~~~SmallBlimps Design Competion~~~ [for MODELS, not FirstFlight of real airship

Hi Floaters!  Let's keep clear on this, there are two SmallBlimps competitions, one for models and one for a an actual, flying at full load, personal airship or SkyBoat. This post is for the models. 1]Static Model Three meters, 2] Floating Model Three meters, 3]  Prototype Full Size.    

SmallBlimps Design Competition

• The SDC encourages the process of developing an UltraLight electric dirigible.
•     The process is divided into THREE steps with certificates at each step; Static, Floating and Prototype. An engraved memorial trophy awarded for the First Flight of a Prototype airship which had previously been registered as a Prototype with SmallBlimps Forum.

• The "Static Model," SM, measures at least 3 meters along the longest dimension of the envelope.
•     The SM faithfully shows how the entrant would construct and assemble a larger Floating Model of the same design.
•     This model may serve the purpose of aerodynamic testing in simple home-made wind tunnels.
•      The SM must look good and be neatly made.

• The 'FLOATING MODEL," FM, measures at least 3 meters along the largest dimension of its envelope. It is Lighter Than Air, LTA, and can float in the air with no part touching the ground except for a slack rope tether.
•     The FM may be un-powered.
•     If it has propulsion, it is electrical. It may be Radio-Controlled or it may be tether-guided.
•     The FM must look good and be neatly made.
  

• A prize will be awarded to anyone who builds a full size Prototype, whether or not it ever flies. However, the entrant must prove that it is capable of floating and flying and resisting mechanical stress.
•     Proof includes the approved measuring of the weight of the entire functional prototype and mathematical proof that the volume of the lift bags is sufficient to lift the complete airship and a two hundred pound pilot.
•     Lift bags must be functional and must prove they can hold pressure by remaining firm for 24 hours after being inflated with air.
•     The prototype must resist a simulated rough wind condition by being strongly pushed and shoved on any part of its framework and control surfaces. It must withstand being rocked and rolled on the ground in a simulated rough landing.
•     The prototype must look good and be neatly made.

SmallBlimps FirstFlight Prize

    See http://smallblimps.lefora.com/2009/12/03/ta-dathe-smallblimps-prize/page2/#post24  for details of the FirstFlight Trophy. The FirstFlight Prize will only be awarded to airships which have been registered with SmallBlimps Forum as a Prototype Category.
    The Smallblimps FirstFlight Prize represents the culmination of our online search for a flagship. The members of smallblimps.lefora.com are searching for cash sponsors for this world-class competition.
    To begin the sponsorship search, Allen Meece of the prize committee has pledged $100 USD for an engraved trophy.

Just asking. Could photos of construction qualify as model drawings? I can do drawings, just not sure of uploading. Scanning seems to make huge files. I'm rotten at cad, and my son is busy in college, hate to distract him from his studies to make drawings for me. Maybe during summer break. I do good photos, can control file size, etc. Love digital cameras, take jillions of snaps, choose the good ones, download, delete.
Hate to get paranoid here, but to repay for all the investment in such a project, something has to be proprietary. If the drawings are out there, anybody can copy them free. Even pictures will show certain tricks that have value.
I don't mind covering the cost of the model, which can easily be $100 for plastic, $80 for a sealer, who knows what for enough party balloons to fill it, and the helium. I'm seeing $500 easy.
If the model works, jumping to the full size unit just takes financing and a large building. Selling model kits could be a way, but it's a small market, I'm sure.
There is a minimum order for the uv resistant plastic, and access to a plotter is not as easy as expected. That would give me an advantage selling kits. The pre-cut and marked gores can be rolled into a tube, stuffed with party balloons bought wholesale, and include the sealer, ready to build. I haven't looked at motors, but when you buy anything in volume, you can get a discount.

Looks good, but I still believe that the bigger achievements should be rewarded with more than praise. I think we should follow the successful concept of the X prize. 

You can patent anything on the craft that you think is worthy of it. I believe you have a year from the day of first publication to file for a patent,  but I'm not an expert on patents.

RE; the drawings revealing worthwhile details of construction, well of course! That is the object of this exercise. This website is to get good construction ideas for a collaborative design. If a member wants to go it alone then they won't offer their good new ideas but they'll surely use ours. And that's fine, as long as an affordable personal airship gets built, who cares?!
