Aerospace 9... Another Avgeek Idea From My Grey Matter

 It's true, I have too many ideas. Seems to be some sort of handicap actually... a steady stream of self-proclaimed great ideas without the resources to make them become reality. It truly drives me crazy. I desperately need a team of highly motivated and ultra sharp worker bees to help me make all this stuff in my head become real. But don't hold your breath on the ever happening, at least not until I make one of them very successful on my own. So I keep trying.

 The graphic above is a teaser for a project I'm gonna try hard to make happen. It's a sliver of the website for the project that I'm working on the design for. And in case you're wondering, my FLY Energy Bar project is still in the works, but I've reached a challenging point dealing with the baked product long-term moisture content and retaining finished product texture quality over a long shelf life. I think I'll get it figured out, it's just that so far, I haven't.

 So, Aerospace 9 is the reinvention of the AirPigz Photo Studio idea that I tried to launch over 2 years ago. My understanding back in 2011 was that I was going to be granted permission for AirPigz to effectively license the use of images I had taken at a particular aviation event, but that permission never came thru. I was even told more than once that it would. But it didn't. Without that permission I was unable to move forward.

 Recently I figured out a way to head off in a different direction to create an even better concept for upscale high-quality avgeek art. I'm not giving details now but you should be able to get an idea if you look closely at the graphic above. I will say this to start the saliva flowing: X-15, SR-71, XB-70 and B-58. There's also one specific hand-built element to the project that stands the chance of generating some real income while also making the operation highly respected. I like both of those possibilities : )

 Aerospace 9: bleeding edge art

3 Videos: The Future Belongs To The Wingcopter! (OK... Maybe Not Just Yet)

 The Bubbleship VTOL from yesterdays Oblivion movie post has me cranked up on vertical flight concepts, so I did a little digging to see what VTOL dreamers are up to. I turned over a few rocks on youtube and found: the Wingcopter... and I gotta say this is a very impressive concept from a small team in Germany led by Jonathan Hesselbarth. It's just an RC model at this time but after several prototypes they seem to be on to a really good thing.

An impressive VTOL concept: the Wingcopter!  (photo: Wingcopter)

 When I observe a verti that's meant to achieve traditional high-speed forward flight, I'm looking for just one thing to impress me: transitions from vertical to forward and back again. The Wingcopter demonstrates this in the video above with amazing stability and control! You might have to watch the video several times to see that the the motors and props are moved back into the VTOL position at about the 29 second mark. The aircraft then decelerates to near stall speed when power is brought in again to complete the transition back to vertical flight. It doesn't just look 'doable', it looks like fun!

Onboard camera view with transition to forward flight and back to vertical

 The only big drawback I see with the concept thus far is that if this was a full-scale aircraft and the motor/prop assemblies became stuck in the forward flight mode, you've got a set of propellers that are going to extend well below the landing gear. That's a problem. My criteria for truly successful VTOL allows for a no-damage landing in the event that the hardware can't get out of forward-flight mode (sorry V-22 fans) - I can imagine tho that there'd be several possible modifications to the concept here to be able to meet that criteria. Overall, this is some seriously impressive work, both in the mechanics and the programming.

Detail of the motor/prop transition mechanics

 You can learn more about the various designs that led to this current configuration, as well as the mechanism that drives the pivot arms on the Wingcopter.com 'prototype' page. And, if you're interested in getting in on the fun with this amazing little flying machine, check out this page where you can actually purchase a Wingcopter ARF! Note that these guys don't appear to be in the RC kit biz, they just happen to be cool enough to to be willing to sell their work so you can experience it. No price is listed, you have to follow their contact link to inquire. 

 It's too early to say, but this just might be a truly viable VTOL concept for the future... Bravo Wingcopter!

Videos: Living Life At 3,000 Feet AG (Bubbleship And Skytower From The Film 'Oblivion')

Unused short scene for Oblivion showing the CGI Bubbleship flying by the camera

 I live in a bit of a vacuum these days without any cable (or broadcast) TV at home. It started as a cost-cutting measure about a year ago, but even now, when money is not the problem that it was, I find I'm much happier without cable in the house. So, still no cable. This shift has brought about a new process for the relatively small amount of TV we consume: we watch completed TV series on DVD (just finished watching all 5 seasons of Fringe in about 3 months) and we watch some movies. So a few nights back we rented the recent Tom Cruise movie Oblivion. (I hadn't even heard of the movie, an interesting side-affect of life without cable TV.)  It was actually a test of an upgrade to a Blu-ray DVD player, and it was the first live-action Blu-ray DVD I've ever seen. (Blu-ray looked fantastic... feel free to welcome me to the 21st century)

Video screenshot: The very cool Bubbleship VTOL from the Tom Cruise movie Oblivion

 I'm somewhat surprised to say that I really liked Oblivion. It doesn't hurt that the living quarters are a fabulously modern house sitting at 3,000 feet above the ground on a thin spire, and there's a lot of flying in a very cool VTOL called a Bubbleship.

