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One of my fav shows, they made a jet pack from plans on the web to see if it would work. Adam and Jamie embark on the longest and most ambitious build they’ve ever undertaken: creating their own personal flying machine from scratch. Are these machines as magnificent as their designers claim? To make the project more realistic, the two limit themselves to a build period of one month and a budget of $10,000. They busted the myth pretty well. Link.
MythBusters make a DIY Jet Pack
Posted by Phillip Torrone | Thursday June 9th, 2005 12:17 AM
Categories: Uncategorized | 9 Comments
They never mentioned the ratio between the motor output and the propeller input. It seemed that they could have put different diameter pullies on the prop shafts and had potentially more thrust, if all the power of the engine wasn’t being utilized.
Seems like they busted the plans they used to construct the thing (mounting a snarling Rotax engine to a aluminum sheet? c’mon). There’s nothing inherently wrong with the concept, though. You can make a brick fly with enough thrust. Now, it may not be very stable, but it’ll at least lift its weight (for a while). Something had to be very wrong with either their props, the ducting system, or the transmission. I was sad that they gave it three test runs and called it quits…how long have the SoloTrek guys been testing theirs?
–riney
During the project, once the test failed with the dummy, they lightened the load by removing the dummy, and just in case and closed the gap in the rotor shroud with balsa wood slats to get a bit more thrust. They calculated that the pack should have been outputing 500 lbs of thrust, and the pack only weighted 130 somthing lbs, so it should have lifted off. The thrust calculations were either incorrect, or the design more flawed than they realized. Even they said that the project needed a bit more time to complete, and the design more difficult than originally anticipated.
If I recall correctly the ’500 pounds of thrust’ figure came from the (faulty) plans and not from calculations. The engine was running at near its optimum speed so the only variable left is the fans. I wonder if they were running near their max rated speed.
The mythbusters are awsome because they blow up stuff and make stuff and give everything a shot !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The mythbusters are awsome because they blow up stuff and make stuff and give everything a shot !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The mythbusters are awsome because they blow up stuff and make stuff and give everything a shot !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The MythBusters are cool because they blow up stuff try stuff and find stuff
what about the v-22 Osprey?. http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/v-22.htm
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