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My day at Bensen
Days '98.
Well, I only spent a couple
hours at the show, and I have to say that it was a little disappointing; seemed like a
smaller turnout than the last Bensen's I went to many years ago. This may have been due to
the weather- It was a fine sunny saturday afternoon but I was told that the wind
conditions aloft were very choppy, and I couldn't even get a ride from the Dominator
people because of it. Oh well.
Even though the show was
small, I still found a couple interesting things to take pics of, some of interest to the
Gyrobee community. Enjoy.
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Dragon Wings! Awww yeahhhh...
The Dominator booth is what drew the most attention from me.
Next project of mine will most likely be a Dominator machine. I love 'em!
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This is what got my attention, and
kept it. You're looking at a Dominator gyro outfitted with... Electric RC motor
prerotators! Yep, the Dom people put it into practice, on a working machine. I asked if there were any plans available, but was told that this was
a "One off" experiment, and that "It was kind of a failure; the rotors
*only* got up to about 150 RPM, the batteries were only expected to achieve about
300 cycles, and that the whole package cost about the same as a conventional pre-rotator;
about $500"
Well heck, that doesn't sound too bad to me. The advantages
of weight savings, potential for rotor-braking (reverse polarity to the motors) and just
plain simplicity seems to make this a worthwhile idea.
You can see that these are just simple motors (I assume they
are electric RC plane motors) bolted to the underside of some Dragon Wings, using large
props and a reduction gearbox. |
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Mast view. You can see the two 12 volt batteries, high on the mast with a switch
on the battery bracket. Wires are going up to what looked like a relay, then up to a
commutator. |
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Batteries in their brackets. Looks like two 12 volt motorcycle batteries, probably connected in
series? |
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Closeup of the commutator. After being picked up by brushes, the wires feed through the blade down to
each engine.
I plan to take a serious look at implementing something
close to this on my machine. |
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Ralph, you should've patented your
pre-rotator ideas! Here, someone is sporting a
set of "more conventional" RC airplane engines on their rotors.
Nice looking, too. |
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Here's an idea for a pre-rotator
that I hadn't seen before. Looks like a small,
weed-eater size 2-stroke with some kind of bendix gear assembly to turn the rotors. Neat
idea, probably turns them up pretty well. |
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I don't know what this was, but it
sure looked fast, even just sitting there. I think I read something about a speed record
on it somewhere. |
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Well, that's about all for the
Gyro pics. Here's a pic of my lovely girlfriend
Heidi, standing at the shore of Lake Okeechobee, wishing she had a fishing pole right now.
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Hopefully I'll get the chance to go to some
more shows in the future, but there's not that many in my neck of the woods, and it's hard
to get away when you work 7 nights a week! If anyone took some pics that they think should
be posted here, please let me know and we'll work something out.
Rich@gate.net
Last updated: 04/12/99
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