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Very informative experiment and coverage! Thank you for sharing our mission Peter! If anyone's interested in getting the full picture of issues like the one in this video, check out the link in the description and let us know if you have any questions.
That would be an insane platform for long range OWA UAV deployment. Have the 'engine' car towing the OWA craft with the (relatively) expensive long range comms and power packs. Give the carriages just enough DV for terminal adjustments and just enough comms to communicate with the engine car then have them glide to target. You could detach carraiges as you go to service targets of opportunity or all in one go at the primary target to overwhelm defensive systems. Have the engine RTB to pick up another batch of carriages with your expensive batteries and flight controller intact.
As a mechanical engineer, I have only one recommendation; add springs and dampers! I think the swaying can easily be mitigated with some damping, while not losing the train-like flexibility.
I was thinking a caboose with some extra drag could help pull the links into more stable tension. Maybe with a spoiler on an rc axis so its taughtness can be varied.
As a non-engineer, I wonder what the benefits of having so many degrees of freedom really are. I understand why the cars need to be able to have a different pitch angle than the tractor, but why not use two couplings to limit freedom to pitch only?
I think the main problem is caused by connecting the carriages together from the front and back, this sets up the pitch feedback loop instability, where the leading carriage pitches up pushing the following carriage nose down etc along the line. If instead you connected them from CG to CG down each side, like a team of horses pulling a carriage, they would follow each other without inducing the pitch oscillation.
I'm also insanely curious what would happen should he add a follower engine like you see on typical train setups. Obviously in this case both would be forward, but he said in the video that they weren't flying good. I think adding a second set of engines somewhere could be good.
I was thinking the same thing about feedback but rather a different hinge point, oppose the flying surfaces so that car responds opposite of the car ahead of it.
I love the idea of a plane pulling a second carriage, touching the runway at some place, discarding the carriage and then just continuing on to another destination
A bit more complicated way of dragging gliders behind planes like it was done in WW2 to get soldiers behind ennemy lines using disposable unpowered gliders
If the cars break away, have a set of mini wings pop out, that pitch the nose up slightly, for a glider to the ground. The pin release could retract into the first car, spring activated, that controls the wings…
Dragon train plane ... Video Idea. 2.0 consider Delta Wings and and Control surfaces on every segment each controlled by gyros. For landing on the tracks use a runway with a funnel at the end. To Put less Stress in the engine maybe Put smaller engines in every segment. Modern electric trains have many electric Motors 🤓
I love what Sripol Industries have come up with this time! Flying train, heck yeah! It moves a bit like those dragons over at cultural Chinese displays.
From towing trailers I know that drag is actually your friend. The more aft drag the cars supply, the more stable your tow vehicle is. Consider adding a little aft weight, countered with a larger wing, for the "caboose." Or even try a small motor on the very last car that has reverse thrust. All you want is enough to keep the trailer behind you. From the video, it appears that each individual car has is own CG, so making these changes should not hurt too bad. You may also find that overall the plane needs to be heavier with bigger engines. Add length to your cars to reduce your oscillation. Make them twice as long. It won't solve all the oscillation issues, but it may settle some.
@@JeffreyOller It wouldn't work too well considering the fact that he can release the cars from the main engine. Unless you put the main power in the last car and then a small battery in the front just so you can land it.
Maybe you could do something like a very slightly increasing drag with each car in the line, so the one in front always wants to go faster than the car behind it, holding tension between them at all times (more or less)? Just a thought. Great job as always!
You just gave me an idea. If we could build an infrastructure of skyhook tow lines we could have a shuttle system like this where you hook a glider via tow line to the skyhook, get towed to a point near your destination, disconnect and glide to the airport. You could even have multiple glider shuttles that disconnect at different stops.
✝️🩸1 Thessalonians 4 KJV 🎺🌥️ 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words. Romans 5 KJV 🩸 9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
@@clintonleonard5187 I already left a separate comment about this, but that idea is very close to the invention in the book "Tom Swift and his Sky Train" :)
maybe dampers on the couplings for sideways movement... or mass/fluid damper inside the last car?.... or maybe a way to stiffen the whole train once airborne :) I love trains
I'm thinking about thin carbon rods, or if you've ever used goldenrod for control surfaces. You could insert or retract those semi rigid rods to control stiffness.
Maybe you could try adding a gyro stabiliser to the last car somehow, completely independent of the electronics in the first car, to counteract the yawing motions and the oscillations
Passively actuated control surfaces on the cars: gimbal joint left/right actuates side rudder, up/down actuates height rudder. No servos or gyros needed, just mechanical links from the joint to the rudders. Add dampeners if you're feeling fancy.
