Recent content by Highplains

Carl Goldberg invented the technique.

I actually met Paul Moeller back in the early 80’s through a third party. He wanted a hot shot RC pilot to fly one of his early designs without supporting safety wires. His design at that time use entrained air as a method of increasing lift. What he really wanted was someone to do a lot of...

Wasn’t the Polan Special also based on the MM?

Birds do more takeoffs than landings.

A guy I worked with at a couple companies built a motorcycle for a mileage event while he was in college. The challenge was to go 55 MPH on 4 Oz of gasoline, so he built a streamliner out of fiberglass with a 125 cc engine, tall gearing, and the carburetor from a 50 cc engine. He managed a bit...

Image that, I thought the term Cosmic implicitly implied that. https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrsp-2013-3

The next ice age was the concern in the 70’s, during the last one which lasted about ten time longer than the brief warming period we currently enjoy, left the world’s population at a meager million or so. These cycles happen like clockwork meaning it has more to do with external influences...

The majority of natural gas is CH4, which is abundant and not called Ethane, but is correctly called methane. While the Brits tend to call it Me-thane, Yanks know it as Meth-thane. Because it is a gas and not a liquid, it is easily used in stationary applications. Of course with the correct...

I use on average about 8,000 gallons of diesel a year for the tractors, sprayer, combine, and semi’s to farm nearly 3000 acres of corn and wheat. The equipment is large and very efficient. The sprayer uses maybe a tenth of a gallon to spray an acre, a tractor pulling a 24 row planter well...

Our entire vehicle system is based primarily on liquid fuels. Contrary to the noise from big oil, ethanol works well in virtually any car produced the past 20 years in blends up to 40%. Testing has shown that E30 hits all the marks, of higher power and lower cost. Perhaps the worst idea that...

I am curious why you only mention an odd number of cylinders for a two stroke engines?

Interesting thread, though it seems like the problem of powering light personal single seat planes goes back decades. After it is all hung out to dry, cost is a major factor as well too low of a power to weight with the current crop of available engines. The two ideas that seem to have the...

The safest plane may be the Cub. It can just barely kill you.

At that size, Robart almost makes retracts that would fit.

Back in the mid-60’s radio control had what they called Class II models for competition with rudder/elevator/motor for a control system. Marvelous flying models, about the only thing they couldn’t do was knife edge flight. They rolled quite well and could fly inverted for as long as you wanted...