Technician blasts out new NZ land speed record

An avionics technician has seen 12 years of hard graft pay off after he broke the New Zealand land speed record in his home-built turbine propelled drag car.

Sergeant Dean Hart averaged 363.436kph and hit a top speed of 458kph as he set new records for the “flying mile” and “flying kilometre” at RNZAF Base Ohakea on March 7.

To set the record, the car had to complete a run in both directions within an hour to take account of any wind. The times were then averaged to get the record speed. 

Hart's first run was clocked at 213.258mph over the flying mile and 324.646kph for the flying kilometre, both just short of the previous records. His second run in the opposite direction clocked 251.046mph and 402.280kph, which was enough to set averages that eclipsed the previous records. 

The previous flying mile record was 216.385mph set by Owen Evans in 1996 whilst the flying kilometre was set by Eddie Freeman in 2012 with a speed of 355.485kph. 

Hart, pictured above, had spent the past 12 years creating the vehicle for his record bid. The chassis comes from an American top fuel dragster and is powered by a turbine engine out of a BAC Strikemaster, flown by the RNZAF between 1972 and 1991. The engine produces about 3400 pounds of thrust.

Despite breaking the record, the team believes there was more speed to be found. Following the second run, a small oil leak was discovered but after receiving confirmation a new record had been set it was decided Hart would not go through with any of the further planned attempts.

Hart, who is ruling out any further record attempts, says “the engine actually has an afterburner on it which gives an additional 50 per cent thrust which we didn’t use".