Monster garage car/plane build

On 8 Jun 2005 04:48:57 -0700, "Denny" wrote:

I have watched a few early episodes of Junkyard Wars, and Monster
garage, and Orange County Choppers, and that custom car guy in
California - Ward something or other -but I have quit... The fake
deadlines and manufactured crises annoy me to the point that I cannot
enjoy watching... Actually what they do with the machinery is
interesting and I dearly love watching rough metal being shaped and
smoothed and painted and coming out looking like a piece of sculpture,
but the crap that the vapid producers use to hype the show ratings is
intolerable...

Denny

My feelings precisely. The producers appear to think that just
building a great vehical from scratch isn't interesting enough to
appeal to a broad enough audience, so they make sure there's always
looming deadlines to produce conflict, intrigue and anger to attract
the non mechanically minded people to watch the show. They may be
right, but I don't care for that aspect of the shows at all.

After all, they're building hot rods and/or choppers, why does
anything have to be rushed about that? Rushing ALWAYS causes
problems. It's kind of the opposite of the homebuilding aircraft
ethic, to me. Of course, I probably carry it to the opposite extreme,
being very slow at construction. I've been working on my Christavia
for some 15 years now and I'm nowhere close to finishing. Work has
slowed almost to a stop right now while I do LONG delayed house
improvements. I view this work as an absolutely necessary part of the
airplane construction: If I don't do the house work, I won't be able
to work on the airplane due to pressure and anger from the other
important one in my life. And she's right. I'm building a toy,
albeit a very expensive toy, but the house may eventually be sold some
day and we should do what's necessary to get the best price possible
for it, when/if that time comes. Even if it doesn't come, the home
improvements are gratifying anyway. So I thought this summer was
going to be the big push to finally get the fuselage blasted and
painted, but work on the house will likely make this difficult to do,
if not impossible.

Testing the engine will be the goal for this summer, it looks like.

Corky Scott

Sorta-on-topic:

In tonight's episode of MythBusters, they explore whether you can build
a personal VTOL vehicle from plans that you can buy on the Internet. I
had a good look at the parts when I auditioned for the show last year.
I won't say much about it til after the show, but what's in the public
domain:

They talked with the SoloTrek guys, and filmed at least part of the
segment at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos where the SoloTrek
prototype is:

http://www.millenniumjet.com/Trek_News.htm

They originally selected a Rotax 582 for power:

http://www.worldtalkradio.com/archive.asp?aid=2471

It'll be interesting to see what they've made of it since I last saw
it.

Thanks, Bob K.

"Corky Scott" wrote in message
...
After all, they're building hot rods and/or choppers, why does
anything have to be rushed about that?

Work pace drives total man-hours to complete. If they bid a fixed cost
contract (not sure if they do it that way), then "taking your sweet time"
eats profits.

Rushing ALWAYS causes problems.

Not true. But you gotta have the right people that can work fast and get it
done right the first time (well, most of the time). If you have some good
top-gun designers/fabricators, they are the only ones doing the special
jobs, the one-offs, and the prototypes.

It's kind of the opposite of the homebuilding aircraft ethic, to me.

Absolutely. The typical hobebuilder is not economically driven to complete
fast. In fact, slowing things down is probably economically better. Keep the
airplane in the garage. No hangar costs, no fuel costs, blah blah....

I work for Lockheed in Palmdale (Flight Controls engineer). I've worked on
some projects where there's no time, no money, and a next-to-impossible
design challenge. Imagine a crisis level like they typically show on
American Hot Rod, but sustained over a year or longer. The pressure to be
efficient and not waste a penny on idle time can be immense. Having one
person sitting around doing nothing cuz he's waiting for someone else to
finish his part is really bad, so you have to keep running around making
sure everyone stays busy at all times. Hissy fits and blow-ups are fairly
frequent. The thin-skinned typically don't survive. Those types, if they
stay with the company, end up working paper research projects (i.e. not on
prototyping efforts). Now, we typically don't have managers that scream at
employees (company rules DO mandate proper behavior to some degree), but
there are other ways to apply pressure.

So, from my perspective, I guess the drama looks about right. It never
occured to me that it was all fabricated, since I live it every day (at
least on my current project).

Kinda makes me wonder what it's like to work at Scaled Composites. Maybe I
should go ask some of my compadres that used to work there.

Pete

jmk wrote:
Somehow I doubt that it can ever come even close to what the British
build (in just 20 hours) and flew in JYW. That thing looked like it
was just about ready to go into production, it appeared to handled so
well.

