-83* How cold can you go?

[BF]

We made the news.  We did something the other day that we've NEVER done before.  

http://www.nwfdailynews.com/local/google-s-search-for-test-facility-led-to-climatic-lab-video-1.494217

We advertise that we can do -65...but we've never just tried to go as cold as possible before.  Google wanted us to do just that....go as cold as we could get it.  

We have Google as a customer and they're testing their Google Loon project.  

http://www.google.com/loon/



I had our equipment screaming and running as hard as it would go.  We officially recorded......




We think we actually went about 10 degrees colder than that, but our instrumentation stopped recording at -82.9* and wouldn't budge after that so we don't have any proof of anything any colder.  

 

[Oss]

way cool   that must be a fun job

[BF]

I have gotten to see a lot of really cool stuff in the last thirty years.  

What we do.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYpgmgAmHZ4

F35....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcGvW5dAa0A

The F35 flying over our facility the day it arrived for testing.....

[Jess from VA]

Reminds me of winters growing up on a MI island.   

[Robert]

So did you try the Valk at those temps?  Come on didn't you just once see what the Valk would do at the cooler temps?

[Chillerman]

I assume your instrumentation is reading 30" hg because it is converting the temperature reading to a vacuum and not because the entire lab is in a perfect vacuum?

[Stormchase]

Very cool, I had to go out in -52° once and No never again if I can help it. I swear the inside of my lungs were starting to freeze lol.

[Gryphon Rider]

I assume your instrumentation is reading 30" hg because it is converting the temperature reading to a vacuum and not because the entire lab is in a perfect vacuum?

1 atmosphere = 29.92"Hg

[BF]

I assume your instrumentation is reading 30" hg because it is converting the temperature reading to a vacuum and not because the entire lab is in a perfect vacuum?

Wrong assumption.  That's reading the barometric pressure from outside.  

The chamber pressure is measured with an old fashion manometer measuring inches of water column.....

 


And also with instrumentation....




The chamber does go negative (and positive) from time to time....however, we can correct that.  However, with better than a 160* difference from outside temp to inside temp, the chamber does go negative.  That's a pretty good inversion from outside to inside.  

Think of an empty plastic water bottle that you put in an ice chest.....and watch it suck it's sides in.  Same thing happens to our chamber. 

[YoungPUP]

Since I think this kind of stuff is interesting as hell ( and because I'm fat and I like it cold) What's the strangest thing you've tested?  Weird, surpriseing, or otherwise?

[The emperor has no clothes]

-50* with a 20mph wind was all I can go.

[Patrick]

My father-in-law and I spent a weekend years ago at the camp in the Adirondack's. We decided to take the snow machines and get a drink. The bar tender looked at us walk thru the door and asked if we were crazy. We questioned him and he asked if we looked at a thermometer as it was -35F at the time.  Later that night we huddled around the round oak stove stoking it constantly as the temp dropped to -52F. We went out in the morning to try and shoot a few rabbits, but, they weren't stupid. They were holed up, we were the stupid ones. Thats friggin' cold. I fell thru the ice in the creek the next day, but, it was only -20F then.

[BF]

Since I think this kind of stuff is interesting as hell ( and because I'm fat and I like it cold) What's the strangest thing you've tested?  Weird, surpriseing, or otherwise?

Interesting/neat/weird?  Probably the Navy's LCAC.  That thing was flat out cool....and weird.  

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=4200&tid=1500&ct=4

Surprising?  During the B1-B test years ago, one night during an engine run test, the flight crew decided that they were hungry and had a pizza delivered.  When it got there, they found out that the delivery person was a cute young girl and they invited her to come into the cockpit to deliver to the pilots.  Pretty sure that was THE most interesting pizza delivery she ever had.  

[Chillerman]

I assume your instrumentation is reading 30" hg because it is converting the temperature reading to a vacuum and not because the entire lab is in a perfect vacuum?

1 atmosphere = 29.92"Hg

Yeah, sorry.  Being an air conditioning guy  I tend to think of inches of mercury as levels of vacuum.  In a perfect vacuum, 29.92" Hg, the related temperature is -58F.  I wrongly assumed that BF's panel was somehow converting that temp.

"In air conditioning and refrigeration, inHg is often used to describe "inches of mercury vacuum", or pressures below 0 psig, for recovery of refrigerants from air conditioning and refrigeration systems, as well as for leak testing of systems while under a vacuum, and for dehydration of refrigeration systems. The low side gauge in a refrigeration gauge manifold indicates pressures below 0 psig in "inches of mercury vacuum" (inHg), down to a 30 inHg vacuum."