I'm thinking add an accelerometer and a simple microcontroller/flightcontroller to each wagon and try to auto-level each wagon individually. Turning might become harder without coordination, but that should result in an overall more stable train(If you can get the PIDs to work correctly - Probably need to tune them for every wagon. Maybe just add a few wagons with active control, maybe even an independent set of motors).
The tail wagging issue is turbulence off the previous wings. Model it in software or in a wind tunnel. Now you need to be able to land it back onto the tracks and operate it like a train. I envision the landing "strip" as a funnel shape. It would need to be long and wide, tapering gently to the width of the rail. This would reduce the accuracy needed to land and, hopefully, gently and accurately guide the vehicle to the correct alignment on the rails. Practical? Nope but fun! The rail gauge needs to be wider to provide better roll stability. The side surface area and the flight surfaces are providing lift when there's a crosswind as well. A wider gauge will help there. Deeper rail connection with the wheels might help too (the wheels will ride lower in the rail providing more resistance to rising over the rail when there's a crosswind).
Possibly. It may also be an instability just of the configuration of the aircraft (ie it would persist even if none of the downwash from the wings affected the wings behind it). A small change in orientation of one section causes a larger change in orientation somewhere else and so on. Only way to really know is to model its control dynamics or throw it into a wind tunnel.
I know others have mentioned a chinese dragon kite... but this looks like it would be an AMAZING basis for a long flying dragon. Might need more power/ motors to get enough thrust, but a 12 foot long tail flying through the air would be dope with a nice dragon head on the front
Birds use their tail feathers for drag. Add a parachute at the end. You probably don't need any wings on the passenger cars, since the u-joints will keep them oriented similar to the engine.
It's a flying dragon! 🐉 A great mythical beast! "It's a dragon!, It's a dragon!" 😂 Seriously, looks like one of those Chinese dragons flying in the sky.
This reminds me of glider towing, But in full scale, you'll have a pilot in both aircraft. This could work, but you would need a computer to constantly stabilize the cars in flight.
Absolutely. The flying wing design had some serious stabilization issues until the computer era ... well uhm .. stabilized it. B2 spirit versus the Northrop flying wing.
one idea that comes to mind: every car has servos for flaps. no engine, etc, but controllable flaps and a flight controller. in theory, even engines could be interesting.
Probably the most entertaining form of gadgetbahn I've ever seen. Also, you're right about the zero-series Shinkansen looking like an aircraft, its design was inspired by airliners specifically for aerodynamic purposes.
Finally! I've been suggesting this for ages! Also, the last car should have a vertical tailfin. The wing stabilizers on the cars should get closer and closer together the further back you go from the engine. That should mitigate the serpentine swaying while in flight.
I was thinking this too. And to add the effect of drag on the main engine, each following car would be powered down slightly from the one in front of it. Essentially taking the majority of the unpowered load off the main engine but still allowing for some resistance to pull in a straight line.
12:36 That kind of movement remind me of the Ghost Leviathan from Subnautica Dress that up as one (somehow,without taking away from the functionality) and you'll make people scream
honestly despite how utterly ridiculous and impractical this is, its great to watch you try an idea, iterate and eventually achieve something that sort of works, the whole process is so cool :)
This, but make all of the flight controls work by pivoting on the train car connections. The position of the cars will dictate the flight and eliminate the twerking.
You can keep the vertical stabs and put in centering springs between segments. If you design it with some jointed beam that is rigged with cables you might even be able to use all the cars for steering. Maybe ball joints, with a cable/pulley system that runs on all four sides of the beam. Though I think the issue is finding a good way to rig it in this condition
We definitely need a dragon next! With slightly stiffer joints, maybe a thin carbon fiber rod from engine to last part, but most importantly steerable joints so the whole body can bend up and down and sideways, so you can replace yaw and elevator steering surfaces with that. With strings running along all segments from front to back along the top and bottom and sides of the body, actuated by two servos.
Peter, I was thinking some more about your train plane and it occurred to me that the super long plane you built at Flight Fest flew quite well but it was a rigid fuselage. So, what if after your plane/train takes off, you activate servos that lock up the couplers, essentially making the fuselage rigid? Then you unlock them or jettison the cars to land.
Imagining the chaos if you were a passenger in that car had me rolling with laughter. Having your window be parallel with the ground 1 second before landing is so crazy.
Great idea! It could be a train boat could work even better. It could be a bullet train-boat because you won’t have any wake from the cars behind the lead. So it could be super fast and efficient. Maybe even set it up with hydrofoils or ground effect wings.
