Gravity sports enthusiasts tend to approach speed like moths to a flame, always seeking more and occasionally getting burned. One of the most extreme speed addicts we know donned a Nomex hood and took things way beyond the norm: Jet Luge! Bob Swartz

The Jet Luge is made with my first race-legal street luge. I actually raced this luge in the Gravity Games. It proved to be a heavy, stable base to build on and I didn’t mind cutting and drilling on my old faithful tank of a ride that was nicknamed by the other competitors “The Metalstar Galactica”. To put it simply, I made a mount to house the electronics, fuel gizmos and jet engine, then bolted the thing to the rear of the luge. I designed a throttle with parts I got from a golf cart and the brake lever from my old Haro Freestyle BMX bike. It works just like a regular streetluge until you pull the throttle. I set my own rules on this… a racer legal luge that could be thrust-powered when I ran out of gravity power. I can start and stop the engine while in motion several times, making a rolling hill road into extremely long luge course. You could call it a personal “Hybrid Powered Vehicle”!

Just like many of the guys that street luge, I like to tinker and build things. We are always in the search of more speed. The people that know me in the sport also know how much passion and effort I have put into promoting safety and all of the gravity sports around the globe. I am constantly looking for ways to nab the attention of the public, media, sponsors and wannabee racers so that it can grow into a common recreation sport that the every day Joe and family can get into. I would also like to see some of the top competitors and organizers get “paid to play”. In general, no matter what others have tried to do in the past, we haven’t got too far past the sport just being racing events for the racers….. That’s all well and good, but let’s face it: gravity sports don’t pay the bills and “watching” what we do at events gets awful boring for the general public… Kind of like drag racing -- unless you’re a diehard fan, how many times can you watch racers zip by before you get bored? Families go to see the Jet Cars, wheel-standers and the freak show. Because of this, and the fact that I live in the flatlands with no place to test new go fast luge equipment, I decided to build a powered luge that would grab the public by its face and make them look! I reviewed many ways to do this and came up with the Jet Luge idea about 3 years ago. At that time, I had no idea how to do this, or even if it would be possible, but I started to research the subject on the “web”. I have no background in jets or aircraft, but I have been known to design and build some very successful electro-mechanical systems and devices for the US Navy while working at the Naval Research Lab here in DC. Just like these projects, I had no idea what I was doing when I started. If you know how to research, talk to and respect the experts, and stick with a project even though others think you should not, you can build just about anything..

Not much, since I have programmed the speed limiter to 90mph. With data from computer simulation, and interviews with lugers that have “actually” ridden in the 80-95mph range, I concluded that we were already at the extreme end of staying in control. All of those that have ridden at these speeds knew that they were riding on a prayer and should not stay at that speed for long. Those that have had to steer or brake at these speeds became out of control; some got seriously hurt. So, I decided that “for now”, I won’t try to push past what seems possible on a conventional luge. By running the Jet Luge at these speeds, in a controlled environment as a test bed, I can study the physics/mechanics of why this speed may be the limit and perhaps come up with a fix or modification to go to the next level. As it stands today, the Jet Luge is capable of 135 mph of speed on flat ground in just about ¾ of a mile, but the chassis and rider are not. To keep it as safe as possible at speed, I decided I needed to use top quality equipment that was setup with laboratory precision, computers to control, monitor and limit jet engine, and to use it in a very controlled environment.

So far every thing is holding up just fine. Thanks to Chris Chaput sponsoring me some hand-picked 90mm Flywheels that I had balanced, I see no problems until I try to push over 100mph. Bearings should never be a problem, as long as they are quality and clean. People don’t realize that the 608 bearing was designed for high-speed electric motors that spin faster and under a bigger load per bearing then they will ever see on a luge. Neglect and abuse kills bearings. Preventative maintenance is key and is life saving on the Jet Luge. I am using sponsored ABEC 11 Biltin 7 bearings with one drop of Ninja Ultra Speed Oil each. I am very happy with them, primarily because they are very easy to use and to “get perfect” when trying to setup and adjust the rolling gear (wheel, axel, hanger). I’m currently using a Z-Roller Maxi truck wedged out to 20 degrees in the rear and 50 degree, Randal luge trucks in the front. I use 2 trucks in the front on high-speed open road runs and a single on the drag strip. I discovered that I could get an extra 2.4 mph in the ¼ mile with one less set of wheels! I would never run without a backup set of wheels at speeds over 70 mph where the stresses of turning and bumps in the road are working on the urethane and hubs. Jet Luge #2 will be fitted with 4 randals, unless someone steps up with a better solution. (Hey Radikal, Crail, Jim Z … need a test bed??)

