It’s being widely reported as the first time an electric multi-copter has carried a human being aloft. Germans Thomas Senkel, Stephan Wolf, and Alexander Zosel are the brains behind e-volo, a 16-copter with four groups of four blades, each of which is driven by a separate motor. The first human-carrying flight is reported to have lasted one minute and thirty seconds.
Zachary Rukstela of Kinetic Steamworks considers himself the steward of the pieces of vintage steam technology he owns. He operates a steam powered vehicle at Maker Faire Bay Area 2011, and explains his background in steam, from growing up on a farm, to working on a WWII era steam powered destroyer.
Without going all the way out on a limb, I’ll borrow language from my first scratchbuilt post and suggest that polish master modeler Andrzej Ziober is producing work that is approaching “the limits a single modeler can achieve,” using conventional scale modeling techniques and technologies, in the field of 1/72 scale aircraft. He has not produced many of these models, because each of them takes about five years of work, at about five hours of work a day.
MAKE contributor Jeffrey McGrew, of the brilliant design duo (w/ Jillian Northrup) Because We Can, was involved in building part of Jon Sarriugarte/Kyrsten Mate’s serpent art cars for this year’s Burning Man. Jeffrey and Jillian built the amazing Viking ship-inspired tails.
This detailed post from modeling forum member Panzerpaul nicely shows off the skill and hard work that went into creating his radio-controlled replica of a WWII-era German tank destroyer commonly called a Hetzer. To house the R/C electronics and other guts, the hull has to be hollow.
1/87 is essentially HO scale, which is said to be the most popular scale for model rail stock in the world. For cars and even large trucks, as you can see, it’s pretty dang small. Which is what makes the level of detail achieved by renowned truck modeler Joe Enriquez on this, and his many other models in the same scale, so remarkable.
Alex Dumas of Sci-High Models took Editor’s Choice in Starship Modeler’s 2010 Just Glue It contest with this 1/87 scale replica of the Swift, a spacecraft from the late-70s British TV series Space: 1999. Do not miss his wonderful work-in-progress shots, one of which I’ve included, below, to show off the remarkable patience and skill […]
