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Gordon Hindle's VariEze Design: Burt Rutan

I started flying when I was fifteen years old and soloed on my 16th birthday back in 1977 and got my license the next year. I flew for a number of years and then stopped when money got a bit tight during my lean 20s. Someday I hope to return to the wild blue yonder, and I often dream of building my own aircraft.

Among the most beautiful small planes in the world are the various canard pusher-prop aircraft. Canards, which are small wings located far forward on a plane's fuselage, aren't that new. After all, the Wright Brother's famous first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina was in the Wright 1903 Flyer, a canard-style aircraft with pushing propellers.

The modern era of canard pushers was started by aircraft design legend, Burt Rutan, who, after working as a Flight Test Project Engineer for the United States Air Force at Edwards Air Force Base in California, founded Rutan Aircraft Factory (RAF) in 1972. He quickly became one of the most prolific designers of homebuilt aircraft in the world with his models, the Vari-viggen, VariEze, Quickie, Defiant, Long-EZ, Grizzly, Solitaire and the Catbird. His most historic achievement was designing and building Voyager, which was the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without refueling. Voyager was piloted by Burt's brother, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager.

There are now a number of gorgeous canard pushers built and owned by pilots around the world, some original Rutan designs and some inspired by them. The web is filled with many canard projects under construction. Some projects are documented step by step. But they all share a common goal - to make it into the air. Good luck to all of them!

Here's a sampling of some of the best images from around the world:

Rutan's first canard pusher, the Vari-Viggen:
- Rear view of the Vari-Viggen; Vari-Viggen in flight; Vari-Viggen front

Rutan's VariEze:
- the VariEze kit; Larry Rothrock's VariEze; Gordon Hindle's VariEze

Rutan's Long-EZ:
- Scott Brown's Long-EZ; Philip Camarda's Long-EZ; Tim Crawford's Research Long-EZ; Dave Lind's Long-EZ; Marcus Borom's Long-EZ; Graham Shevlin's Long-EZ; Arnaud Wodey's Long-EZ; Long-EZ LN-AKT over Svalbard

Rutan's twin-engine (front / rear) Defiant:
- Photos of the Defiant; Another shot of the Defiant; a Defiant in Svalbard (front view, rear view)

Beechcraft Starship Design: Burt Rutan

Rutan-designed twin-engine Beechcraft Starship:
- Robert Scherer's gallery of Beechcraft Starship photos

The E-Racer, designed by Shirl Dickey:
- Bob Peck's E-Racer; Earl Haguewood's E-Racer; Cliff Cady's E-Racer;
1996 Nissan commercial with an E-Racer (3.6Mb QT .mov) (RealVideo)

Velocity XL-RG Design: Dan Maher + Duane and Scott Swing

The sleek Velocity which has side-by-side seating and gull-wing doors:
- Velocity SUV and Velocity XL-RG; Velocity N83AD; Velocity flying; Lovely shot of an XL-RG over water; Timothy England's Velocity XL-RG; Bob Lavoie's XL-RG

The Cozy, another side-by-side canard pusher, designed by Nat Puffer:
- A gallery of Cozy aircraft; the Cozy of Brian Bishop, '98-'99 Commander of the USAF Thunderbirds; Ken Reiter's Cozy III; Bob Misterka's Cozy; Tim Merril's Cozy Mark IV (check out that interior!);

Berkut 540 Design: Dave Ronneberg

The Berkut is the Ferrari of canard pushers, 2-seater dual canopy:
- Berkut on ground with front canopy up (from another angle); Berkut with both canopies up; Misha Kasyan's Berkut 540 in the air; Jerry Parrish' Berkut 540;

Charles Bracken's awesome Berkut 540 - front view; sitting sweet; engine; sitting on wet tarmac; photos in flight

Charles' site also hosts photos of Glen Water's mouthwateringly sexy Berkut G-REDX, including - canopies up; Glen and his Berkut; flying with Glen; nose-on; side view canopies up; closeup of lickable paintjob; rear view; cockpit dash; cockpit left side; cockpit right side; rear seat; front seat
- posted by JIMWICh on 6/21/2001 12:23:34 PM

