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