1938 Ford Pickup
Last summer I bought a '38 ford pickup cab to act as the foundation of a future ratrod project. I'm always looking for eclectic parts to add onto it, in particular a 30's hudson terraplane grill, old chrysler hemi engine, and a bed. I plan on putting a jag rear end in it, not sure what I'm going to do with the front end, either way it should be a fun project.
I started to solid model the frame, but haven't made much progress past this. I plan on taking 3 views from photographs of the cab and modeling the cab as well. Going to rapid prototype the whole thing once its done!
Commercial Aviation Seat Concept
In senior design the RFP stressed the inclusion of advanced, "green" technologies. In my mind this meant not only improvements in airplane efficiency but passenger comfort as well. I thought of my experiences as a passenger and the first thing that came to mind was lack of legroom, especially when the person in front of you had their seat reclined.
Rather than have the seat lean backward, in my concept the seat pan slides forward and the seat back slides up, placing the user at an incline angle. This is analogous to slouching; however, the seat conforms to your back and simultaneously raises you up – supported slouching – your legs of course are required to keep you from sliding out of the chair (feet would be positioned on one of two pegs attached to the seat in front of you). This motion makes efficient use of the space available above the passenger, between their head and the overhead stowage, while not encroaching on the neighboring passenger's legroom.
This idea is not that far fetched, in fact I see it as a much more viable alternative to the standing seat concept. I decided to build a prototype to put my theory to test, figuring out which position is comfortable / feasible, driving the geometry for the "spine." So far the geometry needs tweaking: I made the "spine" extra tall so that I could vary the seat back height over a wider range. The optimal reclined seat angle seems to be between 120° -130°. More testing to come...
Akaflieg, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
Avenol fly-day, BBQs, Nick Camacho’s Luscombe... CPACC: https://sites.google.com/site/cpacc2011/
Arduino / Microcontroller
I've also been trying to get around to working with the Atmel AVR based microcontroller. I started using Arduino this past summer, successfully converting STK500 development board to use the Arduino code. I got the lights to do some cool stuff, but never made it to my ultimate goal of creating a servo controller with a rotary encoder. Before I go any further I'm not sure if I should keep developing in Arduino or go to C+ with AVR Studio.
Swiss Cheese
I built a solid model of a 30" size RC biplane this past summer in hopes that I could learn how to use the HASS laser cutter on campus, or I should say FeatureCAM. I based it off of my Tensor 4D foam airplane.
Trek Bicycle
I built up a road bike two summers ago and repainted the frame, it was a fun project and hopefully I'll make some time for riding again. I live traced the trek logo in Illustrator and got vinyl stickers printed for the frame. Clear coating over them turned out really nice. Definitely one of the best investments I've ever made. I'm looking for a vintage road-bike frame.
Web
I want to create a blog, but call it a bblog for brian web log (sounds like you're stuttering, wow ha funny yerp!). I'm sure the URL is taken already, but the blog would serve as a memory bank of sorts. I could post solutions to matlab code or web stuff I've conquered!