FIRE WINGS-TEST ONE

Now it's really getting exciting!
Joel Hobbie brought one of the fire wings up to Taos this weekend for a test run and they are going to work great. The flame ranged from a soft feathery look to huge blasts that will certainly draw moths to the flame. Supposedly one could see the bursts of flame from R.E.A.C.H, an Earthship community clear across the mesa up on the mountain- 25 miles away! (See the video) They will articulate with a cable and winch and have an elbow joint and a shoulder pivot, where they attach to the Heron. We fire tested the wing with different various amounts of propane in the accumulator tank that Joel fabricated from a score at the Black Hole- our very own Los Alamos National Lab Surplus yard. The night started in full form with some random firing of Joel's pyrosil cannon- always a fun time! Ahhh, the toys available in Special Effects. The Heron is coming along beautifully also. Last week was a big push in the shop. We worked steady on the outriggers and a variety of large bolt plates...heaps of hole drilling. My advising engineer, Tom, drove up from Santa Fe also, with his lovely daughter Kira, and got a chance to examine the project in person. We discussed the connection areas of the crane, and how to fail safe the load-as in transferring loads to the appropriate structural members. I kept thinking about the book "Structures or Why Things Don't Fall Down" by J.E. Gordon- a book well worth checking in with again. We have all been calculating the craziest situations that could arise with and on the Heron- exercising our imagination extensively.
Now off to the shop...