Make: Online: Flying Archives

Flying Archive: Flying

June 28, 2009

DIY air rocket

Built from plans in Make Magazine with a couple mods. Made from a sprinkler valve and PVC (and of course duct tape!), compressed air fires the rocket high into the sky. Our rocket is make of the foam cylinders you wrap around hot water pipes (and duct tape!).

Here is a printable pdf of the rocket body and cone. Check out the article in the digital edition of MAKE, Volume 15.

June 27, 2009

Blimpduino and UAV at Maker Faire

Chris Anderson demonstrates the systems of the BlimpDuino.

The Blimpduino kit is a very low cost, open source, autonomous blimp kit. It consists of an Arduino-based blimp controller board with on-board infrared and ultrasonic sensors and an interface for an optional RC mode, a simple gondola with two vectoring (tilting) differential thrusters, and ground-based infrared beacon. Assembly is required, including soldering.

Anderson created the BlimpDuino with Jordi Munoz of DIY Drones. Their entry, shown in the video above, took first place in the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition a few months ago.

If you want to build the BlimpDuino, the documentation is on the site and pretty good. Printing the build notes out and setting aside a few hours with the soldering iron should have you in pretty good shape.

June 22, 2009

Take Flight for Kids events, Aug 8th

This came to us from Dean McCully, by way of Jake von Slatt:

Take Flight is a hugely popular flying festival series at Northern California airports. We recruit up to 100 volunteer pilots of small airplanes and helicopters, and provide free flights for about 750-1000 young people with disabilities, at risk youth, homeless kids, foster kids, etc. Most of the kids get to take controls of the plane during their 30 minute flights, to experience the empowerment of being in absolute control of a complex flying machine.

We host simultaneous huge festivals at the airports, with 4000-5000 attendees expected to enjoy a fun day of hands-on stuff. The emphasis is on hands on STEM science/tech/engineering/math, pretty much precisely what Maker Faire is all about, just with a huge kids-fly-free component added. 200+ nonprofit agencies are expected to join us on August 8 and party with the crowds. We expect up to 4000 people to join us for the festival, making this the biggest aviation-based STEM science/technology/engineering/math festival in the Bay Area.

Everything is FREE to all attendees, all volunteers, and all nonprofits/vendors get FREE BOOTH SPACE! Free admission, free parking, free BBQ at noon, free airplane rides to kids 8-17 years old (must be pre-registered online), free live entertainment, petting zoos, hot air balloon rides, helicopters, radio controlled aircraft, model rockets, science experiments, games, rides, fun, fun, FUN!

To reserve a (free) booth in this hottest gig in town, all you have to do is RSVP online. We'll take care of the rest.

For more info, check our website.

May 16, 2009

Jet pack sets speed record

Video, via Laughing Squid Links, of Eric Scott, a Go Fast Jet Pack pilot, setting a speed record at the Knockhill Raceway in Scotland.

Go Fast Jet Pack world record
Jet Pack International

May 7, 2009

Android-controlled robotic blimp

YARB is a robotic blimp controlled using an Android phone. Images are sent over Wi-Fi from the blimp to the phone's display as it's maneuvered along using the tilt sensor inside the G1.

Source code for the control interface is hosted at code.google.com/p/srv1console/

The tilt sensors in the Android phone work quite nicely for rotor control - we have proportional steering so the amount of tilt controls the amount of power, and live video is displayed on the Android screen from the blimp's onboard Surveyor SRV-1 Blackfin camera, carried via the same radio channel that sends the control signals.

YARB robotic blimp controlled by Google Android G1 phone

April 28, 2009

Autonomous PIC-based blimp

Here's a robo-blimp that some students at Colorado State University designed. They score points just for coming up with the name infraLED Zeppelin. The article includes PDF build instructions and a complete parts list.

Gadget Freak Case 139: The Autonomous Blimp [Thanks, Phillip!]

April 17, 2009

Airplane reuse

Image from Inhabitat

Looking to cash in your frequent flyer miles? Maybe you can crash here....

The airplane was transported piece by piece from the San Jose airport to its current resting place on a pedestal 50 feet above the beach. It looks a bit like a model airplane on a stand, and we can only imagine the spectacular views from the balcony and the airplane windows. Five big trucks were needed to get the plane out to the resort, and while the transportation certainly had a negative ecological impact, the finished project is a stunning example of adaptive reuse.

Or perhaps here...

