Experimental Aircraft Build

This project was to design and build a one-off, stable/docile, open, two-place gyro with good visibility for fun local flying and short cross country flights. After flying different gyroplanes for comparison, and months of iterative design, I built the fuselage as a seamless carbon fiber shell molded over a removable CNC milled foam male tool. The gyro is now being finished by a gyro enthusiast in Oregon.

For this project, I completed a full whitepaper design of a single seat turbojet aircraft.  As part of the design study, I built the majority of the aluminum aircraft fuselage structure and cockpit to dial in airframe mass properties and structure design. The main point of the project was to test out and learn legacy aluminum fabrication methods.

For this project, I completed a full whitepaper design of a single seat turbojet aircraft.  As part of the design study, I built the majority of the carbon fiber aircraft fuselage structure and cockpit to dial in airframe mass properties and structure design. The main point of the project was to test out and learn new composite fabrication and mold making methods.

This was a small compressed air jet-tip helicopter rotor assembly and testbed that I designed and built to explore the feasibility of helicopters without tail rotors.  This was the first-full sized aircraft assemly that I designed, and it was a great learning experience for mass properties management, structural analysis, and safety factors.  I made the rotor blades out of fiberglass that I molded around CNC hotwired cut foam cores that were bonded to a chromoly structural tube that also functioned as the compressed air duct. A lot of the project centered around the design and fabrication of the rotor head that incorporated compressed air passages surrounding the rotor blade pitch control mechanisms.  I supplied compressed air to the rotor system using a roots blower that was driven by a 4-stroke engine.  I performed dozens of tethered tests running the rotor up to different speeds and variable blade pitch configurations.