Enough for a small, belt fed machine gun/SMG/machine pistol and a few dozen rounds of ammo, I'd hope.

Now *that* would be a cool remote controlled toy....

Steven R

"Klaatu barada nikto".

It's already been done. The Canadian Avrocar was doing this in the 50's but, lacking todays electronics, was canned in the early 60's due to stability issues.

If it's 5 kg of antimatter, annihilating with 5 kg of the saucer, 215 megatonnes equivalent.

First catch your antimatter ....

Unless of course you've just parked your little saucer on the roof of a building to get a nice viewpoint, and turned off the engine so as to a) be stealthy and b) save fuel.

Assuming you can still pan and tilt any cameras it might have on it, you just have to wait til Achmed pops his head out again, and arrange some suitably excessive artillery fire to disourage him.

Of course, you could try to take it out whilst it is still airborne, but you'd better hope it didn't catch a glimpse of you before you take it down...

When I saw the headline I continued to read through to see if I could find the words:

"Internal combustion"

"2 Stroke"

"Bloody noisy, the enemy will hear it from miles away and take pot-shots at it"

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! etc

... says Stevie Gods of crAPPLE! Whoops, that's the kiss of death!

I, for one, welcome our saucer-flying overlords.

It never gets tired or bored or hungry. It never sleeps. It never makes a mistake. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!

How is this better than a helicopter?

nah, if it has a high enough altitude you may not hear it. Crafty ductwork etc. can help. Then from 1000 feet directly above the target, it powers off for "final approach." I'm sure even w/o exposives, it would leave a dent. And if a buzzing noise is enough to keep terrorists inside, then we just keep em buzy.

Peterborough! *Fen* Star, Geoff's Flying Saucers - come on you can't be serious - has anybody actually seen one of these in the flesh?

Try hitting a helicopter with a small arms fire or a dumb RPG from 100 yards.

Now try and repeat that trick with something that has 10% of it's visible profile.

Also, have you priced Apaches and Hinds per hour lately [never mind the cost of losing one]? If you want cheap aerial recon/attack without the viewpoint restrictions of a satellite, or the size restrictions of a gunship [think inner city] this sort of thing is your bag I reckon. especially with 4kg of semtex and 1kg of ball bearings wrapped around it hanging from the bottom...never mind dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars of explosives from a multi-million pound fighter-bomber. We're heading for a recession, don't you know?

And you can crash it through a fucking window and obliterate the contents of a room with minimum collateral damage - a cruise missile will fly through a window, but will take the building with it. I mean, come on, I could sit here all night and think of dozens of great uses for it!

I'm not going to though, because the black helicopters will come and get me.

Steven R

Hitting a stationary 2ft wide target from 300m (1000ft) horizontally, lying down on a range with an SA-80 is not guaranteed until you're reasonably well-trained. The SA-80 is a very accurate weapon, and on a range you can see where your bullets are missing.

An undertrained enemy hitting a 2-3ft target moving across the sky from 1000 ft below with an AK-47 would be miraculous.

Mine's the one with the lepage gun (cf Catch-22) in the pocket.

O

If they can build some kind of mathematical model of how its flight is controlled and make that available I bet there will be a substantial amount of people willing to code guidance, even just for the hell of it (you'd need quality control, of course, but it would quite a cool thing to do).

Offer 3 prizes:

- to be named and included in press

- get to see it work, personally

- get one to play with (assuming you have friendly neighbours, which may not last after you've taken out their windows).

Could lead to decent jobs for some people as well, just prepare for awkward questions when it flies off with your laptop still attached. No insurance will believe you (my laptop flew off with a flying saucer)..

:-)

(Aircraft wings are also curved on top to make use of this effect, but in their case it is not the only factor in play - otherwise planes could never fly upside down.)

is someone confusing Coander and Bernoulli?

It's Bernouilli that is taught at schools that provides minimal lift from a wing coander provides the majority of the lift.

It is Bernoulli that requires an aysemetric wing and only works one way up. (see Einstiens wing designs)

Coander works perfectly with symmetric wings and works both ways up, Stunt planes with symmetric wings make use of coander only (angle of attack exaggerates curvature)

To learn it all in 10 minutes see here: (including einstiens wing)

http://www.math.ksu.edu/main/events/KSU-REU/AeroBasics.pdf

I look forward to taking delivery of my own Mekon-of-Mekonta style hoverabout.

Its only a matter of time....

hmmm,

guess you are a candidate to be 'the second gunman on the grassy knoll' with a hit rate like that............

think I'll need to bullet proof one................................

Video camera, gps, wireless data, laser designator....

About as much bang as any local squadron of typhoons/ artillery battery / apache choose to deliver really...

Looks like someone else needs a lesson or two in aero-dynamics: what keeps any plane in the air (unless it is tail-sitting) is the wing _moving through the air_

Relativity is all well and good (works okay for a hovering helicopter) but in this case the wing will always be relatively stationery, so I suspect the main lift comes from the ingestion of air, with the expelled air being used mainly for stabilisation. (Kind of like a Harrier in reverse: a big fan sucking air downwards, and sideways facing vectored-thrust.)

You can build one yourself (that weighs about a pound):

http://jlnlabs.online.fr/gfsuav/index.htm

The site includes plans (third link in log book)

...because i'm always interseted in new ideas for physics to be put to good use, and I'm prepared, nay keen, to build a model for an experiment. But I've got a couple of concerns about the device, and slightly more concerns about Mr Naudin.

Firstly, this video purporting to show the saucer with video camera capability (http://jlnlabs.online.fr/gfsuav/n01areco.htm) looks suspiciously like it's hanging from a bit of string (you can see in the video that the impellor is hardly rotating at some points).

Secondly, a quick look at the chap's website (http://jnaudin.free.fr/) shows that amongst other projects are an attempt to build a craft with NO moving parts, using (I think) capacitance, plus a cold fusion reactor and "free energy from atomic hydrogen". So either this guy really is at the bleeding edge of sci-fi research, or....