Read more: Homebrew technology: Imagination hacking
Take an evening stroll through a park in Brooklyn, New York, and you might spot what looks like a luminous stingray whizzing through the air above. Follow it to its landing spot and you鈥檙e bound to bump into Breck Baldwin and Mark Harder, two exhibitors from last week鈥檚 Maker Faire who spend much of their time in an underground workshop building remote-controlled airplanes pretty much from scratch. Their plan is to wean people off shop-bought kits and get them freestyling when it comes to building model planes, getting creative with recycled materials instead.
Perhaps the most impressive part of the project is that the plane, remote controller included, costs under $100 to build. The exact cost depends on what materials you can find lying around: 鈥淵ou can certainly improvise,鈥� says Baldwin, who has made planes from such unlikely materials as cardboard, laptop batteries and credit cards.
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Although the duo鈥檚 planes tend to be creatively decorated, it鈥檚 the illuminated night-flying planes that really capture the attention and imagination of passers-by (see video). The idea originated from an installation for the annual festival held in the Black Rock desert in Nevada, for which the team wanted to create an above-ground coral reef effect at night.
鈥淚 wanted 50 night-flying airplanes in the same space and I thought it was easier to teach 50 people to build and fly than recruit that many model airplane pilots,鈥� says Baldwin. 鈥淪o the plane had to be cheap, robust, quick to build and a good flyer.鈥�
The result is a plane that even a child can build. It takes only 3聽hours to put together, and all the instructions and materials are clearly explained on the website.
However, according to Baldwin, the hardest part is learning to fly your plane, which will require patience, and a certain level of detachment from your masterpiece: crash landings are inevitable. 鈥淭he plane has the name 鈥楾owel鈥� because of how it looks after it has crashed a bunch of times,鈥� he says. 鈥淥ne evening I was launching a particularly beat-up plane and someone commented that it looked like I was trying to launch a wet towel. The name stuck.鈥�
