MetaFilter posts tagged with helicopter

TEAM GAMERA!

the man of twists and turns — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 20:46:25 -0800

Gamera II is the University of Maryland's Human-Powered Helicopter. So far it has remained aloft for 65.1 seconds and reached an altitude of 9.4 feet, not quite enough to win the AHS Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter competition. Last summer, Gamera II hovered for nearly a minute, and later on set a world record. A subsequent altitude test ended in a hard landing, (via). How Hard Is A Human_Powered Helicopter? Human Powered Helicopters: Straight-Up Difficult AeroVelo is also working on a human-powered helicopter. previously

The basket is a particularly nice touch

unSane — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 12:14:35 -0800

Bicycle Jumping Mercury Morgan He's still at it.

Tokenism

oneswellfoop — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 17:43:46 -0800

The Monopoly game has used the same 8 "base tokens" (car, thimble, boot, scotty dog, battleship, top hat, iron, wheelbarrow) since the 1950s (with a few extras added to "Deluxe Editions"), and since it's been 15 minutes since Parker Brothers' last promotion, they're doing internet voting at their Facebook page to "SAVE YOUR TOKEN". In "American Idol" style, the one with the fewest votes will be replaced by the top-vote-getter among 5 "New Tokens" (robot with mustache, big-ass diamond ring, cat, helicopter, awkwardly-balanced guitar). So far, Scottie Dog has a third of the votes (take THAT, cat people), while Whellbarrow and Absurdly-Oldfashioned-Iron are bringing up the rear. VOTE DAILY to support your favorite "chocking hazard for under 3 yrs. old"

Rex Trailer, New England legend, rides off into the sunset

bondcliff — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 08:39:51 -0800

New England legend Rex Trailer, host of Boomtown from 1956 to 1974, has died at 84. New Englanders might remember Rex's commercials for Crimson Travel, which were a staple of afternoons on UHF. Rex was also a pilot and would often make local appearances in one of his helicopters. Rex will be missed.

Helicopters Are Cool

exogenous — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 05:31:32 -0800

Rescue of a model airplane using a helicopter (five minute YouTube video)

To the heavens and hell

paleyellowwithorange — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 00:28:17 -0800

If I Fly a UAV Over My Neighbor's House, Is It Trespassing? "The wide availability of UAV technology (combined with HD video) scrambles my sense of what is right. Specifically, it points out how much of our sense of privacy is intimately connected up with our expectations of our property rights. Drones - as flying, seeing objects - scramble our 2D sense of property boundaries, and along the way, make privacy much more complicated." Also, Everyone Who Wants a Drone Will Have One Soon. "Let me posit this: Drones will make traditional fences as obsolete as gunpowder and cannons made city walls."

Everything is Incredible

Isosceles — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:09:38 -0800

Agustin is a Honduran shoemaker. Stricken with polio in his youth, he has spent more than 50 years creating something incredible. (SLVIMEO)

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:18:19 -0800

RC Helicopter Kung Fu (Warning! Very silly music!)

Don't worry about that Richard, ring the newsroom

Hartham's Hugging Robots — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 03:02:14 -0800

Television New Zealand have captured some extraordinary, gut wrenching footage of a helicopter getting its rotor blades tangled in cables and crashing on Auckland's waterfront. The pilot has apparently walked away without serious injury.

Lets have a clever caption contest instead

infini — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:22:29 -0800

The sods must be crazy: OLPC to drop tablets from helicopters to isolated villages (Previously)

New York City....

roomthreeseventeen — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:54:58 -0800

from above.

I did put a keycam on my rotorhead

swift — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:20:27 -0800

I did put a keycam on my rotorhead (Three dee MP-EXL) vertically to optimize. (slyt)

Video of the first woman in a human powered helicopter

stbalbach — Thu, 19 May 2011 20:59:28 -0800

Video of the first woman in a human powered helicopter piloting the University of Maryland Gamera Helicopter. Video of the official flight on May 11, 2011 (AP News) More info about the $250,000 Sikorsky Prize challenge (still unclaimed). Other prior human-powered helicopter flights.

"They asked us who we were, and we told them we were civilians from Kijran district."

zarq — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 16:23:17 -0800

A Tragedy of Errors. On Feb. 21, 2010, a convoy of vehicles carrying civilians headed down a mountain in central Afghanistan and American eyes in the sky were watching. "The Americans were using some of the most sophisticated tools in the history of war, technological marvels of surveillance and intelligence gathering that allowed them to see into once-inaccessible corners of the battlefield. But the high-tech wizardry would fail in its most elemental purpose: to tell the difference between friend and foe." FOIA-obtained transcripts of US cockpit and radio conversations and an interactive feature provide a more in-depth understanding of what happened.

Roger, Roger.

gman — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:28:15 -0800

14 high-res panoramas of aircraft cockpits.

AR Drone Helicopters

Biru — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 07:32:24 -0800

Got an iPhone? Always wanted to fly a helicopter? AR Drones allow you to fly a quadricopter with mounted video cameras through your iPhone. The developers' video shows some of the capabilities. The AR of the title refers to the Augmented Reality element brought in by the helicopter's cameras

C'mon Mom, Go Away Already!

dzaz — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:01:54 -0800

When Parents Won't Cut the Cord. As a reaction to helicopter parents (who read books about the stages of grief so they can cope with their kid's growing up), colleges are literally shutting the gates on parents who can't let go.

RC Helicopter filming

mathowie — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 09:29:19 -0800

What happens when you strap one of those new Canon 7D SLR cameras that do HD video to a remote controlled helicopter? You get amazing video, on the cheap. [via]

RC Helicopters Do Amazing Things

Netzapper — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:46:42 -0800

Most people consider the remote control helicopter quite intimidating. As a beginner, your first few hovers are pure white-knuckle terror. Thanks to negative pitch, these little helis can fly inverted. And some people can do truly awe-inspiring freestyle routines (this style of flying is called "3D"). Part of the reason they're so intimidating is that nearly every crash is a total writeoff. Keep in mind, these aren't Radio Shack toys; they sometimes kill people The principles of flight are complex, but mimic full-scale helicopters. Often described as balancing a soccer ball on a broomstick, attaining a hover takes many hours in a simulator (or, here's a free one), and many separate skills. Even after attaining a hover in all orientations, you need hours of airtime before moving to forward flight. And then, there are many advanced tricks that'll take you years to master. Airframe-only kits start at $200US (with no electronics, engine, or transmitter), and a fully rigged competition-level machine can run you as much as a used car. Of course, not everybody's into 3D tricks. Some people go all out on scale helicopters. These use a completely different, much more expensive, rotor head system that does away with the standard flybar system so essential for 3D flight. And recently, through the magic of realtime programming and MEMS gyros, you can simply get a computer to substitute for the flybar, bringing RC helicopters well into the realm of magic--as if they weren't already.

Hexacopter

marienbad — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:45:42 -0800

Presenting the hexacopter fantatsic miniature helicopter with multiple rotors. boy this thing can fly. has camera and gps. single link, wimp.com

Turkey buzzard mistakes helicopter pilot for Santa Claus.

maudlin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:54:06 -0800

Turkey buzzard mistakes helicopter pilot for Santa Claus. No birds or pilots were harmed in the filming of the incident. Too bad about the windshield. (via)

The Kopp-Etchells Effect

krautland — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:42:22 -0800

Stunning pictures by Michael Yon show what happens when helicopters land in dust storms: The Kopp-Etchells Effect is thought to be the result of static electricity created by friction as materials of dissimilar material strike against each other, in this case titanium/nickel blades moving through the air and dust, but a precise definition is as of now not known. Von reports most pilots were unable to provide him with a satisfying explanation for why this occurred but within the comments at the end of the article some speculate this could be related to Triboelectric effect or the nature of the sand crystals in the dust.

An Ingenious Blend of Airplane and Helicopter

veedubya — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:28:00 -0800

What does an aircraft company do when military contracts dry up? Fairey’s answer was to reinvent the helicopter and revolutionize the short-haul airline industry. After 15 years of effort, its unique project, the Rotodyne, came within an inch of achieving that goal. The Fairey Rotodyne, which first took to the air more than 50 years ago, was billed as the world's first vertical take-off commercial passenger aircraft. Fairey talked up expressions of interest from BEA in the UK, New York Airways and the US Army, but the crucial launch order never came. British government policy to rationalize the industry saw the end of the Rotodyne and Fairey as an airframe maker in 1962.

Technology for helicopter parents

desjardins — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:51:56 -0800

Your mother has eyes in the back of her head. Chicago Public Schools sends parents a text message when their child is not in class or the kid's grades slip. Mayor Daley attends a demonstration. Chicago is not the only school district to use this technology. It's used in Calloway County, Kentucky. Memphis, Tennessee, and Saratoga Springs, New York, to name a few. It's not just used for monitoring your kids' grades. In San Antonio, you can also monitor the presidential propaganda that's fed to your kids! But what if you want to monitor the text messages your kids receive? Radar alerts you when a "suspicious" person texts, calls, or emails your kid.

He says every patient is a golden trout. We need to go get those trout.

parudox — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:53:57 -0800

The Deadly Cost of Swooping In to Save a Life (single-page version): Deregulation and America's health care system combine to make medical helicopters increasingly dangerous.