Of all the forms of immortality, my favorite is participating in a competition in such a brilliant, incorrect way that a rule is permanently added just for you.
So I built a very large version of the same design out of computer punch cards taped together, and won again. I'm still proud of that.
But yes, helicopters can be safely landed this way without power (not crash landed, but actually landed, though crashing is always an option lol)
Also, gyrocopters use the same principle for all phases of controlled flight, by simply using a traction engine to move the aircraft foreword, with a free spinning, unpowered, typically fixed pitch or no cyclic control rotor providing the lift.
There's another option, which is counter-rotation along an axis parallel to the ground, and orthogonal to the direction of travel. This mechanically induces circulation, which produces lift (by the same principle that a curveball produces sideways lift.) Here's more information on this funky phenomenon: https://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.html#sec-spinners
However, there is a sort of rotation about a horizontal axis in an ordinary wing because a wing produces vortices, and this is a necessary part of the process of producing lift [1]. In heavy aircraft these vortices can be surprisingly powerful and long-lasting, to the point where they can cause smaller aircraft to lose control and even crash if they get caught in one [2].
That first reference has an excellent description of what was going on in my design [3].
[1] https://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.html#sec-circulation-v...
https://web.archive.org/web/20060323051213/http://insiderrac...
Cue "demo day": my friend forgot about the project and took the straws and wrapped them around the bulb and then crinkled up the construction paper roughly and wrapped it around the straws and bulb and then took the rubber bands and secured the paper. I think he spent maybe a minute on it.
I think you maybe know how this ends. The teacher sneered at his design but then proceeded to drop it several times from the top of a ladder and the bulb never broke. He then took my design and dropped it upside down (springs pointing up) and the bulb shattered. I still think about that and laugh 30+ years later.
2. The scooter guy decides "can't beat 'em might as well join him"
3. The poor mobility scooter being passed by all this
[1] https://www.velonews.com/news/road/filippo-ganna-smashes-uci...
1990s: going fast by leaning forward, banned
I look forward to 2100 when they will simply ban going faster than a specific speed.
For example, there’s “Félix Erausquín”, who invented a javelin throwing technique you probably never heard of.
http://rethinkingathletics.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-javelin-...:
However the true revolution of javelin throw came in 1956 when a 49 year old spaniard, Félix Erausquín, invented what came to be called the “spanish style”. Erausquín was a specialist of shot put and discus throw (with several national titles and records) but also of the “barra vasca” which consists in throwing a heavy rod using a rotational technique. Erausquín adapted the style of the barra to javelin throw with a greased hand and managed a throw of 83.40 m at a few centimetres of the world record.
[…]
Could the spaniards have won the 1956 Olympic javelin title? Yes and no. Had they kept the style secret till Melbourne they would certainly have taken the javelin world by surprise. However at the beginning of October, a month and a half before the Games, Salcedo used the new style during a competition in Paris. This opened the way for experimentation with the new technique to non-spanish athletes but also alerted the instances of the international federation who by the end of the month had modified the rules so as to ban the rotational technique. However, even if they had kept the secret, the athletes from Spain would not have had the occasion to throw at Melbourne since Franco’s government had, at the last moment, decided to boycott the Games.
But who's infinitely more known than his contemporaries who didn't do some interesting footnote-worthy thing like that and therefore get mentioned far less.
I bet most do not know any of the javelin winners from this last Olympics or any historical greats but now we know the awesome Félix Erausquín!
"came with the work of Dick Held (brother of the world recordman Bud Held) who introduced first the hollow-wood javelins"
Really, it doesn't matter how you throw your dagger as long as you hit the target.
And yet you know his name.
Sometimes, the rule itself is even named after the person — so your name is right there in the rulebook forevermore. They might not know who you were or what you did, but they know you did something stupid enough to require a change to the sport.
† Which is apparently something sports nerds do a lot. Here's a YouTube channel sub-series just about the origins of weird sports rules! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJiNU9JCLpM&list=PLUXSZMIiUf...
[0] https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/when-the-backstro...
That's precisely why car races are boring these days. Everything is forbidden and over-regulated so there's no space for innovation anymore. Look at F1 and its bloat of regulations.
Edit: on a more serious note: The regulations are so tight to keep it exciting. Frustratingly, if the regulations are more open, one of the better funded teams will just run away with the best car. That already happened in some seasons, but would be even worse without tight regulations.
(Reading the Wikipedia article, looks like they only mention two Lotus 23s going but I think there were more)
Give us back mass dampers, active suspension, flexi-wings, dual-axis steering, and similar things. None of these are driver aids, and they aren't inherently unsafe (flexi wings might be more fragile). They were banned because it would be too expensive for everyone to have to develop it.
But the cost cap solves the problem of 'too expensive for everyone to develop it'. Everyone gets the same choice, and if a properly tuned mass-damper takes 30 million to get right, and 10 million to sort-of-work. Then people get to pick where the best cost-benefit trade-off lies.
There's one way to quickly solve this. Just mass-produce the cars and give everyone the exact same car. Then we will know who is the best racer.
Narrator: "It was Gasly."
Make fake AI drivers with a backstory and AI-generated faces and stories and people won't see the difference
[0] https://vault.si.com/vault/1974/07/29/the-flip-that-led-to-a...
Does rally (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDGJoPmR_8U) count as car racing?
Got to wonder what the spectator body count is at an event like this.
Even better is the Fosbury flop, which was just accepted as a superior technique and no rules were adjusted.
> He received confirmation of his qualification for the games while working as a plasterer and temporarily residing in a Finnish mental hospital, due to lack of funds for alternative accommodation rather than as a patient.
> American League president Will Harridge, saying Veeck was making a mockery of the game, voided Gaedel's contract the next day. In response, Veeck threatened to request an official ruling on whether Yankees shortstop and reigning American League MVP Phil Rizzuto, who stood 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m), was a short ballplayer or a tall dwarf.
Reminds me of this entertaining seminar[1] of a bunch of old school IMSA racers describing how they got "creative" racing around the rules to gain an unfair advantage.
[1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...