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The Building of Der Fliegen Plastik Adventures with ABS. |
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So there I was, sitting around channel surfing late at night, when what did I see? Dozens of aspiring pilots charging off a dock in homemade 'aircraft'. I sat there mesmerized as these people soared off the dock and into a lake. All the while, generic German polka music was playing in the background. My only thought went something like, "How can I get in on that?" As if to answer, the date and From the first time I saw a commercial for the Flugtag I knew that I had to do it. I mean, a bunch of armatures build their own aircraft and hurl themselves off a dock! How cool is that? It's got building, flying and acting like an idiot in front of a large crowd. Three things I've had a lot of practice at. How could I go wrong? What's the worst that could happen? Never mind that, it's fun right?
'Fun' does not begin to describe it. So, you want to know what it's like to build one of these things? Read on...(and click on the pictures for big versions)
The first thing I needed was a gimmick. Something to set me apart from the competition. Like an airplane made entirely from... plastic? Yes, plastic! How can you go wrong with plastic? It's light, readily available and best of all cheep. Furthermore, I really didn't think anyone else would try to build a plane entirely from plastic. Who would ever think of that?
Right, so plastic it was. First things
first, I needed a wing. Two actually. They had a few very important
requirements. If I was to meet the 30' maximum wingspan, they had to be less
than 14' each. This would have the added bonus of allowing them to fit in my
secret workshop (aka. My Apartment). My first idea was to build a wing with
curved tips like a hang
glider. However, it soon became apparent that surface area would be far
more important than spiffy aerodynamics in my particular application. I squared
off the tips and increased the chord. I wanted a
floater, something that would hang in the air and was willing to sacrifice
aspect ratio.
I sent in the plans and the next thing you know, I get a call at work telling me I'm in. After a celebratory leap onto the desk and victorious shout (which was well received at work) I came to the realization that I was really going to do this. Simple, right? Two weeks and I'd be test flying. Right, let's get started!
Since I was committed to hurling myself off a
dock now, I thought it might be a good idea to run the numbers and see if the
thing would actually fly. I surfed on over to the Foilsim web
page and plugged in the numbers for my wing. I found out that with a few
tweaks, optimistic estimates and a favorable wind, it might just fly! I
mean all I need is a 10 MPH headwind and 15 MPH pushers. San Francisco is
windy... I know people who run fast... and if the wind is straight in I'll get
some ridge lift on the lip of the launch ramp. What could go wrong? (remember
this, it will be important later)
Armed with a shopping list, a borrowed pickup truck, a 10% off coupon and an unsuspecting friend it was time to go shopping at Home Depot. I gathered up a collection of odd pipefittings, gallons of pipe cement and about 80' of tubing and headed for the checkout. The clerk at the cash register asked me what I needed this curious selection of parts. I replied that I was going to build an airplane and fly it into the San Francisco Bay. Conversation was somewhat restrained from that point.
Now we needed a place to work. I hadn't really
figured out where I was going to actually build the thing just yet. It's
funny how little details like that can slip by. Nobody had a spare garage that
wasn't already full of junk, so I decided to just start building behind work.
Luckily for us, a few spare cargo palettes had been left around. These made
great workbenches and in a pinch could be used as a crude form of miter box. It
took about two hours to fabricate the wings. The best part was, when completed,
they were approximately the same length! The left one was maybe 6" longer
but that was very solvable... We were men... We had hacksaws.
Now we had to figure out how to get the two 14' wings (actually the 14' and
13'6" wings) from behind the office to my apartment. There are no pictures
of this task. This is because the owner of the pickup truck we used must never,
ever see how this was done. It would probably be a good idea for the Sunnyvale
Police Department to not see this as well. Fortunately, I live only 3 minutes
from work. It took four people, but we managed to load the wings into my
apartment. I couldn't get to the backroom or bedroom without stepping through
the wings, but as a great aviator once said, "Sacrifices
must be made."
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The tail boom
was relatively easy to do. It did, of course, require one more trip to Home
Depot. They know me now and don't ask questions when I start laying out
intricate patterns of pipe on the floor. I combined trips and pick up supplies
for both the tail boom and cockpit in one stop. I'm all about efficiency. This
time I conned Brian into helping me out. He in turn conned his wife, Patty, and
daughter, Michelle, into helping. It was a regular family affair. The tail went
together very quickly. Later I would find out that this was due to the fact
that a few of the joints did not actually get glued together. I thought Patty
was out to sabotage the team. But it could have just been the lack of sleep and
copious amounts of caffeine.
While I still had the whole Reed
family onboard, we started work on the cockpit. This was basically going to be
a cage slung under the wings. Later we would cut up a plastic Rubbermaid™ box
to use as a proper seat. An axle would also run across the back of the cockpit
for the wheels. The air
speed indicator would be mounted on a small spar extending up and to the
right of the pilot's position. At this point, the wire bracing has not been
installed. As a result, it must be supported by hand.
