about Ed's experiences. We have posted it on Buckeye Bullet TV.

Watch as Ohio State's Ed Hillstrom and Daimler Chrysler's Director of the Chrysler Group Proving Grounds, Kipp Owen, talk about Ed's Buckeye Bullet experience.

Pete Miller

College Text Features Buckeye Bullet

What a handful of students at The Ohio State University began six years ago is now helping college students all over the world learn electrical engineering skills. The fifth edition of Giorgio Rizzoni's Principles & Applications of Electrical Engineering features the Buckeye Bullet on the cover and in the text.

Giorgio is Director of Ohio State's Center for Automotive Research and Intelligent Transportation (CAR). The Buckeye Bullet set both the U.S. and International Land Speed Records for electric, wheel-driven vehicles at the same time as Giorgio's book was going into its fifth printing. Giorgio's publisher, McGraw-Hill jump at the opportunity to feature the Buckeye Bullet.

Other book deals are in the works and, yes, Hollywood has come calling at least twice to feature the Buckeye Bullet in new TV show projects. We will keep you posted here on the Buckeye Bullet Blog.

Go Bucks! Go Faster!!

Pete Miller

Penske Design Engineer Visits Ohio State's CAR - Accepts Inivtation to TRC

Listen to my exclusive BBRN interview with PTG’s Josh McCormick and Buckeye Bullet Driver Roger Schroer . . . . Click on the photo above to enlarge . . . Here’s the story . . .

The world of professional racing is non-stop 24-7-365. Add to that grueling schedule the pressure of back-to-back NASCAR super races (1) at Homestead FL for the Nextel Cup Championship and (2) the Daytona 500 that are literally only weeks apart. So when a break comes, even for only a few hours around the Christmas Holidays, the pros head for home and family.

Josh McCormick is one of racing’s top aero design engineers. Josh works at the Penske Technology Group (PTG) at the home of NASCAR, Mooresville, NC. PTG provides wind tunnel testing services and race car design engineering services and expertise to the Buckeye Bullet Team.

Most professional race cars are one-off designs. Models, mock-ups and prototypes are brought to PTG to be “aero-mapped” in the PTG world-class, F1-spec wind tunnel.

Listen to my exclusive interview with PTG GM John Moloney recorded at Mooresville to learn more about PTG.

Then race teams put their future into Josh’s hands. Josh uses special equipment to digitally map the physical layout and dimensions of the prototype cars. The race teams then use Josh’s digital files to make drawings to build up to 15 or 16 cars, depending on the team’s racing schedule and budget. Josh’s data can also be used for computer modeling to tweak race car design for individual tracks and/or to correlate with real-time race data during the racing season.

If you are a NASCAR or IRL racing fan, for example, many of the cars and trucks that you watch race on TV go through Josh’s ongoing expert handling and tweaking.

Go inside pro race car design and test at PTG by listening to my exclusive interview with Josh McCormick and other staff pros recorded at Mooresville last November.

Rewind back to Christmas . . . .

Home for Josh McCormick is Wooster in Northeastern Ohio. He graduated from the University of Dayton (and is currently studying for his master’s degree in mechanical engineering in NC). When the team visited PTG in November, on the way to the Hilton Head Island Concours d’Elegance Car Show, we invited Josh to visit Ohio State’s Center for Automotive Research and Intelligent Design (CAR) and he accepted.

During Christmas week, Josh, with his Dad, Rich, and brother, Chad, toured CAR with Giorgio Rizzoni and met with Buckeye Bullet team members and team alumni who were in town for the holidays. Buckeye Bullet Driver and Bonneville 300 MPH Club Member Roger Schroer also joined in.
Josh wanted to hear the student’s plans for wind tunnel testing of a new land speed car design that will take place at PTG this spring. You can tell from our Buckeye Bullet Radio Network interview that Josh was impressed.

Roger then invited Josh to visit The Transportation Research Center (TRC) on his next Ohio visit and Josh accepted. TRC has just opened a new road course inside their 5,000 acre automotive proving ground facilities. Roger helped design the course and never misses an opportunity to get behind the wheel on any of TRC’s tracks, but especially on this new circuit.

Just to make sure that this UD grad knew where he was, Josh ended his day in Columbus with dinner at the Buckeye Hall of Fame Café and then by watching Ohio State trounce a basketball opponent at the Schott.

Thanks, Josh and everyone at PTG, for your Buckeye Bullet sponsorship!

Go Bucks! Go even faster with PTG!!

Pete Miller

Saminco Supports Sago Mine Rescue Efforts

To all Buckeye Bullet fans,

A major Buckeye Bullet sponsor, Saminco Inc, is also a leading supplier of mining power distribution equipment. Saminco VP Jon Anderson reported tonight from Saminco North Headquarters in Huntington, WV, that Support Engineer Kenny Boles is leading the Saminco effort and that the entire company is on standby if the Sago mine has equipment problems.

Jon asks all Buckeye Bullet fans "to keep the miners and their families in our prayers."

You may leave your thoughts here in the "Comments" link below this post.

God speed,

Pete Miller

Buckeye Bullet TV

There is a revolution underway that is breaking down social, cultural, political and some economic barriers to the transfer of information and knowledge instantly to individuals around the world.

Put another way, new web-based technologies are changing the way people read newspapers, listen to the radio and watch TV. We can now receive news and information, how, when and where we want it . . . and also make informed decisions based on many different inputs.

If you are confused or unaware of blogs, podcasts and now vlogs, then you may be blindsided by their effects on educating and increasing the competitiveness of other world economies, as well as younger generation Americans.

The Buckeye Bullet Students are leading this revolution. We believe that this blog, the Buckeye Bullet Radio Network Podcast, and now the Buckeye Bullet TV Video Log (Vlog) are the only such technologies dedicated to both the sport of land speed racing and to student automotive research. I hope that I am proven wrong, but Internet searches have turned up nothing else on these subjects . . . so far.

In slightly more than 30 days, we have posted 14 stories on this blog, 16 podcasts on the Buckeye Bullet Radio Network (with many more already recorded and competing with the few hours of sleep that I get).

Now, with the encouragement and help of Luka Wahab of CAR and WindTalk for Video Production and Streaming, a Columbus-based Internet services company, we have posted our first Vlog on Buckeye Bullet TV.

Our first show is a five-minute version of a much longer interview that Donna and I gave to WHHI-TV at Hilton Head Island, SC, during the HHI Concours d’Elegance. Luka edited the show for the web and BBTV is hosted by WindTalk.

Luka has also posted the Ohio State Buckeye Bullet Video Press Release. He will soon be posting another TV spot that Ohio State made showing one of the original Buckeye Bullet team members, Ed Hillstrom, using his Buckeye Bullet experience to get a job at the Daimler-Chrysler Design Center up in Michigan.

Watch the First Buckeye Bullet TV broadcast.

Bookmark BBTV and BBRN and check back often for new show postings.

Also bookmark this Buckeye Bullet Blog as the “go-to-first” place for late-breaking, up-to-the-minute Buckeye Bullet Student Land Speed Racing Team News . . . and please leave your comments on the Blog, too. We would like to hear from you.

We will continue to use our two websites, much like on-line libraries, for photos, downloadable sponsor packets, links to related information, etc.

Why use a Blog to tell all of this? Because no one reads e-mails this long anymore.

Go Bucks! Go even faster!!

Pete Miller