By Skies Magazine | June 27, 2014 Estimated reading time 2 minutes, 20 seconds.
Thursday, June 26 was the last day of school for many, including the primary students at Franklin Public School in Kitchener, Ont., who welcomed some very special visitors to celebrate the occasion. Paul Stender and his wife, Therese, “the Indy Boys,” stopped by the school to show off their unique jet-powered school bus called School Time, which will be appearing at the Waterloo Air Show this weekend. The Stenders drove all night from Indiana on Wednesday to be at the school Thursday. The school bus is powered with a 25-foot long engine that powered F-4 Phantom fighters. During the show it will race aircraft, and is often one of the crowd favourites at the shows it attends.
Paul took an interest in jet-powered vehicles after driving monster trucks, and eventually started building his own in 1996. Since then, he has turned all manner of vehicles into jet-powered show machines, including a snowmobile, a Jeep, a motorcycle, and a 1956 Ford semi. Therese and Paul met six years ago on a dating website, and were engaged in 3 months. Therese quit her job and started working with Paul, and now carries out the team’s logistics and maintains the vehicles and the engines. They have carried out demonstrations all over the world, including the Middle East.
School Time is the world’s fastest bus at 500 kilometres per hour, and burns 150 gallons of fuel in a typical run. The other vehicle they brought to demonstrate in Waterloo is the world’s fastest outhouse, clocked at 114 kph, which gives new meaning to the term “Thunder Shack!” The children of Franklin Public School were thrilled to see the unique vehicles up close, and asked many very good questions. Many are anxious to see them in action at the Waterloo Air Show this weekend.