What would be really cool would be making each car independent when they're dropped - and then giving them all gliding ability, so that when you pressed the button or flicked the swich, it would just kinda evaporate into loads of little cars (it'd have varying coolness based on how many cars in the train)
The final engine-plane design looks so cool to me, especially when you flew it around a few times on its own. Really kind of imposing and powerful looking.
The only reason why it didn't work is because during flight you didn't lock links in between car. The reason why the links are flexible is for rails. In the air, you need to lock the links rigid.
Question…for your boat rc projects where do you get your materials? And are the circuit boards pre-programmed and pre-wired? Or do you have to do it yourself? And the controller, does that come with the circuit boards or do you have to get it separately or use an old one and just connect it…. I wanna build me an rc boat but idk what I need
1. Sway reduction. Try rubber bands on the 4 corners between each car, loose/non-taught at rest, but when the bend begins, it is immediately at tension. 2. Booster motors in each car. Maybe not as powerful as the main motors of the lead car, but any sort of small booster on each car would help alleviate the drag. Any aerospace engineer would know better than I, but I’d assume as long as the rear motors aren’t equal or stronger than the lead motors there shouldn’t be any issues with the trailing cars pushing the lead too much.
What a fun experiment!!! You make it flexible, then of course there's going to be a tendency for it to porpoise like...a porpoise. It's going to do things that flags do in the wind. My only suggestions are: 1. Limit the range of flex at each joint, in each plane of freedom, to the minimum amount a train actually needs. 2. I wonder what happens if you move the wings of each boxcar to the front instead of the rear.
Keep up the builds lmao, and this reminded me of two things. 1. Some weird trains as planes mobile game that I forgot 2. An anime only those who love trains will know like me
A train airplane is a perfect situation to try an oblique wing configuration! The wings can be pivoted inward/parallel along the body of the train while on the ground then fully perpendicular when ready to lift off! Multiple oblique wings along the length of the train in a zig zag configuration during level flight for maximum stability. Perhaps locking mechanisms in between the cars to lock them in place and keep them straight after take-off. Possibly, a pusher motor in the rear car after locking.
Maybe another HUGE vertical stabilizer on the trailing car along the centerline could stop the wobbling? Increasing the size of the wings for each car as you move to the back of the train could help lift the tail and keep the whole setup from being tail heavy. Each car having smaller wings then the engine seems to have negatively impacted lift. Idk just a few ideas.
You need tighter U-joints to link the cars. Torsionnal stiffness is lacking and it adds to the rear car instability. Wing position could probably use a bit of tuning also. Maybe a bit more angle of attack?
Super cool! I wonder if you add something like rubber bands on all 4 sides between the cars to act almost like a shock absorber. I wonder if that would help any.
Do you think putting gyroscopic stabilizer in the last car will be helpful? If you somehow can have the front engine and the last car stable, the middle part will be stable automatically.
Maybe some sort of locking joint to make the connections more rigid while airborne? Also I'd be curious if you printed some kind of funnel-shaped rail segment, if you could land on that to get the train back on its tracks. Kind of the same concept as the landing ramps on Hot Wheels jumps.
You springs, dampners and gyrostablizers would likely helo smooth out the ride in the other cars is it even possible to reliably land this thing back on the rails correctly?
I agree with a couple people on here... Connections at the CG, possibly adding a small canard to the front of each pulled car so when it separates, it becomes more of a glider than a brick, individual car separation... possibly adding a controller module to each car with a pitch/roll/yaw/ compensator from a drone to control the surfaces better.... the last would also give the opportunity for individual operators to fly each car as it separates... I think that would be a really worthy idea to test... king of like adding multiple gliders behind a tow plane... which they already do... have each individual controller automatically keep it stable and the "pilot" for each car gives it direction when it goes to glider mode.
Someone has probably suggested this but as each car gets further from the engine, give the wings an increased upward vertical tilt. You may need to increase the wing length proportionally to keep the lift equal. The increase in drag is compensated for by increased stability. Just a thought.
something simulating a hydraulic connecting the carts that would become soft when on tracks so it can turn but stiffens up and holds everything straight when in flight
Truly genius! Very fun one.Crazy that the cars ended up crashing right near the ground camera. I like the idea of releasing the cars one by one with ability to control them on the way down. Probably a weight issue but fun to try.
To improve stability, try stretching the train out further. Reduce the drag on the central cars by straightening out their vertical surfaces. Rear car: Angle the vertical surfaces on the rear car to create more drag and keep the train stretched tight. This setup should help with self-correction during flight and minimize slack between cars.
