Latest attempt at getting airborne on battery power.

You can use it as a motor or...
What happens when you place copper coils around spinning magnets?
= 100 years of almost free electricity?
These 1" super magnets have 100 lbs of holding force. Attracting each other that is 200lbs of attracting force for each of the ten rows of magnets times 3 turbine cylinder 33 degree offset timeing contact points.
 
Last edited:
Perpetual motion is hard to beat.
Moving a coil of wire through a magnetic field does indeed induce a flow of electricity with a closed circuit.
The current flow in the coil of wire generates an opposing magnetic field that resists the motion.
The power required to move the coil of wire would be exactly equal to the electrical power so generated if efficiency was 100%, but nothing is free.
 
Last edited:
Hooray! I finally managed to get airborne for 90 seconds on battery power alone!
Oh, wait a minute; what’s it good for other than chest thumping?
We'll, that's 50 percent longer than the Wright brothers got out of their best flight on December 17, 1903. It turned out to be useful in the long run.
 
Yes, you are correct. But what if you understand how to use physic to create a permanent magnet motor that would run for 100 years before it lost its magnetism. Don't laugh. In the 5th grade, I entered one in our science fair after my science club teacher said physics says it impossible. I told him I knew how and would bring it tomorrow and set it on his desk. Made it out of an elector set A-frame with an axle through an oak meal round box top. It was a ferrous wheel of magnets with an opposing larger magnet on a thread wood spool. Set it on his desk with the attractive poll in front of it to get it started spinning and then spun the spool around to opposing polls and it kept spinning. I left his 6th-grade class and went back to my 5th-grade class and said "NOTHING".
At first recess, I opened his door looked at it, and said. "Looks like it is still spinning to me!" And shut his door. At lunch, I said "Hey Mr. Fox appears physic, and the science community is WRONG as it looks perpetual to me.
The next recess he told me to come in before my next well-thought-out smart-ass comment!
After more than 60 years of telling others how you could make a 3 turbine with 10 cylinders each permanent magnet motor, I'm going to make it myself. Chuck's brother makes customized handicap vehicle controls in his machine shop.
Here is how you can make one. I'm been too busy living life to the fullest but running out of life, need to do this before I die.
Just in case here is how you could build your own...

In the 5th grade, I realized that all disks have only one 90 degrees timing point. That is exactly like an armature of an AC motor.
For a permanent magnet motor, you time the attractive side but not to its at-rest state at 90 degrees like you do with opposing coils and magnets in AC motors. I'm timing these cylinders at 33 degrees offset. They are always trying to get back to 90 and at rest but can't because of timing gears.
The other property of a disk I realize is the magnet field changes direction away from each opposing cylinder allowing the other difference from an AC motor. You create a slight dwell that is a gap in the magnetic fields. That is done by spacing the alternating rows of magnets on each turbine to the position where the next row is on the opposing cylinder attracting it by a 33 degree offset.
Any 5th grader who studied electricity and electromagnets, like I did, at the library and did not know science said it's impossible could make one.
Yes ... you can get the wheel to spin with such a mechanism .... but not perpetually

Years ago I bought a bushel of surplus super-magnets and enjoyed experimenting with them

I used a bicycle wheel as the rotor ... cheap , light , strong , and has an excellent low friction bearing .... mounted it on a stand .... then placed permanent magnets around the perimeter.

---Holding an attracting magnet close to the wheel would cause it to turn (of course)
---Trouble is the wheel immediately stops turning at the point where attraction is greatest (of course)
---But if you flip the poles of the hand-held magnet from attract to repel at just the right time the wheel will keep turning (of course)
---It becomes like a pull and a push and pull and push as you flip the magnet from attract to repel .... now all that is needed is a drive mechanism from the wheel to the other magnet so that it flips from pull to push automatically .... at the exact right time .... and voila ... a perpetual motion machine..

However the perpetual motion show-stopper is the fact that it takes just as much power to flip that single magnet as the power the wheel is producing ... no net gain

.
 