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By this time I was starting to get a little fed up with the clutter in my Secret Workshop (aka. apartment). Any sort of domestic task required contorting around various pieces of Der Fliegen Plastik. Additionally, if I ever fully assembled it in my apartment, it was going to stay there for good. Clearly a better solution was needed. That's when some good luck and the bad economy smiled on us. Artisan Components had out grown it's old building and moved to a larger one. Due to a monumentally bad economy, the old building sat empty. Behind this building was a fenced off area with shed. The perfect "Secret Storage Location". Three truck loads of supplies and one new pad lock later the shed was ours! We now had storage (fenced off area), a place to work (the shed), and a testing ground (the empty parting lot). It was time to try to fit all of the assorted pieces together. Unfortunately, this was going to take some work. We made a few attempts to work on the craft during lunch breaks. However, at this stage it took about 30 minutes to drag out all of the components and another 30 minutes to put them away. About all we accomplished was hacking the wings down to [the same] size and deciding that two left wing would probably be less efficient than one right and one left. Clearly we needed a work party on the weekend. I called everyone I knew and tried to put something together. |
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Everything might have appeared to be going exactly as planned, but in truth the plan was changing almost as fast as the progress. The tail section went through three or four different designs. None of them worked exceptionally well. In the end, the tail boom was the least bad of all the designs, but not ideal. The wings were posing a problem too. While designed to be flexible to aid in weight shift control (not that control was going to be an issue), they were proving to be very flexible. I decided that washout limiter cables would be needed to support the trailing wing tips. Also, the leading edges were beefed up with a second tube increasing rigidity and making it a better airfoil. This was inspired by a article in The Oz Report. I wasn't sleeping much by this time. I would go to work in the morning, pick up supplies at lunch and build or plan at night. Thankfully, every few weeks the kind people behind the event would send me a pack of Red Bull. The most inspired comment in all these plans has to be:
"Buy beer and new hacksaw blade w/ lots of teeth"
That sums up everything quite well. The battens were fabricated according to the plans above, but I'm not sure they did any good at all. The push bar assembly worked all right for holding everything together during assembly, but made setup awkward and was removed for the event.
The day of the work party finally arrived.
During that day, we had about 6 or 8 people show up at one time or another.
Even a few hang glider pilots who had got wind of the project stopped by. The
first to show up was the Reed family. They finished assembly of the tail and
this time I checked to make sure all of the joints were securely glued!. We
fixed the boom onto the airframe and covered it with black stretch film.
Shortly after this, Don, a fellow hang glider
pilot, arrived (slick car, eh?). Here's the best part though... He brought his
girlfriend. More hands! Chances are if you showed up, there was something for
you to lift, pull wrap or tie off. As you can see, we finally got all of the
rigging sorted out, but had yet to install the rear wheels/push bar assembly.
The people from Red Bull and TechTV showed up to film this and, of course, the
tail boom broke off as soon as the camera's started rolling. This lends support
to the theory that cameras and aircraft do not mix... ever!
We managed to assemble the whole aircraft for
the first time that day. Once it was assembled, there was only one thing left
to do: Test It! Sure, the wings weren't covered and the cockpit seat wasn't
quite ready, but this was the first time it really looked like an airplane.
Actually, it looked somewhat like what you would get if you crossed an ultra
light (and not a really spiffy one)
with the plumbing system
of a small apartment block. We faced the craft into the wind (a formality, I
admit) and I took a seat in the cockpit. When the wind was blowing in straight,
my launch crew started pushing! On the first pass, the aircraft did not achieve
flight. On the return trip I almost did. As the pushers hit peek speed, the
nose dropped. This allowed my left heel to contact the ground. When my foot
stopped, Der Fliegen Plastik transferred a sizable portion of it's energy to
the back of my leg. This served to catapult me from the cockpit. I was limping
for a few days, but it was worth it!
To prevent this from occuring again, I fashioned a seat from a large plastic cargo box. It was secured to the frame by a few lengths of nylon rope. This gave me a seat with a back and allowed me to keep my feet of the ground. problem solved. Well, there was the small problem of the cockpit becoming disconnected from the rest of the aircraft, but we would solve that soon. Oh, would we solve that!
We would be flight ready after only one more weekend. We tensioned the wings for the first time, added a goofy system of poly string to spread the wing loading more evenly (upper left), attached the battens (which were a pretty bad idea I had to admit) and smashed our heads against various parts of the frame no less than six times. Then we covered the wings with black stretch film. Is there nothing it can't do?
While Michelle gooped up all the holes with silicone seal (hey, it was supposed to float), I installed the ASI. POOF Done!
Of course, I use the term "done"
loosely. The contest was still a week off or so and we are engineers... John decided that we needed cannons. Cannons?
Yes, cannons. Plastic cannons. They fired soft Nerf sharpened fiberglass rods.
Safety first you know. Above are pictures of what you get when your network
goes down and you give a bunch of engineers a few hours with stray bits of PVC,
ABC and elastic bands. Effective range: 100+ feet. Not bad.
So that's how we built Der Fliegen Plastik. I really couldn't have done it
without the help of every body here. That being said, I'm sure we could new
each knock off a similar aircraft in a few days if we had the right material
available. If anyone ever films a few episode of the A-Team where the Team must escape
certain death by building an airplane while trapped by enemy fire in a plumbing
supply store, if they could find us, maybe they could hire... Team Fliegen!