I'd like to see what active stabilizers would do on the follow cars, see if you could use some sensors and really smooth out the transmitted oscillations from the earlier cars. I think you could get the train length much longer then, plus it would be wild to see it really stable in the air.
I wish you had kept iterating. I am kinda thinking about those articulated baggage cart trains at the airports, wondering if there is a way to link the cars with flight control linkages so they correct to follow the engine as perfectly as possible? It flew WAY better than I expected it to, even if all the cattle class passengers were green around the gills after take off, and everyone not in first class got ... well, you know... "dropped off early" :P
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First to like 0:25
First
Cool vid
New Galaxy Express 999🖖🖖🖖 coooool
Very informative experiment and coverage! Thank you for sharing our mission Peter!
If anyone's interested in getting the full picture of issues like the one in this video, check out the link in the description and let us know if you have any questions.
the first iteration = essentially chinese dragon kite
Rayquaza
I liked that one best
That’s exactly what I was thinking
Shenron
with motors on it
You should make a V2 where the carriages can be released individually and each one is a glider controlled by a different person! Love the channel
the idea of slip coaches in this context is crazy. nice idea ( I work with great western railway locos and roiling stock)
Dang it you beat me to it haha I was gonna say add servos to the second cart so it glides down safely instead of plummetting into oblivion.
That comment is a bit scary without context :D
That would be an insane platform for long range OWA UAV deployment. Have the 'engine' car towing the OWA craft with the (relatively) expensive long range comms and power packs. Give the carriages just enough DV for terminal adjustments and just enough comms to communicate with the engine car then have them glide to target. You could detach carraiges as you go to service targets of opportunity or all in one go at the primary target to overwhelm defensive systems. Have the engine RTB to pick up another batch of carriages with your expensive batteries and flight controller intact.
sounds like an elaborate military drone concept
People in the first car would be scared to death, while everyone vomiting in the last car would welcome death
i would do it as extrim sport as long as you have a think that can carry you
3rd class steerage
LOL. Leave the kids in the last car and tell them they're having fun. Mom and Dad now relax in the first car.
@@catmando4914that’s lrt just evil kids will vommit ANYWHERE
Facts
As a mechanical engineer, I have only one recommendation; add springs and dampers!
I think the swaying can easily be mitigated with some damping, while not losing the train-like flexibility.
As an aerospace engineer, I say add a stability augmentation system.
@BottleOfCoke, you know, that makes a lot of sense. In flight, you could make it a lot more rigid
I was thinking a caboose with some extra drag could help pull the links into more stable tension. Maybe with a spoiler on an rc axis so its taughtness can be varied.
As a non-engineer, I wonder what the benefits of having so many degrees of freedom really are. I understand why the cars need to be able to have a different pitch angle than the tractor, but why not use two couplings to limit freedom to pitch only?
You know how you know someone's an engineer? They will tell you.
I think the main problem is caused by connecting the carriages together from the front and back, this sets up the pitch feedback loop instability, where the leading carriage pitches up pushing the following carriage nose down etc along the line.
If instead you connected them from CG to CG down each side, like a team of horses pulling a carriage, they would follow each other without inducing the pitch oscillation.
Ooh what a thoughtful insight. Hope you get pinned!
But that’s not a train….🤷♂️
I'm also insanely curious what would happen should he add a follower engine like you see on typical train setups. Obviously in this case both would be forward, but he said in the video that they weren't flying good. I think adding a second set of engines somewhere could be good.
@@scoobertmcruppert2915 in what way is it not, changing how trains are linked together doesnt suddenly make it not a train
I was thinking the same thing about feedback but rather a different hinge point, oppose the flying surfaces so that car responds opposite of the car ahead of it.
"...and the motor fell off" is something i feel like we shouldnt hear that much, but is definitely a common occurrence in this hobby 😂
You know you have to build a LARGE flying dragon now, don't you?
I was getting big Colgera vibes (Tears of the Kingdom)
that movement was so smooth right?! Imagine if each section had flaps or controls
Yes! And it has to breath fire.
@@Sandux93069420 CONTROLS
Came here to say the same thing
I love the idea of a plane pulling a second carriage, touching the runway at some place, discarding the carriage and then just continuing on to another destination
A bit more complicated way of dragging gliders behind planes like it was done in WW2 to get soldiers behind ennemy lines using disposable unpowered gliders
and maybe have landing gears in sync with the box cars
@@sultanhusnoo8552 I can see the future where we have glider tickets on budget airlines. rofl
@@worawatli8952less can go wrong landing a glider
I'd probably actually fly in one
If the cars break away, have a set of mini wings pop out, that pitch the nose up slightly, for a glider to the ground. The pin release could retract into the first car, spring activated, that controls the wings…
You could make a pretty cool Asian dragon plane with this kind of design
EXACTLY what I was thinking!
