Here’s something remarkably displeasant. Can you cook a steak with glue? [Dom] and [Chris] from ExplosiveDischarge have cooked a steak using a huge, huge amount of two-part epoxy. The chemistry behind this is just the exothermic reaction when two-part epoxy kicks off, and yes, the steak (a very thin cut) was sufficiently wrapped and protected from the hot sticky goo. What were the results? An overcooked steak, actually. This isn’t a sous vide setup where the temperature ramps up to 50°C and stays there — the temperature actually hit 80°C at its peak. There are a few ways to fix this, either by getting a thicker cut of steak, adding some bizarre water cooling setup to keep the temperature plateaued at a reasonable temperature.
This is your weekly reminder for the Repairs You Can Print contest.
We’ve got a twofer for awesome remote-controlled hovering stuff. The first is a 1:8 scale Harrier. This plane designed and built by [Joel Vlashof] will be a reasonably accurate model of a Harrier, capable of VTOL. It’s built around a huge 130mm EDF, powered by 2x6s lipos, and stabilized with a kk2.1 flight controller with VTOL software. This is as accurate a Harrier that you’re going to get in such a small format, and has the cool little spinny vanes that allow the beast to transition from vertical to horizontal flight.
Want some more cool hovering things? [Tom Stanton] is building a remote controlled Chinook. Yes, that helicopter with two main rotors. The usual way of doing this is with proper helicopter control systems like collectives and Jesus nuts. [Tom]’s building this version with standard quadcopter technology, mounting a motor to a servo, and doubling it up, and mounting it on a frame. In effect, this RC Chinook is the tail boom of a tricopter doubled up on a single frame. It does fly, and he’s even built a neat foamboard body for it.
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is going to do something next Tuesday, sometime in the afternoon, east coast time. Whatever happens, it’s going to be spectacular.
Hey, it’s time for a poll. I need to decide between ‘tide pod’ and ‘solo jazz’. For what I’m doing, the cost and effort are the same, I just need to know which is more ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ, cool, or whatever. Right now it’s 50:50. One must be crowned victorious!
Here’s the stupidest thing you’re going to see all year. That’s someone looping a quadcopter in front of a Frontier A320 (Probably. Seems too big for a 319 and too small for a 321) on approach. This guy is 3.6 miles East of runway 25L at McCarran Internation in Las Vegas, at an altitude far above the 400-foot limit. Judging from the video and the wingspan, this quad came within 200 feet of a plane carrying at least 150 people. It’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever seen, so don’t do it. It’ll be great to see the guy responsible for this in jail.
The actual Harrier did NOT have any active stability control (that’s why so many of them crashed upon landing), it was all done by weight distribution and hard pilot work, so he’s cheating a little there :D
But awesome work.
That is as close to the definition of insanity as reasonably possible, I think. Those pilots are made of sturdy stuff.
The guy with the quad is the business-end of a douche. People that pull this kind of Grade-A Premium BS messes it up for everybody, and I have no sympathy for whatever happens to this world-class tool.
You’ll have a bunch saying a drone can’t bring down an airplane.
It does not matter if it can bring down the plane or not. The other team is going to have a field day with it and use it to enact more regulations for drones, making it harder for people who do not do stupid things to enjoy their hobby.
Plot twist: the drone was piloted by an FAA agent in a false flag operation to scare-regulate those naughty people with their remote-controlled helicopters.
I love false flag ops!
no need for false fags where there are so many naturally stupid people out there to do it for free.
I DO NOT like saying it, but seeing as there aren’t many like Sully, the time will come…
It most definitely shouldn’t be able to. But it can cause millions of $$$ worth of damage on that plane, so…
Maybe if they start trying to educate people that big airliners are expensive and crashing a drone into them will not only put them in federal prison, but also a lifetime of debt, some might think it over before trying…(dumbasses still won’t, but there’s always the several %)
I hear that the US and NATO are planning to replace helicopters with next gen VTOL craft (propeller based).
It will be interesting to see how that ends up, probably 2 billion per plane needing so much maintenance that it can only be in the air 2 months of the year so not used much and out of necessity replaced with drones and refurbished old stuff eh.
Good place to be for smaller companies that make stuff that can be used as a stopgap.
Maybe they have another craft in mind beside the V-22?
that would be stupid helicopters are the most efficient form of hovering aircraft at large scales. the only reason to transfer to propeller based VTOL craft is become some know nothing military idiot got conned
“Whatever happens, it’s going to be spectacular.”: Spoken like someone who hasn’t sat through 24+ hour launch delays.