Design, design, design on a dime.

There’s been a lot of other things in my life that need taking care of right now, so my projects have taken a back burner.  A burner pretty far back, actually, and this is a very large stovetop we’re talking about here.

I mean huge.

However, I am designing.  There’s now a three-cylinder radial engine design in my book that is going to work.

There’s also a TASPU 2.  The Manta Ray.

But.. I haven’t even built The Fish yet.  This thing is going to be beautiful.  Not only that, but I bet it’ll fly around the world.   Albatrosses are overrated when compared to Manta Rays.  Those things can glide.

I still haven’t decided what to make the frame out of.  I’d like to use carbon tubes, but there are no funds.  The wings are going to be heavy.  They’re 2-dimensional cloth wings, made with basically kite material.  Big, though, and heavy.  they need an internal framework that will keep them stiff and allow for the warping to occur accurately and only when it’s supposed to.  Wing flutter would kill efficiency, and the pilot too, I guess.

Does anyone know anything about steam?  let’s talk about boiler design.  There’s this downward draft flash boiler shaped like a beehive sitting in my book att he moment, at the end of a long list of designs.   Will that be able to maintain a constant pressure effectively?  Let’s build an auxilliary condenser unit attached directly to the boiler for emergency high-pressure situations.

Can I make it go 100 MPH for 5.5 hours?  That’s the key, here.

The Fish will fly, never forget that.

I love you all, helpers.

Back alley beef?

So a crazy thing happened to me tonight.  I was at a gas station at about 6pm, and there was one old lady working.  There were several guys there getting fuel and snacks and lotto tickets and such, and she seemed kindof overwhelmed.  I went to get some pepsi, but it was out.  I told the lady, and she kindof looked crestfallen and promised me that she’d change it right as soon as she was done helping the other gentlemen.  I waited a bit until she was done, then she came around the counter flusteredly and went to get a new box of pepsi.  I offered my help, and she accepted readily, so I took the box and swapped it out in about 20 seconds or so.  She seemed pretty impressed and said I could do her job for her!  I said that’s okay, I have a job, but I would take a free drink.  She agreed quickly that that was a bargain.  Anyway, as I was leaving, a guy who was a little bit drunk and wearing a steakhouse hat asked me if I liked beef.  I asked him if he was selling some, and he showed me his pickup, which had a freezer in the back.  He told me his tale of how he works for a company that sold packaged meat in boxes and how a customer of his wasn’t answering her phone calls and he needed to get rid of the order so that he didn’t have to take it back and have it re-inspected.  He tried really hard to sell me about 8 cases of meat, AND a freezer!  ALL for 1300 bucks.  I sensed some sort of injustice going on, and I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t happening to me.  I told him to wait a moment.  He gave me a brochure, and I looked up the company name on the brochure, using my excellent reconnaisance techniques.  I made several discoveries.  The company, Ranch House Quality Meats.  Several dozen absolutely horrendous reviews instantly exploded before my eyes, stories so wretched, too horrible to be retold here in the material plane, stories of injustice, fraudulence, and bad customer service.  I made many inquiries to the man about these stories, questions that I truly hoped he could answer.  (I love me some beef, I mean really)  The man had nothing but inconsistent answers for me, and he evaded answering nearly every one of my questions.  He even wanted to cook up a steak for me to show me that its quality was truly the best.  After a long debate, and calls made to his manager, who told me that no one was pointing a gun to my head and hung up the phone, I sent the salesman away.

I am so mad that that was a poor deal.  I wanted my goddamn back alley beef.  Plus a brand new, never-plugged-in freezer which would normally cost me a thousand dollars.  Stupid Lowe’s.  Don’t they know they could be selling that exact model of freezer for 400 dollars more than they are?  That one even came with the warning labels pre-ripped-off!  I hate having to rip those damn things off myself, they get so sticky.  I was also impressed with the pickup truck they carried it around in, It was completely tag free.  I wish I had the balls to drive around without license plates.  Oh, and the meat!  Already vaccuume-packed, no dates required!  Those expiration dates are so annoying.  Who do they think they are, giving me an ultimatum on my consumption!?  I’ll eat when I want to.  Those men should have bought the beef themselves.  They could have even gotten an employee discount.  I hated having to send them away, but I don’t buy anything from someone who hangs up on me.  It’s an unbreakable law, unlike gravity.  Be more steadfast than me, dear friends, don’t let silly things like that stop you from making an excellent purchase on some delicious and healthy back alley beef.  Also freezer.

