Hey everyone, Jason here. Today we're going to take a look at my latest kinetic
sculpture, which is this model of two airplanes flying over a country landscape.
And before we jump into it, I have posted this project to LEGO Ideas
as I think it would make a pretty interesting and unique LEGO set.
It has some really interesting movement and I think it would make a pretty cool display model.
If you agree, you can head on over to LEGO Ideas and with your
support maybe we can make that happen. So let's take a closer look at the model.
The planes are mounted on these transparent bars, which tilt from side to
side as you turn the crank, and as they do so the roll of the planes changes as
well which gives a nice little impression of them flying through the air.
You can also manually control the pitch of the planes just by tilting them forwards or backwards.
The planes and the landscape can be easily customized.
In the introduction I had the Sopwith Camel and the Fokker Dr.1, which
of course is a classic World War One match up. And here I have a couple of mono
planes I've been working on. Bonus points for anyone who can guess which ones they are.
Of course you can build and display aircraft from any era or even birds or
spaceships and decorate the base to match. So how does the mechanism work?
We'll start with the support rods. Here I have a simple set of beams set up in the
shape of a parallelogram and as I tilt the lift arms from side to side, the
opposite sides remain parallel, but if I shorten the distance between the pins
connecting the tops of the lift arms, we now have a trapezoid, and as I tilt the
lift arms from side to side, that top beam will also tilt which is what gives
the planes the nice little roll as they move from side to side.
The geometry is the same in the final model, I've just changed the lift arms to these
transparent bars and connected some Technic pieces onto the ends of them.
And we can control the angle of these bars using an axle connected through the
base of one of them. To do that we'll add a rod to the end of that axle,
and then we'll connect the end of that rod to a crankshaft through a piston.
So that as we rotate the crankshaft, the piston moves the rod from side to side
which transfers the motion to the support bars.
Now we can just duplicate that whole mechanism for the other plane.
And if we offset the cranks driving the pistons by 90 degrees,
then the planes will fly out of phase with each other.
Which gives the impression that the one in the back is chasing the one in the front.
And in the final model we'll just add a couple of gears and a crank to the end of that driveshaft.
So that we can easily power the model by hand.
And that is about all there is to it you can find a link to the LEGO Ideas project in the
description or somewhere on the video.
Once again I would greatly appreciate your support.
I do plan to build a couple of other different themed versions of this.
Probably a science fiction one and maybe a more natural one with birds flying.
So stay tuned for those. As always thanks for watching, keep on building and I'll see you next time.
Oh no, the Sopwith Camel's coming.
Evasive maneuvers. Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.
Oh, no, man down.