The design presented here is a half-track motorcycle with a steering front wheel on a low-pressure tire and a driven track, intended for off-road travel—mainly in summer and in the off-season, in winter on snow (cover up to 25 cm thick), and also on ice and hard crust. The motorcycle’s capability is, in effect, “go Read more…
Every year more and more bodies of water become “closed” to motor vessels. So what are water-motor tourism enthusiasts to do? Moor their boats for good? Not at all! It’s time to remember the sail. Sailing rig can become a real alternative to the rattling, fuming, water-polluting outboard motor. The feeling I had when I Read more…
Engineers were led to the use of air cushion by numerous attempts to reduce the hydrodynamic resistance of ships. As early as the beginning of this century, Swedish engineer Gustav Laval began work on accelerating ship movement using air lubrication—a thin layer of air introduced between the ship’s hull and water. However, he failed to Read more…
A motorcycle and a car are different machines. First and foremost, in terms of comfort. But can the advantages of two-wheeled transport be combined with the convenience of a passenger car? It turns out they can. Such two-wheeled machines—autorollers or motocars—are sometimes seen on the streets. We suggest you build one of these designs yourself. Read more…
Almost all bicycle drive designs share a common drawback that reduces their efficiency. This drawback is the uneconomical expenditure of muscular energy when shifting effort from one leg to the other as the pedals pass through the “dead points” (vertical position of the cranks). Most of the muscular effort at that moment is directed toward Read more…
The kart design (Fig. 1) has no complex units requiring high qualifications of performers and can be replicated in technical clubs of schools or at young technicians’ stations that have a lathe and gas welding. The kart construction must be carried out in a certain sequence. First, the front and rear axles are manufactured, and Read more…
Once upon a time, there was a popular TV show “You Can Do It” where craftsmen talked about the designs they had created. Perhaps it was there that information about air-cushion vehicles first appeared. And publications in the “Modelist-Konstruktor” magazine pushed many enthusiasts, including ours from Angarsk (mainly amateur fishermen), to build such machines with Read more…
The watercraft we would like to introduce to readers can quite rightly be classed as a small vessel. After all, what else would you call a pair of versatile self-propelled floats that can easily be used both as water skis and as a two-seater pleasure catamaran. As can be seen from the drawings, each float Read more…
This two-cylinder engine, designated DD-700/40, was designed and built by Georgy Dorfman, head of the public design bureau “Aerosam”. The motor turned out to be exceptionally successful: reliable, relatively simple, and quite lightweight. The motor was exhibited at the IV All-Union Review-Competition SLA-87 and was approved by the technical commission of the rally. To date, Read more…
In gardens and vegetable plots, at dachas and school grounds — everywhere where there is a need to cultivate small areas of land, universal walk-behind tractors (UWT) are widely used. Including homemade ones, often created with maximum use of standard units and parts. One such design was developed and successfully tested by young technicians at Read more…
