Garage Hack: Hovercraft
This fellow built a hovercraft for his son out of junk in his garage using the plans he found online. He used a countertop as the base, a leaf blower as the “lifter”, PVC pip, Goop glue, plastic sheeting and duct tape. Link.
Announcements
RC Cars on the Battlefield
Sgt. Greg Papadatos of the 69th Infantry Regiment has posted some details about how soldiers in Iraq are using Radio Controlled cars to test objects to see if they’re bombs. When they find unidentifiable debris in the road, E.S. sends out his little RC car and rams it. If it’s light enough to be moved or knocked over, it’s too light to be a bomb, so we can approach it and get rid of it. If it’s heavy, we call EOD. At night, they duct tape a flashlight to the car. Link.
Gumball 3000
The Gumball 3000 is a somewhat underground race London to Monaco through Hungary. Jalopnik has a round up of the coverage. Lots of live pictures, blogs and more. Last year my pal Alex Roy won one of the categories with his DIY police car- You can see the transformation and more about Gumball 144’s “Polizei” entry here.
MakeShift Awards!
In MAKE 01 readers were challenged with a scenario of being stranded far from civilization with a dead car battery. Tons of amazing responses and earlier we posted the analysis and winners. Here’s what they won- a custom Maker-made T-Shirt, a SWISSMEMORY
USB Victorinox 512MB and this MAKE trophy from William Lidwell of stuffcreators -photos of the Victorinox, packaging and shirt here. Issue 02 (shipping now) will have another great shifter! Be sure to enter!
Preview 10 pages from Volume 2 of MAKE on Amazon
Amazon has 10 pages of Volume 2 up. Go check’em out- Made on Earth “Report from the world of backyard technology ” Mousey the Junkbot “With a few spare parts, you can turn an old computer mouse into an amusing little robot” DIY home and Toolbox are also up there at the moment. Just a taste, subscribe or order the mag! Link.
DIY KITT Car Scanner
Might be neat to add this to an actual car PC…This custom mod gives your computer the personality of KITT, the computerized car from Knight Rider TV fame. It slides into a CD drive bay, and only has a single standard power connector. The project is a light display which imitates the dot in KITT’s hood. It looks like the scanning eye of the car’s computer that is so smart it has a personality and acts autonomously. Some people have said the computer shows more emotion and personality than the main actor, David Hasselhoff. Link.
Winners for MakeShift 01
MAKE author William Lidwell had his work cut out for him when it came to selecting the winners in MakeShift 01, where readers were challenged with a scenario of being stranded far from civilization with a dead car battery. As he reports, “MAKE readers answered the challenge with audacity and vigor”.
The winners have been selected, and you can read all about it in our web Extra, MakeShift 01: Analysis, Commentary, and Winners.
If you have to be stranded with a dead battery, you’d be lucky to be stranded with a group of MAKE readers. Unless, of course, you were the one who left the lights on. Then they might just hang you over the side of a cliff as part of their solution…