Jay: Thanks for taking time from your busy schedule to talk about your Scrapheap Challenge experience Bruce. How did you become an expert for the show?

Bruce: I don't think RDF had a lot of choice -- I appear to be the only person in the world crazy enough to strap a 140dB blowtorch to the back of an upturned table (or collection of loading-trolley components) and rocket down the roadway. RDF were obviously taking quite a chance bringing this crazy Kiwi half-way around the world to supposedly build a jet engine with no moving parts out of a sheet of old scrap metal. Even when the thing was finished I could see the worry on their faces. Needless to say they were both terrified and relieved when we fired it up for the first time (on safety day). Boy, if they'd had the cameras on then it would have made great TV, believe me!

J: Maybe if they do a DVD with behind the scenes stuff. One can always hope! Anyway, you were shown using a set of rollers to bend some steel into tubes for your engine. Can you tell us anything about them? They looked quite old.

B: I think they were originally used to crush the fingers of disobedient serfs sometime in the middle ages -- they were that old. I had to spend time freeing up the rusted (and broken) adjustment levers before I could even use them. What's worse -- the rollers were about 4 inches in diameter but I had to roll some tubes that were only 3 inches in diameter. Do you see the obvious problem there? But hey, it's not called Scrapheap CHALLENGE for nothing eh?

J: Yes, I don't think a show called Scrapheap Walk-in-the-park would be very popular. How did you get on with the folks on the show?

B: They were great -- although I was suprised at how little we actually saw of Robert and Lisa during the build day. Without exception, everyone on the crew was really nice and they obviously knew their jobs. The only guy who earned a frown from me was the safety officer who kept shouting "be careful" to me when I was using the rollers -- like I've never used a set of rollers before right? Still, I guess he had to justify his pay-packet somehow. Ian and Serena were extremely hospitable and even took me for a quick tour of London before I flew home, they were bloody marvelous!

J: At the end of the build day, you probably got a chance to see the opposing teams car. Did you think you could win?

B: I had no idea who would win but I knew it would be very close. The other team's engine was more powerful -- I figure it would put out about 65-70lbs of thrust and I knew ours was only going to do about 55lbs or so. However, our vehicle was much lighter than theirs and had skinnier tires so I figured we'd be faster off the line. This turned out to be the case and although they crossed the finish line going faster than us, we got away from the mark far more quickly. If the distance had been more than 1/4 mile, the results would probably have been quite different (phew!)

J: Any more than a 1/4 mile and you guys would be racing out at Heathrow! Any worry driving a "junk" jet car?

B: Hey, that car was more carefully constructed than my own jet-kart, and I've had mine up to 57mph -- so I wasn't worried at all. We spent time on safety day making sure that the wheels wouldn't come off and that I wasn't going to become a roman-candle so I was happy.

J: Talk about a sight to see...that cart flying down the raceway, sparks flying. However, we did get quite a sight when your car basically burst into flames and it was announced that you had engine problems. What were those problems and how did you fix them?

B: Actually, there was no problem -- just put it down to some over-enthusiasm in the editing suite. Race day was very hot and we had only a slight breeze blowing directly from behind the cars. Pulsejet engines consume enormous amounts of air and fuel when running and because the wind was blowing the engine's hot exhaust back towards it, the thing simply ran out of oxygen -- it smothered itself. When that happened it stopped pulsing and just spat out big lazy flames. The reason it did this was because we spent too much time sitting on the line before taking off.

There was no damage to the engine and we simply fired it up again and did the run. It always pay to remember that what you see on TV isn't always real -- although the rest of the programme was a pretty fair representation of what went on.

J: Can I say, for the record, that I hate creative editing? Enough about the show. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about your experiences driving jet cars. How did you get involved with jet engines?

B: Come on -- they're loud, they make lots of heat, the annoy the neighbours, they frighten small children -- who wouldn't want to build one? I've always been interested in jet engines and when I sold my "dot-com" business in 1999 I invested the entire $50.25 I made from that in buying some tools and metal from which I started building these things. Everything sort of grew from there.

J: Wow...your dot-com did better than mine! How fast have you gone in a jet kart?

B: As I mentioned earlier, I've clocked mine at 57 mph (using a GPS unit) and that was plenty fast enough on that particular vehicle. However, I'm currently working on a *much* bigger and more powerful pulsejet-powered car with which I hope to set a benchmark land speed record for pulsejet-powered vehicles. This car will have four huge pulsejets (about four times the size of those we used on Scrapheap - producing around 1,200 lbs of thrust all-up along with around 150dB of noise) and I anticipate reaching around 220-230 mph when I test it sometime next year. Richard Noble will probably come out to have a look -- he's very interested in the idea.

J: Good luck with all that. Would you particpate on Scrapheap again?

B: Hmmm... well it was a lot of hard work, I had to spend a total of 48 hours sitting in an airline seat the size of a matchbox, I had to drink horrible British beer... so would I do it again? [thinks for a microsecond] You bet I would!