Came here to say this
Could probably make one based on Haku from Spirited Away.
I was about to say, it flows like an Asian Dragon. Kinda ironic seeing as the inspiration was from Japanese bullet trains
Dragon train plane ...
Video Idea. 2.0 consider Delta Wings and and Control surfaces on every segment each controlled by gyros.
For landing on the tracks use a runway with a funnel at the end.
To Put less Stress in the engine maybe Put smaller engines in every segment. Modern electric trains have many electric Motors 🤓
Train kids and plane kids can set their differences aside to appreciate this video in harmony.
And it looks like a dragon when it flies.
Autists unite!!
@@SamChaneyProductions It's me. I'm autists.
I love what Sripol Industries have come up with this time!
Flying train, heck yeah!
It moves a bit like those dragons over at cultural Chinese displays.
From towing trailers I know that drag is actually your friend. The more aft drag the cars supply, the more stable your tow vehicle is. Consider adding a little aft weight, countered with a larger wing, for the "caboose." Or even try a small motor on the very last car that has reverse thrust. All you want is enough to keep the trailer behind you. From the video, it appears that each individual car has is own CG, so making these changes should not hurt too bad. You may also find that overall the plane needs to be heavier with bigger engines. Add length to your cars to reduce your oscillation. Make them twice as long. It won't solve all the oscillation issues, but it may settle some.
or put the batteries in the last car?
@@JeffreyOller It wouldn't work too well considering the fact that he can release the cars from the main engine. Unless you put the main power in the last car and then a small battery in the front just so you can land it.
@@natperXD Absolutely right. Those two features wouldn't really be compatible.
The challenge would be landing it back onto the train tracks.
But he did
@@brandonm1088 No he didn't. He took off from train tracks, not land onto them.
@@Eidolon1andOnly 15:25 then what's this
@@brandonm1088 your not wrong but also
@@brandonm1088 Wheels on tracks, perfectly aligned. Come on now, you know what the OP meant.
29 dead, 53 injured. $28,943,836.91 in damages to major railway infrastructure. This is a national tragedy...
Yepp
Maybe you could do something like a very slightly increasing drag with each car in the line, so the one in front always wants to go faster than the car behind it, holding tension between them at all times (more or less)? Just a thought. Great job as always!
The idea of flying people to different destinations without the need to actually stop or land at those is definitely an interesting innovation! 😂
You just gave me an idea. If we could build an infrastructure of skyhook tow lines we could have a shuttle system like this where you hook a glider via tow line to the skyhook, get towed to a point near your destination, disconnect and glide to the airport. You could even have multiple glider shuttles that disconnect at different stops.
✝️🩸1 Thessalonians 4 KJV 🎺🌥️
14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
18 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
Romans 5 KJV 🩸
9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
@@clintonleonard5187 or drop them on water
@@clintonleonard5187 I already left a separate comment about this, but that idea is very close to the invention in the book "Tom Swift and his Sky Train" :)
Crap Elon is going to see your comment and steal the idea!
My therapist: Terrifying spinal bone dragons aren't real. They can't hurt you.
Peter Sripol:
maybe dampers on the couplings for sideways movement... or mass/fluid damper inside the last car?.... or maybe a way to stiffen the whole train once airborne :) I love trains
I'm thinking about thin carbon rods, or if you've ever used goldenrod for control surfaces. You could insert or retract those semi rigid rods to control stiffness.
Maybe you could try adding a gyro stabiliser to the last car somehow, completely independent of the electronics in the first car, to counteract the yawing motions and the oscillations
Or, if you did 10 cars, maybe have a gyro every few cars
Who need moving control surfaces when you can just bend the whole plane and do air drifting.
@@jwalster9412 snake plane!
Came to comment the same thing
or even adding some dampers between each car, like real high speed trains do
Passively actuated control surfaces on the cars: gimbal joint left/right actuates side rudder, up/down actuates height rudder. No servos or gyros needed, just mechanical links from the joint to the rudders. Add dampeners if you're feeling fancy.
I'm thinking add an accelerometer and a simple microcontroller/flightcontroller to each wagon and try to auto-level each wagon individually. Turning might become harder without coordination, but that should result in an overall more stable train(If you can get the PIDs to work correctly - Probably need to tune them for every wagon. Maybe just add a few wagons with active control, maybe even an independent set of motors).
I just wanted to suggest the same !
It´s so evident.
Greetings from an other continent !
🙂
probably doesn’t need it for every car either. Could probably have it on just every second car and the last one
I feel like you'd need to run this in a simulation, and train a neural net to control active surfaces on each wagon.
