Talk:DaSH PA

New stub


I have requested more sources, and photos, from the principals on this project. Anyone with photos or sources to contribute is invited to help. Dicklyon (talk) 21:58, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

OK, Alec Proudfoot and Chris Colohan each made new commons accounts and uploaded a couple of their pix, which I share here with the caption/description they gave. I'll choose a few for the article, which probably can't handle them all. Or someone else can help... Dicklyon (talk) 06:49, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

And based on my original stub, Alec sent these suggested sources and details:

You found the one 'traditional' press article in a newspaper that we've had so far. (We are going to do a press release soon, but not sure yet if it will be surrounding our December test flights, or our first forays into the desert in early 2017... It is a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing, i.e. is there a Wikipedia article for jounalists to look at, or do we need journalists to write stuff first, then a Wikipedia article! :-)

Here are some other sources:

EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association magazine): https://www.eaa.org/en/eaa/eaa-news-and-aviation-news/2015-news/01-07-2016-human-powered-airplane-flies-in-california  (note: this is the digital version but it also made the actual print version of the magazine -- I have a copy if you need it)

Skywings magazine, official publication of the BHPA (British Hang Gliding/Paragliding Association), January 2016 edition: https://www.bhpa.co.uk/sport/bhpa/skywings/1601_Jan_2016_Skywings/index.html  (brief article is on page 8).

Human Power News, the IHPVA Newsletter. February/March 2015 with a long article about DaSH. (This is the most detailed and informative article about DaSH because they did a lot of research and interviewed me extensively. (It was written before we flew).)  There is no online source of this available. I sent you a PDF copy in a separate e-mail.

Right This Minute -- viral video show: http://www.rightthisminute.com/video/rtmtv-these-brave-guys-dont-have-fear-flying

Sustainable Skies blog: http://sustainableskies.org/tag/dash-pa-dead-simple-human-powered-airplane/

Brief mention in this article about the 2014 BHPFC Rally: http://www.bhpfc.org.uk/The-2014-BHPFC-Human-Powered-Flight-Rally.pdf

Mention of our first flight on the home page of BHPFC (British Human Powered Flying Club): http://www.bhpfc.org.uk/

From Lighting BIkes (one of our sponsors, provided lightweight carbon fiber cranks): https://www.lightningbikes.com/riders/dash-pa/index.html

Our blog: http://dashpa.blogspot.com/

I've given 35 talks on DaSH between June 2013 and the present. Some of those have been filmed:

A talk I gave (before first flight) at South Bay Soaring Society in April 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8XI1vZwz-8

I gave a talk at Gnoss Field in Novato in June 2016, I'll be putting up video link of that soon.

Here is a talk I gave at BHPFC Rally 2016 in Sywell, England:

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44k0BS6wXhw

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g_ZkF6QtUo

Anyway, I hope those are enough links. Given the number that support other HPA articles in Wikipedia, it seems to me that it should be.

Note in some of the articles they are talking about an 80 pound weight (36.3 kg). This was our target weight, but for a variety of reasons, we went over (including have to add an extra layer of adhesive backed Mylar to the leading edge, using thicker, stronger foam for the ribs, having slightly heavier than estimated parts for things like the landing gear et cetera). It isn't unusual to go 20% over on an airplane project, and that is about how ours came out...

I'll be updating the stats in the "Information" page on our blog to reflect the known approximate 'real' weights later tonight. But I probably won't get to updating the CAD drawing that also lists the 36.3 kg (80 lb) original target weight until some time later... See the weights and wing areas listed below, those are correct.

Interesting tidbits that can be used for the article (or for the Notes in the HPA list). There is more info here than you would probably use in a basic Wikipedia article, but I thought providing more rather than less would be better, you can cull and/or use whatever seems appropriate.

Started in November 2010.

DaSH PA stands for "Dead Simple Human Powered Aircraft".

Our first flight was on December 5th, 2015 at Half Moon Bay Airport, California.

We flew again in Half Moon Bay in February 2016, and then moved to Moffett Federal Airfield for our test flights. We've flown there in June 2016, and again in November 2016, and have plans for more flights in December 2016.

The longest flight to date (as of Nov 2016) has been by Craig Robinson, 1.62 km (1.01 miles) in 4 minutes 0 seconds at Moffett Field on Nov 5 2016. The longest flight by a female was 850 m, 2 mins 24 seconds on Nov 5, 2016. The first flight by a female was by Ginger Kroft on Feb 21, 2016, 290 m in 45 seconds.

We plan to go to the desert for longer flights in 2017, perhaps to try for some record-breaking flights.

We did it just for the fun of it, and the learning experience. My goal was to build and fly an HPA for the cost of a mid-size luxury car. Later, I started calling the project "My Tesla". (In the end, it ended up being about Two Teslas! :-)

12,000 manhours put in by the time of the first flight.

Over 230 volunteers have worked on the project at one time or another, with a core of about a dozen and a half doing much of the work.

We did our wing load testing at Hiller Aviation Museum in late October 2015.

The airplane comes in four configurations, depending on which wingtips we fly with:

- The DaSH v5 configuration (there were 4 prior versions of the design on paper before we actually started building) has 33.3 m (109.25 ft), wing surface area Sref = 35.96 m^2 (387 sq ft)

- The DaSH v5-WE configuration is 36.3 meters (119 feet) (v5 with the addition of a 1.5 m wingtip extension on each tip), and Sref = 38 m^2 (409 sq ft)

- The DaSH v6 configuration is 36.98 m (121.3 ft), Sref = 38.42 m^2 (414 sq ft)

- The DaSH v6-WE configuration is 38.98 m span (131.2 ft), Sref = 40.14 m^2 (432 sq ft)

We flew DaSH v5 on the first flight on Dec 5 2015. The rest of the flights so far as of November 2016 have been with v5-WE. We plan to fly the v6-WE configuration (the 40 m behemoth) in mid December 2016. We probably won't fly the v6 configuration without the wingtip extensions since it is not appreciably different than the v5-WE version, with the exception of less washout (2.5 degrees instead of 4 degrees with v5-WE).

As far as we know, ours is the first U.S. human powered airplane to fly since the 1988 trials of Daedalus at Edwards before they left for Greece (there have been U.S. human powered helicopters that have flown since, but not airplanes -- I know of four projects -- Virginia Tech's 'Iron Butterfly', UCI's HPA project (both of these flew, and crashed unmanned but haven't flown manned), and personal projects 'Pedalusion' by James Tascione and 'Wind Rose' by Larry McNay. As far as I know, none of these have flown.  There was also a project called 'Raven' in the NorthWest, but also was never finished and never flew, and there may have been a few others...). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dicklyon (talk • contribs) 09:08, 28 November 2016 (UTC)