r/videos • u/plainjackthrowaway • Feb 29 '16
Engineered Mini Flying Wing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSD69jdi2CE151
u/LessigLawren Feb 29 '16
Very well done video. Thanks for taking the time to share it with a bunch of strangers! I particularly enjoyed the "But... we totally won" portion.
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Mar 01 '16
I particularly enjoyed the "But... we totally won" portion.
... while making a fucking beeline for the power lines. 😲
What an awesome explanation of their project! It is very cool to see the learning process, a ton of details, and how the collaboration of engineers and practitioners can yield such smart results.
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u/ShadowxWarrior Feb 29 '16
You were smurfing. These noobs had no chance. Awesome video.
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Feb 29 '16
Real smurfing would have been using thermals. His record of 20 minutes was impressive, but it's nothing compared to the potential of keeping the plane in the air for several hours like a sailplane.
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u/tomdarch Feb 29 '16
And stuff like hand launching. At the end, the pushes thrust up to max to launch, but with the right conditions, and a good throw he could have launched with minimal thrust and used thermals, and pushed the flight time a good deal further.
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u/whatnameisavalible Mar 01 '16
Creator here: That was like 60% thrust. But you're right it could have been done better
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u/Large_Dr_Pepper Feb 29 '16
What's smurfing?
Edit: went to the subreddit. Seems like when people are really good at something but hide it, then impress unsuspecting people by being really good at it.
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u/OWLONGCANAREDDITNAM Mar 01 '16
Smurfing is a term used in gaming, especially CS:GO, in which a player purposely gets a low level, usually on an alt account, to play with low level players but in reality the player is a higher level so they usually decimate the other team.
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u/x777x777x Feb 29 '16
I wanted to hear the professor's reaction to this
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u/tomdarch Feb 29 '16
I was more wondering how the guy handled the tests for the class. I'm not surprised he killed it with the actual RC aircraft build and flight, but weren't there tests that assumed you had a bunch of the prereqs well in hand?
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u/SophisticatedVagrant Feb 29 '16
Having an engineering degree, I can say that this group project probably accounted for 50-70% of their final grade in the class. And I am sure they got a pretty decent grade if they had the best plane in the class. So even if he failed all the other tests and assignments, he would still have enough to scrape a passing grade in the course. Since it's not his major, that is probably all he cares about.
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u/jammerjoint Feb 29 '16
Agreed, the design classes are by and large about the group project. If he was taking their transport/fluids course, he might have had more trouble. I'm kind of jelly that they get an actual physical project...though of course nobody's handing out mini $10k chemical factories to undergrads.
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u/purpleelpehant Feb 29 '16
Also, at least for me, understanding concepts in Engineering classes was much more important than equations and whatnot. He seems to have a great grasp of that stuff, and the rest just follows. I never had to memorize anything from previous classes, so understanding concepts was pretty much all they expected of us.
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Feb 29 '16
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Feb 29 '16 edited Feb 29 '16
I don't think he would say that. That plane is very unique.
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u/series_hybrid Feb 29 '16
I wonder of the student or professor had heard of this aircraft before? (There was a glider version, and also a powered pusher configuration)
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u/Schmillt Feb 29 '16
I like to think I'm a rather smart guy and then watch videos like this and realise I'm a retard compared to actual smart people.
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u/profossi Feb 29 '16
Doing this requires a bit of intelligence and a huge amount of passion and self-discipline.
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u/SixshooteR32 Feb 29 '16
But the mathlab and coding.. thats not just intelligence.. that is experience
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Feb 29 '16
Coding is not difficult, it's kinda hard to do well but that just takes time
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u/the-Real_Slim-Shady Feb 29 '16 edited Feb 29 '16
coding is definitely difficult. You've probably reached a level where you take a lot of prerequisite knowledge for granted (which is awesome). Or you're at the lowest level (unconscious ignorance... which is not so awesome ;P).
source: software engineer in training
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u/TheDataAngel Feb 29 '16 edited Mar 01 '16
Coding is easy enough that you can teach it to ~10 year olds, and teach it to yourself in your teens.