SF's Palace of Fine Arts KAP from The Exploratorium

I have several kites, including a couple of really nice carbon-fiber-tubed stunt kites, but I've never gotten into KAP. KAP you say? Yep, Kite Aerial Photography. It's a huge hobby as I discovered to my delight. I first ran across KAP when I was looking for treehouse links. Patrick Fulton, whose treehouse I featured below, also has a series of pages devoted to KAP, including his Picavet-style camera rig and a collection of his aerial photos.

Here's another page describing the geometry of rigging a camera on a kite. The quality of photos people get vary quite a bit, but there are some pretty impressive collections out there. Here's a few Kite Aerial Photography sites that I think are exemplary:

- KAPER The Kite Aerial Photography E-Magazine with eleven galleries
- Dan Leigh's KAP of the English countryside.
- Californian, Kevin Flynn's KAP and KAP equipment
- Yasunori Ichikawa's Gallery of Kite Aerial Photography
- The Great Plains KAP Webpage includes a gallery from Kansas City
   (awesome shot of the Kemper Art Museum w/giant badminton birds)
- The Exploratorium's KAP of San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts.
- A French KAP site with a nice index of aerial photos
- Charles C. Benton's outstanding KAP site. His page of galleries.
- Simon Harbord's KAP site from Scotland includes a cool beach project!

Radio-controlled Glider Photography by David Grenewetzki

Kite's too limiting for you? How about Radio Control Glider Photography?

- David Grenewetzki's galleries of RC Glider aerial photos: - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 -

Then there's rocket photography! From the small to the incredibly huge.

- 110 film photography from an Astrocam
- Douglas Gerrard's Level 3 Rocket and photo galleries: - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 -

And can you believe photographs from a water-powered rocket?! Yes, it's true. 2-liter soda bottles make great rockets capable of lifting camera payloads!

- Assembled water rocket with camera
- Photos from the water rocket. a bit blurry, but still!

Onboard Digital Video from the Rockets of The Gates Brothers

But nothing can compare to the digital videos taken from the rockets of the three rocketeers, the Gates Brothers. Their site features high-resolution videos of their rocket launches from the ground and from onboard their rockets.

- Photos at the launchpad
- Photos of rocket liftoffs
- Photos of rocket recoveries

If you've got a fast connection (T1, ISDN, or DSL), you're in for a real treat...

- The Gate's Brothers incredible from ground and onboard videos.

- posted by JIMWICh on 6/14/2001 2:47:49 PM

Tree House Project in Chichibu, Japan Osamu Ishiyama Laboratory of Architecture

What can possibly be any better for getting away from it all than having your very own treehouse?! You say treehouses are only for kids? No way! You never get too old for treehouses!

When I growing up my brother and I and two neighbor boys built a number of tree forts. Not really full-fledged houses, but more like lookout platforms, as high as was possible in a number of trees around our farms. Our tree forts were sort like this, only more spartan and located higher. Some were not much more than board perches from where we could survey the surrounding countryside. I always dreamed of designing and building something cooler, but just never had the time, materials, or inspiration.

But that's definitely been changing ever since I got Peter Nelson's book, Treehouses several years ago. One of these days I'm gonna get my chance again! Meanwhile, let's check out some of the elaborate and creative aerial dwellings that are just a click away...

Various Treehouses:

- From Waseda University Shinjuku Tokyo, Japan, Osamu Ishiyama Laboratory of Architecture's ultramodern, wheelchair-accessible Tree House Project in Chichibu, Japan - Photo sets: - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 -

- An amazing multi-story treehouse hideout built by a bank robber!
- Corbin's Santa Cruz treehouse - galleries - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 -
- Three treehouses built by Jonathan Fairoaks, Living Tree, LLC.
- A collection of small photos from David Pearson's book, Treehouses.
- Patrick Fulton's treehouse. 45ft off the ground, with a fireplace!
- Robert Gusick's treehouse.
- The beautiful Miso Barrel Treehouse of Japan
- The Parshley Treehouse
- Ron & Michelle's Treehouse. Interior photos.
- A page with four treehouse slideshow galleries.
- Dawn Merritt's backyard treehouse.