Image from Inhabitat

The Jumbo Hostel is housed within a retrofitted 747-200 situated in the Stockholm-Arlanda airport. The jumbo jet has a long history of service - it was originally built for Singapore Airlines and even flew for Pan Am. It was last operated by Transjet, a now bankrupt Swedish airline. The Jumbo Hostel has 25 rooms with three bunk beds each. Each room is around 6 square meters, and naturally, a lucky visitor will get the chance to sleep in the cockpit.

Back a few years ago, I broke away from a family vacation in Phoenix to go visit Biosphere 2. While I was the only one who wanted to venture to the huge desert greenhouse, I had a nice time and would encourage people to check out the facility and its story. Incidentally, Biosphere 2 did show up in one of my daughter's spelling homework assignments this week.

On my solo side trip adventure, I tried to find an airplane graveyard that I had heard of in the desert outside Tucson. Despite my pre-travel research efforts, I never did find the airplane storage facility back then, but heard an interesting story about how it is more cost effective to mothball your surplus airship than to deliver empty seats from city to city. Apparently, there is something ideal about the desert of the American Southwest for airplane storage.

Got any good stories of airplane storage, reuse or repair? Share them in the comments!

April 15, 2009

Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition

Sixteen teams gathered today to determine whose autonomously-navigating vehicle would be the fastest around the Sparkfun headquarters in Boulder, CO.

Four-wheeled rovers (typically built on RC car platforms) dominated the entries, but there were three flying UAVs, and one spheroid (Nathan, with "labrat", pictured at right). One team had been designed a tethered model rocket to fly the course, but, unfortunately, didn't compete.

The race was structured as 3 heats. Each vehicle got 5 minutes to attempt a run; best time overall won the competition.

The first heat got off to a rough start. Only about half of the robots made it to the first corner of the building, and only the Mookie Mobile Death Pod 3000 made it around the whole course.

A slight wind from the West seemed to be affecting the DIY Drones's ability to precisely line up with the course route. It completed many test runs very well, but its first two official runs were disqualified for slightly cutting the corner of the course. The plane also found itself in multiple trees. The Boulder Fire Department was kind enough to help out with one, and other was low enough to get by hand.

The ground-based vehicles had other obstacles to deal with, including curbs, and people who foolishly think that curbs are a safe place to stand.

After nearly hitting its creator, Ohcraptheresalake! (who later went on to discover the creek) goes after innocent bystanders:
Entrants used the time between heats to tweak their robots according to the lessons learned from the previous run. Death Pod 3000, the only robot to complete the course in the first heat, solidified its lead in the second by lowering its time to 1:28.

In the end, though, the DIY Drones team scored a stunning success with their final try, with Chris Anderson's UAV completing the course in 36 seconds to win the tile!

The competition is over! Diy drones is 1st, with deathpod3000 taking the Engineers Choice award. Thanks for following!!! See you next year!

Jordi launches the DIY Drones UAV:
This robot used sparklers to avoid collisions with pedestrians:
All set on the starting line:

More:

Sparkfun's coverage
Sparkfun's twitter feed, with reports and pictures.
Competition page
Chris Anderson's DIY Drones Blog

March 28, 2009

Spanish students beat NASA

A group of student makers took kite arial photography to a new level: weather balloon photography. They certainly are undercutting NASA's budget, spending very little on their project, and fabricating most of the structure and electronics themselves.

Check out Gareth's previous entry on the project.

Mail Online has a decent writeup. Nice of them to copyright the photos for the students, isn't it?

Building the electronic sensor components from scratch, Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vil, Martm Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort were able to send their heavy duty £43 latex balloon to the edge of space and take readings of its ascent.

Under the guidance of teacher Jordi Fanals Oriol, the budding scientists, all aged 18 to 19, followed the progress of their balloon using hi-tech sensors communicating with Google Earth.

'Meteotek was our experiment to see if we could accurately measure the Earth's atmospheric conditions at 30,000 metres, take pictures to prove the experiment and then recover the instruments attached to the balloon after its deflation,' said team leader Paretas, 18.

'We were overwhelmed at our results, especially the photographs. To send our handmade craft to the edge of space is incredible.'

Their use of Google Earth was integrated into the project and provides some nice mashups of their data.

It's great to see the progress of their build in photos and text on their blog. Their site also provides a choice to use Google translate, which helps people from other cultures access their work.

Thanks Tom!

