Background
Following my failed attempts at constructing a functional giant wooden airship in 1993–1994, I realized the reality of such a dubious project. Nonetheless I continued researching the history of aircraft and flight dynamics in order to pique my childhood curiosity in the hopes that I would eventually achieve flight before adulthood. Despite not being able to actually build any flying vessels of my own, I maintained a fascination of flight in general as sort of a fantasy from afar.
For instance, there was a revival of The Transformers rebranded as Generation 2, in which the old school ’80s cartoon was aired as reruns on TV along with a new toy line of the original models recolored in updated ’90s colors — and with the Autobot faction called The Aerialbots being brought back on store shelves, I became especially obsessed with jet fighters. Towards the end of my 3rd grade year in school in spring 1994, my friend Hunter and I would draw pictures of various airplanes in class: I would draw German World War 1-era triplanes as well as the modern American F-16 Fighting Falcon. Hunter on the other hand would draw British World War 1-era biplanes as well as modern American F-15 Eagles.
I recall when Hunter wrote a short story as a writing prompt for class. The story was called Water Wings, which involved some sort of enchanted biplane that could land on water or something. I don’t remember the specific details. Hunter was a good creative muse for me; the two of us would bounce ideas back and forth for creative writing prompts as well as drawings.
Higher & Higher
During the summer of 1994, Six Flags Great Adventure announced a new interactive flight simulator ride called “The Right Stuff Mach 1 Adventure”, in which patrons would be seated in mechanical chairs that would rock and lurch in sync with a giant projection screen featuring point-of-view footage of a jet airplane achieving supersonic speeds. Think of this concept akin to 4DX or IMAX theater experiences. Naturally my family and I traveled from Pennsylvania to New Jersey that summer and took a ride at The Right Stuff ourselves. We each got into line and waited outside in the hot sun along the life-size replica of Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1 jet plane. Eventually we got our turn to watch the show, and it was during this time that I made the conscious decision that I would eventually fly some day — maybe not in the immediate future, but eventually. Maybe I would actually build an airplane in the backyard for real. Maybe I would pursue a career as an aircraft pilot. Maybe I would be launched from a cannon like the Conehead in that Red Hot Chili Peppers music video.
Time passed throughout the year and I would make small steps to hopefully achieve flight. Later during the summer of 1994 we were kicked out of our townhouse in Manheim Township, and my sisters and I were forced to temporarily live with our grandma in rural Manheim. I remember trying to construct a makeshift hang glider from sticks and cardboard from a box that shipped my grandmother’s refrigerator. I made a feeble attempt at gliding from atop a steep hill in my grandmother’s yard, but obviously to no avail. My older sister told me I was insane for doing that.
During the 1994–1995 school year in East Petersburg, I began reading extensively on the Hindenburg Disaster from reference books in our school library — and even created a huge poster design of the aforementioned Zeppelin tragedy for an art class project on historical events. I must have raised a few eyebrows from concerned teachers when they saw me drawing an elaborate art design of the flaming wreckage of an airship with burning victims fleeing the scene of the crash. At this point I dreamed of having access to my own dirigible — whether a traditional helium blimp, a hot air blimp, or even an old fashioned hydrogen Zeppelin — and planned on calling my ship The Brunkenburg. I used to lay in bed at night and dream about flying around the skies of my small town of East Petersburg in a comical homemade blimp — imagining the puzzled looks on my friend’s faces as I’d fly over their houses!
Later in 1995 I eventually joined Cub Scout Troop 133 and subscribed to Boy’s Life magazine: a magazine for preteens enrolled in Boy Scouts. Aside from articles and information on camping, that magazine was notorious for containing questionable ads in the back for products and services such as military surplus or catalogs for novelty items; for the latter, think of items like hand buzzers, fake vomit, or chewing gum mousetrap gags. You know, the kind of schlock you’d see a Spencer’s Gifts at the mall. A particular advertisement which always intrigued yet baffled me this recurring ad for a supposed homemade hovercraft kit made from vacuum cleaner parts. The ad was a black and white photo containing a boy piloting some sort of strange triangular vehicle with circular pods, and the text mentioned that if you send money to the address listed, they’d mail you plans on how to construct a real, working levitating hovercraft that could somehow defy physics and float around. 11-year old me completely believed this and tried to scrounge up enough money to obtain the plans.
Well, I didn’t get enough money to buy the instructions, and I certainly didn’t build this supposed vacuum cleaner hovercraft. Instead I used the small amount of money I was able to obtain and sent away for novelty catalogs of even more stuff I couldn’t possibly afford. Rather than getting instructions on how to disassemble a perfectly good vacuum cleaner and build a non-functioning flying machine out of it, I would just fantasize about the prospect of building various homemade aircraft to fly for leisure in my neighborhood. I would imagine myself piloting some sort of makeshift invention to fly around in circles in the skies above our housing development, much to the bewilderment of my skeptical classmates. A kid can dream, can’t he?
Time would go on during the latter half of the ‘90s and my fascination for aircraft would somewhat take a new form when the original Star Wars Trilogy was re-released in theaters; thus I then developed a new liking for science fiction starfighters. Rather than building rickety wooden airships, cartoonish blimps, or dubious vacuum cleaner hovercrafts, I instead focused on drawing artwork inspired by Imperial TIE Fighters and then began creating LEGO models inspired by Imperial Star Destroyers. Mind you this was a good few years before an official licensed theme of Star Wars LEGO sets, so you can definitely say I was an early innovator in this regard. This also predated social media and digital cameras, so this is why I never got sued by George Lucas.
