Colour photos of functioning V1 Engine

[harrison987]

This V-1 Ram Jet Engine was bought buy a guy who owns a machine company, and the past 20 years he spent restoring it to functioning condition.

After about 30 tries it ran for about 1 minute...used around 8 litres of Gas during the duration.

A leaf blower was used to "ram" air into the front intake to get it going (normally the engine would ignite in flight). There are baffles in front and compressed air was shot into the front to simulate movement...once it is going you get an explosion...this explosion which goes out the back, creates a vacuum in front and with the baffles it sucks new air in, add more fuel and it ignites again, you get an explosion and it starts all over again.

That first Explosion was so loud it sounded like an shot gun, and exploded every second or so. It developed around 750lbs of thrust in approx.15 seconds.

After each try when it would not start, we had to blow out the raw gas with the Leaf Blower...engine got so hot it melted the plastic Blower Nozzle.

Apparently, the owner wants to build a glider and install this engine in it to run for about 2 minutes and then glide back to the ground...crrraaaazzzzzzzzzyyy...

Mike