A look to Modern Mechanix for some very bad ideas

The artillery spotter is particularly fantastic!

That artillery spotter reminds me a bit of the guy they used to hang in a capsule, underneath a Zeppelin, for whatever reason.

"You can be sentenced to be pecked to death by ducks, or you can be assigned to man this contraption."
"How soon can the flock assemble?"

The Israelis have a boom tank for lifting someone up to look over the concrete walls surrounding Gaza and the West Bank. The motorized parachutes are a real thing, just not like the picture. The land battleship is an idea that just wouldn't go away. A couple resemble the mono wheel. The last one is just ludicrous. What would that thing do in a cross wind much less a storm?!

Quote from: kerick on March 20, 2025, 09:45:09 PMWhat would that thing do in a cross wind much less a storm?!

Sink. 
Though to be fair, that'd likely happen at the pier, too...

Quote from: Rick Lowe on March 20, 2025, 09:46:58 PM

Quote from: kerick on March 20, 2025, 09:45:09 PMWhat would that thing do in a cross wind much less a storm?!

Sink. 
Though to be fair, that'd likely happen at the pier, too...

Who designed these things? Definitely not an engineer. Maybe the magazine artists.

And what were they imbibing at the time? 

The Science and Mechanics issue was edited by Hugo Gernsback of science fiction fame. That explains a few things. But as whiffs go, some interesting and crazy stuff.

The list of Gernsback's publications is impressive:
Hugo Gernsback Bibliography

Considering the amount of time we've got left it's very possible there's gonna be another build from me 😆
It's one I know I've wanted to do for many yrs and I've got all the goodies to build it .
It's a real model ..well a real wooden mockup was built and I'm a thinking it was a bad idea ....a L71 8.8cm armed Stug lll ...the same gun as the King Tiger used but stuffed into a Panzer lll/ Stug lll hull .
I'd have to completely scratch build the entire upper hull and case mate .

Better get to work!

Quote from: kerick on March 25, 2025, 12:06:18 PMBetter get to work!

Damn it Ken!! I knew somebody would say that 

Whilst doing some research for my upcoming French Antarctic exploration vehicle and found a vehicle that should gain an honourary mention in this GB. The Byrd Antarctic Snow Cruiser. At 55ft long and 75,000lbs it was quite a large thing to not expect to sink into snow or crash through ice. Whilst being driven from where it was built to Boston, it missed the bridge it was supposed to cross and got lodged in a ditch for 3 days. When back on the road, it then caused the largest traffic jam the world had ever seen up unto that point. Whilst being unloaded from the ship in the Antarctic, it fell off the ramp and got stuck. Then, owing to a fantastic bit of logic, the cruiser couldn't drive without digging itself down 3ft into the snow (the designer opted to spec completely smooth tyres, assuming that treaded profiles would just fill up with snow). The team discovered that the cruiser actually had more traction in reverse, so, on it's longest expedition,  it drove over 90 miles across the antarctic ice..... Backwards!!
Then it got abandoned twice before becoming permanently misplaced.

The Snow Cruiser has featured on here a few times now, there may even be a whole thread on it somewhere.