Diary of a Mad Natural Historian

Newton’s third law - refined as the conservation of angular momentum - is not the helicopter’s friend. There are the usual solutions - a tail rotor that provides thrust to counter the main rotor’s torque and tandem rotors (where two equal sized rotors move in opposite directions and offset each other) - and the out-of-the-ordinary takes on the problem.I was nosing around the web a couple days ago, trying to figure out if a picture of a helicopter was real or a model used in a movie (option 2, by the way) and discovered another Soviet/Russian helicopter design bureau: Kamov. The Kamov Design Bureau’s claim to fame is the use of coaxial contra-rotating rotors. I’ve got to think that this a hella complicated way to do things, but it is compact. Lots of good Russian chopper design - a couple stood out.

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The Ka-137 (above) is the quintessential evil drone. It’s a UAV that can do recon/surveillance work and - according to the linked web site - deliver cargo. No mention of weapon mounts…

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The Ka-56 is superspy material. Depending on who you believe, it was either designed just to be carried in a torpedo tube (why?) or actually fired from the tube inside, one assumes, a special torpedo (yay!). Followed by another torpedo carrying our intrepid agent, one hopes. Looks like the writers of the Venture Brothers missed a perfect obscure reference when they put Assassinanny 911 together.

What makes the title of the post work is the solution of another chopper designer - Kaman Aircraft. They used an intermeshed contra-rotating solution - at least the hubs are side-by-each rather than one sorta-inside the other. The HH-43 Huskie has been fave of mine since my plastic model aircraft days.

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If you embiggen the picture above, notice the warning on the rotor mast. Because of the way the rotor assemblies are canted, approaching from the side would result in a radical hair cut.

I channel-surfed my way to a teevee program on the history of Soviet helicopters the other evening. There was footage of the Mi-12; it’s tough to envision just how big it is until you see it swallowing trucks whole. I did a YouTube search and came up with the following clip - it’s in French and interestingly enough what parts of the narration I understand match perfectly with the English version I saw. Mi-12 fun fact - there’s a shaft connecting both powertrains together. Both engines on one side could fail, but both rotors will continue to turn.

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Minor spoiler alert! I’ve posted on Alan Moore and Gerry Anderson recently and wasn’t surprised at all to find that Moore knows his Anderson. In The Black Dossier Mina and Allan arrive at a spaceport where they steal a rocket - a Pancake Extra-Large 4. They had been told that the Extra-Large models are named after how the previous models met their end (thus Shrapnel XL2). One guess as to how the Pancake meets it’s end (with a not-too-bright Perspex robot pilot at the controls).

Via Telstar Logistics, a glorious bit of bricolage:

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Click through and view the whole thing. Nixie tube speedo! Vacuum cleaner brake light! My two wheel lust continues to be focused on a Ducati Monster, but this is sublime.

The Maker’s first name - Nemo - is getting filed under ‘Suggestions for Grandbaby Names’ - to be used far in the future. A simultaneous link to Verne and McCay would not be a bad thing.

A Certain Design Student scoops Jalopnik! Sighted on the Pratt campus and posted to Flickr on the 29th, two Nissan Cubes.

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Days (OK, day) later - the Jalopnik post. I prefer the greenish paint job - it fits - reminds me of earlier Japanese microcars.

Continuing with the automotive theme - the internets are trying to tell me something. Twice, in as many days, I’ve been presented with posts on a vehicle that three days ago I didn’t know existed - a FC (forward control) Land Rover. This, after googling for info on the FC-170 Jeep in the middle of the week. I think the net is becoming self aware - and it likes me!

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Want!

Some pictures taken during the last week or so…

My office spider, a male Lasiodora parahybana. He has a small fan club led by a middle-school girl (her curiosity and fearlessness rock).

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A couple dart frog pictures taken when I dropped by a fellow frogger’s place to pick up a D. fantasticus. An E. bassleri Black in an ?Aechmea?:

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And a Phyllobates terriblis - the really toxic one - looking tough.

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Shifting gears a bit - a couple awful pictures of a killer vehicle. Spotted in Portsmouth on a misty evening, a Swedish Unimog. It looks like it’s set up for pumper duty - man, I love these trucks!

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Heading north yesterday, I noticed that a neighbor had pulled his Ultravan out of the barn. I popped by this morning to ask permission to take some pictures and got a surprise. I didn’t know these folks - had only spotted the Ultravan nose peeping out of the barn on previous trips past - turns out they are the folks that drive the Isetta, the Messerschmitt, and other little vehicles in the Madbury Day parade. Also, very nice people. Not only did I get permission to photograph the Ultravan, I got a lot of info about the vehicle and I got a quick tour of the basement (Daihatsu three-wheeler, France Jet, motorcycles, outboards) and the garage, where the current active project sits: a Goggomobil Dart. Pictures:

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The whole photoset is here.

