Red Baron:Wright brothers 1903 flyer

Name of model:
The Wright Brothers 1903 flyer

Timeframe of construction:
About 12 sessions of LEGO

Team involved:
Only meR

Contributors:
Batman, Jimsey and Past Pupil

Initial idea:
I got the idea of doing the Wright brothers flyer from doing research of the Wright brothers and I found it really interesting. We looked at videos of the plane in flight, it was animated though. I found it interesting learning about how they were bicycle engineers and that they used to make gliders before the engine powered plane. They became interested in flight when they were young. Their father who was a bishop brought them a type of thin that flew by an elastic band. You would twist the rotor blades on top and let go and the blades would spin around making the thing fly.

Adaptations:
I had to change a few things. I built the plane in a way but it didn’t exactly work so I tried something else and that didn’t work. One day I asked Past pupil if he could give me a hand so he helped me with I and we did a thing with gears to work the front part of the plane and sadly that did not work either but eventually we found the right idea and we used pulleys with the elastic bands and it worked so that was good. In the back of the plane it wasn’t hard at all and the first thing we did worked. After a few more LEGO sessions Miss O’Connell saw that the motor wasn’t in the right place and it looked wrong where it was, so I moved it.

Changes in the future:
I am not sure what changes I will have in the future and hopefully I won’t have to make any changes. I will be making the Wright brothers flyer out of lollipop sticks with Danny and a few other people so I am looking to that.

Programming:
The programming on my plane is not so complicated, the plane just goes 0.2 seconds one way and 0.2 seconds the other way and repeats a few more times. The programming on a model is when you can make the plane do what you want and it is controlled by the RCX which is connected to a motor by a wire and the motor spins. You use the computer to program the RCX. An RCX is a control unit that is specially designed for LEGO MINDSTORMS.