Updates on the wind tunnel.

The design for the wind tunnel has changed significantly.  It is now 24 inches wide by 12 inches tall by 8 feet lonf, I’ll be making it using sheets of one inch thick foam board and an external frame of 2×4s.  The model is going to be 1/12th scale of the full-size prototype.  I will need at least 10mph (880 FPM) of airflow.

That’s all for now, have a great day everyone!

So I’m building a wind tunnel.

I got a little frusterated trying to design a wing without knowing exactly how they would perform in flight.  What I needed was a wind tunnel, so I’ve decided to build one.  It’s going to be 2ft by 2ft by 8ft long, and will get up to wind speeds of about 40 mph.  That’s about 1/3 of what I’ll be flying at, if I can get it.  The wind tunnel will be a blower type, not an induction type.  That means that the fan will be at the back end of the tunnel, not the front.  There will be a plexiglass window about 1&1/4 feet from the end that is 1&7/8 ft by 2&1/2 feet.  I’ll be sure to post pictures as I build it, so keep an eye out.

Update.

Moving to Missouri, I apprenticed myself to a man who has been doing heating and cooling for twenty years.  I want to use natural gas or propane to power the boiler, and one of the biggest uses of that, one of the largest industries involving gas is the heating industry.  Most residential furnaces and water heaters use natural gas. I want to learn as much as I can, so I have been asking a lot of questions while I’ve been working with this guy. My boiler design will be as efficient as I can manage, and The Fish will fly 550 miles on one tank, with no steam loss. Keep watching!

Finding time to design

For the past few weeks I’ve been moving, and working at my new job doing heating and cooling work.  All the work I’ve done on the design has been focused on the boiler.  I’m calculating the volume that the design I have will give me.  From there I’ll be able to determine the amount of btu’s required to heat it up to the right pressure.  Once I have the diagrams of the boiler completed, they’ll be posted.  It’s been slow going, though, all my moving and work is taking up  a lot of time.  I have to be very careful with the design, so I don’t spend a lot of money and materials blowing up the prototypes.  I’m going to be working on the design all winter, so I’ll have the blueprints done by spring.

Course layout.

Okay, so in order to fly accross the Atlantic ocean in this thing, I’m going to make a couple stops along the way.  So, the trip is broken up into 4 main flights.  Starting from Cape Chidley, Newfoundland, and flying to Nuuk, Greenland is the first, and longest stretch at 525 miles.  Then I’ll go accross Greenland to get to Kusuluk, and take off from there and fly to (I’m hoping here) Breiðavik, Iceland.  A trip of 380 miles.  Then I’ll go to the other side of Iceland and take off from Höfn, and fly to Vágar, in the Faroe Islands, a trip of 300 miles.  Then the final flight will be from Vágar to Cape Wrath in Scotland. (250 miles)   The distance between Nuuk and Kusuluk is 465 miles, and the distance between Breiðavik and Höfn is 300 miles.  I’m not sure if I’ll fly those two stretches or not, but it makes the total distance for the trip 2,215 miles.  That’s the trip!  As long as I can carry enough gas to fly about 550 miles, everything will work out perfectly.  Therin lies my task.

TASPU photos.

TASPU model airframe top.

Another view of the top of the airframe model.

A close view of the rear left angle of the model.

A close view of the left side of the model.

A view with the model on its side.

A top front view of the model.

A left side view of the airframe model.

Stage 2

A side view of the top of the model.

The TASPU project.

Hi.  I’m Eric Cecchettini and I am designing and building an ultralight aircraft powered by steam that will fly accross the Atlantic ocean. I am calling it the Trans-Atlantic Steam-Powered Ultralight project, or TASPU because that’s easier to type. I’m also calling it the fish, because that’s where I get the design from.

The idea started as an odd notion. I was sketching various designs for small, personal vehicles, such motorcycles, atvs, jetskis, snowmobiles, and ultralights, when I thought how interesting it would be to have one of each powered by steam. When I came to the ultralight, I thought “that couldn’t be done, you’d need this and this and this…” As I thought about everything that it would require, the problems it faced, I realized that they could all be overcome. But why build a steam-powered ultralight if it can only fly for 30 seconds? I realized that if I could build an ultralight, powered by steam, that would fly accross the atlantic ocean, and then do it, it could potentially inspire people to chase their own dreams, and think that nothing is impossible.

There, that’s out of the way. If you have any questions, or would like to be a part of the project, you can contact me at gunshire@gmail.com