aviator_edb

Hey folks, Due to a fortuitous visit to my in-laws in northern Wisconsin I will be going to Oshkosh this year. It's my first visit. I wont be able to make the Cozy dinner on Friday but I would like to try and run into some of the folks on this list who are also going to be there. I realize it's a crap shoot to catch anyone or a group of you in one place during the week but where's my best chance? The cozy campground? Should I carry a big sign reading "If you are a canard builder/flyer I want to meet you!":p I'm not looking to bug anyone. I jsut want to say 'hi' and put some faces to the names.

Are you talking about this one: Freedon Aviation?

I'm going to be there early in the week. Might make the thursday stuff but no chance for friday

basalt is bascially lava rock.....although considering the context of this forum and thread I'm not sure if that definition applies

Would 'pre-heating' the foam a little bit possibly help this? I'm not talking about heating it way up but perhaps tossing it in the heat tent for a bit prior to micro and glass?

Well, I guess it happens eventually. My wife and I were flying home from St Lucia in the British West Indies. We had to take an ATR-72 from St Lucia to San Juan to catch a jet to Boston. Anyway, 15 minues after departure the pilot kills one of the engines and turns us around. I gotta tell you. Mentally I know the plane shoudl fly fully loaded one engine but when you are over the open ocean, looking out the window, seeing the ocean and seeing a windmilling, feathered prop it does cause things to pucker a little bit. Obviously we landed back in St. Lucia without further incident. Anyone else got any stories like this?

Edge, are those little windows in the roof of your turtleback? If so, that is f'ing cool.

Waiter, I am curious. What are you writing your recorder with?

Lol, yah. I'm just using it right now to have something to project. It sits on my workbench. If I try it in a moving vehicle it'll probalby be with me the passenger seat looking at it there.

I'm still working out my mirror, lens, beam splitter rig...Using a silly garmin car gps as a temporary test display

Hrrmm, foudn this while doing some googlin' http://store.earthlcd.com/SK-3021-SK3021 350nits is a bit low and I woudl prefer a VGA connector but 100 bucks is lot less....Plus, I'm curious to see what I can do with the widescreen aspect since I would like a pitch ladder plus altitude and airspeed ribbons....Dunno, I'm a long way from THAT yet.

Well, I got my fresnel lens and one of my mirrors...The beam splitter was back-ordered. Now I'm working on a simple contraption to hold the lens and mirror in front of my latop display. I wrote a silly little program that draws some graphics in a 4" sqaure area and I'm using that as my 'output'. I need to come up with some way to fine tune my lens focus but overall the results are promising. I'm sure I'm going to approach a Rube Goldberg design for my experiment but that's ok...I'm only trying to establish how to set the lens and mirrors up... Once I get this I need to find a tiny and brigt LCD screen as my real output. I was hoping to find somethign witha VGA connector but so far I'm looking at 200-300 bucks for a 4" 320x200 500 nit display unit. I dont want to spend that much jsut yet...

Which version fo the Fein do most builders buy? I'm about to order one but dont want to spend the extra money for the macked out kit if I dont need it...

Share! I've been looking for a place to get that from....Granted I've bene looking for already coated surfaces but anything would do... Also, sorry to be thickheaded but I want to be sure I have this straight...With a dichroic coating you can limit with wavelengths get reflrected. So, If I had a 20% reflective beamsplitter it relfects 20% of the visible spectrum. My question is, if I add a dichroic coating to reflect green, does it only reflect 20% of the light in the green spectrum ? Or, do I actually need a dichroic filter plus the beamsplitter. The dichroic filter would be between my collimator and the beamsplitter and would only allow my green wavelengths to pass to the beamsplitter? I'm startign to see why HUDs aren't common. This is a pretty technical beastie.

Jeff, another questions, are you suing a plate or cube? Also, I found this website: http://www.globalspec.com/ it's an engineering search engine that has tons of links to optics companies as well as some 'What is a ...' stuff on different components...It's helped a bit in my education..

Jeff, what beamsplitter are you using? Can you sned me the link to it on Anchor's website? With the beamsplitter you would get the full spectrum reflected, right?

