American West Coast Pulsejet Meet, April 30

[hagent]

Is there a problem uploading videos? I can't seem to send the file.

[Gary Robinson]

Gas bottles, hoses, wide open spaces and pulsejets... OH YEAH BABY.

Thanks for the pics Hagent, very much appreciated.
Cheers

[resosys]

I made it home from the PJ Meet late last night.

What a weekend.

The setting was beautiful and the engines were amazing.

Everyone there was amazing. 13+ of the finest human beings I've ever had the pleasure to meet.

Pictures and results are sure to be coming soon.

I can't wait for the next one and hope I can afford to travel if it's out of the country.

Good time!

Chris

[larry cottrill]

I caught Mike E via cell phone a couple of hours ago, in time to tell him that my package should be there at his shop. They were taking a break for fast food before another pulsejet attack. I talked with him long enough to learn the following:
- The Fo Mi Chin took some tinkering to start, but ran well. They were afraid they'd melt a hole in it, so apparently didn't push it too hard
- They got thrust measurements of everything [except maybe jam jars]
- They got wave recordings of several engines before failure of the mic or recorder or something
- Rossco and Mikhail [nanosoft] can achieve sustained resonant combustion from anything that resembles a piece of pipe, somehow
- nanosoft is the wizard of jam jars, demonstrated many wonders including horizontal jam jars that scoot across the table and BCVP jam jar pairs
- Everyone is having a tremendous time!

L Cottrill

[Rossco]

Larry, indeed! we are all having/had, a great time.

I think i just put Bruno to sleep talking of engines, and there is no stopping us yet. So there is more to come. (when he wakes up)

We tried to run your engine just before now. It is promising, but the slit? well, it sounds like it will run, but at the moment, only with forced air. Sorry. Ben says that you think we can seal up that pipe?????????we couldnt after the obvious work that youve put into that.

Bruno and i are going to think up something to smash and hammer together tomorow, so ill catch up then.

Rossco

[larry cottrill]

We tried to run your engine just before now. It is promising, but the slit? well, it sounds like it will run, but at the moment, only with forced air. Sorry. Ben says that you think we can seal up that pipe?????????we couldnt after the obvious work that youve put into that.

Doggone it, Rossco, twist Mike's arm to get him to stop off at a hardware store and get some plumber's putty - the kind that's in the form of a little 'coil of rope'. It'll cost him a whole dollar or something. Just peel and pinch off four little pieces to fit between the welds, on the tubing surface opposite the flare. Try cutting the gap down to half for starters, and work it in gradually closer to the flare. Or, start out sealing it up completely to see if you can get the thing started, and then gradually open up the gap. Should work either way.

If worst comes to worst, I did give Mike permission to weld it up with the Henrob, but of course, I'd rather see you play with that gap a while first, so we'll find out what works ... if anything.

Go for it!

L Cottrill

[larry cottrill]

Meant to ask: What did you get for a thrust reading on Fo Mi Chin II? Anybody remember?

L Cottrill

[Mike Everman]

No, we've run out of time. At the meet, as soon as Nano said he was afraid the CC was going to burn through, we set it aside and then time really started to move fast.

In about an hour I take Rossco and Christie to the bus to LAX, and Marten and Bruno are coming to my house for the night, then fly out tomorrow. We're all completely burnt on pulsejets for the moment.

I can't make the shipment today, Larry, but will take care of it soon. I'm home sick at the moment and am playing "mr. Mom" as Cindy has gone to mexico.

[Mike Everman]

Lockwopettes, ha ha.

More like Lockupettes or Escuwoods

[Bruno Ogorelec]

Larry,

The split-tube FWE really arrived too late for us to do serious work on it -- by that time things were starting to unravel, with some people leaving, some stuff moving from the wineyard to Bell&Everman etc. It only wanted to work with forced air and even that was tricky. But, it sure looked spectacular with fire shooting radially out of the slit in all directions until the thing caught resonance and then suddenly disappearing!

However, the Fo-Mi-Chin was nice -- it took a while to get to self-sustain (and it would never do so with just me at the controls; it took the magic of Mikhail at the propane valve and me bumbling at the air valve to push it into the right mode) but when it did, boy, did it ever run sweetly! It is somewhat lower pitched than a Chinese, sounds more 'muscular' to my ears, but I don't really know what it means in terms of performance.

Frankly, in my opinion, the Burning Grape had too many engines for the first meet of this kind -- and then we built three new ones on the spot! It meant that we had enormous, wild and hysterical fun, but the scientific rigor could not really be maintained for a long time. So, thrust measurement of the Fo-Mi-Chin got waylaid. A pity, but I just can't see how a meet this complex, whose logistics basically depended on one man -- Michael Everman -- could have been organized better.

So, Larry, we only proved that the Fo-Mi-Chin worked and that it worked sweetly, but could not work out figures to go with the impressions.

Congratulations on an unusual, smart and real sweet engine!

I don't think the foam cans are ever going to make it as combustion chambers, though

[mk]

Yeah, it was surely a very nice time!
I really, really enjoyed it! Nice people all around.

I'm still at Mike's house. And probably will have do do some work when I'm back, so don't expect my pictures before the end of the upcomming week.


BTW Hagen, I just cannot remember you made it there, too. I've surely been messing around with some stuff.
Could you or somebody else send me a picture featuring you?
Would be nice.

[Anthony]

Could you list all thrust stats here, just for fun?

[Bruno Ogorelec]

BTW Hagen, I just cannot remember you made it there, too. I've surely been messing around with some stuff.
Could you or somebody else send me a picture featuring you?
Would be nice.

Marten, Hagen was that dapper, intellectual-looking gentleman with a sharp hat that looked so unusual among us wild men in the wineyard. At first I thought he was a poet laureate coming to transfer pulsations into lyrics, but no -- it turns out that a jet-propelled heart beats behind that gentle facade!

[larry cottrill]

Larry,

. . .

However, the Fo-Mi-Chin was nice -- it took a while to get to self-sustain (and it would never do so with just me at the controls; it took the magic of Mikhail at the propane valve and me bumbling at the air valve to push it into the right mode) but when it did, boy, did it ever run sweetly! It is somewhat lower pitched than a Chinese, sounds more 'muscular' to my ears, but I don't really know what it means in terms of performance.

. . .

So, Larry, we only proved that the Fo-Mi-Chin worked and that it worked sweetly, but could not work out figures to go with the impressions.

Congratulations on an unusual, smart and real sweet engine!

Well, that's good enough for now. Thank you for your willingness to work with it!

I don't think the foam cans are ever going to make it as combustion chambers, though

Ha - it's the wave of the future. Fo MI Chin forever!

L Cottrill

[Mike Everman]

Could you list all thrust stats here, just for fun?

Don't worry, when I get a minute I'll be posting all data and sound files gathered, which is not very much. We did way more fun than science. I really wanted to get SFC numbers, but I didn't get the rig going and Bill's scale was problematic, unfortunately. Max thrust and frequency in different configurations was most of it.

Interesting to note that Ed's Chinese was 60% greater volume, and only 25% greater thrust than Nano's Laird Chinese.
My bent "simple rules" engines had the 3" make twice the thrust of the 2", but volume is something more than 2:1, I have to crunch the numbers.