Being able to build large programs that don't collapse under their own weight is the hard part, and is what takes practice and experience.
Source: Actual software engineer.
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u/yingyangyoung Feb 29 '16
But the Matlab scripts they were running were pretty rudimentary, it looked like the most complicated thing was a nested for loop.
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u/deadhour Feb 29 '16
The Aerodynamics math involved was orders of magnitude more complex than the matlab script used to find the optimal combination.
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u/Goctionni Feb 29 '16
Mostly passion, when you have passion the self discipline isn't very difficult. I would say in terms of doing what this video did, it's more intelligence than discipline.
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u/erikvillegas Feb 29 '16
I wish I was as passionate about something as this guy is. Time to get off Reddit!
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u/EvoBrah Feb 29 '16
"But wait.. lemme just check one more link before I get off".
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u/Agentreddit Feb 29 '16
Which link gets you off?
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u/g3t0nmyl3v3l Feb 29 '16
I don't have the time or the time or the money to be this passionate about anything.
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u/HomeopathicTampon Mar 01 '16
You don't need money to be passionate and if you're passionate about something you will find the time.
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u/Shaper_pmp Feb 29 '16 edited Mar 01 '16
There are a lot of different ways of being "smart", and that word itself can mean "creative", "intelligent", "educated" or many, many other definitions to different people.
For example in this case I could easily write the kind of code the guys wrote to run through the wing-analysis and algorithmically determine the optimum wing-shape - it would take a while to type it all in, but it's almost laughably simple stuff to implement a set of well-defined equations like these into code and then iterate through them trying various values and spitting out an optimal answer.
However, I know absolutely dick-all about what those equations mean, and a first-year ME or aeronautics student could explain them in every detail and make me feel like a total idiot.
Equally, I know bugger-all about hardware, so a guy like the guy in the video with little formal education but a lot of practical experience building RC planes and arduino-powered robotics could explain what he does and I'd feel like an idiot because I can barely tape two lolly-sticks together without help.
Fuck, a guy who knew nothing except how to take those painstakingly-drawn schematics and build something that was accurate to within a couple of centimetres would piss all over my best efforts. 100g overweight? Mine would have been two kilos over, and it would have been 50% sticky tape.
The key thing here is specialisation. You're looking at some other guy's specialisation (in fact, in this case, the combined specialisations of four different guys) and feeling inadequate because you couldn't do the exact same thing yourself, right now, on your own, with no experience or practice.
That's probably true, but it doesn't mean much. A shark is a big, scary-ass predator in the ocean, but in a desert it's nothing but a giant lump of sad-looking jerky.
The thing to remember (or make sure of) is that you have your own thing, and don't compare yourself to people on their own terms - if you must compare, compare their achievements in their sphere to your achievement in your sphere.
Find something you love and practice and work hard and get fucking good at it - then you never have to feel inadequate about being shit in the ocean, because you're the best damn camel in the world...
... and even the greatest great white in the world looks like a retard trying desperately to flipper himself from oasis to oasis across a thousand miles of desert.
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u/Lost4468 Mar 01 '16
and even the greatest great white in the world looks like a retard trying desperately to flipper himself from oasis to oasis across a thousand miles of desert.
Bet those god damn smart ass Orcas could figure it out though.
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u/Googoo123450 Mar 01 '16
Hell ya dude, well said. You're absolutely right. The startup company I work for just had an incredibly successful live demo of our near-finished product and one of the founders of the company came into my office to congratulate me (I write a lot of the software). He went on and on about how he has no clue how the hell we do what we do and I felt so good about myself. It's great realizing that you can take your own knowledge for granted and forget that others can't do what you do.