And then there was that great judge... what was his name??? G

I believe that even Chuck well admit that they didn't REALLY build it in
20 hours.

Jerry

Denny wrote:
I have watched a few early episodes of Junkyard Wars, and Monster
garage, and Orange County Choppers, and that custom car guy in
California - Ward something or other -but I have quit... The fake
deadlines and manufactured crises annoy me to the point that I cannot
enjoy watching... Actually what they do with the machinery is
interesting and I dearly love watching rough metal being shaped and
smoothed and painted and coming out looking like a piece of sculpture,
but the crap that the vapid producers use to hype the show ratings is
intolerable...

You would probably enjoy the British series of series "A [plane/race
car/classic car] is (re)born". Same presenter and format in each
episode, building something. Only one guy (mostly), no rush or
deadlines, but he does tend to skip over big chunks... its still
entertainment rather than how-to. There's also a series called "Wheeler
Dealer" that I enjoy -- again one presenter buys a beat-up old car,
fixes it up (with help from others), and sells it for profit.

Frank

In article .com, jmk says...

Somehow I doubt that it can ever come even close to what the British
build (in just 20 hours) and flew in JYW. That thing looked like it
was just about ready to go into production, it appeared to handled so
well.

And then there was that great judge... what was his name??? G

I'll let ya in on a little secret ,the Brits and the French were prepared for
the build.They had drawn full size plans at home and knew what they were gonna
build ahead of time. The USA team pretty much winged it because only one guy
knew what was going to be built. The French even practiced building components
back in France for practice. The Bill the pilot on the Brits team even built a
flying scale model back in the UK to test the design. As Judge I was there for
the 2 build days and the planes were pretty complete except for details like
throttles ,wiring fuel tanks etc. True it was longer then 20 hrs but all in all
it was 3 planes built ,N numbered and flown in under a week.And there was a
couple of days wasted in transporting the planes to the desert.

As far as the Judge went he should go back to building and leave the Judging to
Judge Wapner LOL!!

See ya

Chuck(out of work JYW's contestant)S

"Richard Riley" wrote

Back in a previous life, when I was in the Biz, I pitched a series to
PBS (before any of the cable channels existed) called "The Masters."
The idea was every week we'd do 2 segments on master craftsmen, doing
masterwork. Commission them to make some of the best work they'd ever
done, their choice, them follow them thorough the process. They paid
for a pilot, we filmed a silversmith and a wedding dress maker, but it
didn't get picked up.

I have watched a show, that was exactly that. Home and Garden Network,
maybe. I don't remember.
--
Jim in NC

I don't get it. If you think the "effort was wasted on a
joke vehical" why watch? I have never seen the show, the previews
looked like a bunch of guys who think they are better than everyone
else. I also figure that instead of waisting and hour watching someone
else build something and complain about how they do it, I could work on
my own projects.

Lou

On 9 Jun 2005 03:41:22 -0700, "Lou" wrote:

I don't get it. If you think the "effort was wasted on a
joke vehical" why watch? I have never seen the show, the previews
looked like a bunch of guys who think they are better than everyone
else. I also figure that instead of waisting and hour watching someone
else build something and complain about how they do it, I could work on
my own projects.

Lou

Interesting, you didn't watch it but feel the need to comment anyway.
Doesn't matter that the car is a joke, that's what they do, build joke
vehicals, it's the point of the show. What's interesting is watching
the guys do things like turn a Mazda Miata into a jet ski boat: how
would they do that? What pieces go into it? Or turn some other car
into a snomobile that raises and lowers the tracks and ski's so that
it can both drive on the pavement and run on the snow. Or build a car
that can fly. They chose not to give the vehical the full three axis
controls, guess it was one complication too many because the original
vehical controls remained (brakes, accelerator pedal and steering
wheel) but they had to add the aileron controls and elevator actuator.
Perhaps working out the rudder controls was just too much for a five
day build, since they also fabricated their own wings and struts and
roll cage to which they would attach.

Yes, they act like a bunch of egomaniacs because they've spent all
their lives building things other folks can't, and most have been very
successful at it.

I appreciate their skills, I just don't like the producers efforts to
create acrimony to make the show more "watchable".

Corky Scott

Corky Scott wrote:


I appreciate their skills, I just don't like the producers efforts to
create acrimony to make the show more "watchable".

Corky Scott


One of my favorite is the OC chopper show they do great things with their
bikes but suffer from the same "producer" troubles. The producer
concentrates on the bickering between father and son which I know is a turn
on for a lot of people but just turns me off. Kinda like the political
threads on this ng! ;-)
John
Sorry Corky couldn't help that last gib!