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China's DIY Aviators Take Flight
ScuttleMonkey writes "China’s emerging aviator class is spreading its wings with a plethora of approaches, from the ramshackle to the sophisticated to the potentially revolutionary. They’re using everything imaginable, from old motorcycle engines to electric motors to even their own legs, like Mao Yiqing and his human-powered airplane. You could easily plot these adventurous innovators on a graph, with the X axis showing their skill and the Y axis their financial means."
So as X goes to infinity, Y goes to zero?
The problem with Chinese experimental homebuilt aircraft is, a half hour after you test fly it, you....
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
How is this news? People make homebrew/budget planes and what-not all the time. Remember those idiots with their weather balloon? Does X-Prize mean anything to you?
Coming up next - man grows his OWN food!!1!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
With two measurable qualities, couldn't you graph anything on? # of cabbages sold per day, number of kills I get playing Team Fortress 2 per day. Other than what day it is, they're not related. Unless I just don't know that consuming a cabbage gives me better skills (which is to say, skills greater than 0). Is whoever wrote the summary trying to suggest they're two related qualities? That's a rheatorical question, as I'm pretty sure they are - but I wish I was more suprised that someone made such an inane and baseless statement in a slashdot summary. I mean, you're not writing the article yourself (except in some cases), surely doing a summary that isn't ridiculous isn't too much of a stretch.
Time airborn I assume...
how long until
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Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon, Manny Mota
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Some people will do just about ANYTHING to escape a communist dictatorship.
When W was busy claiming that the west would move to an economy of IP, rather than actual manufacturing, he missed that the 2 work hand in hand. Basically, you need to be able to see how things are done to do the derivative work. Basically, America MUST bring back manufacturing to be able to grow again. America is becoming more and more like Russia; a has-been. Both because they have moved to depending on few incomes.
In the mean time, good luck to these ppl. Hopefully, one day, they will be free to actually enjoy their labor.
Cessna is now outsourcing manufacturing of the new SkyCatcher 162 to China. I wonder how long until a lot of the design is copied by the Chinese into the homebuilt market. We all know how they rapidly produce knockoff products of just about everything. Cessna is reportedly saving about $77,000 USD by manufacturing in China yet the SkyCatcher still costs >$100,000 USD to buy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STvpqWeZ158
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbwV-GWIZz8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRo9UvzgJYM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqa5nyk6hCk
"You could easily plot these adventurous innovators on a graph, with the X axis showing their skill and the Y axis their financial means."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you "easily plot" any 2D set of related numbers on an XY graph?
"You could easily plot these adventurous innovators on a graph, with the X axis showing their skill and the Y axis their financial means."
Great, I could plot something. WHAT THE FUCK WOULD IT MEAN?
You say that as if you need no facts to back it up. Looking around, the best estimates I could find were 3 to 5 percent of the cost of a plane are litigation and litigation-prevention costs. There's also a fairly significant amount for insurance, some of which goes to paying for litigation, but all totaled it still seems to be less than either of the two largest costs, parts and labor.
So, please stop pulling numbers out of your ass.
I wonder how long it'll be before some bureaucracy sees an opportunity to regulate them out of existence. Seems likely that do-it-yourself anything would be scary to the authorities unless you provide the appropriate bribes which demonstrate the safety of your activity.
Sadly most people never get to experience the joy of flight (flying buses don't count). Homebuilt aircraft are less expensive but have a safety concern. I applaud the Chinese for exploring other avenues. I own one of the smallest general aviation aircraft you can get -- a Cessna 150. My annual costs (insurance / hangar / annual inspection / maintanance) run $10,000 - $12,000. Then add in fuel (6 gallons/hour * $3.80/gallon) and you get a real expensive hobby. People love it when I take them flying. Despite the bad press (general aviation is NOT a threat to national security) it would take severe unemployment for me to ever give up flying any type of aircraft. I can only imagine if the US imposes user fees what will happen to non-commericial flying. You want to encourage people to use air traffic control for safetly. Not avoid it to save a few $$$
I have the privilege of being able to inspect a lot of cessnas (couple dozen or so) from fully complete up to date and functional to a hangar fulla parts, and every stage in between, including one crashed one where the bonehead decided to fly his groceries with him instead of buying them where he was going, and didn't estimate his weight correctly and didn't make it. He lived through it, but the plane is chunky style now spread out and he needed a lot of re-constructive surgery from what I hear. (old airport where I live, besides being a big farm, I maintain the grounds and fences and do the mowing, etc)
There has GOT to be a better way to build affordable airplanes. What that might be I don't know, but this old traditional way needs some serious rethinking. Those things are *ridiculous*, and absolutely no wonder why they are expensive and need a lot of reliability insurance, etc. They are made of one zillion tiny pieces of aluminum held together with 100 zillion rivets. Even the ones in good shape aren't capable of keeping their own doors shut if they aren't keylocked, I have to go around and reclose them all the time. I can't see how they keep from getting recalled, rube goldberg doesn't come close to what they are. It's no wonder they need massive inspections and certifications and insurance, etc. and cost so much.
