gus 1 #1 April 22, 2001 Hi,Does anyone know where I can but a toy square parachute? I've looked around but all the ones I've seen are round, even the otherwise very funky Action Man Skydiver!Alternatively, has anyone ever made one? Or does anyone have any detailed schematics for manufacturing a square parachute?Cheers,Gus Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Deleted 0 #2 April 22, 2001 When you order most parachutes they are mostly cut by machine so that all you do is type in "i want a 135" or you can have it cut a 5" parachute. Some of the canopy manufacturers would have an actual parachute that was only like 3 foot squared. But i dont know that it'd be an affordable option for a toy. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
miked10270 0 #3 April 22, 2001 Hi Gus,Would I be correct in guessing this is going to be used as a teaching aid?If so, then construction is going to be EXPENSIVE for an accurate & functioning Ram-air parachute!For display purposes, I've used a small (6") wood "artists model, risers, slider & suspension lines from steel wire onto a curved steel plate as the bottom skin. Furniture foam above the plate cut to shape, & covered with ripstop nylon.I've also seen display models made from various grades of plastic card (available from model & hobby shops).For Canopy Control lectures I've used an oblong of laminated paper with a small figure suspended from it (technical accuracy isn't as important as an approximate image). Then again, one of the best Canopy Control demos I saw was given using an alti and an empty VHS Video box with a figure suspended with 4 pull-ups!!!!!! Prof that it's the teacher, not the aid that's important.Mike D10270. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gus 1 #4 April 22, 2001 Cheers for the posts,As a teaching aid? Well I'm a few jumps short of being an instructor (875 short of 1000 to be accurate) so it would literally be as a toy.I was thinking of making a radio controlled 'powered parachute', I thought that with a little fan on the back for airspeed and motors/servos to control the brake lines you could fly it like a model plane. The difficult bit would be making the actual canopy, so I either need some plans to follow (so I get the angle of attack, aspect ratio etc right) or I need to buy one. And I don't think asking PD for a minature Spectre is within my budget!Any cunning ideas?Gus Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Craig 0 #5 April 22, 2001 You mean like this?Powered ParachuteLooks kinda cool.Craig Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gus 1 #6 April 22, 2001 QuoteYou mean like this?Gutted, someone's already done it!It looks pretty neat but it reckons a running time of 6-7 minutes, which is kinda crap. I'm sure it could be modified though, it does look like fun!Cheers Craig,Gus Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
miked10270 0 #7 April 23, 2001 HI Gus,Yeah... 'phone Allan Hewitt on +441980 844130 to talk Powered Parachutes... He did the "Toys" for the Bond movie. Look at Ram-Air "kites" (effectively 3 or 5 cell ZP Ram-airs) for your Canopy.Good luck, you can sell me one when you've got it sorted...Mike D10270. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Merrick 0 #8 April 23, 2001 Yeah, looks like there's been a couple people do it... I remembered seeing this out on Ebay once, looked again & they still had an auction for it.R/C Parachute Auction"Peace & Blu Skyzz!"Merrick Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gus 1 #9 April 23, 2001 Okay, this is where it's at: http://www.airfoilaviation.comFuel powered motors, 40 minutes flight time.....I have to have one. I've got a school playground about 20m from my back garden, just a problem of finding the £££s!Gus Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
skreamer 1 #10 April 23, 2001 Here is the web-site for Allan's business.skyscienceI met him about a month ago, he has some REALLY funny stories from when he was a CRW instructor in the Freds (actually most of his stories were really funny)./s Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OmriMon 0 #11 April 23, 2001 dude don't u think it's batter to save that money to buy a REAL parachute instead of a toy one?Free Skies,Omri Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
skreamer 1 #12 April 23, 2001 Uhh, Omri, living here in England you will probably get more use out of the toy one than the real one...Sad but true./s Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OmriMon 0 #13 April 23, 2001 ohh thats sad...Free Skies,Omri Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cdunham 0 #14 April 23, 2001 There was a guy I saw once who had built one of these that he was able to drop from his r/c plane. No shit, there were a couple of times where he was flying it around during a weather hold and people actually thought someone was still jumping! (Hey, how do I get on that load? Well, try shrinking down to 3 inches! LOL).It wasn't super-realistic looking up close, but it would fool people (OK, at least me) for quite a good part of the flight. It had actuators for steering toggles, so he could fly it in really nice. Didn't swoop too well as I recallCarl Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
flyboy62000 0 #15 April 25, 2001 You can buy one of those RC airplanes with the skydiver in it. The parachute is square and is steerable using a second radio for the jumper. You should be able to buy it from a store that deals in radio controlled models.Blue Skies,Adam Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lummy 4 #16 April 25, 2001 There is an article in this months "Skydiving" about RC parachuters. Sound skinda fun. According to the article, you can buy everything commercially if wanted.here's the linkwww.rcparachutes.homepage.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
froggie 0 #17 April 25, 2001 Gus, a question :Quote £££ how do you do that? are the keyboards different over there in the UK? strangely enough, this was something that i always wondered. Like in Japan. what do thier keyboards look like? they use those symbol things. you know, the Japanese art. So do their keyboards look like that? and from what i studied about the Japanese alphabet they have hundreds of 'symbols'. so how big are their keyboards? oh man, this sparked my interest. froggie Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PalmettoTiger 1 #18 April 25, 2001 Froggie, from what I understand (I took 4 weeks of Japanese before dropping the class ) there are 3 different character sets in Japan. One is kanji, the more complex symbols that are whole words, then there's katakana and hiragana, both of which are sets of symbols that represent individual sounds. Hiragana are used for grammatical markings and foreign words, and katakana are used for Japanese words that don't have their own kanji. (I might have those two backwards but it's not like your life depends on it, eh?) For keyboards.... well I've never seen one but I assume it works like ours - the symbols that make sounds are laid out and you tap on them until you get the word! There are some programs out there that will take your American keyboard and convert what you type into Japanese characters (i.e. you hit a key and the corresponding hiragana symbol appears on the screen), and others will even make those characters into kanji. Pretty funky.Of course, I could be absolutely barking mad.Blues, squares,PTiger Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cdunham 0 #19 April 25, 2001 Don't forget romanjii, which is the character set that this posting is in, and is used for a lot of foreign words/brand names, etc.Supposedly, katakana is taught to children first, but dropped later in favor of kanjii, so things written in katakana appear "childish' to native speakers, again like this posting. Carl---jeat? no, jew? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lummy 4 #20 April 25, 2001 Japanese keyboards look exactly like american keyboards. Only difference is that they have the japanese characters instead of the letters. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gus 1 #21 April 25, 2001 Quotehow do you do that?It's right above the '3', what's there on yours? Ah, keyboard layout - one of my favourite topics. Gus Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