That would very likely endup way more unstable, connecting multiple self-regulated parts is very tricky.
The tail wagging issue is turbulence off the previous wings. Model it in software or in a wind tunnel.
Now you need to be able to land it back onto the tracks and operate it like a train.
I envision the landing "strip" as a funnel shape. It would need to be long and wide, tapering gently to the width of the rail. This would reduce the accuracy needed to land and, hopefully, gently and accurately guide the vehicle to the correct alignment on the rails.
Practical? Nope but fun!
The rail gauge needs to be wider to provide better roll stability. The side surface area and the flight surfaces are providing lift when there's a crosswind as well. A wider gauge will help there.
Deeper rail connection with the wheels might help too (the wheels will ride lower in the rail providing more resistance to rising over the rail when there's a crosswind).
Maybe land into maglev mode and then settle down onto the tracks
Possibly. It may also be an instability just of the configuration of the aircraft (ie it would persist even if none of the downwash from the wings affected the wings behind it). A small change in orientation of one section causes a larger change in orientation somewhere else and so on. Only way to really know is to model its control dynamics or throw it into a wind tunnel.
I know others have mentioned a chinese dragon kite... but this looks like it would be an AMAZING basis for a long flying dragon. Might need more power/ motors to get enough thrust, but a 12 foot long tail flying through the air would be dope with a nice dragon head on the front
Birds use their tail feathers for drag. Add a parachute at the end. You probably don't need any wings on the passenger cars, since the u-joints will keep them oriented similar to the engine.
It's a flying dragon! 🐉 A great mythical beast! "It's a dragon!, It's a dragon!" 😂
Seriously, looks like one of those Chinese dragons flying in the sky.
Next, try to get like 50 feet of track flying in a line, and have a normal (lightweight) train drive on that track.
This reminds me of glider towing, But in full scale, you'll have a pilot in both aircraft. This could work, but you would need a computer to constantly stabilize the cars in flight.
That was my immediate thought as well, you’ll need active stabilization for all the trailing cars/planes
Absolutely. The flying wing design had some serious stabilization issues until the computer era ... well uhm .. stabilized it. B2 spirit versus the Northrop flying wing.
one idea that comes to mind: every car has servos for flaps. no engine, etc, but controllable flaps and a flight controller.
in theory, even engines could be interesting.
Probably the most entertaining form of gadgetbahn I've ever seen. Also, you're right about the zero-series Shinkansen looking like an aircraft, its design was inspired by airliners specifically for aerodynamic purposes.
Finally! I've been suggesting this for ages!
Also, the last car should have a vertical tailfin.
The wing stabilizers on the cars should get closer and closer together the further back you go from the engine. That should mitigate the serpentine swaying while in flight.
You're other right track, but there are a couple more elements at play here. (Pardon the punn)
A stabilizer hitch helps with trailer sway. some sort of resistance at the coupler to reduce movement might help. Cool experiment!
Now make a flying submarine 😂
Still more feasible than the Hyperloop ever was 🤣
Why was the hyperbool less feasible?
@@Paper246giant vacuum tube is very prone to accidents
@@not2hot99
Big suck.
No emergency exits, no fire control. Deathtrap
@Paper246 it's difficult to maintain a giant vacuum tube.
Every car powered with control surfaces, programmed with delay so they they follow in line would be insane.
When everyone forgets EMU trains exist and think there has to be a locomotive and so they miss out on cool ideas like this :(
I was thinking this too. And to add the effect of drag on the main engine, each following car would be powered down slightly from the one in front of it. Essentially taking the majority of the unpowered load off the main engine but still allowing for some resistance to pull in a straight line.
12:36 That kind of movement remind me of the Ghost Leviathan from Subnautica
Dress that up as one (somehow,without taking away from the functionality) and you'll make people scream
Even though it flies so chaotic, I love it. There's something majestic about it, looks like a dragon.
honestly despite how utterly ridiculous and impractical this is, its great to watch you try an idea, iterate and eventually achieve something that sort of works, the whole process is so cool :)
Sterling Archer: I WANNA FLY THE TRAIN!
Peter Stripol: I got you, homie.
Wake turbulence?
How?!? The video came out 15 minutes ago and this comment is 7 hours ago
@@CoolrexAAAAAAA godem
@@CoolrexAAAAAAA member ship early access most likely
@@WheneverIsm ah, I thought he was a time traveller or something
why? is turbulence late for work?
This, but make all of the flight controls work by pivoting on the train car connections. The position of the cars will dictate the flight and eliminate the twerking.
