• Member Since 9th Sep, 2012
  • offline last seen May 4th, 2023

Featherprop


Just your average flying pony with a little more to carry than his own wings can handle

  • EThe Last Link
    When a pilot finds himself trapped with no good choices left, what will he do? Good intentions conflict with harsh realith, and he has to balance saving lives against losing his own before he can help.
    Featherprop · 61k words  ·  73  4 · 1.2k views

More Blog Posts39

Jul
25th
2014

Is It Last Friday Yet? · 10:41pm Jul 25th, 2014

So.

"Updates Every Friday," it says. Must have hit a time warp. I've actually been hesitant to post this chapter, because I'm not sure if the tone fits, or if I break the story's mood with something that sounds like a lecture... or a maudlin attempt to pluck at heartstrings.

But I've been over this thing so dang many times I need to just pop the drogue and let it go. This was one of the earlier parts of the story to be sketched out, and I think it shows. It was where I originally got lost on how to end it, and I was quite unhappy with a stereotypical "drift off into a hazy future" kind of ending where you leave it blurry.

Unfortunately, this triggered a couple ideas, and then some other ideas. For now, they're sitting in a sort of congealed idea stew, almost a goulash, but there's some hints to be found. In the end, I leave... well, that'll have to wait for another chapter or two.

A few other things: I said I'd try to get some pics of the mythical "Ice Vanes" and I did! I'll try to post a series of them to show how the two flaps look at various stages of opening and closing, to give an idea of how they work. I need to cut them down and upload them, then I'll pop 'em up!

Ice Vanes!

Here's a few pics!


First one is with the vanes in the "stowed" position, how it'd look in cruise flight. All the air gets rammed up into the cowling.



Next is a head-on view- you can see the guide that helps the air turn, and the lower flap covering the ejector chute as well as some hydraulic lines.



Top vane is starting to close, forcing air to make a sharp bend around the bottom of the guide plate.



You can see the bottom vane opening now, and the top vane is getting close to full extension.



Midway through, you can see the chute behind the bottom vane, and how it forms a straight path for chunks of stuff to go out.



Almost there, top vane is nearly done moving, bottom vane is almost out of view. Now any heavy particulate will be forced down and carried out the chute at the back, rather than getting sucked up into the tender tender compressor blades, or even worse the brittle turbine blades and their magical ceramic coating that lets us operate at a temp range where the metal should be gooey.

Aaaand... oops, forgot to upload a pic of the closed vanes. I'll have to fix that tomorrow.

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Comments ( 1 )

Yeah, I know how that goes; as a story grows I tend to start staggering under its weight of accumulated narrative and it becomes so much more important to get that next part just right. It's a habit I need to break if I want to write longer-form stuff.

I've fallen a bit behind on my reading but I'll look forward to catching up!

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