 After I watched the movie, I watched it again with the special-feature commentary that replays the film with Tom Cruise and writer/director Joseph Kosinski making comments about the scenes and the production process. I love this stuff. After seeing the commentary, I find myself quite taken by the film. I have to say that I recommend checking it out if you haven't seen it yet.

The video above gives a great overview of the Bubbleship in Oblivion

 There's a certain simplicity and open-ness to the film that I'm drawn to. As life here on Earth seems to increase in quantity and diminish in quality everyday, the uncongested landscape of Oblivion's post-alien-attack Earth seems oddly attractive to me. (maybe I just need to move to Wyoming)

 Your mileage may vary on that.

 
This video gives an overview on the 3,000 foot high Skytower in Oblivion

Video screenshot of the Bubbleship on the landing platform of the Skytower in Oblivion

 I really enjoyed these videos since they show how some of the effects in the film were made. The way that they created the background sky and cloud views for the lookout from the skytower is extremely cool. Fascinating stuff... and a movie I actually liked. Watch it, I think you might like it.

5 Year Anniversary For AirPigz! (State Of The Avgeek-Nation Address)

The entire AirPigz staff is feeling a bit stuck in the mud these days

 The experiment pointed toward 'avgeek world domination' known as AirPigz began exactly five years ago today. Happy Birthday? Well, it's been a long and difficult journey for everyone here at avgeek central, which of course means just me since there isn't any staff here. I wish there was, and in fact that was always the plan, but it's just never come together for that to happen. So, for right now I'm just gonna say it like this: Birthday!

 Being a one-man-operation is a huge pain... especially when the operation doesn't make enough money in a year to pay for the trip to OSH and a trip to Reno. And I sleep in the car and eat cheap on those trips! That means I have to work a day-job to support posting my regularly scheduled avgeekery. No surprise there as there aren't very many people who make a real living running a blog, but it's become a lot more difficult in the last two years for me. My day-job is as a ceramic tile installer and I work alone there too. Work was almost nonexistent when I started AirPigz in late 2008 but these days I'm constantly busy doing a very physically demanding job. I'm tired, worn down, and wearing out.

Like Freddy Flameout, I'm not giving up yet!  (photo: ilbasso via hobbytalk.com)

 
 AirPigz traffic remains strong with over 50,000 page views each month and well over 30,000 unique visitors each month, but I seem stuck in the mud. Lack of time and resources make it almost impossible to create more and/or better content, and growth well past these numbers just doesn't seem to be happening otherwise. More important is that I don't get a lot of feedback which makes me wonder a lot these days if all this effort matters at all. Add to that the fact that I have just emerged from the crushing financial crisis that ruled my life these past 5 years and I find myself wanting to sleep a lot. That part of my life was been a long and bloody war, and I feel shellshocked. 

 To keep the pig alive I wind up working on posts before work (like right now), sometimes during lunch, often in the evening, and very often late at night. For a while that's a lot of fun (for people like me anyway), but after several years of it, with no real income and not much feedback, it becomes a heavy load. It's one I'm still willing to carry, but I can see there will have to be changes for this to continue well into the future. Any normal, sane person would have given up on this a long time ago!

 As a young kid I had a plastic model of Freddy Flameout in my room that my dad built. I always thought it was cool just because it was so crazy, but now I see there's a lesson to be learned: don't give up. So I'm not giving up, just trying a little public complaining (aka honesty) instead to see if it makes me feel better : )

 I hope you have a great avgeek day!

Before Brown Arch, The Blue Arch At Oshkosh 1971 - Nostalgic Picture!

(click pic to enlarge) The humble blue arch at the flightline entrance from Oshkosh 1971

 This pic from my old picture album is what I remember the main gate to the flightline at Oshkosh looking like back in the really old days. 1971 was the second year for Oshkosh (before that the event was in Rockford, IL) and for the first many years of the week-long fly-in and convention, access to the flightline was restricted to keep the general public away from the airplanes. That's why an 'entrance' was needed there in the first place. In this CoolPix image from a post back in 2010 you can see a neat old picture of Ray Hegy's El Chuparosa homebuilt and that flightline fence. Those were some great old days!  

 The blue entrance in the pic above looks to be in the spot just south of where the brown arch is these days, which means it's a current motorized vehicle access point to the flightline. But in 1971 this was the big entrance! After the main entrance moved a few feet north sometime later to the current brown arch spot, it served as the restricted access entry point for many more years... but when the access restriction was lifted, the brown arch became a symbol of the past. Today it's a memorial to the legacy of the event.

