China Lake YouFoe Quiz

Here's another pic I found at China Lake Alumni.
The very first pic in the 1962 gallery.
I haven't seen one of these in at least 20 years.
I do know what it is.
Do you?

Mystery Mono at China Lake

Sometimes it pays to repeat a search from time to time.
Previously, when I Googled Monocopter I'd get some of the
usual scattering of model vidclips and discussion, and a whole
lot of that Euro turbofan jetpak, which may be mono, but
aint no copter.  This time around the photo below popped
out at me.  Quite a find.
It was at the China Lake Alumni website, in the photo gallery
page for 1963. China Lake is home to the US Navy weapons
test facilities.  The site search engine, unfortunately, yielded
no other photos or info. I kept the original file name on the pic;
Monocopter perch 16AUG63 CLK SL-027985



I am able to infer a few things from the pic. Foremost is that 
the protuberance on the far side of the hub is not the same as
the wing on this side, so I believe this really is a monocopter.  
The wing is mounted to the hub at the center of lift, therefore  
is probably capable of changing pitch in flight, likely in response
to control inputs to the elevon at the wingtip. If the hub isn't
made from actual truck hubcaps I'll be surprised as hell.   If it's
heavy enough the disk hub will stabilize a rotor despite the lack
of a proper flybar.  I had already designed a monocopter using
a ring shaped hub, although the ring on mine is proportionately
larger in relation to the wing since it'll have no extra internal mass.

Two things are puzzling.
Obviously; what is the powerplant?
The other is the source of the 1/2 round shadow directly below
the hub? You can see that the sun is to the left and the shadows
are stretching to the right, therefore the hub's actual shadow is
to the right as well.

If anyone knows ANYTHING further, PLEASE comment!

Low Flight 2, The Heli Version

Today, while surfing the web for something completely different,
I ran across another version of Low Flight, this time written by
and for helicopter pilots.  I previously posted the original High Flight,
and then Low Flight written for Phantom II crews earlier this year.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                Low Flight

Oh, I've slipped the surly bonds of earth
And hovered out of ground effect on semi-rigid blades;
Earthward I've auto'ed and met the rising brush of non-paved terrain
And done a thousand things you would never care to
Skidded and dropped and flared
Low in the heat soaked roar.
Confined there, I've chased the earthbound traffic
And lost the race to insignificant headwinds;
Forward and up a little in ground effect
I've topped the General's hedge with drooping turns
Where never Skyhawk or even Phantom flew.
Shaking and pulling collective,
I've lumbered the low untresspassed halls of victor airways,
Put out my hand and touched a tree.

-Anonymous

Campitch 1 Monocopter Pt2

On Sept 19, I went to fly with the Alamo Rocketeers over in China Grove.
Since my truck is broken, I went on my Harley Sportster with whatever I could carry in a knapsack. It's been a long time since I did that. You're limited to rockets that are either small enough, or that disassemble. Sturdy is important too. The Campitch 1 is certainly small enough once the flybar is removed. The hard part is getting by while leaving a new 25LB field box at home. It helps to have friends.


The CP1 sitting on a borrowed pad, loaded with a D12-0


After ignition it's only spun 180 degrees and the wing is already extended for ascent at least part way. The pads' rod angle adjuster is slipping.


That's the wing in the foreground after bouncing off the ground, and tossing up a small cloud of orange soil.


The hub is falling after making a respectable altitude, wingless.

No major damage to speak of, but the cam follower pin was sheared off where it came out of the reinforcement plate on top of the wing. The pin was essentially a 2-56 steel bolt. I've already done repairs and replaced the 2-56 with a 4-40 socket head bolt, and widened the
camtrack slot to take it.

In retrospect it's not too surprising that something happened, given the number of MC's that come apart under centrifigal loads. I would've been much less surprised if the 2-56 pin was simply bent but still there. While I was at it, I installed the heavier return spring I had pre-selected as a possible upgrade. I never liked the limited wing attachment method on this model. A secondary safety attachment would be nice, but how to do it without making the next failure worse?

Campitch 1 Monocopter Pt1

This is the Campitch 1.  The 1st of 2 recently finished
monocopters. Both monos employ quite different wing
control mechanisms, but I decided to build both at once
because most of the construction is routine enough to be
a bit boring and I always mix too much epoxy  anyway.  

The Campitch 1 uses a system similar to that of the
Rotary Space Ship that I posted about back in March of
this year. When the vehicle begins to rotate, centrifigal
force causes the wing to slide outward on its' pivot rod,
as it does so, a pin on top of the wing root follows a
cam track causing the wing to rotate from down pitch to
up so that it can ascend.  Once the motor burns out, the
mono will slow it's spin until a spring can retract the
wing, returning it to down pitch so that it can autorotate
for a gentle landing.   No stopping, no falling.  

Now, I've done away with the burn string that the
Mousetrap requires.  After I work the bugs out on D12's,
I'll be able to fly it on my own small moonburn sugar motors.

It was a Gorey Show [sorry]

I can't remember the last time I was hot to go to a museum.
The Cosmodrome when I was in Kansas for LDRS 12?
That was a space related museum, no surprise there.
This time it was the McNay art museum here in San Antonio.
I've driven past it a 1/2 a million times without knowing it
was even there, this time we were pulling in. What snagged
me was a traveling exhibit of the art of Edward Gorey.
We aint in Kansas anymore, for sure.
We managed to get down there on the final day of the exhibit
and it was great. There were plenty of prints of course, a
mere drop in the bucket from a prolific artist, but mixed in
were occasional originals, and pencil layout sketches. One of
the prettiest displays was a cabinet with hand drawn and
watercolered envelopes that Edward sent to his mother over
the years. I'll spare you further descriptions, the book covers
above are adequate examples. The Doubtful Guest above was
my intro to Ed Gorey, it was read to me/us when quite young,
but then I grew up with hippy school teachers.
My brother and his Sylvia were the ones who went with me,
in fact drove me as I had no transportation at the time. Last
weekend was my birthday and they gave me Ed Gorey's
Amphogorey Again, a compilation.  Love it.

