Method

Measurements

• Length - 110 mm
• Height - 91 mm
• Weight (with wings) - 1/4 ounce

Design

This is one of those projects where I am rather embarassed to say that there were no formal plans, what one could say were "designs on the fly" but that would be a pun.

In principle, I knew exactly what I wanted and the designs were in my head. The general design concepts were just like Big Brother but they were just very much smaller. The main difference between Big and Little Brother was the wing armature joints. Instead of fixed joints a flexible piece of plastic was used which can be seen in the top image( this lead to be the downfall of the project which will later be described. The image only shows half the strip!!!)

The flexible strip was chosed due to the intricate size and shape that the joints were that were required and in fact worked well in practice pre-flight mode.

The power unit

The problem of the power unit was a real issue for this project. How could I get a large amount of power, to the armature that was light weight and did not require electricity. The simple solution is always the best in KTS because you are using lo-technology to solve complex designs.

If you look closely at the image on the left you will note a small metal hook which is 17mm in length frm hook to tail end (within the transparent casing). The casing is the ink cartridge of an old Bic biro.

The hook was made by cutting and bending an old paperclip. The smaller hook was made to be wider than the internal diameter of the cartridge so that it could be forced into place. Once in place it was very diffult, if not impossible to remove as the sharp edge dug into the plastic mounting....simple but very effective. A perfect KTS style solution to a problem in a build.

You will see in the central image on this page that Little Brother has a vertical tail; this is drilled and glued in place. The hook and tail are the mountings for the elastic band. This area of work required trial and error to see exactly how many bands were required and how many turns were required...too many and catastrophic failure was only a turn away!

Wings

Sadly the wings cannot be shown as they are now so damaged they have been put in the bin. Both wngs were 200 mm long and were made up of 2 x 100mm x 2mm dowels joined in the middle by the remaining bic biro cartridge. Some standard A4 paper was used to create the wing flaps and looked like bees wings. These were glued to the dowels.

The flight

Well this baby actually flew. I had placed two 4mm x 1mm x 50mm elastic bands and had turned it approximately 50-100 turns.This was a very dangerous time as the wings had to move whilst winding up.

I held Little Brother above my shoulder and gently pushed him off and let go of the crank .....WOW he actually flew, he went about 2 feet and then catastrophe happened one of the flexible wing mounting snapped clean off causing Little Brother to plummet, still flapping madly and then fall to the floor.

The Jezzarettes were amazed that I just hooted with laughter. They thought I would swear...NO NO this was an absolutely briliant excercise...and hey Little Brother can always be repaired.