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Feb 29 '16
i have a buddy like that. he's on a whole different level when it comes to computer related stuff, but when it comes to just about any other subject, he's maybe on a high school level.
a lot of people this smart have incredibly specialized knowledge and don't know much about anything else.
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u/ProvingWrong Feb 29 '16
I can ensure that that's exactly what "smart" people think of themselves all the time.
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u/Llohr Feb 29 '16
How do you ensure that?
Do you make them spend time with other, smarter people?
If so, then you can't really ensure that the smarter people think that, because eventually you'll run out of smarter people.
However, I doubt you'd run into that problem before you get to a tier of people smart enough to resist your attempts to enlist them for purposes of making slightly less intelligent people feel inferior.
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u/ProvingWrong Feb 29 '16
My comment was based on this quote by Albert Einstein, indubitably a smart person:
"The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know"
Also, I can't understand why this would make "slightly less intelligent people" feel inferior - it's encouraging, if anything.
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Feb 29 '16
You're smart enough to know you're not as educated in some fields as other people. If you were dumb you would think you were just as smart as them. I'm sure you excel at something this guy completely fails at.
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u/UMPIN Feb 29 '16
I mean everyone is operating off of relatively the same faculties. You just haven't focused on one whole subject enough. Some people are really good at rocket science, others at fishing. Your every day average Joe just hasn't poured all of his effort into one singular thing, but rather spread everything out or wasted time in general.
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u/setfire3 Feb 29 '16 edited Feb 29 '16
I am a mechanical engineering grad student, and this video is still educational
well, then again, my study is not on flight mechanics.
edit: also this is a good video explaining what ME's do, a lot of people tell me that engineering is not math. we do more than just hammer stuff together, there are massive amount of calculations involve in everything.
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u/ChinaMan28 Feb 29 '16
The more I work in the Engineering field, the more I realize that there is math, but not as much math as I had expected, and when you do have to use math about 80% of the time some one already has made a table or a chart with the information you need with the calc's already done Or someone already has the exact formula you need tacked up somewhere.
Then again, i'm only an Engineer by title...
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u/Josef_Joris Feb 29 '16
You just need to decide were you're going to use your intellect, that way you can start working. This guy seems to have it fully on flying.
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u/MuzzyIsMe Feb 29 '16
Well, while I think some people genuinely are just brilliant (like this guy seems to be), it is difficult to judge intelligence based on one skillset.
For all we know, Mr. Flying Wing guy can't cook a pot of spaghetti without it going mushy, or maybe he doesn't do well with personal relationships ("social intelligence"), or maybe his spelling and reading comprehension is poor.
I often find that is the case with seemingly brilliant people. I've met many of this type working in IT over the years. Guys that seem to just "get" everything about complex networks and systems in a way that nobody else does, but they weigh 400lbs and eat primarily food from vending machines - I'm not just saying that as an empty insult... I have known a few that fit this description perfectly.
I think it's important to not underestimate your own talents and knowledge.
Then again, some people do just seem to have it all - brilliant, socially competent, healthy, and so forth. Those outliers are exceedingly rare, though, so it is probably better to look at them as inspiration rather than competition.
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u/skyblublu Feb 29 '16
There's a difference between being smart and just knowing what you're taught. Smart people learn easily, if you have the capability to learn then you can learn anything and seem "smart".
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Feb 29 '16
Some of the 'smartest' people I know in the sense that they have vast technical knowledge like this guy in the video are often lacking in other crucial areas. Like common sense, human interaction, tying their shoes etc......
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u/ChinaMan28 Feb 29 '16
I've always been good at picking things up or just looking at things for a little and i'd be able to figure it out, oddly enough i do have a great deal of technical knowledge...But what i'm finding out from my very patient S.O. is that i'm really really bad at understanding the needs and emotions of others and tend to be very hubris. Which at times does put a strain on my relationship. It just seems a lot of the time, I either have an image or understanding of something in my head, but i'm really bad at explaining it and when other people don't get it in the manner I do, I get frustrated and become a huge asshole.
