Designer Times
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So, how the heck to we reduce from 50 feet and $200,000 to 30 feet and $20,000? The first thing is to recognize that a Spacecraft is just a bunch of lights in the sky. All they have to do is look bright and flash wildly.

Maybe about (50) 600 watt 115 volt lights in combination with some smaller 12 volt automobile road lamps, and a bunch of strobes might do. I added up the total electrical load and figured we'd program them to not all be on at once. This gave me a reasonable electrical generator size.

I bought a Honda ES 6500 gasoline electric generator set, the auto lights, and some Whelan emergency vehicle strobe flasher lights. I added some moveable center spot lights. Now all I had to do was find a lighting controller. Craig Barr saw that I knew nothing about this stuff and provided an animated bird programming device from Roger Broggie, son of my boss from the earlier Disneyland days. Craig wired up a clever control box which could run from a 12 volt car battery. We now had a complete lighting system. All it needed was a structure to hang it on.

If I made the central main structure to be a 6 foot cubic shipping crate, all the outer 30 foot diameter parts could be stored in the central core.

This core had a plywood floor to mount the Honda generator and all the other stuff. The core had casters to make the spacecraft easy to move around. They were on vertical tubes which carried the helicopter lifting cables on top.

We made four cover panels that bolted onto the core so as to make the whole deal a self-contained shipping crate on wheels. The guys covered it with green carpet which made it look quite classy.

With this plan in mind, it was easy to make 8.5 x 11 drawings of every detail part for the guys to fabricate. When every part is fully detailed from my master layout, no time is lost trying to figure out large engineering plans. I kept all the purchase, finance, labor and material payment methods dead simple. This went very quickly and we were soon ready to assemble the spacecraft in the backyard prior to the first helicopter flight test. Using my new Mac, I wrote up an operations manual, technical and service parts data sheets for show operations by Walker and Sterr. We had to deliver a stand alone product to others that we would never see again.

After the test assembly, we trailered the boxed Spacecraft from the garage in North Hollywood about 60 miles out to the Rialto Airport for flight testing. Dorcy Wingo of Western Helicopter and their Hughes 500 jet helicopter had been contracted for a day of testing. Unlike the Olympics test disaster, the Spacecraft 30 test went off without a hitch. Dorcy even flew around the airport at over 60 mph with it to show off the very stable aerodynamic characteristics of the 1420 pound Spacecraft. When Dorcy completed the last flight, I unhooked the lift cable, which he then promptly lowered to the ground in a coiling manner....what a pilot!

Everybody was happy, Walker quickly paid GurrDesign, Inc. and I paid the guys for their labor. Since several items were added to the original $20,000 scope of work, the final delivered price was $24,087 which left us all with a modest profit to split. This entire project was completed in less than three weeks. I never missed one day of work at Sequoia. All of us were delighted to learn that there are always smart, simple and efficient ways to get things done. The business lessons of the Spacecraft 30 project served me well for years to come.

oOo

Nexth Month: Universal Studios Special Effects Show 2010 Flying Rig