I have no idea on the quality of other brands and makes, but if one were given to me I'd sell it pronto and look around some more.
A huge trend in the near future (0-20 years) will be home and distributed engineering (inventing) and manufacturing. People will trade information on technologies, how-to information, plans, and parts to make sophisticated products in their home or workshop.
This is not to say we're all going to get replicators or nanotech manufacturing like in "The Diamond Age" but the level of sophistication of home built products is going to go way, way up. From small appliances to tools to vehicles to weapons, it'll be possible to make a large number of items in places other than traditional factories, in small quantity and high quality.
To see this sort of thing emerging, look at efforts like Reprap to make a self replicating 3d prototyping machine (which probably won't be 100% self replicating for a long time, but which is a great starting point for at-home applications of the technology) or home CNC machines like router tables and small CNC machine tools. You can buy a CNC milling machine capable of producing small parts eg. for firearms and small engines for less than $3000 with computer. Once these become widespread part libraries for them will be as available as clip-art. Want a new part for your bicycle? Download the pattern, place the raw material in the machine, and walk away.
As quality items become harder to find in mass produced outlets, items made at home will take their place. Any item with a niche market will probably be made in these mini manufactoria... there won't be a profit any more in making small quantity items since there'll be tremendous competition from small manufacturers.
No need to keep an inventory of obscure auto parts on hand (or to pay for storage space or sunk costs in the inventory). Just keep the pattern available and churn out parts as needed. Need a part you don't have a pattern for? Ask someone on the internet to measure their part and make a pattern from it, using the same CNC mill to automate the measurements.
I like the trend myself... but can you imagine the fit the government will throw when it figures out it can no longer regulate eg. firearms because anyone with a CNC mill can turn one out in a day or two? I can see them at first trying to ban home manufacturing, trying to ban precursor items and materials, then trying to create an overarching government agency to police the whole thing.
It'll be similar to recording companies figuring out they're no longer needed since anyone can distribute or purchase music on-line without their involvement.
Likewise I can see large corporate manufacturers of some items begging for a government bail-out because no one wants to buy their mass produced crap any more. Why pay $100 for a cheap wal-mart bike when the CNC machine shop in the next town can produce one with 3x the quality for the same price? Why pay a computer store $35 for a plastic keyboard when you can get a solid brass one with better components made at home?
Erik PS: For those of you that know what this means... we'll be able to evolve an STC pattern for common items :)
When I was young, we escaped to socialist dictatorships. Then we spent a while in USSR prison as it was closest thing to rest we could ever get! And we never complained!
But tell that to youngsters today and they won't believe you.
It takes more than 4 Chinese to build an aircraft, because two Wongs don't make a Wright.
We have so much regulation in this country we just can't experiment with new kinds of airplanes or invent a new way of air travel. Imagine all the red tape you will have to go through just to put the damn plane together.
The FAA has frozen innovation in the airplane industry: we still base our airplane designs in the same basic principles invented 100 years ago because trying something new would require years of research and testing just to comply with their safety requirements.
I predict these chinese inventors will propel a new way of air travel while the US will be left way behind.
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Man no wing fry down frast
It's 1920's-30's tech, sheet aluminum and rivets, a thousand pieces all needing to be meticulously fabbed and machined and drilled, then assembled. It was fantastic when first developed. I mean it works obviously..my Grumman canoe is built exactly the same way and it works pretty well, but it is still bleeding edge 1930s..and these sort of planes costs a mint to make today and two mints to keep working, and a fourth mint for inspections and insurance. that's 4 mints. I think it is time to drop that down to just 1 mint cost.
I think we can go beyond that now, enter the 21st century, maybe something like rutan's models. In fact exactly like rutan's ideas. Likely this is what will happen, composite construction once more manufacturers do it and the engineering and costs drop down and we have a better handle on "carbon nanotubes" and so on, graphene construction. I think that has a lot more potential to both improve quality and robustness and drop costs in the medium and long run today, rather than just keep slapping out sheet aluminum and rivets.