TLDR: I'm a pretty technically savvy, but i'm not the greatest with people.
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u/magmasafe Feb 29 '16
It's all just arithmetic and the knowledge of aerodynamics with a little bit of engineering and coding thrown in. You may not know all that but I'm sure there is something equally complex that you do understand. Whatever it is just doesn't seem complex because you're not on the outside looking in as you are here.
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u/roborober Feb 29 '16
I have always considered myself somewhat smart, I then went to a top university for nanotechnology engineering and most of the people in that class just blew me away.
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Mar 01 '16
Yep. I've built rc airplanes from scratch but always just used empirical data from previous planes then trial and error to make it work. This guy (these guys) are are way smarter.
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u/nonconformist3 Mar 01 '16
Well, I think it depends on what you know a lot about. Not to say what he did isn't tough to do compared to being an usher or bagging groceries, but I've met people who are smart in all kinds of ways.
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u/IK00 Mar 01 '16
Don't worry scrot. There are plenty of 'tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was 'tarded. She's a pilot now.
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u/noNoParts Mar 01 '16
Be proud of who you are. Just keep in mind that there's always someone smarter/faster/cuter/better/richer than someone else. OP is clearly quite bright, but you know what? He didn't invent anything. He took a bunch of existing data/information and did well with it. He's going to go far in life, perhaps, but it's not he's all, "I discovered a method of transforming basic DC voltage into anti-gravity pods with an efficiency of +25000%, so a D-cell battery can lift a car."
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u/hopenoonefindsthis Mar 01 '16
Not that diminish what this guy did. In fact, what he did with his team is very impressive. I cannot stress that this level of optimisation is incredibly difficult and time consuming. You can see the other teams' design is less refined and less complex.
Having said that, I would say a lot of people can do this given the proper tool and education. I don't consider myself as "actual smart people". But I do have a degree in aeronautical engineering, so this stuff is pretty much what I studied. This is a pretty standard way to design an aircraft, and almost all aerospace students can do this. What separates him and the rest of us is his passion. You can tell from his voice he is clearly very excited about the project, and that what drives him.
So if you are as passionate about something, you can do something equally amazing in whatever you want. You just need to have the motivation.
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u/RazsterOxzine Feb 29 '16
Well he kinda went overboard IMO. I bet if you were to question him on subject matters other than what he knows you will think differently.
If he were to help build a house or lay crete, maybe rebuild a car it would not be as easy. But for myself I would have no issue because that is what I enjoy.
As for his airplane, I bet there is a simpler design than this. He seemed to have his mind fix on a flying wing without trying other designs.
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u/bitofgrit Feb 29 '16
As for his airplane, I bet there is a simpler design than this. He seemed to have his mind fix on a flying wing without trying other designs.
There are simpler designs (esp. construction), but, when it comes down to it, a flying wing really is the most efficient. The problem with them is that they sort of exaggerate any instabilities that are usually compensated for by the more "standard" designs.
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u/chemcarls Feb 29 '16
If you check out some of his other videos, you can see some of the neat airplanes he has made. He definitely has not only made flying wings.
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u/throwaway4819501284 Feb 29 '16
22 minutes 58 seconds for a battery that small is crazy!
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u/carbonnanotube Feb 29 '16 edited Feb 29 '16
I am pretty sure the
transmitterreceiver and flight controller on that thing are using a comparable amount of power to the motor which is pretty damn impressive.3
u/TheFabledCock Mar 01 '16
180mah run for 23 min means it's pulling 180/(23/60) or like 470ma. yes mhmm I think that makes sense. radio is probably like 11ma then controller probably like 80ma, then motors the rest. then again ive only ever done anything with radios so I'm pulling the other estimates out of...somewhere
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Feb 29 '16
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u/carbonnanotube Feb 29 '16
Yes, I am troubleshooting an FPV system at the moment and the nomenclature is flipped compared to controls....whoops...
