Outdoors News

Eat my root vegetables! MSNBC anchor and tuber launcher Tucker Carlson joins me on the Popular Mechanics Show to discuss the wonders of spud gunning, and to share some of the more elaborate potato cannons (a propane-powered semi-automatic) he has in his arsenal. Plus, Transterrestrial.com's Rand Simberg, a self-confessed recovering aerospace engineer, joins me to analyze last week's announcement that Lockheed Martin will build NASA's new ride to the Moon and Mars -- will it fly? Senior editor (automotive) Mike Allen answers your car care questions (including what to do when you fill your gas tank with - D'OH! - diesel), and West Coast editor Ben Stewart drives the coolest electric car yet, the Tesla Roadster....
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By GLENN H. REYNOLDS / For an upcoming piece in Popular Mechanics magazine, I did a rebreather familiarization course and dive. Here's a bit more background than the magazine can hold on rebreather technology. I also shot some video explaining how things work. Ordinary "open circuit" scuba delivers compressed air or Nitrox (a blended gas containing more oxygen and less nitrogen than ordinary air) from a tank to a regulator to your lungs. When you inhale, you get fresh air from the tank. When you exhale, the gas -- now containing less oxygen than before, plus carbon dioxide produced by your body -- bubbles out into the water....
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Here at PM we've been playing with spudguns, those armaments of the starch-loving, in which a Yukon gold is blasted from a homemade cannon at hundreds of miles an hour. These are flex-fuel munitions: they use anything from Static Guard to hairspray, but Right Guard has always been a spudgunning favorite. Several versions of the spray-on antiperspirant contain propane—or at least they did. A few days ago, however, I went to four different ammo shops (i.e. drug stores), reading Right Guard labels, and didn't find a single one with propane. More research discovered four facts. One, Right Guard stopped using propane several months ago....
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The days here start early. I’m up at 3:30 a.m. on my first morning with this areotrekking crew—which goes by the name Sky Gypsies—and out to the hangar near Tucson, Ariz., at 4 a.m. to preflight the vehicles. Here, in June, kite wing pilots fly early and fly late: Searing midday heat in the Southwest produces thermals—sudden updrafts that can lead to dust devils and sand storms. Glider pilots hunt for those pockets of lift, which hoist them like elevators. But as the heated air shoots upward, it grinds and tumbles along the ground, creating scary conditions for anyone soaring a few feet off the deck, as kite wing pilots are want to do. And that’s where we intend to be....
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A couple of months after I earned my sport pilot certification, we posted an e-mail from John McAfee—the man behind McAfee antivirus software—introducing us to a new, relatively unknown subset of recreational flying: Aerotrekking. Needless to say, I wanted to know a lot more. It turns out that McAfee’s own aerotrekking club, the Sky Gypsies, is one of only two groups in the country that organizes expeditions of ultralight airplanes. These so-called “kite wings”—or "trikes," depending on who you ask—are basically go-karts bolted to hang gliders, with giant engines on the back driving pusher props....
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A small but intrepid team of Popular Mechanics’ fittest souls last Thursday found themselves in the thick of the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge, a 3.5-mile running race through Central Park. And believe us, it was thick. The organizing brain trust behind the event never quite saw fit to insist that the 15,000-plus participants (note I do not say runners) line up in some sort of appropriate order—say, by speed—so our first mile or two involved fighting hard through a dense-packed herd of walkers (whose intended starting position, far at the back of the field, WAS clearly marked) and other assorted slowpokes of all stripes....
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For the last week, clouds of uncertainty have been roiling metaphorically over my head. My instructor, Jeff, has signed me off to take my check ride with an FAA examiner. But am I ready? The process is anything but a rubber-stamp procedure: The last club member who tried failed twice before he finally got his license. Maybe, I think, I should spend some solo time in a glider first, to polish my skills. Or maybe I should jump in as soon as I can, while Jeff’s lessons are still fresh. It’s a nail-biter: This is not Apollo 13, and failure is definitely an option....
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The first drops of rain started to fall as I pulled to a stop at Freehold Airport. It was nine o’clock in the morning, and I was scheduled to meet my instructor, Jeff, for our second consecutive day of intensive training in preparation for my glider-license check ride. Within minutes the rain was coming down in buckets. The weather forecast had called for mid-80s temps and partly cloudy skies. So what was this? I called the FAA’s nearest Flight Services Station and spoke with a weather briefer. “This wasn’t forecast,” she told me, “and we don’t know what’s causing it. Must be some kind of upper level disturbance.” Rain dripped off the eaves as Jeff and I sat indoors and went over the practical test standards, reviewing what maneuvers I’d need to be able to perform....
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There’s something particularly agonizing about waking up on a Monday morning and seeing blue skies and puffy clouds, especially after yet another weekend of bad gliding weather. Since Nutmeg usually only soars on Saturdays and Sundays, good weather during the week is worse than useless—it’s a cruel taunt. But blue skies are what we had all week, and finally I couldn’t bear it. On Wednesday I emailed Jeff Driscoll, my instructor and asked if he felt any inclination to chuck work and meet me Friday morning. Hallelujah: He agreed. My quest for my gliding certificate was back in gear....
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Why would anyone spend more than $6000 on a bicycle? That’s a bit like asking why someone would spend $150,000 on a car. No one needs to spend this kind of money to get from one place or another. But, apparently there are some people who care more about how they get somewhere—fast, and very much in style—than where they’re going. So when the folks at Guru bicycles offered to build one of their carbon-fiber Maestro bikes, customized to my particular dimensions, and let me borrow it for a few weeks, I jumped at the chance....
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