Perpetual motion is hard to beat.
Moving a coil of wire through a magnetic field does indeed induce a flow of electricity with a closed circuit.
The current flow in the coil of wire generates an opposing magnetic field that resists the motion.
The power required to move the coil of wire would be exactly equal to the electrical power so generated if efficiency was 100%, but nothing is free.
I know... That is what Mr. Fox told me too. Put that example on his desk overnight and then he wanted me to enter it in the science fair as a Perpetual motion machine. We did, but I only won 2nd place because the judges informed both of us that magnetism only last about 100 years. I told them well that is perpetual in my lifetime? They did not buy it.
 
Yes ... you can get the wheel to spin with such a mechanism .... but not perpetually

Years ago I bought a bushel of surplus super-magnets and enjoyed experimenting with them

I used a bicycle wheel as the rotor ... cheap , light , strong , and has an excellent low friction bearing .... mounted it on a stand .... then placed permanent magnets around the perimeter.

---Holding an attracting magnet close to the wheel would cause it to turn (of course)
---Trouble is the wheel immediately stops turning at the point where attraction is greatest (of course)
---But if you flip the poles of the hand-held magnet from attract to repel at just the right time the wheel will keep turning (of course)
---It becomes like a pull and a push and pull and push as you flip the magnet from attract to repel .... now all that is needed is a drive mechanism from the wheel to the other magnet so that it flips from pull to push automatically .... at the exact right time .... and voila ... a perpetual motion machine..

However the perpetual motion show-stopper is the fact that it takes just as much power to flip that single magnet as the power the wheel is producing ... no net gain

.
Just alternat the rows and have at least 3 wheels with a new attraction point take over and hand it off to the 2nd them the 3rd wheel and then it is back to the 1st wheel. Actually, all 3 wheels do this at slightly delayed times from each other. At least that is how it has been running in my head for 60 years. Exactly the same as I understood the physics of the single Ferris Wheel and that ran in my head too. That one ran for more than a year until the 1st earthquake misaligned the main magnet.
 
Last edited:
Yes ... you can get the wheel to spin with such a mechanism .... but not perpetually

Years ago I bought a bushel of surplus super-magnets and enjoyed experimenting with them

I used a bicycle wheel as the rotor ... cheap , light , strong , and has an excellent low friction bearing .... mounted it on a stand .... then placed permanent magnets around the perimeter.

---Holding an attracting magnet close to the wheel would cause it to turn (of course)
---Trouble is the wheel immediately stops turning at the point where attraction is greatest (of course)
---But if you flip the poles of the hand-held magnet from attract to repel at just the right time the wheel will keep turning (of course)
---It becomes like a pull and a push and pull and push as you flip the magnet from attract to repel .... now all that is needed is a drive mechanism from the wheel to the other magnet so that it flips from pull to push automatically .... at the exact right time .... and voila ... a perpetual motion machine..

However the perpetual motion show-stopper is the fact that it takes just as much power to flip that single magnet as the power the wheel is producing ... no net gain

.
But you are correct and on one of the right tracks.
I also designed a version, in my head, where the timing rotated the magnets using gears so that it flips from pull to push. And if my first design fails I will try the rotating flip flop of polls. But the gearing for that is so much more complex with so much more friction and limited life of gears.
 
In defense of electric aircraft, The batteries are a moving target. The energy storage density is improving and will continue to improve. The won't need to achieve parity with fuel in energy density because the electric motors are more efficient and because the electric format can offer other advantages, potentially offsetting the energy storage disadvantage.
 
I can imagine that there might be a few design freedom advantages. For example, fuel tanks generally have to be over the cg so that you don't have a radical balance shift as you burn off fuel. Batteries weigh pretty much the same regardless of the state of charge, so you can distribute them where convenient.
 
I have no desire to "fly" a CopterPack. Like all aircraft, mechanical failure is eventual. When one fan fails, it will fall from the sky. Anything above 3 feet is serious injury. If they put 6 fans on it, maybe....
 
I have no desire to "fly" a CopterPack. Like all aircraft, mechanical failure is eventual. When one fan fails, it will fall from the sky. Anything above 3 feet is serious injury. If they put 6 fans on it, maybe....
I can relate to that.
I prefer to have a landing-gear other than my legs.
 
Top