Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Feeling Blue

Feelingblue

9 comments:

Damien said...

Did you anodize the whole thing ? It looks good, I'm really looking forward to see it in the air. Don't you think that you will need some kind of shock absorption for the landing, or was it too heavy ?

Paul Breed said...

Yes the whole thing was anodized.

Each Gear leg is a shock absorber.
When you pressurize the catalyst tanks in the legs it stands up about 7 inches. In the picture there is no pressure in the gear legs so the "shocks" are collapsed.

As you use catalyst the pressure in the cat tanks and thus the pressure in the shock absorbers decrease. The way it looks like it works out the shocks don't move until they see 4 to 6 gees of impact. The amount of pressure they exert varisoftest when full as the ratio ofes with fuel burned. They are tank pressure to overall weight is lowest. They are firmest at empty.
(1/2 the pressure 1/6th the weight)
I still have not decided where weare going to mount the required LLC payload I may mount the majority of the payload on the gear legs minimizing the mass the gear attachment has to support. Pressurized aluminum tubes are insanely strong.

Carl Tedesco said...

You should have anodized the legs gold... that way you have Chargers colors!

Very nice.

Anonymous said...

Great look... Could the anodization treatment add some strenght to the tank?

Paul Breed said...

It should not change the strength , what it really adds is corrosion resistance, so the tank does not degrade over time.

This is most important for the catalyst tanks that hold the permangenate as this corrodes aluminum.

Also I could make the whole thing look like a foot ball helmet in chagers blue and gold ;-)

Carl Tedesco said...

If you win the LLC maybe the Chargers would let you fly it during the halftime show :-)

Anonymous said...

I've read previously, that anodizing often reduces the fatigue strength.

Unknown said...

Love the anodizing job - but what kind of "Stealth" properties is that going to give it if you go for any high-altitude flights with this thing?? ;-) Get a good zoom lens!

James Jarvis said...

Is this soft anodization or hard anodization? In building ethanol fuel tanks out of aluminum we had to use hard anodization to get the corossion resistance we required.