March 24, 2009

Lost Knowledge: Airships

The weekly Lost Knowledge column explores the possible technology of the future in the forgotten ideas of the past (and those slightly off to the side). Each Tuesday, we look at retro-tech, "lost" technology, and the make-do, improvised "street tech" of village artisans and tradespeople from around the globe. "Lost Knowledge" is also the theme of the current issue of MAKE, Volume 17 (on newsstands now)

With a crew of drunken pilots, We're the only Airship Pirates!
We're full of hot air and we're starting to rise
We're the Terror of the skies, but a danger to ourselves now.
Airship Pirate, Abney Park

[Abney Park's H.M.S. Ophelia darkens the skies over Stockholm]

Zeppelins. Airships. Dirigibles. These words have fired my imagination since I was a child and put together my first Zeppelin scale model. And as a headbanging teen, my devotion to a Led Zeppelin meant that I was always surrounded by icons of these floating horizontal skyscrapers. Every decade or so, there seems to be a resurgence of interest in airships, with new material availability, an energy crisis, or some other motivating factor. Today is no different. So here's a sampling of some of the airships of the past, a few in the skies of the present, and some fantasies for the near-future.

So far, efforts to create a serious and sustained airship industry have fallen far short. It seems unlikely that airships will ever become common transportation, but it'd be nice to see them find some sustainable niche.

Wikipedia has a lot of great information and links related to airships. Here's an excerpt from the main Airship page:

"The Golden Age"
The "Golden Age of Airships" began in July 1900 with the launch of the Luftschiff Zeppelin LZ1. This led to the most successful airships of all time: the Zeppelins. These were named after Count von Zeppelin who began experimenting with rigid airship designs in the 1890s leading to the badly flawed LZ1 (1900) and the more successful LZ2 (1906). At the beginning of World War I the Zeppelin airships had a framework composed of triangular lattice girders, covered with fabric and containing separate gas cells. Multi-plane, later cruciform, tail fins were used for control and stability, and two engine/crew cars hung beneath the hull driving propellers attached to the sides of the frame by means of long drive shafts. Additionally there was a passenger compartment (later a bomb bay) located halfway between the two cars. Other airship builders were also active before the war: German firm Schütte-Lanz built the SL series from 1911; another German firm Luft-Fahrzeug-Gesellschaft built the Parseval-Luftschiff (PL) series from 1909, and Italian Enrico Forlanini's firm had built and flown the first two Forlanini airships.

Construction of the USS Shenandoah in Lakehurst, New Jersey, 1923

Navy blimps in hanger at Moffett Field, circa 1943

Gondola of U.S. Navy blimp J-4. Elevator operator sat on the left. Rudderman sat on the right.

QUEST on KQED Here KQED's Quest video documentary, Zeppelins Resurrected, about the crash of the USS Macon in the 30s and the return of airships to California:

The Hindenburg wasn't the only air ship to end in a catastrophic crash. In 1935, the USS Macon went down in 1000 feet of water off the coast of Monterey, California. Now, as scientists study the recently-discovered wreckage, dirigibles are returning to the Bay Area and are poised to rule the skies once again. But these aren't the same dirigibles - these are new and improved.

Read the Full Story...

More:

From MAKE magazine:

Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!

Buy your copy in the Maker Shed
Subscribe to MAKE
Access the Digital Edition (if you're already a subscriber)

In Volume 17, MAKE goes really old school with the Lost Knowledge issue, featuring projects and articles covering the steampunk scene -- makers creating their own alternative Victorian world through modified computers, phones, cars, costumes, and other fantastic creations. Projects include an elegant Wimshurst Influence Machine (an electrostatic generator built entirely from Home Depot parts), a Florence Siphon coffee brewer, and a teacup-powered Stirling engine. This special section also covers watchmaking, letterpress printing, the early multimedia art of William Blake, and other wondrous and lost (or fading) pre-20th-century technologies.

Read full story

March 13, 2009

Meteotek high-altitude balloon project

Meteotek is a Spanish high school project to build a meteorological sounding balloon equipped with temperature and pressure sensors, GPS, radio, and a still camera. They had a successful launched on February 28, 2009. Their Flickr pages are in (Catalan) Spanish, but the photos speak for themselves. It's just endlessly amazing to me that the technology now exists for amateurs, high school kids even, to be able to reach into space. Check out that back seat space command center!

Meteotek 08

March 12, 2009

ArduPilot 2.0 Beta released

Chris Anderson, of DIY Drones, sends us word that ArduPilot 2.0 Beta has been released. It has built-in stabilization, making it a full-functional autopilot -- no third-party stabilization unit required. It uses the same $25 ArduPilot hardware, so all existing owners should be able to upgrade without issue. This is pretty amazing -- the functionality of a >$1,000 autopilot for less than $100! Go DIY Drones!