A particular go-to original LEGO model of mine that I frequently built around this time was a large white and blue spaceship resembling a NASA Space Shuttle, only armed to the teeth with laser cannons like something seen in Darth Vader’s armada. Its insignia and color scheme was inspired by the LEGO Space theme called Exploriens, which used white space ships with transparent blue canopies and neon green lasers.
The Trashcan Spaceship
Skipping ahead now to the new Millennium where I attended Hempfield High School from 1999–2003. It may surprise a lot of people, but despite my current career as a graphic designer and video editor, I honestly never took any creative or digital electives in high school. Instead I focused on technical classes such as woodworking, machinery repair, and welding — so naturally in shop class, I rekindled my childhood fascination for aviation and sketched up some concepts for potential flying machines to build as school projects. Nothing really came to fruition, and instead I just used my woodworking talents for making completely mundane things like small storage boxes and a nightstand that I still currently use to this day (despite its shoddy stain and lacquer job).
In 10th grade wood shop, my teacher Mr. James had the class pause work on our projects to do a week-long writing prompt as sort of a mental exercise to test our wits and creative fortitude. Basically he decided to make us take a break from getting covered in sawdust and wood glue so that we could do a thinking and problem solving activity to see if any of us working class types still had a brain. I’m not entirely sure what this specific writing prompt had to do with woodworking, but he required us to write a report about a fictional hypothetical scenario in which we had to escape from a remote island using our technical skills, basic survival knowledge, and internet searching abilities. And then we had to chronicle our exact methods of escape through means of items hypothetically purchased online, and logged our website links written in the report.
It sounds like a mouthful, but it’ll make more sense eventually as you keep reading. Anyway, so we each went to the school’s computer lab and sat down by the early 2000s-era iMacs, as our teacher gave us the specifics of the writing prompt scenario. This was the general writing prompt requirement as laid out by Mr. James:
You’ve each been mysteriously stranded on an island somehow — don’t ask how, exactly — just use your imagination and pretend your plane crashed, or you had an unfortunate boating accident like in Gilligan’s Island. You’re now stuck on an island with internet access on a magical laptop and a special credit card with a specific limit of $300. Using the power of purchasing things online within a certain spending limit, you must chronicle each purchase you’ve made via a search engine and online shops, and then go into detail how these items would help you escape the island back to the mainland. You must also purchase no less than three items. Don’t ask how the items will appear: just pretend an enchanted FedEx airplane will fly to your specific location and drop the products, however don’t try to be sardonic and ask why the delivery planes can’t just rescue you. Since you can only purchase items found online and because your item links must be logged in the report, you can’t buy fictional items like jet packs or teleportation portals, nor things not sold via the traditional internet marketplace such as large boats, rockets, or airplanes.
Keep in mind that this was 2001, and you probably couldn’t buy a used navy vessel on eBay back then — let alone with meager funds from the fictional credit card limit, too. Sure, this whole scenario seemed preposterous for most of the class, but since I was an eccentric goofball who loved science fiction and creative writing prompts, this was my time to shine! I fired up the school computer, opened a popular search engine of the day such as Hotbot.com, and conducted a search for various strange items to help me escape the desert island.
First I visited Rubbermaid’s website and purchased a large trashcan — a good, durable trashcan made of sturdy plastic and large enough to contain a human. Next I went to Home Depot’s website and bought a ceiling fan, duct tape, and assorted tools. After that I went to the G.E. website and bought some light bulbs and spools of electrical wiring. Finally I visited K.B. Toy’s website and purchased a radio-controlled car. When my fellow classmates initially heard what items I purchased, they were definitely confused, as most of them went for easy no-brainer purchases such as buying kayaks, flotation devices, cheap jet-skis, fuel for the jet-skis, or GPS units.
What was the purpose of my mishmash of assorted unrelated items? The Trashcan Spaceship! Mr. James said we couldn’t materialize fictional items like spaceships — but that didn’t stop me from building a spaceship from a trashcan! My total cost of supplies was under $200, surprisingly, so I succeeded in fulfilling that requirement.
Now here comes the detailed analysis of my purchases: first, the trashcan acted as a frame/chassis for my “spaceship”. With parts from the remote control car — jury-rigged with the copper wire and ceiling fan motor — I made a propeller engine. The fan’s blade acted as my aircraft’s propeller for primary thrust, and was attached to the underside of the trashcan. Imagine the trashcan being tilted on its side at a 90 degree angle, with the propeller attached to the top, and that a person can climb in the front and close the lid. As for a power source, I took the Tungsten out of the light bulbs and hooked it up to the crude ceiling fan engine somehow; don’t ask how, but this made sense in my head. Finally, I used the toy car’s remote control, taped it to the inside of the trashcan and used it as a steering wheel! Any spare parts from the R.C. car were gutted out and used accordingly for the spaceship’s navigational components. The whole thing resembled [in my head] a plastic escape pod with a wooden fan sticking out of it. For those of us who played too many airship levels in Super Mario Bros. 3 and were well-adept on reruns of The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, this entire apparatus seemed not only logical, but plausible!
Presto!
I now had a reliable form of escaping the island and getting back safely to civilization. According to my writing prompt, I pretend-got into my make-believe spaceship, and pretend-flew away across the treacherous waters of the Pacific Ocean, and got to make-believe home in one imaginary-piece. This was all chronicled in my essay that ultimately got the highest score in the class— for creative thinking! The next school year during fall 2001 — in my third year of wood shop — Mr. James told the class that if ever needs someone to build a trashcan spaceship, I’d be his first pick.
The whimsy and excitement of this aforementioned creative writing prompt for the trashcan spaceship would help pave the way for my next but final flying machine project from my final two years in high school. This next conceptual flying machine would be known as The LB-1: a story for a different time.
-Baron von Brunk