The USS Macon was a military airship operated by the United States from 1933-1935. Retired computer engineer Jack Clemens spent two and a half years building a 20-foot replica that flies for 45 minutes at a time:
The Macon was an airship, not a blimp, meaning it had a rigid hull. A backbone made from 12 circular frames connected with strips of wood called longerons gave the 785-foot-long craft its form. Clemens wanted to mimic the structure in his model, so he built a jig to ensure that the frames--made from thousands of balsa-wood sticks--were precisely the right size. Although the Macon’s skin was a mix of cotton muslin and metal-colored sealant, Clemens’s model used Mylar because it was lightweight, tough and the right color.
Clemens calculated that to get his craft to fly, he would need a total of eight small model-airplane propellers anchored to the sides of the frame. “It takes very little propulsive force to move an airship,” he explains. The propellers are powered by a single 2.5-ounce lithium-polymer battery that sits in the nose of the craft and helps balance the weight of pulleys and servomotors in the tail.
The airship takes up a lot of room in Clemens' home, so he hopes to donate it to a museum. http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2011-04/you-built-what-retired-engineer-crafts-colossal-gliding-model-1935-airship | Photo: Cody Pickens
Comments (4)
Center of Science and Industry, and the CORKS club, Central Ohio Radio Control club..
sorry, i suffer from CRS.
Lew Grey was a Renaissance man and he was an actor, a science nerd, builder of RC aircraft.
TimW
In one stroke he doubts God, but then expands the beauty of God to the universe… and states that our beliefs are as limiting to Gods true beauty as limiting our understanding of the flower to only its surface “one centimeter”
There’s a helluva lot in that one little video…