rubber-power maple seed riddle

[Anonymous]

I’m trying to get a maple seed to fly using a rubber-power catapult.

You know the seed that you throw them up and they autorotate down?

Here is what I’ve done so far:

http://www.rubber-power.com/Gallery20.htm

You can see a couple of my prototypes.

Also you can see the apparatus I used to measure the center of gravity of a maple seed.

[Anonymous]

Hey Darcy, Ii cannot recall where I saw it, but there is a model that you can buy to build that is essentially a maple copter.
I was surfing the web one day and came across some model site and there it was the Maple Copter or whatever they call it. essentially a spar with a squarish wing on one end, with some weight on the other end.
Very similar to what you are doing.
-G.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the note.

If you come cross it again, please let me know as I can’t find anything.

http://www.rubber-power.com/Gallery20.htm

Darcy

[George Reinhart]

The concept was called a “charybdis” and it was publish in 1957 in Aeromodeler magazine.
I built one in high school and it actually flew.
I saw the recent video a day or two ago, so it’s out there.
Cheers!

[Anonymous]

Pete,

Thanks for that as well. I googled the word charybdis and haven’t found anything except the charybdis sea monster called that.

Darcu=y

[Anonymous]

I am aware of the Charbydis, there was one called the Chip Chopper a number of years ago in Model Flyer, wild machines, I think there is probabl avid on youtube.
But this was just a stick and tissue job, sort of like what Darcy shows, but the ‘sail’ was just a rectangle 1/16 frame covered in tissue,looked to be about 2″-3″ appx,then a spar running off the long edge(LE or TE?) of the rectangle, with a blob of plastercine on it for balance. Ive been looking for it, man wish I would have bookmarked it.
-G.

[Author]

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