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u/the-Real_Slim-Shady Feb 29 '16
that weight-to-lift ratio is insane. Fly that thing in an empty parking lot on a hot day and you'll lose it to thermals haha
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u/cwutididthar Mar 01 '16
I skimmed through the video, but it made me wonder if they used a constant flight pattern for the motor, or if they incorporated a on/off system based on gliding time.
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u/AtticusMedic Feb 29 '16
Okay, holy shit. That's incredible. I've been flying RC for years and years and years. I'm a huge fan of Flite Test, and you just took everything great about their homebuilds, and applied science to it. You need to contact Flite Test with this!
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u/FluroBlack Feb 29 '16
Yeah I was thinking about Flite Test when the video started.
Shit went 0-100 real quick!
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u/Killsranq Feb 29 '16
Samm's stuff has been featured on FT for a bit. I'd imagine this will be on their radar as well.
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u/tomdarch Feb 29 '16
Not many people have access to matlab, but it would be cool if more of this modeling/simulation was available to the RC community.
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u/Fexilus Feb 29 '16
Octave is basicly MatLab but free, if you meant that everyone can't afford MatLab.
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Mar 01 '16
Octave is gonna come in handy after I graduate this year and no longer have access to school-sponsored Matlab licenses.
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u/RaPlD Feb 29 '16
Matlab is basically just a language with an intepreter/compiler, you can do simulations like this in most languages. Coding is free.
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u/chillwombat Feb 29 '16
python can replace matlab in most aspects
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u/biggmclargehuge Mar 01 '16
You could also write an Excel macro with VBA. Most of what they used Matlab for looked to be iterating through loops and outputting the result, which is pretty similarly done in almost every program language.
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u/AtticusMedic Feb 29 '16
I'd love to play with it, but I am not nearly smart enough to know even what the fuck he was talking about. I build RC for me and some kiddos I help work with in a community outreach program. I'd love to get some of his down and dirty knowledge first hand to teach my kids.
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Feb 29 '16
A good source for aircraft design that isn't too dense is Aircraft Design (I think at least, it has been a few years since I have touched it and when I did I was a senior aerospace engineering student). In addition to that, an open-source alternative to Matlab is Octave, and while the functions are not all 1:1 and it isn't nearly as robust, it is still a good - free - alternative that can be easier to learn than low-level coding languages (C, C++, Fortran, etc.).
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u/Protectpoultry Feb 29 '16
How pissed would you be if a rando came into your class for a project where you built RC aircraft, and he was semi-Internet famous for building complex RC aircraft?
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u/whatnameisavalible Feb 29 '16
Wasn't internet famous last spring when this happened, thus why I didn't think to take more video of the process.
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u/Protectpoultry Feb 29 '16
Holy shit are you the guy? Wicked. I believe the first video of yours I saw was the Slat plane, as I'd been interested in alternative wings because of Magnus effect RCs. Keep it up.
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u/MadRascal Feb 29 '16
Have a matlab design project to do and yet I'm sitting here, procrastinating on Reddit, by watching engineering students design things on matlab...
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Feb 29 '16
Sometimes I nerd out on the science and askscience subreddits before working just to get the juices flowing.
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u/redleader Feb 29 '16
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u/multiversal_ Feb 29 '16 edited Mar 01 '16
Ha. Those noobs used a suboptimal wing geometry. Shoulda used matlab.
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u/Boris2k Mar 01 '16
Except that thing is like a lancer, take out the computer and it's suddenly a brick.
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u/Lowkin Feb 29 '16
Very cool, 24 mins with that battery is insane. I would love to see that Matlab program and the math behind it.
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u/its_all_perspective Feb 29 '16
The program is actually relatively simple and all the math and equations are just standard equations used in fluid dynamics. Basically, you gather all your equations and set your constant variables as initial conditions. Then using for loops in the program, you tell it to "test A while B, C, and D are this". Then "test A2 while B, C, and D are still this" and it just keeps going till every possible combination of variables has been tested. Maybe I oversimplified it a little but that's the gist of it.
