What ever happened to life vests with parachutes to pull you safely away from the wreckage and slow you down?

My Dad wrecked at over 100 in the 70's and one of these saved him.

or maybe a hole in the floor where you could just stick your feet out( ala fred flintstone)

I think the answer is maybe. Cats run right below the point of instability. That's why there are so many accidents. If they didn't run there, they wouldn't get the reduction in drag due to lift, and the speed. While you might be able to prevent a blowover, the recovery might be another thing, with the bow submarining. It would take a lot of testing to perfect, and I think you might find it hard to get volunteers.

Michael

Most cat crashes I have read about are not from blowing over. They are caused by an uneven launch off a wave/wake that causes one sponson to grab and the boat goes into a spin or barrel roll.

I really have what I feel is a great idea brought on by current events. I know it could work with testing. I just wanted opinions. I have it worked out in much more detail than I have given but think about it. An airplane stops with a little wing and some drum brakes. I am not talking about blowoverers I am talking about getting air and bringing it back to a safe point. I will make calls to get testing done but I know it will work just to what degree I have no idea.

An uneavean launch would end the same way as soon as the boat got so much air about 45 degrees whihc should never happen in normal conditions it would bring back to normal if that was what you wanted well the ending would be stopping.

I already have wind tunnel testing ideas which will never replace real world but if it only saves one life is it worth it.

The current Unlimiteds have tested what you are talking about with a gyro to control a wing and effect attitude. We used it on some RC boats with a rc helicopter gyro and a wing with a rapid response servo. If you study both applications, and test in an rc cat, you would be able to figure out if it made sense for a tunnel in a fullsize cat. PM Steve David and he may be able to send you in the right direction.

I thought about what you are saying about rc boats but lets say it is a quarter scale model it would need wind speed of almost 800mph to equal 200mph of a full size boat.

My thinking is opening it with air only (less parts to fail) but where enough air only gets in at a certain angle I even thought about more than one flap depending on the degree of the boat.

The reason why I think it would work in a cat and not an unlimited is because at running speed the tunnel of a cat is out of the water but the bottom of an unlimited is still completely in the water or just above

One of the folks working on a WSR boat had implemented that exact system. It was using some sort of accelerometer system to control the dump of air under the tunnel. But what they were addressing was managing lift in a very static operation- level flight over glass-smooth water. The systems complexity and processing power would grow in unimaginable complexity when put into a highly dynamic 3-axis environment such as an offshore raceboat.

And, since Warby still holds the record, I suspect their effort didn't pan out.

Development of something like this would cost many many millions of dollars and addresses a problem that really isn't there. Very few boats blow over backwards purely because of wing effect. Most are dynamic events- boats being propelled from their line of travel by unexpected forces.

Most likely, the system would cost as much as or more than even the most expensive boat.

Glassdave nailed it. With all due respect to those that have crashed and to those that have suffered injuries or demise, have you ever noticed that the top guys are rarely if ever in these situations? This is a dangeous sport that requires a high level of skill. I certainly don't possess the skills and experience level to operate one of these monsters at 170+. Few do.

P.S. At the first race the Apache cat was run at, in a post-race interview, Ben Kramer stood on the deck and described exactly the same system being discussed here- a dynamic system used to dump air from the tunnel. I still have the old Betamax tape of the interview- somewhere.

That was 1986

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