I am so tired of hoaxes and other variations of it ( we have been seeing a quite large amount of them this days) that I simply can't trust those marvelous new inventions I see in posts like this anymore.
Just yesterday I was discussing with a friend what would be involved in making a bike exactly like this, except the fans would be powered by induction motors. Our idea involved a three-phase power supply but we lack any real world experience. Does anyone have proper engineering knowledge that could help here?
I very much doubt that an induction motor would come close to having the power to weight ratio for something like this.
A $10 weed-wacker motor from a garage sale would be a better starting point.
With no knowledge of engineering (or indeed the associated issues) I was interested to hear what the community felt about this kind of vehicle.
For the record, it was never my attention to post this as a sensationalist story (which I presume is why it's been pulled).
Amazing that almost zero thought on the side of aerodynamics and engineering went into the production of such a high-amount-of-work project. The second the 3-foot tie points are removed, the center of mass of the driver will cause it to flip upside down instantly.
Why not cover both fan wells entirely with the mesh coverings? Does that reduce lift significantly? It looks really scary to have the fan exposed. I'm sure it would be grisly if anyone got a hand in that thing.
How long is the flight time on this? It burns through about 30liters of gas an hour so even if it had a car sized gas tank it could only fly for an hour before refueling. Still, it seems really exciting!
this has been around for a while, and there still aren't any videos of it actually flying. judge for yourself why they're selling t-shirts and scale models instead of the actual thing. as of june last year (quote gizmag.com article) "To help generate interest in the hopes of attracting investors, Malloy plans to conduct flight tests in a couple of months."
I'd love to see a quadrocopter implemented like this. I think it would have much more stability.
I was actually thinking about that Simpsons episode when they got involved in that cult.