     Patents are cans of worms. They cost tens of thousands to acquire and they do NOT insure profits nor even the effective ownership of an idea. They simply serve as one piece of evidence if the owner wants, and can afford, to engage in a long, expensive civil lawsuit over who thought of something first.
     In other words, a patent is merely a license to defend an idea in court. The Patent Office doesn't defend anything, it merely records and issues certificates.  We can do that  here  ;-]
    And if you know that corporations are big fat licensed crooks then you know that they way prefer to lie and steal than to pay for ideas from defenseless little guys. Come on.

Notice Ive removed the drawing category since it was included in error.  Since drawings are too easy to produce, I do not want to mail certificates out for them. That'd take as much work as the drawing   8-0>

No, patents don't ensure profits, nothing can. And patents don't have to cost tens of thousands if you do the work yourself. I don't think any big company would rip us off, it would be a waste of their time because there isn't enough money in it.

I don't think you need a patent, I was just suggesting it to put your mind at ease. It will be far easier for you to continue doing things the way you are than for someone else to figure out what you have done from a picture and replicate it. And even if they do try to replicate you, they will have to compete with you. And you will have the advantage of more experience and better connections in the LTA community. 

   <<I still believe that the bigger achievements should be rewarded with more than praise. I think we should follow the successful concept of the X prize.>>>

   True.  We are now in the market for prize sponsors!  I've seen Peter Diamandis a few times at space conventions and I know that he worked 24/7 for years to get X Prize sponsors and had to also spend money on insurance that the money would be there if won. Then he found the Ansari family after years and years of searching and they demanded a name-change in exchange for paying about half the ten million Ansari prize. If all donors had wanted that it would have had a thousand-yard name.  I am 100% against that. They should get name-recognition but not right at the top of the mast no matter what.

Fund raising is hard and will siphon energy from the rest of the SB forum but there's no harm in just giving it a half-hearted try.

    I think the airship spirit will appeal to more businesses than just aerospace corps. The ad campaigns of fashion houses would like this adventurous theme!!

Had a productive day in my workshop. Made a couple of small gores out of some thin aluminum. Took pictures at every step. It went surprisingly easy. The seam worked very well. I hope the plastic works as well. I'll continue work on it tomorrow, trying to make a model of a section, to work out the engineering on the fly.
I totally agree patents are only as good as your lawyer. My philosophy is market quick and move on. Once someone starts copying you, the sales dry up. The airship model market has to be very small, and you can't do much markup on a kit.
My design will not collapse when deflated, so selling finished units isn't practical.

A provisional patent is not too hard to do. If my design works, I'll look into getting one on the model. Selling to a manufacturer is a good idea. The thing to do is retain ability to make your own units, as long as you don't directly compete with the  party you sold to. That allows you to make new designs without running into conflicts.

<<[[The thing to do is retain ability to make your own units, as long as you don't directly compete with the  party you sold to. That allows you to make new designs without running into conflicts.]]>>
 
I agree.  No exclusivity contracts/licenses except in small and well-defined areas. This limits the salability of the invention, of course, but that is OK. Some mfrs want the whole nine yards of an idea just to limit the development of a good idea, ie, they want to corner the market for a great concept. That's no good for the airship field, it's just selfish greed and is typical of corporations.

   If a corp wants to build a certain type/size/function airship, that's great. But the inventor must hold and maintain the general right to use his ideas for different types of craft.

   Also please note that the files on this website constitute evidence of first origin of many airship construction ideas. We don't require patents to do that.  We are publishing and placing ideas in the common domain, so it is ok to adopt and adapt these good ideas as long as they are attributed to us. Attribution is the difference between stealing and acknowledging the truth.   UP, up and away.

Once something has been published like this, can it be patented? By anyone? Once something has been sold, can it be patented by the seller? By the buyer?

In the US, the rights belong to the person who can show that they came up with the idea first, but they must show due diligence in developing the idea. There are quirks in there, but that is the basic premise. It is not about the first person to file the patent, its about who can prove they thought of it the soonest. 

