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Fanwing Planes?
waimate writes "Up until now, there's been fixed wing, or there's been rotating wing, and that's it. But now thanks to Patrick Peebles, there's an entirely new principle of flight called the Fanwing. Initially developed in secrecy and flown only at night, as reported in this Bulletin article this machine combines the many of the attributes of helicopters and conventional aircraft, but not by combining the worst aspects of both like the V-22 Osprey. The FanWing is a whole new way of getting off the ground, particularly suited to inner city applications. It's only downfall (he he) is that it lacks any ability to glide in the event of an engine outage. Includes videos of the prototype in action."
Will a dainty girl walking on the beach do the first commerical for this?
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What a bizarre-looking bird. Looks like it can be used to provide aircon in the hangers when its not flying.
Baz
The FanWing is a whole new way of getting off
Jeeves, buy me a dozen!
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
So affordable flying cars by next year then? We are a bit overdue.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. -Fight Club
thousands of slashdotters their requests spawning
this server
flies
no more
If it doesnt scale, we will just make a cluster of them instead!
It seems their web server was in the same building than security.debian.org , because it too doesn't show any sign of life anymore.
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
My Right to autorotate shall not be abridged!
;-)
Otherwise it sounds cool, might get one for my ex-wife
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
So that's how those things in Dune get invented. I guess we'll have to beware of the Harkonnen
(Been a while since I read Dune, so don't whine about the spelling).
Ha, it looks like someone took one of those Mississippi River paddleboat steamers and built an airplane around it...
I saw this kinda thing on Monster Garage. I wonder if this plane can mow lawns faster than Jesse James's wild ride.
So the Fanwing is especially suited for inner city applications? I'm guessing it's all chromed up and has a CD player that goes boom boom boom boom da boom.
Interesting. But they picked the wrong name for the design. It should be "Squirrel Cage Fan Wing".
... link directly to videos on some poor shmuck's site. Surely they'll be able to withstand the onslaught of /.'ers. Oh wait... :P
Ironically, the first thing that they'll do is put a big wing on the back of it.
Looking at the model and if it is intended for common man use. I can see Cats finding there ways into this and perhaps little adventrous kids getting into the wings (A great place to hide). And the wings seem to be placed rather high so it it tough for an adult to look into these. And the sound this would be made if it was parked under an oak tree.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"He's developed a batch of inventions - an electric fork for twirling spaghetti,..."
I think that's sort of a "Hello World" for inventors.
I am no pilot, but I can give a view of autorotation. Basically, the rotor can work both ways - rotor turns and drives air, or air running through rotor turns it. So if the engine fails, you declutch the engine and keep the rotor turning as yo descend - fast but not too fast. You use the enerdy of your descent to keep the rotors turning, keeping the rotors on shallow pitch - which also slows your descent. As *just* the right moment, you put the rotors into steep pitch, which rapidly converts the kinetic energy of the rotors into lift - which kills your vertical speed just befor you hit the ground - you hope.
Autorotaion is *much* hairier than gliding a plane, because you have to time things much more precisely, killing your descent at the right moment. But it is *much* better than the alternative (plummetting).
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Your post crashed Xerces due to bad XML. You should have excaped that ampersand in "Copy & Paste."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I was downtown, tooling along the sidewalk on my Segway, when this moron in a Fanwing who was trying to read email on his simputer crashed into me.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Place the cylinder on a table, and press down on it hard with 8 fingers.
Eight fingers?!?? You have eight fingers?
Bart?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Quick! Someone tell me first aid for a pen in my boss's eye!
Well, that depends. If the eyeball has not been puncured, remove pen and flush with water. If the eyeball has been punctured, cover the other eye, strap boss down so he/she/it does not attempt to move or remove the pen, empty supply closet, charge a first class ticket to country of your choice on your boss's credit card, and get out of town. Oh, and call 911 from the airport.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
... he used to mow his lawn with it. Rotary push-mower, I believe it was called.
There's an amusing but morbid story of how he connected a B&O engine to the mower, and ended up flying over two counties and setting a new altitude record before running out of gas and thereby learning that the thing simply does not and, rather terminally, will not autorotate.
Ol' Ms. Winslow's petunias were crushed when he hit the ground, and she went rather catatonic for several months, what with having been working on the begonias a few feet away when the old man splattered, but the story goes that they were prize-winners the following year.
Within my own family, it led to an everlasting fear of lawnmowers. My grannie had her yard turned into a gravel Zen garden, and my father took it even a step further when he married and moved out of the home, choosing to encase the yard in a foot-thick pad of reinforced concrete painted a nasty, hinky green.
I'm the renegade of the family, though, what with being several generations removed from this early air disaster, and have planted my own yard with low-growing, never-needs-mowing golf green fescue. It doesn't need trimming, and I've every opportunity to practice my putting.
True story, all of it, I swear.
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What most people do not understand about light aircraft is that the propellor does not actually provide any thrust; it is there to cool the pilot. This is easy to prove -- just watch how much the pilot starts to sweat if it stops.