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Category: Archive 2010

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1. Italian hellp Needed
2. What's all the flap  about?
3. The Wind Machine
4. Joe Dashko

Roger,

Just curious since per your rules for the finals you can't use a bike to stir up the air are they going to permit running under the model waving a t shirt or towel to break loose the thermal? Seems like I use to see that in the past as I recall.

Thermals,

Terry Thorkildsen

Terry

At the risk of opening a huge can of worms,. this is an editorial explanation that deliberately takes a middle of road position because this generated a lot of emotion that probably distracted from the event  . .. at the last finals there was some very aggressive moto flapping that probably changed the results of the finals and caused a number of serious safety concerns. Some people said they would not longer participate in the finals because of this, others complained that this was a big advantage to California flyers, others that it was not really true free flight,  etc ... FAI flying in the USA is different that most other parts of the world because of the use much larger use of motor bikes for airplane retreival. Also the surface at Lost Hills lends it self to the use of motor bikes breaking loose a thermal, the same might not work on a tarmac runway or a grass  or plowed field. In other counties people do flap with their t-shirts and many of us remember various Eastern European team managers 25 years ago or so snapping their fingers and getting 20 people t-shirts off under a sagging model.  The FAI still permits all forms of flapping.  Flapping without bikes is permitted in the USA contests, including the finals.  There are a number well known FAI flyers who have lobbied against Moto-Flapping so this rule has made it into the team selection program  and many FAI event organizers have also forbidden it in their regular events. To do this the organizer has to make a statement to that effect in the contest flyer.

There are some interesting things to view regarding my late Father Andrew’s wind machine project.  I just discovered during the last week that the whole question of whether it is possible to sail downwind faster than the wind has been once again hotly debated in just the last couple years with many skeptics declaring that the whole idea is nonsense and dismissing all prior work including that of my Dad as a hoax.  It got so intense that a couple guys built a brand new machine and did some record runs with it just a couple months ago to show the world again that it in fact can be done.  The detailed story is here:  http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/08/ddwfttw/all/1

Also, I have just resurrected some of my Dad’s old 8mm movies of his first machine running in 1969 and have put the clip here for all the world to see:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAkJ_QVbloQ

(That’s him driving the vehicle and the kid standing in front of the first shot is me!)

-Ken Bauer

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