Thanks for asking! I would not ride this thing if I were not confident in it being as safe as possible. 90% of my design problems were “safety issues”, meaning safety of the investment, myself and the people & property around me. It would be fairly easy for someone with some spare cash to bolt a jet engine to a luge or skateboard and get it to push you down the road, but they would be running with a serious risk of getting killed or maiming others.

There are too many things to list here, but I will give you some idea of what’s going on in terms of things to accommodate with safety measures. The engine runs up to 112,000 rpm, with a compressor wheel clearance of less than .003”. The exhaust temperature can run as high as 800 Celsius and has a velocity of close to 600 mph. If one pebble, candy wrapper, or one of my curly locks got sucked in, the engine could grenade. One fuel or electrical system problem could explode the thing into a fireball. These are just a few of the things that could go wrong just 4 inches behind my head! I have 2 computers in the system: one to control and monitor the engine and the other to monitor many fail-safe conditions that could occur. I have a kill-switch lanyard attached to me that would immediately shut down the entire system if “Bob Has Fallen and Can’t Get Up”. The funny-looking thing on the front of the engine is a FOD screen made of a wire mesh pencil holder that keeps crap, to include fingers, from being sucked into this super high-powered vacuum cleaner. On top of that, I wear a Nomex fire hood that my wife bought me and I always keep a CO2 fire extinguisher close by. Whoever is acting as pit crew for the day is trained and practiced on how to handle a number of situations that I feel could happen, to include me being too injured to shut it down. All of that and I still take time to pray to God, to see if this is what I should be doing today. He is the pilot in my life and on the Jet Luge.

It runs on “Jet A” or Kerosene with 5% turbine oil added, and only if your Civic has a jet engine in it. You’re not the first to come up with this idea. My son wanted me to put the jet engine on his rice-burner for a day, but I told him he would go faster if he tossed out that 100lb Sub-woofer and neon widgets he has in the trunk!

Hmmmmm, Back in the day… (70’s) I built a few things that they would not let me bring to school and the Dept. of Homeland Defense would have something to say about today. Everything else is Classified.

A few of the well known competitors such as Doc Go-Fast, Darren Lott and Chris Chaput have shared their ideas with me on how to make things better on the luge and about not getting carried away and killing myself. I really respect Darren’s opinions and his comments are kind of a sanity and reality check that I take seriously. The RC jet jockies from RCU.COM helped me with “all things jets”. Young Justin Crenshaw, a streetluge and speedboard competitor from Virginia, has helped me as pit and staging crew at the dragstrip. He is very good at explaining the gravity sports to the spectators that visit the pits and he might be the stand-in for me someday at the track. My wife is cool! She sees all that I do to try to make something dangerous safer, but still worries. She supports me as long as I keep the rest of life, to include the “Honey-do List”, in perspective.

The initial investment to make the Jet Luge is kind of high, at over $10,000 and many hundreds of hours of study and work. But that’s ok. Since the kids moved out, there’s a fair amount of lunch money left over each month! Running it is very cheap. At today’s pump prices for Kerosene, it cost me about 50 cents to make a quarter-mile pass. Everything else is rechargeable or reusable. The estimated tear-down maintenance cycle is 25 hours of run time – that’s a lot of 20 second runs and 5 minute tests!

Who me? Well, I have gone the fastest speeds in my own neighborhood. Yes, I have some friendly and interested neighbors. I have ridden uphill at 70mph at the World Cup Event in Bainbridge Ohio. I just can’t hang the hairpins as well as a street luge without an engine because of the added mass on the rear end. I am looking to try it out on a few road courses and super speedways this year.

I figured PETA would have something to say about that if I rode in California! Seriously though, “tow in” is a valid method to test gravity racing equipment and body position if you are lucky enough to have a budget and an airport-sized space to do it in. The hill and open road throws too many variables at the formula to accurately assess the data and make a conclusion. Biker’s skitching stunt proved a lot to speed boarders that could not have funded such a test themselves. I just wished he did the tow to the side and out of the draft turbulence of the bike.

Other than the standard concerns for my safety and sanity, they have all been overstoked and positive! Initial reaction is that they do not believe what they are actually seeing... To tell you the truth, I am surprised at the reaction on the dragstrip. I usually run after the fastest 300+mph cars, the Nitro Burning Top Fuel Dragsters. You would figure 77.76 mph and a 20 second ET to be a boring show. But when they see me skate the Jet Luge standup to the starting line and then lie down one inch from the track with the sound of a jet engine coming from somewhere they all come to their feet. It is kind of a head trip to hear a 300 mph Top Fuel or Funny Car driver or crew chief tell me that I must have balls this big, while they fake holding a bowling ball between their legs. It turns out the size of my balls is the number 1 technical question I get!