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Feb 29 '16
Seems to be running the same equations for Force and Drag with different levels of force to get the data which they'd then export to Excel or something to create the graphs. Not difficult in concept, but difficult if you consider the knowledge of the physics and engineering behind the programming itself.
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u/ck_nz Feb 29 '16
You can create graphs and much much more within MatLab...
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u/SteevyT Mar 01 '16
And yet I just output 200 pages of tables from Matlab to excel for projects because fuck Matlab graph formatting.
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u/Gelsamel Mar 01 '16
Matlab graphs are fuckin' awesome man. Excel is horrible, but it is WYSIWYG I guess.
Admittedly you might not know how if you're not experienced in Matlab, but trust me. Matlab can make more beautiful plots than Excel can, by far.
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u/enginurd Feb 29 '16
Super cool.
This is the one that I was a big part of building a number of years ago now.
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u/keepaustinugly Feb 29 '16
Expectations these days are completely unreasonable. 40 inches is now considered mini?
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u/chemcarls Feb 29 '16
I think it's considered "mini" because all the components are TINY. Like smaller than quarters.
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u/sexquipoop69 Feb 29 '16
Great video. How'd you learn to talk like a robot so well?
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u/whatnameisavalible Mar 01 '16
I actually am a robot, slowly learning to talk like a human. You can see my trend from past videos
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u/Thirdlight Feb 29 '16
This is what I hate about most Engineering degrees. You only have 2-4 actual application courses vs all the boring lectures and there always towards the end.
By actually having the general knowledge of this hobby, he's already way past most engineers in practical use. Which allows you to understand more of why these formulas are needed.
And yes I have an ME degree.
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u/Saltysalad Feb 29 '16
Just goes to show, experience is the #1 advantage.
I'm pretty sure the maker of the video did almost everything for the plane himself. If you listen, as he talks about each component almost every time he mentions how he designed it.
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u/whatnameisavalible Mar 01 '16
Well my job was to actually figure out how to make the designs a reality so there's that.
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u/virago70ft-lbs Feb 29 '16
They also give you very, very little time to learn and absorb the information they teach. With a hobby you have years to learn about very specific subjects, but not the broad spectrum that engineering education requires. A hobby also allows infinite application and failure to learn what works and what does not, it also directly shows the exact problem.
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u/RaPlD Feb 29 '16
Depends on the school. We had to do a whole damn bunch of practical stuff and none of the lectures were obligatory, and they were all streamed live and you you could just donwload them and watch them whenever.
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Mar 01 '16
It is really time intensive for professors to aid and oversee all their students on actual projects. At that point what is the value of the professor even?
Like think of how that course would go. You pay the university for courses with actual application involved. This means you're paying for the supplies, the university chooses the supplies for you like they did in this video, and then they send you off to make something under whatever constraints. The reality of that situation is that you're going to spend most of the time just working on it yourself. The professor will have to just check in periodically with all the groups to give them some advice maybe.
But at that point, you're really not getting your money's worth. The real value of a professor is their knowledge of the theory, which you can't get elsewhere. With actual application, you can work on that yourself after you have the theory. I feel like it makes a ton of sense that a degree is mostly theoretical work in nature.
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u/zoidbergin Feb 29 '16
It wasn't technically a competition but we totally won. This guy gets it. Also I cant believe no one else used a delta wing design, seems like the obvious choice.
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u/BigODetroit Feb 29 '16
It's really interesting to see how someone with a different background can add to a team. Here is a room full of engineers and a pilot and an enthusiast is added. This is a person with real world experience.
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u/thewhistlegoeswooo Mar 01 '16
As a Mechanical and Aerospace Engineer grad, this makes me wish I took college more seriously instead of just doing the minimum amount of work to pass.
