I was watching the shark, and not the helmsman, but the thing is propelled forward by wagging its tail. If the tail is wagged 20ยบ left and 20 right it goes forward. I think it's steered by moving the center of the wag, like if you wag 30 left and 10 right the back end is kicked out to the right and it turns left.
It doesn't save any helium, as it uses 4.5 cubic feet. The problem with using it to steer is that it's incredibly sensitive to air density, If you set the ballast for 10 feet, it won't go to 15. When he removed some ballast to make it go up to the roof, he had a hard time getting it back down. One solution might be to keep the ballast light, and hang a thin thread from it, like the mooring lines on a real aerostat.
There was a second rescue later in the day, when the model overflew a pipe near the ceiling, all except for the stab, which got hooked on a sprinkler head. A gentle bump from the shark popped it loose.
Received on Tue Jan 28 2014 - 06:47:31 CET
This archive was generated by Yannick on Sat Dec 14 2019 - 19:13:48 CET