Some continued unrelated assaults on my mental health, in addition to hitting a bit of a wall with D-Orny-One-III, mean I haven’t done much the last few months, but I thought I’d get back into my flight research by building Nathan Chronister’s Flex ornithopter, from his instructions uploaded last August. This design is based on […]
Read MorePart 1Part 2 Aright, time to explain my amazing idea to get somewhere with this… I redid the tail with just wood and tested it at a bunch of different angles. That’s basically it. But I was proud of my idea to use a layer of aluminum also, to make it easier to redo the […]
Read MorePart 1 here It was perhaps slightly naive of me to hope more power would be the single answer to everything. It might still be. After another 2 months I have yet to find out… My next attempt at getting the base of the pylon to not break was to completely replace the little block […]
Read MoreMy next victim has been the D-Orny-One-III ornithopter, designed by one Dan Garfinkel, as described in the Flapper Facts plans here. Since up to this point I’ve only built things following basically the same design, I learned quite a bit just through the building process this time, mostly relating to thread hinges and working with […]
Read MoreSo what’s a study of aerodynamics without starting out with how lift works? You would think this would be fairly simple and easy, considering how fundamental it is, but there’s a lot of different explanations out there that aren’t even compatible with each other. Although apparently, among people who actually know what they’re talking about, […]
Read MoreMy next model to attempt is the Luna, also by Nathan Chronister. It’s similar to the Freebird, but this one is a biplane ornithopter. There is a smaller spar above the main fuselage that the wings actually attach to, and the crank is simpler since getting the wings to flap in sync is less of […]
Read MoreJust a fun little thought experiment I got distracted by the other day… What would a wing with 100% (max) camber look like? Think about it a minute. I thought at first that if 0% curve is a straight line, would 100% curve not be a circle? But it turns out I don’t actually know […]
Read MoreAt long last, I am back at building things. The format of this online version of my log will probably change, but my goal is to focus on what I learn from my already numerous mistakes. Mostly involving forcing myself to glue things more times than necessary… I’m restarting my journey from the basics, with […]
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