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!

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]

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:

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]

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:

• Dude, where's my (flying) car? Part 1
  
• Dude, Where's my (flying) car? Part 2
  

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.

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

Via MITers

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

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.

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...

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]

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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!]

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!

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

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!

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

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.

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:

• Lost Knowledge: The Catalog
• Lost Knowledge: The Antikythera Device
• Lost Knowledge: Village tech in West Papua, Indonesia
• Lost Knowledge: Neon lights
• Lost Knowledge: Reanimating Dead Media
• Lost Knowledge: Manual typewriters

From MAKE magazine:

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

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.

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

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:

• Do it yourself era... open source hardware
• ArduPilot - Arduino compatible UAV controller

Photograph by Gabriela Hasbun

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

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

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.

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.

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