11/14/2002: Fly plane
 

http://cellar.org/2002/flyplane.jpg

Yes, you can follow the instrunctions on this site

http://www.digital-eel.com/sirl/flyplane.htm

And build your very own FLY plane. But is it cruel? No! The site has inspirational words to cover that:

"It should fly like a charm, and, far from being cruel to the flies, you'll be teaching them a new and valuable thing, one that brings us to the virtue of this exercise. For we see that while flies think a lot alike, have a great deal in common, share many of the same hopes and dreams, they never act in concert, as a team, with regard for the worth of other, neighboring flies until forced to by grim circumstance - as, for example, when they are harnessed to fly and either first experience the exhilaration of high-altitude cooperation or die."

If only all such instructional sites contained this kind of high philosophy.

That is SO aweseome!

If someone tries this, get pictures!!

Fly powered airplanes have been done - it's NOT that hard to do. There is a class of model aircraft called "Indoor Duration" - the models weigh in in the low gram class - one guy put a small mount on the back, used to catch horseflys, and glue them to the mount. The two tricks were

1)Knocking them out without killing them

2)Figuring out that if their feet are off the ground, they WILL beat their wings. He built the mount in souch a way that all their legs were off the ground

He said it was quite interesting watching the fly figure out how to steer!

Intresting to say the least.
 

Normally I would say that this is cruelty to animals but, in this case it is just flies. I mean these are the animals that we smack with a flyswatter, newspaper or any thing handy.

In saying all of that I have to say. . .Damn that one cool looking thing. I wonder if you can make bigger planes out of bigger insects like bumble bees, wasps, horseflies or locusts.

Here is an image to make you want to kill all those flies making your airplanes.

http://www.zeri.org/img/projects/songhaimaggots.jpg