OutbackUAV

The advice was originally given to Dustin Hoffman’s character, Benjamin in The Graduate but whereas Benjamin immediately took to the bottom of the family swimming pool in his new scuba gear to escape his parents’ frightful friends it looks like Chad Kapper has taken the advice onboard.

Perusing my YouTube subscription feed there was a new one from FT, always welcome and perhaps less frequent than I would like.

They’re busy people.

They have FliteFest coming up.  As well there’s their road trip to the South of France sponsored by ImmersionRC.  (As a mad Francophile and ‘RCophile’ so it’s agonising that I can’t go - even if I’ll only be not far away in Greece at the time.

When I watched the video it was all business, just Josh and Chad and no planes.. ominous... then Josh said “you need to listen up” so I put down my coffee and sat up straight.  When Josh says “jump!” I say “how high?”.

The news was that FliteTest and StoneKap Productions have been sold to a group called Lauren International (LI).  LI’s web site proclaims themselves as… oh sorry I went to sleep reading what looks like copy written by one of those buzzword generators.  I even slept through the audio that started up when I hit the home page.  Audio on web pages - the blink tag of the new millenium!

LI seems to make plastic extrusions and tubing, lighting, pet products and NaviGate™ some sort of regulation compliance web app.

I knew the comments on the video would be special with plenty of prophecies about the sky falling.

I read a few then commented that I thought that LI didn’t buy FT because they wanted in on the cheap foamboard kit market (hardly a path to riches I would think) but because they wanted FT/StoneKap’s savvy in video and social media.  To my great surprise FliteTest even replied to my comment, and it’s in the ‘Top Comments’ section.  FT’s reply essentially confirmed my suspicion.

It remains to be seen how this pans out - the main risk to the avid FLiteTest viewership would probably be FT losing the skills of people like Chad because he’s got a big job ahead of him: Nurtured Pets have a link to a non-existent channel on their home page, Lauren Manufacturing seem to make about one video a year.. this is a big win for LI, hopefully it will be for FT too.
 

 This is one project I can't wait to see finished.  Melanie Vermeulen is building a EDF version of the F-35 VTOL fighter complete with the weird but ingenious jet nozzle which redirects thrust rearwards or downwards as shown in this video:

Closeup of the nozzle:

Here it is hovering with an impressive amount of control.

Great work!

Here is the real thing doing a vertical takeoff although I wonder if, like the Harrier, it won't be doing many vertical takeoffs in operational use because lifting a full fuel load off the ground ends up using a large proportion of that fuel.

In my extensive YouTube watching experience I’ve seen a lot of very enthusiastic and energetic people in the RC world. There’s Josh Bixler, Glassdogangle, DemonDriver, Jeremiah and Alex from Stone Blue Airlines just off the top of my head but I can’t think of any who pack more punch than Trent from MyGeekShow.

In the last couple of years year he’s gone from newbie to attempting one of the greatest feats ever tried in the RC world.  He’s going to try and fly one of his Raptor 140 flying wings across the United States from San Diego to South Carolina(?) a distance of around 4,000km.

I’ve taken a small sponsorship via Indiegogo of one of the wing panel ads that will proudly wear the OutbackUAV logo that I laboured over for a good 3 or 4 minutes...

Even if he doesn’t make it it will be epic.  It's worth the tiny sponsorship just to see him try.  Trent’s the kind of guy that is pretty unstoppable despite having a full-time job (and we know Americans don’t get much holiday/vacation leave) a wife and family plus other commitments. 

I'd love to try the same thing here in Ostraya, maybe Shark Bay to Byron Bay?  It probably wouldn't be as interesting because as anyone who's crossed this wide brown land knows that it's very wide and very brown.  It's about 4,000km as the crow flies, about the same as Trent's route but there's basically no East-West roads across Australia 'through the middle' unless you have two 4-wheel drives, a lot of water and fuel and a Flying Doctor radio.

I'll be in Greece at the time but I'll try and get a SIM for my phone so I can see Trent give it a red-hot go.