Air. I recently finished William Gibson’s latest: Spook Country. A bit part is played by the Hook, a Soviet-era heavy lift helicopter. I’ve long been a fan of the American CH-54/S-64 Skycrane - I built a plastic model of one years ago (you could run the winch line up and down by rotating the main rotor) and I find it’s minimalism appealing.

S-64 in firefighting mode - a shout-out to my friends on the West Coast.

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If you still doubt the size of this machine, consider this - the Mi-6 can carry twice as much as the largest American helicopter, the CH-64 Tarhe “Sky Crane” - in fact, it’s capable of lifting a Tarhe. The accompanying sign said that it had often lifted MiG-17s and MiG-21s; the Vietnamese would conceal their aircraft in servicing areas in the jungle and airlift them to a roughly prepared field for takeoff, then return them to the jungle afterwards. Most remarkable perhaps is the Hook’s ability to transport up to 120 people when it’s in its high-density seating configuration!*

Even larger and much more bizarre (therefore, cool in my book) is the Mi-12 Homer prototype. Two main rotors arranged transversely (left and right, rather than the front and back we’re used to) each powered by two engines. According to Wikipedia, the rotor/powerplant combo was lifted directly from the Mi-6 (get it? Mi-6 * 2 = Mi-12). Choppers start off as improbable objects - add in that Russian air thing (think ekranoplan) and you get:

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Land. I’ve been wanting to post on this bit of gorgeousity for a while. I’m very partial to the union (set-wise) of Africa and Garratt. Having grown up on a diet of Big Boys, Challengers and the like, Garratts are strange, alien and - you guessed it - way cool. How do I love this steam engine? Let me count the ways:

• Beyer-Garratt 4-8-4 + 4-8-4 - the largest locomotive ever built for 50 lb (light!) rail. Meter-gauge!
• May have crossed the bridge at Tsavo (in my mind, it certainly did)!
• Shares a nickname with Walter Dalrymple Maitland Bell, who used a 7×57 (among other light calibers) on elephant.

The Kenya Uganda Railway No. 87 Karamoja:

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Beautiful model (be sure to click through and check out the 3-D view):

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Not Karamoja, but a Garratt at Tsavo:

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Sea. Via the Telstar Logistics blog, a pointer to John Konrad’s thoughts on the Pasha Bulker incident report. The Pasha Bulker ran aground June 8, 2007 on Nobby’s Beach, Newcastle, New South Wales (if you don’t know where New South Wales is - I’m not going to name the country - spend the rest of the day with an atlas, please). New vocab word for the day - hogged - and an incredible Flickrset. The gCaptain blog where Mr. Konrad’s post appears looks like something I’ll need to visit from time to time.

The title of the photo is “Correctly parked”.

COOP’s post and Flickrset caused me to dig out my (very) old box of Matchboxes, Corgis, etc. I took one set of photos, but the sun isn’t above the big pine tree in the back yard yet - I don’t have any fancy flash equipment - so I’m going to start over in an hour or two. The pictures will be uploaded here; in the meantime, something to prime the pump:

First, a follow-up to an earlier post on Borges’ Library - via BoingBoing, a paper titled Information Policy for the Library of Babel. To quote the BB entry, “James proposes that the Internet bears striking similarities to the Library of Babel — and applies the lessons from its infinite depths to the question of information policy for the net.”

And - a bit of hyperlinked serendipity. One of the widgets on my Netvibes page shows me my Fickr contacts’ most recently posted pictures. This morning I saw this picture of a Ford Falcon Ranchero posted by Telstar Logistics (as COOP and A Certain Design Student know, the Ranchero is a huge favorite of mine). I zipped over to Flickr to mark it as a fave and while I was there, I read the comments. GiselaGiardino²³ wrote, “(The sedan version, apart from being the most used Ford car, was used by the military dictatorship and the police, painted green, so they are widely linked in the collective memory to the violence and atrocities of the 70’s here).” “Wow”, said I, “I wonder where she lives?” I clicked through to her Flickr home page - the answer was immediately apparent: Argentina. And to close the loop, she has a “Borges, the infinite and me” photoset!

I am reassured by the delight I feel when these kinds of odd connections occur - age and cynicism (aside from the military dictatorship considerations) haven’t swamped me yet!