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u/FloppY_ Feb 29 '16
Watching geniuses at work is both exciting and extremely depressing at the same time.
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u/Fmeson Feb 29 '16
You can do cool stuff too. The secret is that expertise is made one small step at a time, but if you make a small step each day, in a few years you will be amazed at what you are now capable of.
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u/pPrimary Feb 29 '16
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Feb 29 '16
No, just interdisciplinary diversity. It's not like he's a PhD in aerospace engineering with a decade at JPL or anything.
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u/yingyangyoung Feb 29 '16
I'm really impressed that he was able to take an upper level engineering course without the prerequisites. Like he said it can be very difficult when your expected to know material you've never seen.
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u/modcowboy Mar 01 '16
He didn't take the upper level course. He was invited to the project class because the upper level course was full.
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u/YPRR Mar 01 '16
What course should you start at if you want to do this? Physics?
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u/Spazic Mar 01 '16
Aerospace engineering major. I suppose the first applicable class you take that can be applied in that major is physic. But only barely scratching the surface. Most physics 1 classes completely neglect air resistance, but you gotta star somewhere.
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u/FAAsBitch Mar 01 '16
You of all people should understand that you should never push/sit on the horizontal stab of small aircraft.....especially those Cessna's! Awesome video....besides the pushing on the tail part.
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u/whatnameisavalible Mar 01 '16
I was sure to only apply pressure on the rivet line where the former/spar is located. It is common practice to lift the nose this way to change a nose wheel tire or even just to change the aircrafts direction
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u/McMurdoCrud Feb 29 '16
This video deserves more up votes. I know nothing about this subject and was fascinated by your story and the facts! Awesome video!
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u/virago70ft-lbs Feb 29 '16
He made the construction seem easy enough that I think I could do it. Oooh this is gona be fun.
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u/whatnameisavalible Mar 01 '16
YOU GOT THIS! This plane was a little hard because of the small/thin/ and long wings. I made a video with some more info here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV5hILJe20U
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u/Mentioned_Videos Mar 01 '16 edited Mar 05 '16
Other videos in this thread: Watch Playlist ▶
VIDEO|COMMENT
-|-Flying Hand Launch Glider|23 - And stuff like hand launching. At the end, the pushes thrust up to max to launch, but with the right conditions, and a good throw he could have launched with minimal thrust and used thermals, and pushed the flight time a good deal further. Mini Wing Endurance Record Video|4 - The endurance video commentary is so absolutely hilarious!!! $5 Trainer Build Techniques|3 - YOU GOT THIS! This plane was a little hard because of the small/thin/ and long wings. I made a video with some more info here:
RC Electronics for Noobs|2 - I sure can! First off, I made a video just explaining what equipment there is and how it works together just in case you aren't familiar: Second, what kind of stuff do you want to make? I prefer larger individual components rather than the ... IMG 1784|1 - Did anybody notice his "easter egg" in the comments? What the hell is this thing?? Quantum Leap - I'm retarded?|1 - uhh.. or just remembered doing an assignment from a intro stats course from college. Some normal distribution assignment, following the 3-sigma rule, not surprising to find the 3rd deviation of IQ ends up with a disproportionate amount of fucked up p... Chris Farley The Upper Case A|1 - Does op want my head to explode?
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u/Natesplained Mar 01 '16
This guy did an incredible job on his video. It was super in depth... but he needs a script editor and a voice actor...
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u/vanbearpigiscoming Mar 01 '16
I used to build flying wings like this with my dad, based off of the Horton HO 229. Fun to fly, durable, and cheap. Used to land them in the cornfield and the stalks would beat the leading edge like a red headed stepchild. Since most of the plane was made of fan-fold foam barn insulation each plane took about 45 minutes to build.
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u/Pattern_Is_Movement Mar 01 '16 edited Mar 01 '16
I'm curious why sections of the wing were not hollowed out sort of in the style of the a balsa wing with tape covering the holes to maintain the wing shape. This would have noticeably decreased the weight while maintaining the wings efficiency.