While waiting for my lens order to get here I've been looking for info on mirrors. Specifically I've been looking to see what kind of mirror I would use as the imager. Chrissi's idea about a dichroic looks like a really good idea. I again know aquat about dichroic filters but Wikepedia is very helpful. Since I've been looking towards a monochromatic HUD it seems like a dichroic lens would be a really interesting option. Depending on cost (and apparently good dichroic filters can be very pricey) a lens that reflrects just my symbology could make for a really good display.. Anyway, more random thoughts and ideas.

Ok, I'm taking a plunge...blindly... I've bought a couple of smal, inexpensive fresnel lenses. I got 3. They are all 5"x5" and have avrying focal lengths. 2", 5" an 8". I want to see the difference in projected images using the different lenses. I'm goign to use glass with various levels cheap tinting for my initial mirrors. I'm currently looking for a small display unit. I'd like to find a monochrome display with it's own lighting...the Planar displays are gret but I'd rather not spend 500 bucks jsut yet... I'm only doing concept stuff for now. Any ideas on a display unit?..If worse comes toworse I'll just build a small test program to run on my computer CRT and black out everything but the area I want to test platform to project..

I believe i finally have a miniscule understanding of how to focus something at infinity. Basically, the object is our display output, probalby a bright LCD and preferrably monochrome. The first lens (I think it's called the object lens?) is placed so it's focused on the screen. If you were looking directly through the lens at the screen it would be in focus. The image projecting from the lcd and going through the object lens will then come out focused at infinity. That hits the mirror and voila you have an image focuses at infinty The trick is to have the right lens and I think a fresnel lens is where I'll start. I'm going to buy a couple of different cheap lenses of varying ize and focal length and do some experimenting with all this. If I've got it right then it's only a matter of settling on the right lens and mirrors to achieve a decent image. Anyway, this is all "Ed-theory" and is worth about a wooden nickel.

Duh! Of course. I hadn't thought about the inverted and upside down issue. Thanks for the clarification. I would like to see a unit that has it's own bright VGA LCD screen and takes any vga input. That way pretty much anything with a VGA out could be hooked to it. (Heads up Nintendo anyone? ) Personally, I would like to have minimal data displayed on a HUD. Maybe attitude, velocity vector, airspeed, heading, altitude, etc...nothing as complex and colorfull as an full EFIS, just something minimal to reference. It could also act as an annunciator panel if hooked to an engine monitor or something smart like Al Wick's setup. If somethign isn't looking correct the HUD would flash the warning and then you could drop down to get the full picture... I guess my biggest concern is making the HUD more prominent in my vision than what's outside.. Did that make any sense?

Do you realy need the extra 'turn'? Target /----- >oo (eyes) | display | ----/ could you do this to simplify: Target /----- >oo (eyes) | | display Bascially have the display pointed up.

Heh, cold winters in New England make me bored...at least until i get the garage indulation done do I can work on the Cozy... That website has an interesting pdf on their lenses and talks about different applications. http://www.fresneltech.com/pdf/FresnelLenses.pdf If I'm understanding (and it's unlikely that I am ) the flat lens fresnel acting as a collimator would have the image display (LCD or whatever) at the focal point? then the collimated image is what gets bounces on the reflector? Where in the path would the Petzval lens go? I'm guessing between the fresnel and reflector? Ooh, somethign else I just thought of....Optimally would you want the smallest, brightest and highest resolution screen you could get? Ugh, need more beer..

Ok, I'm so bored so I did a little digging...I found this place: http://www.fresneltech.com they sell a bunch of different frensel lenses and the prices seem pretty cheap. However, I have no clue if what they sell is even remotely usefull for this application...

Wow, ok. How do you put these optics together? Where would you buy them or scavenge them from ? What do I google on! AGRGH, now you've peaked my interest. Darnit! Wait, aren't Fresnel lenses what are used in lighthouses? Crap, I know just enough to know I dont know squat about optics..

How would you handle focusing the display at infinity? That's how military HUDs are setup. This lets you see the image without having to refocus your eyes. I'm not sure what the optics invovled would be but if they aren't cost prohibitive for mere mortals it might be somethgn worth considering.