Flying snake plane. Like the gliding snakes irl.
I think if you run string or something through the end of your wings loosely so they can detach but they will also have stability
"Why does optimal public transport always evolve into trains"
Peter: hold my beer
The turbulence is insane 💀
Fr 💀💀💀
You can keep the vertical stabs and put in centering springs between segments.
If you design it with some jointed beam that is rigged with cables you might even be able to use all the cars for steering. Maybe ball joints, with a cable/pulley system that runs on all four sides of the beam. Though I think the issue is finding a good way to rig it in this condition
"Complete dodo..." "I'm here to help" Siri responds to dodo 💀
Elevator stabilizers on the cars too. Remember a Kite needs the tail to have the right weight. Make the last car have weight in the rear.
0:02 well they have some in the past☠️
Now do the same thing but each car releases one by one and flys for itself after.
This was awesome and hilarious!
Fantastic job dropping the cars right on the camera!
We definitely need a dragon next! With slightly stiffer joints, maybe a thin carbon fiber rod from engine to last part, but most importantly steerable joints so the whole body can bend up and down and sideways, so you can replace yaw and elevator steering surfaces with that.
With strings running along all segments from front to back along the top and bottom and sides of the body, actuated by two servos.
That would be incredible!
You could have most cars without wings, just the front car with canards and motors a middle car with large wings and a tail section.
"this is your captain speaking, please buckle up as we're about to enter some turbulence"
Passengers on the last car: "We'Re AbOuT tO wHaT?"
That train looks pretty plane 😅
Peter, I was thinking some more about your train plane and it occurred to me that the super long plane you built at Flight Fest flew quite well but it was a rigid fuselage. So, what if after your plane/train takes off, you activate servos that lock up the couplers, essentially making the fuselage rigid? Then you unlock them or jettison the cars to land.
When your airplane IS a snake.
Needs way more dihedral on the cars
and maybe less angle on the fins. maybe a few degrees on the first car, and then increasing it slightly on the following cars.
More engines and maybe a computer controlling small flaps on the trailing cars but that will probably add way too much weight.
15:19 That shot from the tail cam seeing the cars each land one after another was hilarious.
Imagining the chaos if you were a passenger in that car had me rolling with laughter. Having your window be parallel with the ground 1 second before landing is so crazy.
@@clintonleonard5187 same lol
0:14 it kinda looks like a A320
Yep
Yes Boeing better tho
Great idea! It could be a train boat could work even better. It could be a bullet train-boat because you won’t have any wake from the cars behind the lead. So it could be super fast and efficient. Maybe even set it up with hydrofoils or ground effect wings.
What would be really cool would be making each car independent when they're dropped - and then giving them all gliding ability, so that when you pressed the button or flicked the swich, it would just kinda evaporate into loads of little cars (it'd have varying coolness based on how many cars in the train)
ok but using this design to make an eastern style dragon would look REALLY cool
The final engine-plane design looks so cool to me, especially when you flew it around a few times on its own. Really kind of imposing and powerful looking.
What if every car had its own gyro and stabilisers?!
If you need help, I’m your man
I need help
@@Chris-mu1xt bet
Is there a way to make gradual adjustments to each car? The further back you get, adjust the wings to make the cars more stable.
We need more train content!!! This stuff is da bomb
The only reason why it didn't work is because during flight you didn't lock links in between car. The reason why the links are flexible is for rails. In the air, you need to lock the links rigid.
Then it’s just a normal plane
Question…for your boat rc projects where do you get your materials? And are the circuit boards pre-programmed and pre-wired? Or do you have to do it yourself? And the controller, does that come with the circuit boards or do you have to get it separately or use an old one and just connect it…. I wanna build me an rc boat but idk what I need
super train megazord anyone?
I thought so too
Pls do a flying bed Pls like this comment 😄
1. Sway reduction. Try rubber bands on the 4 corners between each car, loose/non-taught at rest, but when the bend begins, it is immediately at tension.
2. Booster motors in each car. Maybe not as powerful as the main motors of the lead car, but any sort of small booster on each car would help alleviate the drag. Any aerospace engineer would know better than I, but I’d assume as long as the rear motors aren’t equal or stronger than the lead motors there shouldn’t be any issues with the trailing cars pushing the lead too much.
What a fun experiment!!! You make it flexible, then of course there's going to be a tendency for it to porpoise like...a porpoise. It's going to do things that flags do in the wind. My only suggestions are:
1. Limit the range of flex at each joint, in each plane of freedom, to the minimum amount a train actually needs.
2. I wonder what happens if you move the wings of each boxcar to the front instead of the rear.
you can modify it by adding rod below connecting all the carts together as one piece (but it won't help in turning rails)
I agree but like put swivel links on the ending of each rod stick under the wings. So it can turn on rails an stay straight
@@JuwonJones thats better! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
You could make a sick looking dragon with this concept. Love it Peter🔥🔥
Keep up the builds lmao, and this reminded me of two things.
