geneb
01-29-2012, 01:25 PM
A couple of weeks ago I chased down a lead and found a Mylar vendor that can supply material up to 124" wide. It's _cheap_. For example, a 100 foot roll of .5mil @ 96" wide is roughly $200 shipped.
We've also come up with a way around the patent issue - instead of the curved "ears" at the ends of the mirror, it can be more square - something shown as "prior-art" in the patent, but a feature we couldn't use because we couldn't get Mylar wide enough.
What this means is that we're now open to making plans & short kits available to people.
We're looking at two "reference" designs.
The first would be large enough to accommodate standard GA aircraft right around Cessna 152-172 size up to something around a Lear or Cessna Citation.
The second would be a "big iron" display that could be used with cockpits around the size of the Boeing 737.
If there is enough interest, we'll go ahead and get the design work done and I'll build Inventor models so you can see what they'll look like.
However, we're not going to build prototypes for either one of them until there is enough commercial interest. This doesn't mean a bunch of folks going, "Hey! I'd buy that!", it's some number of people (say 5 for this example) willing and able (and actually do!) put down a down payment for a short kit.
We're doing this because building one of these things takes a ton of time and effort when you're writing the manual for it at the same time. The materials aren't cheap either - the prototypes and kit parts will be in 18mm and 12mm Russian Birch - it's a high quality material. It's not the kind of endeavor that either one of us can fund ourselves on the hope that someone might buy one someday. :)
A "short kit" is typically parts that most folks can't make themselves - all the shaped parts, etc. Any dimensional lumber, fasteners, Mylar, projectors, etc. would be supplied by the builder.
We'll also look into providing the vacuum management system - this would likely consist of an Arduino Uno style "shield" and the parts to build a servo controlled bypass gate similar to what you've seen in our videos. Servo not included. :D
There will definitely be size issues you're going to need to be aware of if you're going to build one of these. Our single-seat version is a tight fit in a room with a 9' ceiling. You can just about be guaranteed that the GA display is going to be bigger than that and I shudder to think how much shop space that 7x7 display is going to eat up. :)
Because of the size & scope of this thing, don't expect any concrete results out of us until April-ish.
I'm going to re-post this to various places in order to make sure the folks that are interested see it. :)
Thanks all!
g.
We've also come up with a way around the patent issue - instead of the curved "ears" at the ends of the mirror, it can be more square - something shown as "prior-art" in the patent, but a feature we couldn't use because we couldn't get Mylar wide enough.
What this means is that we're now open to making plans & short kits available to people.
We're looking at two "reference" designs.
The first would be large enough to accommodate standard GA aircraft right around Cessna 152-172 size up to something around a Lear or Cessna Citation.
The second would be a "big iron" display that could be used with cockpits around the size of the Boeing 737.
If there is enough interest, we'll go ahead and get the design work done and I'll build Inventor models so you can see what they'll look like.
However, we're not going to build prototypes for either one of them until there is enough commercial interest. This doesn't mean a bunch of folks going, "Hey! I'd buy that!", it's some number of people (say 5 for this example) willing and able (and actually do!) put down a down payment for a short kit.
We're doing this because building one of these things takes a ton of time and effort when you're writing the manual for it at the same time. The materials aren't cheap either - the prototypes and kit parts will be in 18mm and 12mm Russian Birch - it's a high quality material. It's not the kind of endeavor that either one of us can fund ourselves on the hope that someone might buy one someday. :)
A "short kit" is typically parts that most folks can't make themselves - all the shaped parts, etc. Any dimensional lumber, fasteners, Mylar, projectors, etc. would be supplied by the builder.
We'll also look into providing the vacuum management system - this would likely consist of an Arduino Uno style "shield" and the parts to build a servo controlled bypass gate similar to what you've seen in our videos. Servo not included. :D
There will definitely be size issues you're going to need to be aware of if you're going to build one of these. Our single-seat version is a tight fit in a room with a 9' ceiling. You can just about be guaranteed that the GA display is going to be bigger than that and I shudder to think how much shop space that 7x7 display is going to eat up. :)
Because of the size & scope of this thing, don't expect any concrete results out of us until April-ish.
I'm going to re-post this to various places in order to make sure the folks that are interested see it. :)
Thanks all!
g.