Gadget Freak Case 106: CopterBox Puts A New Spin on Air Cargo
By Design News Staff -- Design News, August 12, 2007
Air delivery of supplies to areas where there's no place to land is typically done by parachute or helicopter. A parachute is reusable, but requires a trained rigger, periodic inspection, occasional repairs, controlled storage conditions and, of course, some way to return it to base after the drop. In dire battlefield conditions, used parachute components must at least be made unavailable to the enemy. In jungle areas, parachutes tend to leave the cargo hanging in the trees. Helicopters are expensive to operate, impossible to hide, make for high-risk operations behind enemy lines and can't land in the jungle without a prepared site.
Chase Warren and his teammates at DropMaster Inc. have a better idea: an economical, single-use delivery system that's compact, simple to rig and has the rectangular shipping container with all of the parts inside transforming into the hexagonal drop box! A small drogue chute with a metering line orients the package in free-fall and then deploys the deceleration system — three rotor blades that spin with the cargo (no bearings) at about 450 rpm and create lift to control the descent rate. It penetrates tree cover without a hitch and you can even use the parts as a camp stove to cook those fresh groceries!
CopterBox is combat-proven by U.S. Special Operations Forces in the mountains of Afghanistan.
View more details, a parts list and video | Post a Comment
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Folks, we will religiously return to the non-commercial gadgets w/ parts list. We thought the Copter Box was interesting enough to run, but in hindsight, we agree that GFers should be able to build products themselves from scratch.
In the true "spirit of gadgeteering,"
John Dodge, Design News editor-in-chief
- 2007-21-8 04:16:24 EDT -
Great idea (back in '92). We were designing a device that would successfully deliver an egg safely to the ground off a 3 story building. Looks similar to those ideas. What's up with this info-article anyway? Wouldn't this be better suited in the advertisement section of the magazine?
- 2007-15-8 02:05:41 EDT -
great idea but I didn't know Design News advertised products for sale in this section: there are no build instructions, only links to the company where one can purchase for a mere $600
- 2007-13-8 19:14:09 EDT -
I have downloaded the pdf versions of Gadget Freek but I can not read the pdf. I get the following message.
"Adobe Reader could not open 'DNx070813Gadget_Article.pdf' because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged (for example, it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded)."
I have the latest Adobe Reader installed.
I have downloaded this several times and get the same results.
I have tried to download as an HTML page but the pdf -> HTML converter complains about the file as well.
Any ideas?
- 2007-13-8 16:42:52 EDT -
I agree with the other comments. This is nothing more than a shameful plug for their device. There is no build information or instructions as suggested in the link. This type of commercialism should not be allowed in the Gadget Freak section.
- 2007-13-8 12:57:35 EDT
