The fabulous Flamingo, a motorhome made from an abandoned aircraft | Hacker News Reader

The fabulous Flamingo, a motorhome made from an abandoned aircraft

uk.motor1.com

90 pointsGordonS44 comments

If you like that, check out the Winnebago Heli-Home.[0] It actually flew.

[0] https://www.thedrive.com/news/34753/the-winnebago-heli-home-...

Cheers that was too interesting not to post! Looks amazing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29361699

I first learned about it on HN so credit’s due to that OP!

Everyone of my family members that owned an RV has said that gas mileage was aweful. I'm wondering what would be worse, this heli-home or a regular RV. How much advantage of being able to travel in the literal "as a crow flies" distances vs ground roads, price of regular fuel vs aviation fuel, etc. However, at least in an RV, you don't need sound deadening headphones and intercoms the entire time of travel.

For a mid sized helicopter like this, you can expect around 40 gallon per hour and a speed of about 100 mph.

So I don't think this is a solution to the RV fuel consumption problem.

Jet-A1 is a lot cheaper though than unleaded petrol or car diesel at least here in Europe. Especially because it's untaxed.

Still it works out much more expensive for the chopper obviously. Those really guzzle it.

And this one looks so old that might be piston based in which case it would probably run on avgas which is a lot more expensive than car fuel.

Tax depends on who is buying, usually. IIRC in Poland private plane owners who are not buying through airclub pay tax on fuel, but airclubs don't, which results in every non-road-legal 4 stroke engine on airfield running on AVGAS-100LL ;)

Seriously?? I thought Avgas is still much more expensive than regular unleaded fuel.

It sure was when I flew but I'm not sure whether we were paying taxes. We bought it through the airclub but it was not a commercial club. So we probably did pay it.

But we paid something like 3,50 euro per liter and this was when regular petrol prices were 1,50 or so. I was told it's so expensive because the special production: They add dehumidifying agents against condensation etc.

I heard a lot of clubs are going for turbodiesel conversions now but the problem is that they have to be completely replaced every X years, they can't just do an engine overhaul like they can on the old Lycoming avgas engines.

Sounds like you were paying AVGAS price + taxes, at least given typical petrol prices in EU.

At least in Poland, the situation is that if both are without taxes, then AVGAS is more expensive than car petrol. But taxes add enough on top that taxed car petrol is more expensive than untaxed avgas.

This meant that non-airclub planes had significant amount of car petrol conversions done, but aircraft that could be fueled through Polish Aero Club didn't bother.

At the airfield I learnt to fly gliders, even the utility car (used among other things for dragging winch wire back to start) was fueled with avgas-100ll, except we also modded it with LPG system that was fueled by normal kitchen gas bottle. The hand-pushed grass mower also ran on avgas :D only the winch and old ursus tractor used diesel due to engine type involved.

It's only untaxed for commercial operators, not for your own helicopter or airplane.

Fun fact is that EU introduced a directive that any state could tax it in 2003 but no one did. So much for the green new deal...

Well it's not really green if they do it. It will have to be done worldwide.

Otherwise all the operators will fuel up to the brim at tax havens and be much heavier (and thus burn more fuel which is bad for the environment). And skimp on fueling at expensive locations and as such introduce dangerous situations (like RyanAir was already caught doing!). I think this was also the reasoning behind the no-tax thing.

They could make it mandatory for intra-europe flights for example but then the airlines will just introduce little side-hops to places like Dubai and Northern Africa for the sake of it. There just is no good solution unless the world agrees on taxation everywhere. That would have been a good point to raise at Glasgow but it was once again all form over function.

You could first raise the tax to just the point where detours do not make sense. It's the same with petrol and here local governments tax. IMHO the effect is minor. The solution would be to collect the tax like an import tariff even if you have fueled up elsewhere. Fuel usage should be well documented. There will be ways. I guess this is however not covered by the EU directive i guess. But that shows the problem of a green new deal. New agricultural subventions can also be used in a green way. Nobody does really...

Ahh ok I didn't know this. I never flew anything with Jet-A1. Only Avgas.

European diesel RVs get around 25 MPG (US). That's better than a Ford F150.

Lone Starr would love that!

Holy shit do I hate the hyperactive editing of that video.

It is a video about a thing you want us to look at, maybe let us have a good look. Long slow pans, not jittery jump cuts.

FFS.

How beautiful, loved it! Kudos to the creator for the patience to do the adaptation. I wish we could build and use such a thing legally in the EU, but we have much smaller roads which would be easily clogged by a monster like that. If I may raise some criticism, the rear abrupt cut off looks odd. I would add a few Space Shuttle styled rocket nozzles over there, then hide the air conditioner exhaust in one of them.

Well, it wouldn't fit in some cities, but I do not believe a motorhome is for city trips, is it?

This one maybe a bit too big but I think something similar would be doable even with some tiny rural roads.

Also - and I am not a car mechanic - I can spot at least 5 violations of street-worthiness laws just by watching this rather flashy video. This contraption would never pass inspection.

I look at those tiny windows making up the split windshield and all I see is a giant pedestrian-squashing contraption. To think that this thing is allowed to move on public roads at speeds greater than 3mph is terrifying. This should have been a trailer.

The main thing that saves us from such machines is that they are relatively rare, and are seldom operational.

Disclosure: I follow some musician forums, and a classic genre of discussion thread is: "The bandleader wants to buy a bus."

Hey...I saw this in my home state of Wyoming, at a Walmart parking lot a few months ago. I hung around for 30 mins hoping to talk to the owners but unfortunately they weren't around(or, they were inside sleeping and I didn't want to disturb them).

They were hauling a trailer as well, so I guess there isn't too much storage space in there.

https://i.imgur.com/pCd7opK.jpeg

I love that you can get something like this road-legal in the US; in Europe you wouldn't stand a chance.

