Make: Online: Flying Archives

Flying Archive: Flying

November 18, 2009

Intern's Corner: Test-firing the HHO rocket

MAKE: Intern's Corner
Every other week, MAKE's awesome interns tell about the projects they're building in the Make: Labs, the trouble they've gotten into, and what they'll make next.

By Steven Lemos, engineering intern

Making the Hydrogen-Oxygen Bottle Rocket (that Adam Savage is posing with on the cover of the new MAKE, Volume 20) was a pretty basic endeavor, with the exception of the circuit. The original schematic diagram had a flaw in it, but only after we breadboarded the circuit -- twice -- did we catch it.

I guess that's the reason we MAKE interns build the projects that run in the magazine, so it's us who bang our heads against the table and not you. I will kindly take that cookie now.

The experience showed me that, sure, when working with electronics it's easy to misplace a component or wire, or completely miss something, which I already knew, but it's just as easy to have a diagram be the culprit. So a word to the wise (a word I'm sure all the experienced hobbyists have already discovered for themselves): if you take care when putting together these tedious circuits it will pay off, for if you can trust in your work, then you'll know the culprit lies in the plans, and you won't spend hours chasing that metaphorical wild goose.

Twice we breadboarded this bad boy before discovering an error in the schematic -- so you won''t have to.

But on to the actual launch. :) We had talked to the local electronics store owner, who at the time was making his own hydrogen using a more sophisticated apparatus, and who was interested in what we were doing with ours. So he came to watch, and brought along his professional pyrotechnician friend, who showed us how to make fuses with 12V and tiny resistors (basically the resistors pass so much current that the wire heats up and can act as a fuse to light stuff -- voilà, cheap fuses).

Our beautiful 2-stage HHO rocket ready for test launching -- before being crippled by a crash.

The first launch was a success, with the two stages going off rather quickly in succession, so we dialed in a little more delay time in the circuit before the stage 2 ignition. This was good and bad. We got more height out of the rocket on our second launch, but on its return it landed electronics side down. This resulted in our circuit behaving oddly.

So, not ready yet to call it a day, we began firing off only one stage at a time, adjusting the proportions of HHO (hydrogen and oxygen gases), water, and air, and testing the makeshift fuses, which worked fine for a single stage, but due to the time they take to ignite (3sec@12V) might not work for 2 stages.

We probably launched 12 times that day, attracting passersby. Good weather, new friends (who like blowing stuff up), and multiple launches. All in all, a good day. Houston, we have liftoff.

• Related: MAKE, Volume 20: "For Kids of All Ages"

November 3, 2009

Make: NYC Meeting November 12

If you tried to go to the last Make: NYC meeting and were thwarted, like me, by the police blocking the street (for an unrelated construction problem), you'll be happy to read this announcement for the next Make: NYC meeting, featuring fewer cops!

Make:NYC Meeting 16 - Thursday November 12th, 6:30PM

We're bringing back a favorite challenge for all you makers! We're excited to see how new faces and new ideas can take this challenge to the next level

Challenge: Return of the Blimps

You've got brains, we've got blimps! Three teams will compete to make ordinary RC blimps perform extraordinarily. We'll provide the blimps, helium and some standard Make:NYC challenge materials. Arrive on time to make sure you get in on all the lighter-than-air action cause it's gonna be a blast!

Show and Tell

Meet your fellow NYC Makers and show off your creations! Bring your gadgets, gizmos, sketches, ideas, anything you'd like to put in the spotlight. We encourage NYC Makers to collaborate on and discuss DIY projects. If you're planning to bring a project, drop us a note at meetings@makenyc.org.

If you'd like to attend we have plenty of space for everyone, but please RSVP!

Make: NYC meeting 16
Thursday, November 12th, 6:30PM
Bug Labs
598 Broadway at Houston, 4th floor
New York, NY 10012

Do you have an event coming up? Check out the Maker Events Calendar and add yours!

October 16, 2009

MIT helicopter uses lasers to navigate indoors

Here's a video of the impressive micro aerial vehicle (like a UAV, but smaller) by the MIT MAV Team. To me, the coolest part is their use of a 2D laser range finder device to map out the environment around them. The range finder device itself can only measure distance in a line from left to right. Instead of using a servo to change where it points, they move their whole vehicle up and down. This data is then used to build a full 3D model of the room, which is used to navigate through their environment. This allows the vehicle to work indoors, where traditional GPS tracking wouldn't work. [via technabob]

September 23, 2009

Intern's Corner: My R/C hovercraft

MAKE: Intern's Corner
Every other week, MAKE's awesome interns tell about the projects they're building in the Make: Labs, the trouble they've gotten into, and what they'll make next.