Treehouse Plans:

- Multi-tree platform for treehouse.
- EZ Treehouse Plans

Treehouse Inns you can stay in!:

- Out 'n' About Treesort in Takilma, Oregon. Treesorts' treehouses.
- Cedar Creek Treehouse in Ashford, Washington. Treehouse photos.
- Treehouses of Hana, Maui, Hawaii. August Moon, Treetops
- posted by JIMWICh on 6/10/2001 12:02:39 AM

I've always been able to eat and usually enjoy just about any kind of food, no matter how unusual or strange (as long as it was truly edible and safe). Some foods didn't seem very tasty at first, but eventually I would be able to slowly build up an appreciation towards them little by little. Some of the Japanese foods that Toshimi has introduced me to have been like this, such as Natto. Having grown up on a farm I ate a lot of things that most city folks might turn their noses up at, like Head Cheese and Mountain Oysters! Mmmm-mmmmm!

So naturally I was excited to run across the fairly extensive site of Andreas Ramos, a talented fellow who has one page dedicated to Ray Bruman's, Ray's List of Weird and Disgusting Food! Note: You may need to increase your browser's text size to make this more readable.

You'll have fun perusing this list up front and the glossary of descriptions that follows. I particularly liked that the list contains not only delights such as Potted Hough (a Scottish specialty like Head Cheese, but starting at the other end) and the yummy beverage from Tibet, Rancid Yak Milk, but also such American blandities like Velveeta processed cheeselike food!

Andreas' site also has a recipe for Aztec-style Hot Cocoa that sounds pretty good. I'm going to make up a batch of this.
- posted by JIMWICh on 6/6/2001 12:24:02 AM

The Tower Dwellings of Cappadocia

One of the world's most unusual geological features is also one of the oldest known housing developments. It's the ancient Cappadocia region of central Turkey. (location on map of Turkey)

Cappadocia is the region east of Konya, bounded by Aksaray to the west, Kayseri to the east, Nigde to the south, and Kersehir to the north. Very popular as a tourist destination, the most well-known sites such as Goreme, Zelve, Uchisar, Ortahisar, Cavusin, and Avanos are home to fantastic dwellings carved directly into the cone-shaped volcanic towers and mushroom-shaped fairy towers.

The Cappadocia region contains some of the oldest known human communities. Some as old as 10,000 years, such as Catalhoyuk, located along the Casambasuyu River near Konya. Because this region has been at the crossroads of civilization for so long, its people also have an amazingly diverse genepool. Cappadocia is truly one of the most interesting areas of the planet, geologically, architecturally, and culturally!

Some links to exterior pictures from Cappadocia:

- Conical towers with carved openings
- Large tower with multiple dwellings at Goreme
- Stunning image of Goreme towers
- Rose Valley near Goreme
- Towers densely carved with dwellings
- The same image of the towers, in a closer view
- Another view of that remarkable cluster of towers
- Carved towers with natural formations in the background
- A house carved into a fairy tower at Goreme
- Another cool single home in a cone
- Wide view of Goreme
- Closeup of carved entryways
- A tourist among the towers
- More tower dwellings
- Mushroom-topped Fairy Towers
- More Fairy Towers
- Some more Fairy Towers
- Even more Fairly Towers
- Fairy Towers among spring tree blossoms
- Fairy Towers with mountains in background

Some links to interior shots from some of the Cappadocia hotels:

- Check in at the front desk
- Living room with fireplace
- Cozy bedroom
- Another bedroom (from the Goreme Cave Hotel)
- posted by JIMWICh on 6/1/2001 10:05:19 PM

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