There are a lot of places on the net where you can read about this stuff.

Well the garage has been cleaned up (just moved from NewJersey to Michigan, (USA)) , now just need to winterize the garage so I can work on the models.  But need to drywall three more rooms in the house first so won't be able to get to the hobby for awhile.... I'll get some pics online when I get it going, or even the garage after winterizing....

Looking at the Prodex Total Insulation for the walls and ceiling... aluminum on both sides....but the ReflectiveBubble Reflective Insulation might be good for helium retention on a model.  99%pure aluminum...   

http://www.insulation4less.com/

Yeah, Paul, Aluminum. The ZMC2 (see avatar) was duraluminum, not sure of it's properties. My current model is aluminum, just because it works good and I had some laying around. I get it free from print shops, they use it for plates. I fix stuff for them. It's brittle, but so what, it's just a model. If you want to do a lenticular out of Aluminum, PM me, we can kick around seam design. I'm doing a standard football out of the aluminum I have. It's coming up very strong in compressive strength the long way. Have to work on internal guying for radial strength.

Lefora just released the ability to use private categories for discussion among mods and privileged members. We can use it if we need to keep anything under wraps. If people are worried about patent rights or stuff like that, we now have a non-public option for discussion. Just let me know if we need one and I can open it up. 

I believe the modern equivelent of duraluminum is 2024. You can get the properties for it at www.suppliersonline.com/propertypages/2024.asp

Another good place for materials info is;

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com

Relative to post #14:

Form the Wiki folks:

Duralumin (also called duraluminum, duraluminium or dural) is the trade name of one of the earliest types of age-hardenable aluminium alloys. The main alloying constituents are copper, manganese, and magnesium. A commonly used modern equivalent of this alloy type is AA2024, which contains 4.4% copper, 1.5% magnesium, 0.6% manganese and 93.5% aluminium by weight. Typical yield strength is 450 MPa, with variations depending on the composition and temper.^[1]

The heat treatments ( like T4 and T6 ) were not known then, so AA2024 is better stuff than Duralumin.

3 meter minimum size requirements (or 9.84 feet  , I'm  not metric minded  in another post I said  12 foot so  forgive me on that )  But it  Is not rational  or  feasible  to have a size restraint   to  encompass the  wide  array of  shapes  that  could be  used, given  the  physical  limits of  typical  floor to  roof lines  in  most  houses or shops being  8  foot  high  and  garage  doors of  7 ' h x 8' w .  This  9.84 feet  exceeds typical  building  constraints  in  some designs  considered  like  lenticular, winged,  or  even  round.    
 I believe  a  much better aid  to the builder  that allows complete design  flexibility for  acquiring  a  true scale working model  that  would function  more like its  full scale counter part they  envision , and to  be  cost effective to build ,  is   to 
   Mandate the  minimum amount  of lift, or  the  gas lift envelope volume.  Not the  ships physical  minimum size . 

   This  minimum size  mandate has  placed  a  undue  handicap and hardship on  the  design  flexibility we all need  to  create working  scale  models   to  derive  the  info  we need  to  pursue  working full size prototypes with  the  all important  least amount of  cash  expenditure.  The  world of  todays RC components  allows for  small powerful  lightweight components,  which  are inexpensive.  This one fact alone allows  for building  and flying full functional scale ships   in a minimum of  physical space and makes  it easy  to  transport.  A  9.84 foot minimum size  is unrealistic to  transport  or in some cases  you  couldn't  get it out of the  garage door .  If  your  ship  is a rigid  scale  model  of  the  Macon  or  Hindenburg  or  of your  own  creation  using  a  new  design   for  rigid airship  construction .  A size  mandate  just  does not  work.  A Gas lift /  volume  mandate   does. 
  I suggest the  new  design  rule to  be  a Minimum of  2 pounds of  lift  or  33 cubic  ft of volume. Given that  most  RC gear  complete  and mounted in a gondola with  battery,   will  weigh   in at around  a pound give or take , and  that leaves  1 pound for  envelope,  or  airframe  considerations of  any shape . Also  this minimum lift / volume rule  could offer payload room   for a on board  cam  ,  lights, or  banners .if the builder  is  careful  of  weights.