Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Tired Of Busting Your Prop In The Rocks?



 You have to wonder if this is the first jet-drive. It's hidden away in a private collection in a secret location in Southern Illinois.

UPDATE!  Info gleaned from SmokStak:   Walter Schnacke of Evansville, IN built these until he passed away at age 94.  This one has a Tecumseh engine with a Lauson carb, and is most likely from the early 1960's.  In later years he used Briggs engines.  A commenter on the Smokstak forum says that about all these were good for was to make smoke and noise.  Mr. Schnacke worked at the Hercules factory in Evansville from 1915 to 1920.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, in the aircraft world that would be a "ducted rotor". I hesitate to call this a "jet" since a true jet squirts water out the nozzle, much like a garden hose.

Merle

LL said...

one man's impeller is another man's propeller.

David aka True Blue Sam said...

You are correct! I looked up jet boat drives, and this thing doesn't really qualify for that name, but you can see how the builder was thinking. Jet drives use multi-stage pumps to move the water, and eject it from a nozzle. There's a lot more slippage in this primitive upstart.