The Roar of Thunder at Hamilton Airport

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Press Release June 14th 2009

The Roar of Thunder at Hamilton Airport

The Gods must have been with the Black Thunder Racing Team for their scheduled testing on Hamilton International Airport in preparation for Bonneville Speed week 2009. Despite a week of rain and heavy rain around the country the Hamilton area was spared on Sunday producing almost perfect conditions, which permitted the completion of high speed testing by Alan Thoresen on his Kawasaki ZX-14 Black Thunder.

Fellow racer, Dean Veale, who is venturing to Bonneville Speed week this year with Alan and the Black Thunder Team, was also able to get a few test runs in on his newly built Suzuki Hayabusa "Special".

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The testing enabled handling to be checked on both bikes as they have been changed significantly from previous standard configurations, as well as engine performance was able to be checked with the new configuations.

There was still water on the runway when Alan Thoresen took Black Thunder through its first series of runs, as a rooster tail of water was evident on some areas of the runway, and there was noticible wheel spin.

All fears of performance issues faded away as the crisp, sharp exhaust note of the Kawasaki ZX-14 roared from the bike as it raced down the Hamilton runway at speeds conservatively around 300kph under the control of Alan Thopresen.

The engine note gave no indication of any engine over rich / over lean fuel air mixtures, and showed the bike was more than capable and would have the potential of some high speed runs on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Dean Veale on his Hayabusa special, had a small electrical gremlin to start with, which delayed his runs, however after a fuse replacement, the Busa Special burst in to life and was away down the mile long runway to start testing also at some very high speeds.

Both riders took their bikes in turn on to the runway under clearance from the control tower and worked their way up in speed to check handling and performance, with both Alan and Dean being very satisfied with the results from the testing.

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The Air Traffic at Hamilton was reasonably busy as most pilots were probably trying to catch up on the training missed out on over the last week of wet days, and to further complicate the testing, the parallel Grass Runway 18 /36 was closed due to extensive work being carried out, so the only active runway was the one we were trying to test one Seal runway 18/36.

Special thanks to Hamilton International Airport for their support and assistance, to Rescue Fire at Hamilton Airport, To Hamilton tower, and to St Johns Ambulance for their valued assistance and support during our testing exercise on the airport.

With this testing phase completed Alan and Dean will both carry out the final finishing tasks on their respective machines in preparation for Bonneville Speed Week 2009.

Check www.blackthunder.co.nz

ENDS

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