By Steven Lemos, engineering intern

For a school project in my AutoCAD class, my group and I decided to design and build a hovercraft. At first we were planning a full-size, ride-on hovercraft, but after meeting and brainstorming it was clear we didn't have enough time to build one. So we decided to build a smaller version, using R/C controls. This was made possible by a friend's surplus supply of assorted R/C airplane parts, including motors, receivers, and controllers.

The hovercraft took one month to design using Autodesk Inventor software, two months to build working mostly on weekends and some school nights -- and 1 afternoon with the MAKE interns to wreck! Check out the video:

Read full story

September 2, 2009

This flying Dutchman can return home

Jesse van Kuijk is one talented and dedicated maker. He decided he wanted to fly, and then proceeded to design and fabricate his own pedal-powered plane! It took him three years to build, even requiring him to return home from college on the weekends to work on it. That is dedication! More details at the Spiegel Online.

[via neatorama]

August 19, 2009

Dude, Where's my (Flying) Car? Part 3

Bill Gurstelle is a Contributing Editor for MAKE magazine. His most recent book is entitled Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. You can follow Bill on his danger-quest at twitter.com/wmgurst. He is a guest Make: Online author for the month of August.

More on the Maker quest towards building a flying car....

Batting third in the flying car line up was the Mizar, a true and actual product of the Technology Underground, but it has a sad and far more tragic case history than the others.

Henry Smolinski and Hal Blake took the top half, engine, and wings from a light airplane, and placed tehm in an attachable module that fit on rails set on top of a modified 1971 Ford Pinto.

By melding the two disparate vehicles through a variety of attachment methods, they came up with a flying car - half Ford economy car and half high wing airplane. Initially it worked pretty well. In fact, it really did fly and as such it got a lot press (as flying cars tend to do.)

Here's a quotation, from a 1973 magazine article (Peterson's Complete Ford Book, 3rd Edition):

"Planned as a dual-use vehicle to fly long-distance travel and then operate as a conventional automobile for local surface travel, here's how the Mizar works. Equipped with its pusher-type aircraft engine, the Mitzar airframe will be kept on telescopic supports at a convenient airport. You drive the AVE-modified Pinto to the hanger and back the car under the airframe. A self-aligning track incorporated into both units makes attachment an easy job that requires less than two minutes to complete.

Structural connections are made with self-locking high-strength pins in the structurally linked track assembly and wing support connections.

The last line in that description is worth special attention. For in late 1973, Smolinski and Blake climbed aboard the Mizar prototype one last time and powered up the engines. No one knows what went on in the cockpit of the Mizar as it rolled down the runway during takeoff. But what is known is that very shortly after they left the ground, the "self locking high-strength pins" gave way and the flying car developers found themselves driving through the Southern California sky in a suddenly wingless, and decidedly non-airworthy, Ford Pinto.

The tragic death of the two principal developers resulted in the end of the Mizar project. So, still, the world awaits the first practical flying car. But there is always another one looming on the horizon, ready to take off from the technology underground and fly into the big time.

More:

August 18, 2009

Awesome DIY water rockets with drop-away boosters

As huge fans of water rockets, we are worshipping Australian rocketeer George Katz and his Air Command Water Rockets team, who are now launching single-stage soda bottle rockets over 600 feet using three drop-away booster engines that separate, NASA-style, when their thrust is spent. The boosters have upward-pointing pins that slip into rings on the main rocket, so they simply slip back out upon burnout.

Water Rocket with 3 boosters from AirCommand on Vimeo.

To make it work, the team devised a clever launch base with an air manifold that pressurizes all three boosters equally, simultaneously with the main rocket. Air Command's insanely good website has video of the launcher build, DIY instructions for drop-away boosters and all aspects of water rocketry including multi-stage and parachute mechanisms, plus build and flight logs for all kinds of crazy rockets. And their launch videos (from ground and onboard cams) are so awesome we want to build a water rocket Cape Canaveral.

Link.

August 15, 2009

Human powered hovercraft

Steam Boat Willy has an amazingly detailed account of the technical details on this human powered hovercraft.

Via MITers

August 12, 2009

Dude, Where's my (flying) car? Part 2

In my last online article, I discussed the concept of the flying car and how difficult it is to make a viable one. But designers continue the quest.

Hollywood set designer turned engineer Norman Bel Geddes came up with one of the first flying car concepts. His work yielded a design for something that looked much like a 1940 Chevy Coupe with wings welded onto the sides and the wheels replaced by a single rear-facing propeller.

Bel Geddes never got off the ground with it.

But since then, quite a few flying cars have been successfully flown. One of the first and perhaps most successful was the ConvAIRCAR.

