BLACKBIRD ESTABLISHES WORLD RECORD

Well, we exceeded our goal. On July 2nd, 2010 we set a world record going 2.8 times the wind speed directly downwind on the El Mirage dry lake bed in southern California. And then we became so complacent and lazy that we didn't even update our blog. You can read all about it on the NALSA (North American Land Sailors Association) website here: http://www.nalsa.org/DownWind.html

Our fastest run to date was approximately 54 mph. Our best speed ratio was a little more than 3.5 times the wind speed. Of course there are a number of requirements to establish an official record run with NALSA (for example we must be accelerating through the submitted portion of the run). Of the runs we did at El Mirage, the best run simultaneously meeting all NALSA requirements had us at 2.8 times the wind speed directly downwind. Given enough time to make lots of runs in lots of conditions we're confident we would achieve an official run of more than 3X wind speed. But we're plenty happy with the results we have.