Flitter Flyer

Inspiration

Ever since I don't know when I've been interested in this stuff. "Space 1889's" concept of Liftwood Flyers was fascinating to me. The classic idea of a flapping flier just seemed too much fun. So here is mine.

Here we have the flyer with the wings out of phase, lifting the rear as the nose drops, then lifting the nose as the rear drops. I saw how airsickness would quickly come on with this motion, so we put the gearing so they fly in sync.

The Synched flight has the rear wings traveling a little farther than the front, this is so the pilots flight is not obscured, and the rear wings are taking more of the load. The upstroke is faster than the downstroke where the little plutonic steam turbine is fighting the weight of the flyer.

I did make a dirigible a couple of weeks ago.

Part Count

As for the build. 47 pieces in the flyer. The mini-figure included brings the part count to 51. Lets not mention the flying base as seen in the stills. That is not part of the set, and was only an aid to photographing the set. Do the small antennae count as one part or two each? I counted them as one, since that is how it is in LDD.

If I had to sacrifice a part, I'd probably lose the front two railings. They sit higher than the rest because of the wing mounts. If I had unlimited part I would have raised the rest of the fence to match using some grey 4x1 plates.

Part Sources

So most of the parts are borrowed from my sons. Sure I have plenty myself, but it's Technic and older vintage space. The pilot is wearing Diggers (Dino Attack/Dino 2010) leather flying/football helmet, he is also wearing Catwomans leather suit, and Luke Skywalkers head.

The Build

Now for the parts lists, and the step by step building....

The Movies

So I used monkey jam to make the movie sequences, using our Logitech Pro 9000 webcam. The images were PNG files. I used Paint to remove the flying base frame by frame, but since there are only 15 images in total, this was not too painful.

The Conclusion

I was actually the first post in the entries, and joint 8th place in the "Reasonable Clever" Steampunk build competition. Since the rules only permitted one prize per entrant, I still got a little something.