Here is a good "food for thought story": during my first appearance at the drag strip, the announcer asked for a show of hands from the 20,000 spectators on how many knew what a “street luge” was. Just maybe 10% of the crowd raised their hands. Then he said, “Ok... let’s do it this way… How many people would like to see the world’s only jet-powered, lay-down skateboard?” The crowd went nuts! So, at the dragstrip, that name has stuck. The promoter said it’s something the general public can relate to. After my run, many race fans come to the pits to see the Jet Luge up close and that’s where we school them on the roots: gravity sports. I have videos of downhill events playing. Justin and I show the fans our gravity racing gear. Many take a spin on the luge, buttboard, and speedboard for the first time in the pits area. I take pictures of the kids laying on the Jet Luge with my helmet on. I can be parked right next to the highest tech race car on the track, and my pit has the fans in it...amazed at how long the wheels will spin on good equipment. I could go on and on... The point is the action in the pits provides more stoke to me than on the track.

No, but I thought I was going to have to bail for the first time last week. I was doing a piece for a local TV news spot and I was supposed to head directly for the camera guy and slam the brakes on as close to the lens as I could get. Unfortunately, I discovered the throttle was stuck wide open and I was gaining speed from 60 mph instead of stopping! Just past the camera guy was a dead end street with lots of dry leaves and woods. I tried to pull the kill switch line, but it was too long (designed it only for falling off... doh!)! Still gaining speed, I decided to footbrake and slow it down for a controlled bailout. The tire rubber on my shoes smoked like a burnout, but I was able to stop the Jet Luge still under full thrust! I was then finally able to take a hand off and pull the kill-cord. The camera guy had no idea how close he was to getting some prime “Jack Ass footage”! When it was all said and done, I discovered that the 35 degree air and 60+ mph wind chill kind of gummed up the works on the throttle. Back to the drawing board on the fail safe system don’t cha think?!

No chute. I have seen a guy try chute years ago. He popped the chute and it pulled the luge right out from under him, then it hit him in the back! For now, I must wait until I am less than 75mph and then use the conventional Fred Flintstone Stomp. For speeds over 80 mph, I’m designing a gyro-controlled, vertical stabilizer that splits open to a set of airbrakes, very much like what’s on the space shuttle. My studies have proven that braking of any kind on a standard luge over 80 mph is asking for disaster. The drag force builds up so fast at these speeds that moving a foot or leg or arm causes the center of pressure to move in front of the center of gravity and it wants to spin you out “right now”. You’re basically flying like an arrow with the feathers suddenly on the wrong end. Remember this rule when messing with speed: when you double the speed, the forces quadruple! The drag force is 4 times as great at 100mph as it is at 50. So is the force of impact!

Whole Pecan or Toll House. Did you know there is 8000 calories in a pecan pie??? Burp!!

I have been trying to learn to longboard cruise and carve and downhill since I was about 45 years old (ha! a year ago). I was tired of being the guy that had to take a cab or walk at night during events while everyone else skated. Unfortunately I suck at it. For that matter, I always sucked at sports. I kind of grew up as a geek and never owned or saw a skateboard as a kid. Now I am just the geek with the fastest skateboard in town... YEA!!!!! Revenge of the Nerds!!!

Luck?

Ummm, It’s like the incredible sound of a jet, of course. No really, this is a real, Axial Gas Turbine like on a fighter jet, only smaller. It does not shake my insides, because there is no vibration. Vibration would grenade the engine! I’m not sure how loud it really is, because most of the sound goes backward and I am always the one riding it. But, I can tell you this: the sound is loud enough to record on video from 200 ft away with the windows up in the truck.

Well….. I will give you a hint. What’s better than 1 jet engine?

I already have! The second I rolled out under thrust power to 1 mph, I broke the world record for a Jet Luge. The most asked question these days is whether I plan on breaking 100 mph. The answer is yes, when the time is right. What speed junkie wouldn’t?

Of course! As you can tell, I am full of words. First, I would like to make a shameless plug. The Blue Smoke Jet Luge is for hire and is looking for sponsors. With exhibitions in front of crowds of 10 to 20,000, hundreds of one-on-one interactive gravity sport show-and-tell sessions in the pits, and all of the media coverage I have been getting, this gig could put your products in the face of many new customers that would not normally walk into a skate shop. I can’t tell you how many times people asked me who makes that wheel, what kind of bearings spin that fast and I am quick to respond with my sponsors’ products. The Jet Luge is also available for your downhill and skating events as kind of a hook to grab more media and sponsors. If an event organizer gets a company to sponsor a Jet Luge exhibition at the race, I will split the fee with the organizer. Remember, I did all of this to help draw attention to our sports… not away from it.

I would like to thank my current sponsors for their support. ABEC11, Doug’s Hobby Shop and my beautiful wife.

I want to thank the crew at Silverfish for giving so many people a forum to discuss their dreams, ideas and inventions. Always wear your safety equipment, it’s the only way to ensure more SPM (Smiles Per Mile)! Check out my website for the latest news.