1. Some weird trains as planes mobile game that I forgot
2. An anime only those who love trains will know like me
A train airplane is a perfect situation to try an oblique wing configuration! The wings can be pivoted inward/parallel along the body of the train while on the ground then fully perpendicular when ready to lift off! Multiple oblique wings along the length of the train in a zig zag configuration during level flight for maximum stability. Perhaps locking mechanisms in between the cars to lock them in place and keep them straight after take-off. Possibly, a pusher motor in the rear car after locking.
Maybe another HUGE vertical stabilizer on the trailing car along the centerline could stop the wobbling?
Increasing the size of the wings for each car as you move to the back of the train could help lift the tail and keep the whole setup from being tail heavy. Each car having smaller wings then the engine seems to have negatively impacted lift.
Idk just a few ideas.
You need tighter U-joints to link the cars. Torsionnal stiffness is lacking and it adds to the rear car instability.
Wing position could probably use a bit of tuning also. Maybe a bit more angle of attack?
Super cool! I wonder if you add something like rubber bands on all 4 sides between the cars to act almost like a shock absorber. I wonder if that would help any.
Do you think putting gyroscopic stabilizer in the last car will be helpful? If you somehow can have the front engine and the last car stable, the middle part will be stable automatically.
Maybe some sort of locking joint to make the connections more rigid while airborne?
Also I'd be curious if you printed some kind of funnel-shaped rail segment, if you could land on that to get the train back on its tracks. Kind of the same concept as the landing ramps on Hot Wheels jumps.
You springs, dampners and gyrostablizers would likely helo smooth out the ride in the other cars is it even possible to reliably land this thing back on the rails correctly?
I agree with a couple people on here... Connections at the CG, possibly adding a small canard to the front of each pulled car so when it separates, it becomes more of a glider than a brick, individual car separation... possibly adding a controller module to each car with a pitch/roll/yaw/ compensator from a drone to control the surfaces better.... the last would also give the opportunity for individual operators to fly each car as it separates... I think that would be a really worthy idea to test... king of like adding multiple gliders behind a tow plane... which they already do... have each individual controller automatically keep it stable and the "pilot" for each car gives it direction when it goes to glider mode.
Someone has probably suggested this but as each car gets further from the engine, give the wings an increased upward vertical tilt. You may need to increase the wing length proportionally to keep the lift equal. The increase in drag is compensated for by increased stability. Just a thought.
if you mag lev it will it automatically snap back onto the rails?
something simulating a hydraulic connecting the carts that would become soft when on tracks so it can turn but stiffens up and holds everything straight when in flight
Try adding a gyro and servos to the back car to try to stabilize it. Great build, keep building outside the box!
Truly genius! Very fun one.Crazy that the cars ended up crashing right near the ground camera. I like the idea of releasing the cars one by one with ability to control them on the way down. Probably a weight issue but fun to try.
Maybe each section could have their own propellers so that in case it disconnected, it could still fly?
To improve stability, try stretching the train out further.
Reduce the drag on the central cars by straightening out their vertical surfaces.
Rear car:
Angle the vertical surfaces on the rear car to create more drag and keep the train stretched tight.
This setup should help with self-correction during flight and minimize slack between cars.
10:10 the songs that starts here is called "Piccolo and a Cane" for those who are wondering. It's also probably the electro swing version
What about adding control surfaces to each wagon coupled with a fc for each to stabilize them ?
He learned the hardest lesson of his life and had the scars, both physical and mental, to prove it.
I'd like to see what active stabilizers would do on the follow cars, see if you could use some sensors and really smooth out the transmitted oscillations from the earlier cars. I think you could get the train length much longer then, plus it would be wild to see it really stable in the air.
I love how you almost hit the ground camera when dropping the cars at the end; unbelievable aim 🙂
I wonder if adding the accordion like connections found on passenger trains could provide enough dampening and rigidity.
I wish you had kept iterating. I am kinda thinking about those articulated baggage cart trains at the airports, wondering if there is a way to link the cars with flight control linkages so they correct to follow the engine as perfectly as possible? It flew WAY better than I expected it to, even if all the cattle class passengers were green around the gills after take off, and everyone not in first class got ... well, you know... "dropped off early" :P
If you make a V2 You should make a funnel type system and land and redirect the train onto the tracks