ArduPilot 2.0 Beta Code Released!

More:

March 10, 2009

How-To Tuesday: Compressed air rocket

Photograph by Gabriela Hasbun

Read full story

March 6, 2009

Cheap, simple Delta Wing flyer

Awesome R/C Delta Wing flyer, dubbed The Towel, you can make in a few hours out of Dow insulation blue board, an R/C rig, and model plane parts. They've even put together a parts bundle of all the mechanics and radio for under $100.

The Towel V1.0

Giant RC plane runs on a Weed Wacker motor

Instructables member nickademuss shows us how to make an RC plane with an 8 foot wingspan out of corrugated plastic and a 25cc Weed Wacker engine.

I love Radio controlled airplanes and have built several kinds from balsa to this large scale plastic one. This one is made from $25.00 worth of plastic I bought locally at a sign company. The plastic is Coroplast or corrugated plastic, its cheap and builds fast. You could also use old election signs, you just need to paint them or make a patchwork airplane. Total cost with radio and motor was around 350 bucks.

Anyone have any post-election yard signs lying about?

8 Ft Wingspan Coroplast RC Piper Cub flown by 25cc Weed Wacker Motor

February 28, 2009

Kite Buggy Skis

In December, I finally jettisoned the skis I got when I was a nanny/construction worker for the year after college. Michael needed them to turn into a Kite Buggy. Right now it is operating successfully as a sled/buggy, but the kite is already functioning.

Finally able to get your skis to work! Next iteration will have shorter skis and slight camber to help cornering/ lateral load of kite.
Waiting for the wind. In the mean time, gravity is helping out.

When the wind kicks up, there will be some more fun in the snow!

What do you do to beat the winter doldrums? Add your celebrations in the comments and don't forget to include your photos and video in the MAKE Flickr pool.

Fly Plane

Make Pt1794
Finished
Yikes, someone made a real "Fly Plane". Not every cute illustration should end up "real" :( - Spatula writes -

After coming across this lovely image depicting the construction of a fly powered matchstick airplane, I had to try it for myself. Here are the flies, trapped within their impenetrable polyethylene terephthalate dungeon of doom. As difficult as it may be, avoid pouring the hydrochloric acid in with them. They find it very unpleasant, and may refuse to fly for you. Wait until after you get bored with the plane before you decide to bathe them.

February 26, 2009

Head-up display unit for FPV hobby flying

The whole FPV (First Person View) R/C flying hobby fascinates me. I'd love to try it at some point. This system, being developed by a French maker, is a board that plugs into the video camera system used in a FPV rig to provide a heads-up display with useful flight, navigation, and power information. Looks like it's still in the prototyping phase and there's no word about selling it, kits, open sourcing, etc.

Check out some of the other cool projects on his site, like this analog instrument panel to go in the cockpit of an FPV plane so you can see the instruments from the camera POV as if you were in the cockpit.

R1OSD Augmented Reality Display

February 25, 2009

Rockets from office supplies!

Here's a great how-to on building a "liquid fueled" rocket using little more than a fat Sharpie marker, a can of compressed air, and a few more supplies found down on the Cube Farm. The resulting rocket can fly up to 75 feet!

But hey there, John Glenn of the IT Department, BE CAREFUL! This is actually a project you don't want to take lightly. Launch it outdoors, wear safety goggles, don't "burn" yourself on the compressed air (it's *very* cold). Generally, be smart, and use common sense whenever dealing with any type of projectile and components under pressure.

What you need:
A Sharpie
Canned Air
Electrical Tape (Substitute Packing Tape)
Ball Point Pen
Rubber Band
Bottle Cap
Leatherman

The innards are removed from the Sharpie and a port for the canned air tube is fashioned from a ball point pen tube and secured to the thrust end of the rocket.

The fins are made from electrical tape.

Plug the compressed air into the port on the business end the rocket, fill will gas from the can, and... BLAST OFF!

TIP: On the Comments to this Instructable, a maker suggests cutting off the bell-shaped end of another Sharpie and adding it to the thrust end of your rocket to form a De Laval nozzle for better thrust performance.

See the full Instructable for more details.

January 15, 2009

Hydrogen steam rocket

Steampunk maker Professor Fzz rebuilt a hydrogen/oxygen rocket kit into a thing of Victorian era beauty. He used a 12V 3.3Ah lead-acid battery to generate the hydrogen, and built a control system to monitor battery charge and fire the rocket. He also built his own spark igniter from a voltage generator, and constructed a lovely copper-pipe lanuchpad. Gorgeous work.