On paper, the ConvAIRCAR was envisioned as the marriage between an automobile and an airplane. It promised to revolutionize the daily drive for thousands, perhaps millions, of commuters.

In November of 1947, a prototype ConvAIRCAR circled San Diego for about an hour and a half. It appeared, for a brief time, that the aircraft's developers had actually produced "the Fertile Mule," that is, a hybrid with a viable future. But, in reality, this airborne sedan was still a flying car, and therefore a single successful test flight proved little.

A few days after the test flight, a test pilot crash-landed the ConvAIRCAR on a dirt road when it ran out of gas. The only prototype of the ConvAIRCAR in existence was damaged beyond repair. And that's as far as that particular flying-car ever went.

Next post: Flying car tragedy

More:
Dude, where's my (flying) car? Part 1

Dude, where's my (flying) car? Part 1

A flying car is, to many futurists and makers, the epitome of technological progress; the holy grail of personal technological achievement. A car that flies from Chicago to Fort Wayne and an airplane that one can drive to the Piggly Wiggly to pick up eggs and coffee, all in the same package -- that's what I want.

We're a clever group, so here's an obvious question: Why is there no flying car in your garage? It's well into the 21st century, it seems like we've had plenty of time to tackle this. Over the next few days, I'd like to a look at what progress (or lack thereof) various individuals and companies have been made towards realizing my dream machine. It's a long story, and to be honest, not a particularly pretty one.

So, let's begin considering this question with the words of recent Louisiana gubernatorial candidate Patrick Landry.

"As Governor, I shall seek investors who will bring their capital to Louisiana in an effort to design, develop, and eventually mass-produce an aeromobile. This vehicle, which would revolutionize transportation in America, would be a cross between an ultra light aircraft and an automobile. The intended purpose is to create the ability of lift-off between 55 and 75 MPH, flying at low altitudes for short distances, and conceptually, look similar to an Indy racecar."

-- Unsuccessful 2003 Louisiana Gubernatorial Candidate Patrick "Live Wire" Landry

Patrick E. Landry first threw his hat into the political ring in 1999. Landry, called "Live Wire" because of his background as an electrician, claimed that among his qualifications for high office was his virginity.

Obviously, Landry was something of a fringe candidate. But his virginity, his plan to nuke Baghdad, and his Flying Car Development Platform, got him over 10,000 votes. In fact, in the 2003 governor's race, Landry came in eighth out of seventeen candidates.

The flying car idea didn't start with animated cartoons in the 1960s, although most baby boomers probably first imagine something like what George Jetson dropped off daughter Judy of at Orbit High in. Actually, it's a concept that's been in the air since airplanes were first invented.

This is the flying car, designed by Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria in 1885. Everyone said he was nuts. But now, 120 years after his death, German scientists have shown him to be one of the unsung pioneers of flight. ludwigs flying car.jpg

Ludwig, whose fantastical castle at Neuschwanstein aptly featured in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, drew up plans for a flying car more than two decades before the Wright brothers took to the air, but when he tried to build it he was declared insane and stripped of his crown.

Recently German aeronautical experts re-studied Ludwig's designs and say they would have worked. Sketches recovered from letters between the ruler and Austrian engineer Gustav Koch show the monarch had planned to create a fleet of flying machines that would take him across his beloved Alpine lakes to his many castles, including the fairytale Neuschwanstein.

In my next article, I'll look at a couple of attempts that came close...

August 10, 2009

Scratch-built vintage rockets

There seems to be a growing number of hobbyists out there who are scratch-building the model rockets of yesteryear. Many of the instructions from the original commercial models are available online (copyright champions, look away) and some folks sell nosecones, decal sheets, and other parts for these models. One popular theme is the sci-fi movie and TV rocketships, such as those from Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica.

Hobby rocket couple Verna and Randy scratch-built a fleet of Colonial Vipers from Battlestar Galactica, based on the old Estes kit. A friend of theirs, Jim Neubauer, made the decidedly more imposing 1/15th scale Viper (seen in the last photo).

Verna's Vipers [via HobbyMedia]

August 1, 2009

Star's pillow hands

Star Simpson came up with this awesome plane-sleeping "hack." She outfitted a pair of kid's water wings with sheaths sewn from old T-shirt fabric. Looks comfy to me!

Sound Sleep on a Long Flight

July 29, 2009

Easy-to-build tissue and balsa model planes

Rubber-power.com has some really nice, quick and easy-to-build rubber-band-powered model planes designed by MAKE subscriber Darcy Whyte. There are free, downloadable instructions on the site and info and video on building, flying, and repairing these simple model planes.

Model Airplane Power by Elastic Rubber Band

June 28, 2009

DIY air rocket

From rosendahl in the MAKE Flickr pool:

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!