A Plane Hacker | Hacker News Reader

A Plane Hacker

home.hiwaay.net

49 pointspg24 comments

I'm only saying this because no-one else will, but how many of us thought "cute chick flying a plane!" then read "barely 11 years old" and almost died of shame? Anyway, still a great project :) I couldn't even have imagined flying a plane now, let alone at 11.

I wasn't expecting a child with that headgear, so i just passed by noticing a blond chick and was like "nice..." :-)

I also liked this picture of a girl with a fitting T-shirt: http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/corvair/cc2002/02052770.jpg

He suggests his plane gets better gas mileage than his car.

People keep asking, "Where's the flying car?" Well, we have it. It's called an airplane.

Not quite, but almost close enough. You'd have to create a plane which can take off and land vertically. This can probably be accomplished with a tilt-rotor design, where some performance tradeoffs will have to be made.

Whoever is capable of creating a cheap general-aviation VTOL aircraft will be rich. Technology development in aviation moves at a glacial pace, but only because everyone is afraid to be sued or crash. The "crash" risk can largely be mitigated with emergency parachutes, whereas the "sue" risk is a question of politics. Not technology.

One final note - the MPG rating for aircraft only accounts for about half the running cost of operating an airplane. Engine maintenance is horrendously expensive, and all too necessary given that small planes only have one of them.

"I'll do 160 mph at 32 mpg at 9500'or 10,500'... so clearly flying is cheaper than driving, and I don't have to stop and buy lunch!"

Brilliant. Why don't more people do this? (Aside from landing fees and weather etc, still very cool).

You mean, aside from the landing fees, the weather, the fact that General Aviation accounts for most air fatalities, the fact that flying at 10k ft puts you right in the worst of the weather, the fact that you need to be instrument rated to reliably use a light airplane as transportation, and the fact that if you screw up any of the mechanics, you die?

Awesome hobby. Mad respect. My wife was taking private pilot lessons in A2 a few years ago; I wish I could have found the time, and I keep prodding her. But this is not a reasonable mode of transportation for normal people.

As opposed the parking fees in NYC that people pay? The traffic they endure? Which has a higher fatality rate flying or driving? Have you driven through a snowstorm? If you drive into a tree you die too.

The safest thing you could do is sit home on your computer all day, it would also be extremely boring. Life is not made up of driving to and from a cubicle and typing on a computer. I would much rather take the 0.0001% chance of dieing while doing something fun than the 100% chance of living an entire life that is devoid of any meaningful experiences.

Flying is a real PITA. To just take off with a GA plane, you have to do 20-30 minutes of setup pre and after takeoff. You have to register a flight plan with whatever country nav system your with. Your also usually restricted to semi-rural GA airports, so if want to get to one place from another, there's usually a 1 to 2 hour car trip added to get where ever you wanted to in the first place. Air gas is also really expensive, at least +$.40/L because of it's high octane. It's not uncommon to burn through $200 of gas if you were flying all day (8hrs). Because it's aviation, the regulatory burden is extremely heavy, airplane parts are way more expensive than they should be, and you can often run into mandatory $5000 repair bills because system x has to be in tip top shape, and it wears down, easily. Learning to fly is usually a $10'000 minimum & a lot of time, and that's usually without instrument flying, which is necessary in cloudy or night time weather. Flying is also extremely weather dependent, if you feel like flying to somewhere one day, you can't plan it because the weather might cancel your plans, frequently. Also you usually can't bring a lot of cargo or passengers w/ you either. You only really get the benefits of general aviation when your going long distances.

Compare this to a car: 1. Setup time: 10 seconds, turn ignition and go. 2. Weather: Who gives a fuck about weather, you can drive in snowstorms, rain, shine and it will do it. Maybe in the rare, rare major snowstorm, you have to do 20 minutes of setup before hand. 3. Cargo: You don't have to think about it 4. Passengers: You don't have to think about it 5. NYC Parking fees: You have to pay hangar fees anyway, and the world is not NYC. 6. Maintenance: You can bloody let your oil leak for a while, and it isn't $5000 to repair it! 7. Training: Usually free, or $1000 and you can become competent in months!! 8. Driving plans: You don't have to register a single car drive to anywhere! 9. Traffic stress: Traffic stress and the 7 things you have to juggle with flying is about the same! (Unless you have nice, expensive systems that do a lot of it for you). 10. Price: ALOT CHEAPER!

People fly GA for the pleasure of flying, not because it's necessarily better than a car, or commercial flights. It is the last bastion of the very well off. You'll still get harassed by customs & co. with a GA plane as you would with a normal flight.

General aviation is not airline travel. You do not have miniscule odds of crashing a prop plane.

Computing is fun and meaningful IMHO... And really devoting your life 100% to that profession means you'll take the time to "enjoy life" with exercise and other good stuff because it actually pumps up fun, meaningfulness and productivity.

public transportation is awesome. Especially in NYC.

5000 hours just to get the thing in the air - kind of ruins the whole thing from a purely cost advantage perspective. Just imagine what you could build in 5000 hours...

Not to take any credit from this guy at all. He deserves mad props (heh heh) for this project. Truly a hacker in every sense of the word.

You don't need to imagine - I'll tell you what you could build: you could build an airplane!

that's actually pretty cool, and IMO definitely worth the time. I mean, how many people can say they've build planes?

> Truly a hacker in every sense of the word.

Except the ones that involve computers.

Which _is_ the newest form of hacker.

Also notice that he's a real VW man with that classic Scirocco 16V. What's up with hackers and VWs?

Awesome. It's always inspiring when you see somebody making stuff like this for themselves. Reminds me of something I read last year about a Nigerian student building helicopters out of old cars - see http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/homemade-helicopter/nigerian-man-...

I can't quite remember when I saw it, but it was an amazing self build, all stramlined - even the rivets had been made flush with the body work. I think it was an employee of Scaled Composites who did it for a learning experience to pick up credit with work. I remember being pretty amazed. Can I find it doing a search? Nope. I wish that I could remember just a little more!

Hmmm, this makes me want to go pick up a share in a 152 and do some more flying.

That does look like fun.

Awesome. I always wanted a pilot's license, but I've only logged 30mins in the cockpit alongside an instructor.

this is the coolest thing a hacker could actually make

No, that would be a synchropter - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchropter

killer robots?

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