Homemade sprayer

DIY electric garden sprayer from a sewing machine motor

I made it for treating plants in the fight against garden and vegetable pests. I assembled it from available materials, mainly an electric motor from a sewing machine and a gear oil pump from a Ural motorcycle. I mounted them on a common base and connected them with a long drive shaft. The sprayer is Read more…

“Butterfly” on the waves

Moth dinghy build: hull, mast, rigging and sail

The ultra-light international Moth class dinghy — the “Moth” (fig. 1, 2) is simple in design, easy to build, and possesses all the most important qualities of a racing boat — it is fast, maneuverable, and responsive to the helm. All this makes it worth recommending as a first racing sailboat for those who dream Read more…

Teen buggy

Buggy-350: school microcar based on a motor tricycle

On the roads and cross-country tracks of Latvia, new sports microcars — buggies built at the republic’s Central Station for Young Technicians — have recently appeared. One of them, the school “Buggy-350”, was displayed at NTTM-74. These nimble, agile machines move with equal success on dirt roads, highways, and heavily rugged terrain. They are also Read more…

Pneumatic all-terrain vehicle

Single-seat pneumatic ATV for winter ice fishing

A familiar winter TV story is the rescue of ice-fishing enthusiasts from a drifting ice floe. Almost every year we are shown how emergency services specialists on helicopters, boats, or all-terrain vehicles save unlucky anglers. Such incidents are not uncommon on the country’s freezing bodies of water. Moreover, anglers often drive out onto the ice Read more…

Bicycle in a suitcase

Teen folding bike that fits in a 650×450×150 mm case

A folding bicycle is nothing surprising today. However, even when folded, its dimensions are not that small, and storing it at home — let alone carrying it on a bus or tram — is not always convenient. I set out to develop a convenient folding bicycle with the smallest possible folded dimensions. I wanted it Read more…

Solar-powered dryer

Solar fruit dryer: design and operating principle

Fruits are dried in different ways. Most often — by the air-solar method, which, besides obvious advantages (simplicity, availability, etc.), has well-known drawbacks. The proposed solar dryer design is free of many disadvantages inherent in other constructions. The “greenhouse effect” works in it, as they say, at full capacity, providing a temperature under the film Read more…

The all-terrain vehicle changes its shoes

Pneumatic all-terrain vehicle by B. Ryzhov: 4x4 build

The author of the article and the creator of the all-terrain vehicle discussed here is Boris Nikolayevich Ryzhov — a long-time acquaintance of our magazine’s readers. Photographs of the machines he built (a tracked and a six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle) were published in the magazine as early as 1990 (No. 7). But the desire to create Read more…