I’m curious why you reckon it wouldn’t stand a chance. In Australia and New Zealand I’d expect it to be fairly straightforward (meaning fiddly in places but perfectly doable), so long as it isn’t too wide (it’s within half an inch of the US limit, by the sounds of it). I know one New Zealander making a fairly outrageously large, heavy and wide RV at present, and he knows all the details that will be required to get it road-legal (a family member has done something slightly less extreme before) and reckons it’ll be fine.

How does it getting approved in Australia or New Zealand help counter it being harder to approve in EU?

Australia and New Zealand are also less busy and have wider roads than most of western Europe.

> wider roads

Surprisingly but not, at least compared to Russia (and Switzerland)

Lanes here are narrower than in Russia and of my memory doesn’t fail me, when we were driving from Switzerland to Italy several years ago, the lanes there were as wide as in Russia.

My understanding is that Australia can be pretty picky. Dick & Pip Smith drove an Earthroamer (a $500k offroading RV) around the world and when he got to his native Australia there were several things he had to alter, even though it was titled in Colorado, had Colorado plates, and had a 12-month Carnet from the government for it. The ones I remember were he had to install wider fender flares to ensure full coverage, and replace the red rear turn signals with amber ones. Being famous there apparently didn't help.

The two things you recall are simple things that are only relevant when you’re bringing in a vehicle designed against different standards. When you’re making such a thing from scratch, you’ll consult with the standards documents (treating them as a checklist, to a considerable extent) and get it right from the start.

Because is not safe to drive. Wouldn't never pass the technical exam for vehicles each 6 months. You can't drive a car in a public road without it.

What specifically might they be likely to complain about? I’m unfamiliar with the idea of regular tests (in Australia I don’t think you ever need a roadworthiness check if you keep the vehicle’s registration) and don’t know what they’d be looking at.

“Because it’s not safe to drive” is nebulous; I’m interested in details.

The safety concept is pretty clear in fact: "Your extravaganza and attention craving, puts my life in risk".

To start, all car makers must destroy several vehicles in crash tests before are allowed to touch any public space. The analysis of the damages in dummies proves that they are safe in the most common types of collisions.

This car has not passed it. Would end the steering pedal buried in your belly in an accident? Nobody knows.

Was built with 1950' technology. Technology from the Korean war!. Early 90's maximum. Totally outdated in terms of safety. The structure could accumulate easily 50 years of stress over the materials or even more.

Wasn't designed to hold airbags or points able to support attachments for pyrotechnic seat belts. They would never work correctly with that structure.

The airplane part don't includes modern extra weak points designed and arranged in the structure to bend in a safe way and absorb the energy. Is a total mess in this sense. The pointy end probably guarantees, in my non expert opinion, that the cabin would be stripped off from the truck and pushed back against the driver in a frontal crash.

The brake system wasn't designed for this weight and center masses so could stop the vehicle too late, bend the brake disk or work in an unpredictable way.

The center mass looks higher than normal. The vehicle could turn upside down in a closed curve

In case of collision against somebody walking on the street the front of the vehicle is clearly unsuitable to protect human lives from serious injuries in spinal cord, head or legs. They wouldn't even see it coming with this tiny windows

And is so ugly that even hurts my eyes.

If you drive a sofa or a two-story bicycle you basically accept the risk over your life, not mine. A truckenstein is a different issue. I don't want this experiments allowed to be in the same road as me, ever.

For more details ask an engineer

I’ll address only a couple of points, but am sceptical of the relevance of most of it for roadworthiness certification.

In at least AU/NZ/US, I believe crash testing is only required for production vehicles above a certain number of units produced. Prototypes and experimental (one-off) vehicles don’t require it.

> So ugly that even hurts my eyes.

I would be deeply amused if this could actually be presented as grounds for disqualifying roadworthiness because it’s so intensely subjective and opinion-based.

Someone in the UK made a drivable sofa and was able to have it legally registered:

https://youtu.be/CTgLnUgzZYk

The requirements for custom vehicles are much less than for mass produced vehicles. Of course it is going to vary by country though. My country is very strict and doesn't even allow retrofitted LED license plate lights...

The requirements for vehicles go up with each weight category. Take the sofa as an example; it's registered as a motorcycle with sidecar. If it was a car instead of a 'motorcycle', it would need to meet additional requirements starting with a windshield. Heavy vehicles are strictest.

Clown vehicles for clown politician times. I'm not surprised really.

The only issue in Europe would be the loading gauge possibly being too big, but that's specific to this car, not specific to making your own custom car.

And with motorhome you're not going to take trips to tiny old city roads anyway, so you can go big.

Your only practical issue is that you need to have C-class driver license for many bigger motorhomes, due to weight limits on normal B-class driver's license. (C-class is trucks, including semi-trailer tractors)

That's amusing, in the US, its the other way around: Class C is for regular autos while Class A is for tractor trailers.

(Class B is for heavy vehicles not towing, like buses or large delivery trucks)

You also don't need a special license unless you're driving commercially. Anybody can drive a motorhome of any size.

That’s not entirely true. Most (all?) states have exemptions that let you drive a motor home with a class C license. But you still can’t drive a bus or tractor trailer, even non-commercially.

Absolutely not true. Some examples:

In California, you need a special license to drive anything 40 feet or longer.

In Texas, you need a special license to drive anything with max weight over 26,000 lbs.

You love the fact technical inspection in US comes down to at most someone looking at the car from afar and proclaiming it road legal?

This is ok by you https://youtu.be/ZlwjXhdNd3Y?t=456 ? No instruments, no road legal lights, basically full racecar made legal by briefly looking at it on a parking lot.

We call it freedom...

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