Hi all,
Thank you for all your comments, interest and ideas.
Here are some images you may be interested in addition to what I posted before.
1 Manikin
After I settled down my rough ideas for the flying machine, I decided to make a manikin first which would help me judge all of the criteria that I will need to use during the modeling process, such as dimension, proportion, balance, materials and ideas.
This is kind of a sketch model project so I’m not really serious about technical detail, but I know this manikin will help me approach all modeling information faster.
For example, you don’t need a ruler to measure to figure out the seat height and width and so on because the manikin is there as a reference.
So I made it quickly. It is 95 percentile manikin data based.
It’s quite a simplified version but it has all necessary joints to pose quickly.
2 Suspension system and wheels
Wheel design is based on an invention drawing from older times. It is quite an advanced type but not the modern type and I used flat springs for the suspension system for smooth landings.
3 Steam engine and wing motion actuator
I just picked the symbolic shapes and modified and then put them together as chimney, boiler tank, pipes … from early steam engine pictures…not worrying much about real working engine mechanism details and I arranged all the parts into compact space behind the pilot.
4 Controls
This took a lot of time to figure out how I could make it fly in some sense.
There are tail (rudder) controls with foot, side wing motion controls in the front and a power control (side lever).
Front gauge indicators are just for the engine and the actuator condition display, not for the navigation kind of information. You just need your flying senses like birds have.
5 Assembled view
Finally, basic functions and shapes are put together well and I still think it needs more detail but I decided to stop adding details because it shows enough most of the ideas that I had planned earlier on.
6 Assembled view with pilot (manikin)
7 Wing structure
This was another difficult challenge for me to make it a nice early-looking wing structure design.
I searched several different designs and ideas for wings.
I chose three famous inventors’ ideas; Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519, Otto Lilienthal 1848-1896, and Gustave Whitehead 1874-1927. Among them Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches (bat wing shape) really fascinated me. The overall design idea and details are simple and easily understandable. It’s kind of a message to us we can fly like a bird. And he did it five centuries ago! So I took some ideas from above inventors’ sketches and models.
8 Flying
During this project, there were some minor struggles to figure out tool functions and because of limitations, especially object handling tools. Of course, I am learning new Moi tool functions whenever I open it.
But overall, it is quite an interesting project for me because I never tried to create something like this before using our ancestors’ ideas, the technology and the materials from that time. It’s like time travel and I have learned many things, especially “how we get to really fly.”
scrw
