redbull flugtag sf 2012

Entertaining the crowd in the "hangar" area .

This November I participated in Red Bull Flugtag with a team called the Slammin Tri Lambs. We were trying to build a plane that would fly as opposed to one for comic relief. The design was supposed to resemble a double-necked guitar with wings and picks for a tail.

Quick CAD work for the event application.

The plane was a short wing, long cord, canard aircraft designed to use ground effects to gain extra lift. For this project I did most of the initial design work, with input from the team, and all of the CAD work.

Version 1.

Version 2.

The plane was designed around easily available and cheap materials from the local hardware store. The spars and fuselage were made from a plywood and foam sandwich for strength. These were surprisingly strong and could easily hold up a person when cantilevered out. The wings on each side could be pulled off for transportation. All the complex shapes were cut with a water-jet.

Water-jetted foam pieces.

Water-jetted plywood pieces.

Nearing completion. Elevator moved to the back.

After some model testing, the team decided to move the elevator to the rear for ease of calculating the center of gravity (CG) of the plane. If we had more time, I believe we could have made the canard work. However, the plane was built in only about two weeks.

Painted and ready for some final touches.

McCovey Cove with the 30 ft launch platform.

End result.

Unfortunately, the plane did not fly. After the event, we suspected two mistakes that may have caused the plane to nosedive off the platform. First, we had the plane sitting on the cart too far forward, which nosed us down as the cart went off the platform. Ideally, we should have had the CG of the plane closer to the back of the cart, allowing the plane to separate from the cart more easily. The second mistake was using paracord for the the elevator controls. After watching video from the event, we noticed that the elevator moved about a third of what it should have been capable of, meaning that the paracord was probably stretching.

A video of the live stream can be seen here. We come on at the 1:36:00 mark.

"Z" for zoom

Original design concept.

This is a project I did for some friends who are about to have a baby. They wanted to decorate the baby's room with the alphabet, where each letter was made by a different friend. I chose the letter "Z" because I thought it was cool to choose the end of the alphabet. The letters were supposed to represent the maker, so I went with a car theme using some engineering to get the wheels to do a burnout.

Car assembly.

 The car was made from six layers of plywood. Each was laser cut and glued together.

Car Interior.

The two center layers were just in the roof area so that car would straddle over the bottom of the "Z". I put in a sub frame piece to support the body of the car.

The "Z" was made from four layers of plywood, also laser cut and marked. The bottom of the "Z" from the "OOM" was one layer thick and the slot allowed the space for the sub frame and axles to slide through. In the back, there were also cutouts to allow it to hang onto nails.

Painted and in the starting position.

 The car was painted with spray paint while the wheels were painted with Plasti-Dip to give it a rubbery feel.

ZOOM.

The axles are a 1/4" hardwood dowel riding on nylon bushings that were pressed in the car. PET spacers sit between the car and the "Z" to take up space and to allow the car to slide smoothly. When the care slides across, the axles ride against the bottom of the slot causing the wheel to spin--giving the appearance of a four wheel burnout.

Here is a quick video of it in action.