Tracy Jones

Tracy Jones is the principal builder and test reporter for the Hamel Flying Saucer (HFS). His construction commentary and dated September 1999 test reports are the only quasi-experimental record in the source archive dossier on David Hamel's Gravitomagnetic Drive.

Construction work

Jones built multiple HFS models. He describes his own wing construction in detail: the cone is one piece, the horizontal wing surface is one piece, and the top skin required two pieces attached to 3/4-inch plywood because he ran out of material. The bottom has 3/4-inch plywood with a three-inch center hole and air holes around the bottom. Ribs on the horizontal wing are two 1/2-inch aluminum strips joined with a brass screw and glued with 3M glue, acting as stiffeners. The cone stiffener is a round piece of 1/2-inch plywood halfway down the cone with 1/2-inch aluminum strips from there to the horizontal portion. He reports the construction weighed only 34 pounds without magnets.

He installed 2 × 4 × 6 inch magnets at Hamel's direction — 18 on one side of the wing and 18 on the underside, each in rejection to the other — held in stainless steel channel, with indentations facing the opposing magnets face to face. He notes Hamel marked all the magnets with a large "N" to prevent mixing them up. He describes welding a pipe to hold a long spike that keeps the wings lined up during assembly, stressing that if the wings move too far from side to side the magnets come into attraction and lock up.

For plexiglass models, Jones paid a plastic shop $215 each for four domes with horizontal wings and $30 each for inner cones. He reports the only advantage was solving "droopy wings" and being able to see inside — "which was pretty much nada." He tried to get cigarette smoke to flow downward into the inner cones after forcing it up to the top, to visualize the intended airflow between the wings. A Canadian machine shop charged $465 (US) for all nine pinions; he used cue balls for the shoulder pinions. He later reports that Dan LaRochelle told him plastic wouldn't work anyway, and that LaRochelle kept the plastic domes while Jones kept some of the magnets for a third HFS.

He also built a drum version: his insert was designed to go inside a 55-gallon drum after cutting 1/2 inch off the top and re-gluing it. Bob Thomas's drum had peek holes cut in the side so he could watch it oscillate; Jones did the same at the top.

The September 1999 test reports

Jones attached a Buick windshield wiper motor with a 1/2-inch aluminum arm to the bottom wing and drove it from a battery charger. His reported observations, in sequence:

Report 1: Bottom wing oscillates about 1/4 inch; top wing slightly less. Center floating magnet oscillates about 1/8 to 1/4 inch and does not spin. A portable phone was disconnected 6 times, the furthest at about 5 feet, lying in a line toward a pole transformer. A power transformer was approximately 60 feet from the device and estimated 20–25 feet above ground; phone lines ran from the pole to the house, closest distance to the HFS approximately 30 feet. Most interference was toward those lines and pole. The loudest noise interference occurred along that line of sight and closer to the HFS, increasing until the phone disconnected. A TV about 4 feet away, level just above the wings, showed considerable picture interference but not sound. The strongest buildup before a disconnect occurred when he oscillated the top wing by hand while the bottom wing was motor-driven. When the motor was turned off, all phone interference ceased. The strongest detected interference was when the phone was within 2 inches of the skin, and this was constant all the way around the HFS, independent of the location of overhead phone wires or the pole transformer. The motor had run 75 minutes at the time of writing.

Report 2 (95 minutes): The TV began resonating with the wing movement, with both sound and picture turning off and on.

Report 3 (215 minutes): The motor was still running. Every time the arm touched or moved within the connected joints it sparked, sometimes heavily; this also happened when aluminum touched aluminum, not only steel. The TV showed only large flashes on each spark, with no program. A phone call disconnected when the phone was placed close to the wings.

Report 4 (325 minutes): Tests began at 4:50 PM and it was then 10:15 PM — 5 hours 25 minutes, or 325 minutes. Jones writes that the device "just keeps running and running, but no lift off." He tested whether grounding was responsible by detaching the motor from the structure while still running; sparking continued when the aluminum arm touched the frame or moved while loosely attached to the bottom wing. He rebolted it and ran an alligator clip from the bottom wing and struck the top wing — no spark. Striking the clip to the frame from the top wing — still no spark. Attaching the clip to the frame on the opposite side and striking the bottom wing produced lots of spark, but none from the top wing. Each spark caused intense TV flashing.

These are single-operator, uncontrolled, uninstrumented observations. No force, power, field strength or lift was measured. The reported phenomena — sparking at loose aluminum joints, TV picture interference, phone disconnection near a running electric motor — are consistent with ordinary electrical noise from a brushed DC motor and arcing contacts, though the source does not make that assessment.

"Tracy's wheels" modification

Jones later designed a modification he called "Tracy's wheels," intended to provide more surface area for what he considered the cones to be — a capacitor — without making the device bigger, and to be easier to assemble. He replaced the outer rings with a method of centering the rings (wheels) so the magnets remain in balance while moving across one another, insulated the outer skin from the machine, replaced the center floating magnet with two fixed magnets in the hub in rejection to each other, and used soda pop cans filled with concrete as cups and miniature snooker balls (1½-inch hard plastic) as pinions.

Materials and cost list

Jones published a materials and cost list for the "Tracy's wheels" build, purchased largely at the Boeing Surplus facility in Kent, Washington. He notes the purchasing rules there: what you see is what you get and no refunds; sharing a purchase with another customer is allowed; payment by check or cash; material is new leftover or obsolete; most sold by the pound. The list is a build-cost inventory, not a specification. It is reproduced in full in the source article.

Significance

Jones's reports are the closest thing in the dossier to a replication attempt with recorded observations, and they end in "no lift off." His account is also the source of the concrete detail that the design's wings must be kept in magnetic rejection or they lock up, and that the pinions bound their travel.