 I was I had a lot more of the pictures that my dad and I took back in the early days of Oshkosh, but most of them were lost in some water damage years ago. I was only 10 years old when this picture was taken, but it was already my third trip to an EAA convention. Oshkosh 2014 will be getting me pretty close to my 40th convention! I still get just as excited as I did when I was a kid : )

 If you haven't been to Oshkosh in a while (or ever), then I'd like to suggest that now is a great time to start making plans to make it happen. It's the greatest aviation event in the world, and you should be there!

 Oshkosh 2014

I'm A Fan Of Amelia Rose Earhart! (Watch Her TEDx Speech To Learn Why)

 I hope the people who found it necessary to beat up on Amelia Rose Earhart back in August, when it surfaced that she's not actually related to the Emelia Earhart aviator of the 1930's, know enough today to feel bad for the things they said... if they don't (maybe you're one of them?) then this video, recorded back in October at a Denver TEDx event, should do the trick. She's done an excellent job here explaining the past, the present, and the future.

USA TODAY story on Amelia and her name revelation

 I've been following the modern Amelia on facebook for a couple years now, and it's pretty easy to see that she's smart, kind, funny, respectful, adventurous and very capable. I also watched her press conference with the Pilatus people at Oshkosh this year, which was the first time I'd seen her in person, and it was clear then as well that she's a great person. I say that not because her name is Amelia Earhart, but because she's a great person!

 High-fives and Godspeed Amelia Rose Earhart.

The Amelia Project at flywithamelia.org

Amelia Earhart at Oshkosh 2013 announcing her round-the-world trip for 2014

Video: 'Amazon Prime Air' Makes A Fabulous Publicity Stunt For Cyber Monday

 I could be wrong, but Amazon Prime Air looks like nothing more than a very effective publicity stunt to me. The video above has received over 2 million views in well under 24 hours... and it just happens to be Cyber Monday, hmm. If you were in the retail sales biz, offering a massive inventory via the great big interwebs, wouldn't you love to have half the country chatting you up right now? Of course you would.

 Jeff Bezos might be serious about using octocopters (small unmanned electric drones) to deliver five-pound-and-under items directly to people's homes, but I honestly don't wanna see it happen. Ever. I think it's a bad idea.

 In a perfect world they would be great, but this world is far from perfect. Aside from all of the possible mechanical and electrical failure possibilities (which lead to an autonomous 10 pound object falling completely uncontrolled from the sky) the real issue here all about people trying to shoot them out of the air just for fun. And far worse than the 10 pound uncontrolled object falling from the sky that they hit with their favorite rifle, consider the 10 bullets they shot that missed their target... but found your head while you were mowing the backyard half a mile away.

 I say bad, bad, idea... but great publicity stunt. Btw, I love Amazon Prime, let's just keep the Air out of it, ok?!

Video screenshot of the 'Amazon Prime Air' drone concept delivering a small package

Video: Watch This Kid Shoot Down An F-35 With His F-18

 I honestly don't know the detailed politics of the F-35 vs F-18 debate, but I'm pretty sure if I did I'd be desperately looking for the government's OFF switch... however, I do know this video is very well done and it really did make me LOL!

 Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts about this issue, but I'm remaining silent. I'm just gonna laugh at the video and then go back to watching the world continue to collapse.  

 And hey, have a great day!

Video screenshot from the stunning F-35 takedown by the simple-n-old F-18

CoolPix: The Amazing Days Of The X-15 (Post Flight B-52 Fly-Over)

(click pic for hi-res)  An X-15 after landing in 1961 as the B-52 mothership flies over

 I've been feeding a revived X-15 addiction here the last week or so, and this image from the early days of the program sure drips with 1960's aerospace awesomeness. I've even got a sideline project in the works that includes North American's rocket-powered speedster... the one that spent quite a bit of time at the edge of space while we marched our way toward the Apollo program.

 No details on the sideline project for you now, but this pic hopefully does a great job of stirring up your avgeek juices as we get ready to head into December. Enjoy : )

check out all of the AirPigz CoolPix images

Hey, Go Easy On The Turkey... Happy Thanksgiving!

(click pic to enlarge)  Now that's a real flying turkey!

 The entire AirPigz staff (me, myself, and I) would like to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. I truly hope you have people that you love to share the day with. And please, don't be hoggin' the turkey like the guy above!

 More seriously, if you're hardcore old-school like me (like a Pilgrim/pioneer), then we can share in thanking Almighty God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, for the harvest and blessings of this last year.

 (Psalm 146:6)