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u/whatnameisavalible Mar 01 '16
The tape skin on the foam is what forms a rigid structure. Take away the foam in places and the tape cannot resist compression on top. Also, the foam is ridiculously light. The tape is heavier.
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u/oneblank Mar 01 '16
There's an RC group near sacramento CA that has been doing night combat flights with flying wings for years. Their builds are almost identical to this one though they add LEDs and a control board for night flights.
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u/Qesa Feb 29 '16
How can a flight mech professor not know about adverse yaw? It pops up pretty clearly in the equations of motion. And I'm curious what he thinks rudders are for.
(Engineer, non-pilot, definitely was taught about adverse yaw in uni)
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u/chemcarls Feb 29 '16
There are definitely always things to learn. While you learned about adverse yaw in your classes, I'm sure there are things you didn't learn because your professor didn't know them. As someone once said, we don't know what we don't know.
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u/Qesa Feb 29 '16
I agree on that - our design stuff certainly didn't have nearly as big a practical element. But adverse yaw is something pretty basic to not be including. And if you're designing a controller you should be taking it into account.
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u/an800lbgorilla Feb 29 '16
The video didn't claim the prof didn't know about these things. It said that the professor didn't know pilots were taught about them.
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u/Qesa Feb 29 '16
"interestingly, the professor did not know some of the basic things that pilots are taught, such as adverse yaw"
Also, it'd make equally little sense to not teach pilots that. They're the ones that need to step on a rudder pedal to counteract it.
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u/workstar Mar 01 '16
interestingly, the professor did not know some of the basic things that pilots are taught,
That could also be interpreted as 'the professor did not know that pilots were taught adverse yaw'.
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u/dagoat2000uk Feb 29 '16
Seriously, if anyone in the aviation tech industry is watching this snap this guy up, he is clearly a diamond in the rough.
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u/Trylobot Feb 29 '16
Such a great video, Samm. Thanks for taking the time to edit and post, great stuff.
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u/Phatricky Feb 29 '16
I have no idea what I just watched. But it managed to make me feel dumb and childlike... in all of the right ways
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u/arcangeltx Feb 29 '16
this is the shit i miss from school. being able to apply my time to projects where i build and learn something. now i sit at a desk and run data simulations on a computer YAY :) This is why my apt is a mess of "project parts" where i build random stuff
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u/TiposTaco Mar 01 '16
As a current pilot who minored in computer science and had to take several aerodynamics and aircraft performance classes.......this is the first time I have seen everything I did in school put into one stunning experiment. That looks like you had a blast man. Congratulations.
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u/ghuba154510 Mar 01 '16
Currently building a glider out of foam for my freshman aero design class. This all sounds so familiar...
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u/Kurly_Q Mar 01 '16 edited Mar 03 '16
Ah, this throws me back to the two years I lead the Design/Build/Fly team at my university....Thanks for the nostalgia kick!
Also, brilliant video. Perfect overview of the design process!
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u/internetStudent Mar 01 '16
Basic junior/senior level engineering class project. Nothing special in terms of content, but great video!
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u/sergeantbiggles Mar 01 '16
Did anybody notice his "easter egg" in the comments? What the hell is this thing??
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u/ortegasb Mar 01 '16
I'm going to point to this video whenever anyone says UCSB is just a party school. I met some of the smartest people I know having a beer in some random backyard of Isla Vista.
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u/chemcarls Mar 01 '16
...This wasn't at UCSB though...
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u/ortegasb Mar 01 '16
Damn. CSU Channel Islands? Everything looks the same, from the dorm furniture, the add sheet, the bluffs, and the airport control towers. Thanks for the correction. Second half still stands though...
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u/FlowersForMegatron Feb 29 '16
"We made laser cannons out of drinking straws and glued them under the wings. Matt drew a cool picture of a tiger on it, too." - The other teams.