Interesting Projects

RPI takes an extraordinarily long Winter break.  I’m leaving my dorm room on Friday (8/18) and won’t return until (1/22ish).  I want to be an engineer when I grow up, but outside of the FIRST Robotics Competition, and restoring aircraft at the Owls Head Transportation Museum. I haven’t had a whole lot of hands-on experience.  I spent a couple of weeks at Fisher Engineering in high school, but most of my work experience has been in an office.  I helped organize a $1.5 million car auction last summer, which was pretty awesome (and I will hopefully be working their again this summer), but it’s not engineering.  After all, it doesn’t make much sense to hire a highly skilled accountant to lead the design team of the next Space Shuttle.

So, I brainstormed some things to do.

CAD an airplane.  A really old airplane.  WW1 Aero, is a highly informative magazine on the early aeroplane, filled with both stories of the early aviators and technical goodies.  Sadly, they may have printed their last hard copy issue, but they maintain a list of drawings nontheless.  Not quite sure, which airplane, I’d like to do, but I’ll need a full set of drawings.  Right now the front runner seems to be the 1909 Wright Military Flyer, as it has complete drawings.  I’d like to do something a little less well known, but I’d gladly settle for a Wright.

CAD a rotary engine. Rotary engines were the gold standard of aviation from 1909-1918.  Airplanes need power to fly through the air, and to get that much power, you need engines that generate significant amounts of heat.  They needed some sort of cooling system, and water cooling was simply too heavy.  The Seguin brothers from France developed the rotary engine.  The cylinders are located radially around the crankshaft.  However, instead of mounting the engine block to the airframe, they mounted the crankshaft to the airframe!  That is, the cylinders spin with the propeller.  Scroll down on this page and look at the big picture for a still of one in action (this is a slightly different engine.  I would CAD a Le Rhone 80 HP, they built a 100 HP Oberusel).  WW1 Aero has the full set of drawings for an 80 HP Le Rhone, which is what leads me in that direction.

Human Powered Flight. Okay, so this sounds really crazy.  But I’m quite convinced it’s not out of the realm of possibility.  Jesse van Kuijk just flew last year, doing almost all of the work himself.  He’s 19 and started when he was 17.  I’ve emailed with him a few times, and also Bryan Allan, pilot of Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross fame.  No doubt it would be a huge amount of work, and probably span the next two summers.  Luckily, most of the “hard” things (airfoil, basic structural issues) have been done before.  It would also be undeniably cool.

Rockets I lurk on the aRocket mailing list.  If you are at all interested in amateur rocketry, I suggest you google it and join.  Lots of really smart people doing really incredible things.  It’s a lifelong goal of mine to build a liquid propellant rocket, but building one is a little expensive for a poor college student.  Perhaps some early design work?