The website below is a .net, but it's actually a .com.
http://goreydetails.net/
Other than that go to Amazon for books or simply Google,
there's plenty of E.G. out there.

Flying a better Mousetrap

I've been flying monocopters since 1988. I've also seen
other people fly them. They all shared two common
problems, the first is getting them to stay in one piece
throughout the flight despite the high rotational loads.
I've seen a few fly apart, including some of my own.
Anyone who hangs in there a while, can conquer this
sooner or later.
The second problem is the subject of this post. When
a monocopter's motor shuts off, they typically stop
spinning and fall down. Some falling monocopters will
reaquire spin, either backward or upside down, hopefully
before impact,and make a safe landing.

In short, after getting monocopters to go up reliably, the
next trick is to get them to come back back down safely.
I've seen other recovery methods tried with varied success,
but the coolest will always be autorotation, ie; true 
mapleseed recovery. Spinning up, and spinning back down,
without stopping, without falling.

Last fall, I built the 1st step on this quest. I call, it the Flying
Mousetrap. It somewhat looks the part. Mousetrap has a
wing that pivots around the center of lift. There's a spring that
pulls the wing to descent angle, and a length of string to hold
the wing at ascent angle until the motor [D12-3] ejection burns
it through. This gives a timely transition after slowing to
autorotaion speed, but without falling or reversal. The string is
actually dental floss, it's easy to work with at the field, and it
comes in a neat dispenser WITH a built-in cutter.
Minty fresh too.

I don't consider this to be the best approach to the problem.
It's a simple up/down system instead of being reactive, and it
limits the choice of usable motors to ones with suitable delay
and an ejection charge.  Since I make my own sugar motors,
I would prefer a system that can use them, and they're all
capped.  However, I figured this would be a good first step
that others might prefer.

The 1st flight video was posted by friend John Lee at the time.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23694991@N03/2953720670/

Welcome to the Pirate Art Institute

"Aaarh, Ye be welcome to the Pirate Art Institute"
How many ways can you COPY this pirate?

When wewere kids we would see this art school ad in the back of magazines. "Can you draw this pirate?" or some other bit of cutesy art. "Then enroll today  and have a future as
a commercial artist, bla-bla-bla..."

When my brother and I had a print shop back in the late '80's, it became a running joke early on. Customers would bring us totally crappedout art, or ask for art that we didn't
have, or to infringe on copyrights in a questionable manner.
The Pirate Art Institute to the rescue!
We would clip, photocopy, photograph, trace, or redraw,  then shoot a transparency, use it to expose a screen, and finally silkscreen  print it in [hopefully] vast quantities.
Whatever it took to make a buck.

Anything but FAX!
We refused to install fax service because at least one customer a week would want to fax their art to us.  No, nope, nu-uh, don't do it!  Most fax looks terrible on a good day.  Imagine what it would do to the aforementioned already crapped out art.

What a Bomb

As I perused online photo albums from NARAM-51, I saw
another rocket worthy of note amongst the scale and fantasy
scale models. Fantasy scale designs are rockets and spacecraft
that are serious designs that were never built, or designs that
are entirely fictional in nature.  This is a very nice model of
the Alpha Omega Bomb, the doomsday missile that radiation
fried mutant humans worshipped in the movie, Beneath the
Planet of the Apes.  I didn't quite have a primal moment when
I recognized the model, but the apes in the movie sure did.  
Reading up on the history of the movie, it was Charlton
Hestons idea to set off the bomb at the end of the movie.  
He rather hoped that would be the end of the series. 
No such luck.

All the models entered in competition at NARAM have to fly,
but I doubt the Omega Bomb flew as is. It only has 2 fins.
No doubt the model has a set of removable clear plastic fins
that are added to make it flyable.  Unfortunately, I have no
info at this time on the owner builder, or the photographer.

Quest for New Designs?

When I first saw a pic of what I take to be Quest
Aerospace's dealer table at NARAM 51 I had a primal
moment. I curled my lips back and hooted a few
times while slapping my head. A quick check of the
Quest web site confirmed that what I spotted in the
pic was one of Quest's new kits, the Striker AGM.
Well there's new and then there's new. I've seen that
design before and it takes an old rocketeer to know
where.
Way back when, some of the movers and shakers of
model rocketry got together to create a truly  cutting
edge company called Enertek. To make a long  and
mostly unknown story short, Enertek failed to make it
into production. Gary Rosenfield and/or his company
Aerotech was a major participant, others participants
went on to form Quest. A lot of Enertek tooling had
already been done and this formed the core of
Aerotech's kit line. The Mantis launch pad, the Initiater,
Strong Arm, and Arcas kits. All underwent some changes
minor or major, but there they were.  Enertek was
where C-slot motors and Copperhead igniters [called
Top Shot Igniters then] gestated as well.

A close look at the Astra 2000 will cause a lot of fellow
rocketeers to have a primal reaction themselves, the
critter is obviously based on major components from
a Black Brant II. Nose cone, boattail, and the narrow
waist ring [the white section below the upper fins].
Quest naturally used what was at hand and used a Nike
Smoke nosecone.

I always wanted to build a clone-rok of the Astra 2000,
but being a difficult person, I wanted to stage it and
that upper fin set is dreadfully small. I have cloned a
couple other Enertek vapor-roks over the years, but
that's a story for another day.