A Plane Hacker

http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/index.html

by pg • 18 years ago

49 24 18 years ago

home.hiwaay.net

jkent• 18 years ago

"I'll do 160 mph at 32 mpg at 9500'or 10,500'... so clearly flying is cheaper than driving, and I don't have to stop and buy lunch!"

Brilliant. Why don't more people do this? (Aside from landing fees and weather etc, still very cool).

dhuck• 18 years ago

5000 hours just to get the thing in the air - kind of ruins the whole thing from a purely cost advantage perspective. Just imagine what you could build in 5000 hours...

Not to take any credit from this guy at all. He deserves mad props (heh heh) for this project. Truly a hacker in every sense of the word.

PieSquared• 18 years ago

You don't need to imagine - I'll tell you what you could build: you could build an airplane!

that's actually pretty cool, and IMO definitely worth the time. I mean, how many people can say they've build planes?

dmoney• 18 years ago

> Truly a hacker in every sense of the word.

Except the ones that involve computers.

tptacek2• 18 years ago

You mean, aside from the landing fees, the weather, the fact that General Aviation accounts for most air fatalities, the fact that flying at 10k ft puts you right in the worst of the weather, the fact that you need to be instrument rated to reliably use a light airplane as transportation, and the fact that if you screw up any of the mechanics, you die?

Awesome hobby. Mad respect. My wife was taking private pilot lessons in A2 a few years ago; I wish I could have found the time, and I keep prodding her. But this is not a reasonable mode of transportation for normal people.

krschultz• 18 years ago

As opposed the parking fees in NYC that people pay? The traffic they endure? Which has a higher fatality rate flying or driving? Have you driven through a snowstorm? If you drive into a tree you die too.

The safest thing you could do is sit home on your computer all day, it would also be extremely boring. Life is not made up of driving to and from a cubicle and typing on a computer. I would much rather take the 0.0001% chance of dieing while doing something fun than the 100% chance of living an entire life that is devoid of any meaningful experiences.

dcurtis• 18 years ago

He suggests his plane gets better gas mileage than his car.

People keep asking, "Where's the flying car?" Well, we have it. It's called an airplane.

marvin• 18 years ago

Not quite, but almost close enough. You'd have to create a plane which can take off and land vertically. This can probably be accomplished with a tilt-rotor design, where some performance tradeoffs will have to be made.

Whoever is capable of creating a cheap general-aviation VTOL aircraft will be rich. Technology development in aviation moves at a glacial pace, but only because everyone is afraid to be sued or crash. The "crash" risk can largely be mitigated with emergency parachutes, whereas the "sue" risk is a question of politics. Not technology.

One final note - the MPG rating for aircraft only accounts for about half the running cost of operating an airplane. Engine maintenance is horrendously expensive, and all too necessary given that small planes only have one of them.

watmough• 18 years ago

Hmmm, this makes me want to go pick up a share in a 152 and do some more flying.

That does look like fun.

mrdorian• 18 years ago

this is the coolest thing a hacker could actually make

pc• 18 years ago

No, that would be a synchropter - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchropter

rms• 18 years ago

killer robots?

ctkrohn• 18 years ago

Awesome. I always wanted a pilot's license, but I've only logged 30mins in the cockpit alongside an instructor.

jcromartie• 18 years ago

Also notice that he's a real VW man with that classic Scirocco 16V. What's up with hackers and VWs?

petercooper• 18 years ago

I'm only saying this because no-one else will, but how many of us thought "cute chick flying a plane!" then read "barely 11 years old" and almost died of shame? Anyway, still a great project :) I couldn't even have imagined flying a plane now, let alone at 11.

rtra• 18 years ago

I wasn't expecting a child with that headgear, so i just passed by noticing a blond chick and was like "nice..." :-)

BioGeek• 18 years ago

I also liked this picture of a girl with a fitting T-shirt: http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/corvair/cc2002/02052770.jpg

djm• 18 years ago

Awesome. It's always inspiring when you see somebody making stuff like this for themselves. Reminds me of something I read last year about a Nigerian student building helicopters out of old cars - see http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/homemade-helicopter/nigerian-man-...

jobeyonekenobi• 18 years ago

I can't quite remember when I saw it, but it was an amazing self build, all stramlined - even the rivets had been made flush with the body work. I think it was an employee of Scaled Composites who did it for a learning experience to pick up credit with work. I remember being pretty amazed. Can I find it doing a search? Nope. I wish that I could remember just a little more!

A Plane Hacker

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