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25 April 2024 20:29
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| Asked by: |
Nitro MacMad |
| Subject: |
Avoiding pitfalls |
| Question: |
Dear All,
I see all the usual suspects are still here a little older and hopefully a little wiser. And yes, I’m still alive.
There are some lessons still to be learned, I see, and perhaps I can help steer you away from, at least some, of the pitfalls that await us all.
As it is the most recently mentioned, I will start with Mike Marsden’s machine……
There is a very human tendency to see the results we desperately want to see while being blinded to what is the “bleeding obvious” to an unimpassioned observer.
With Mike’s machine you have all been looking at “the bleeding obvious”. Let me try and help you see it…..
The great Laithwaite got fooled by the same “bleeding obvious” that Mike Marsden seems to have. While it is disappointing to learn Mike’s machine is a non-starter, it may be some comfort to learn he is in the company of a great man who had all but found “the answer”. For, while poor Eric made the same simple mistake that Mike Marsden did, he was a great man. Eric was so close to the answer that you couldn’t slide a cigarette paper between his monumental mistake (made so disastrously in front of the buttoned down “geniuses” at the Royal Society) and the truth. That simple mistake?.....
Spring scales for weighing things have a damper in them to stop them from springing up and down for ages when a weight is placed on them. This is so they quickly settle to indicate the correct weight. Because they are not designed for things that bounce up and down, the damper tends to work more, or entirely, in one direction. This is why when any object that is joggling up and down (and you can try this yourself at home with a small electric motor and an eccentric weight – I did) is placed on a spring scale it is inevitable that the indicated weight of an object that is joggling will vary considerably compared to a stationary weight. This gives the unwary the impression that the joggling object has gained or lost (depending on the direction of damping) weight and that they (NASA, satellite companies, governments or whoever “they” is, this week) will shortly knock on your door with a lorry full of ten pound notes – or shoot you and steal your idea.
If Mike or Eric had simply turned their machines sideways (why does everyone want to go up?) and placed it on a low friction trolley they would have seen that they were in reality getting no thrust and the machines would have oscillated to and fro. If only Eric had waited and tried this simple change…….
Also: It is necessary to incorporate a non gyroscopic mass which has to be moved linearly back and forth with one of the linear strokes caused by a gyrodynamic displacement and good old Newtonian displacement and the other stroke by good old Newtonian displacement and gyrodynamic displacement. Just whirring things round and round without this mass displacement will get you and/or your machine nowhere –really; nowhere!
Like the Meercat says in the insurance ad. “SIMPLE”.
A word of warning. Although ”simple”, the main shaft rotation speed is (like the ankle bone is connected to the leg bone) linked to the diameter to each gyro axis, as is the gyro mass, rotational speed and diameter, as is the linear mass to be accelerated back and forth, its speed of acceleration and deceleration. AND all this needs to be kept as light as possible – quite a trick with the inevitable need for fairly heavy gyros and frame, for strength – or the small amount of impulse/anti grav/thrust will be lost in the, horrendous to balance, mass of the whole damn shebang. Change any one parameter and it will likely lose you the “sweet, thrust producing, spot” that you’ve found (that is, assuming you’ve found it in the first place); making you have to start searching for it again with every small change!
So! Good luck with that! As Harry Hill would say.
Oh! Don’t forget health and safety!!!
Anyone who has been anywhere near one of these things when they “let go” will know how easy it is to overlook safety in the rush to see the latest results. You can easily end up finding out how remarkably long it can take a ricocheting gyro to lose energy enough to be safe, if you are lucky. Or; enjoy the facilities of the local A&E ward if you’re not lucky.
Missed you all loads and loads
Nitro MacMad
The original “nutter in a shed”
PS No, I don’t regret having spent countless hours on this, one of many of my many interests, with no likelihood of a financially useful outcome. If you don’t enjoy your own curiosity then you are very curious indeed! (I bet some plagiarising so and so has that on “U-boat” or “Face-ache” within a week!)
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| Date: |
4 June 2011
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