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TINY NUCLEAR REACTORS ARE ABOUT TO REVOLUTIONISE AMERICAN ENERGY P3 4

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W O O D W O R K I N G: MASTER THE HALF-LAP JOINT

COVER: COURTESY NUSCALE POWER LLC; THIS PAGE: BOEING

CONTENTS

04

From the editor: Creative outlets.

09

Readers’ letters: Email us and share your ideas, projects, or new inventions; include photos. (Incentive: A great prize is up for grabs.)

12

Calendar: Historic events in September and October.

14

Time machine: Interesting stories from the PM archives.

16

Bigger picture: Splashdown – The SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience returns to Earth.

18

HYWW: Introducing the first fusion reactor; A real-life warp drive; A cosmic lasso to divert deadly asteroids?

24 26

During the Second World War, the United States military turned to the movie set designers in Hollywood to help them hide aeroplane factories from Japanese bombers. Turn to page 54 to read this fascinating story.

28

Gear and gadgets: Gizmos, machines, and apparel that caught our eye.

62

Woodworking: How to make a half-lap joint. (Joint tutorial one of six.)

34

These tiny reactors could save nuclear energy: They’re one per cent the size of a power plant, but pack 10 per cent of the power.

68

Tool review: Festool’s fantastic cordless track saw.

72

DIY with Kreg: Build this simple (yet attractive) shelf unit to store your books.

40

Rocket Man: ‘Mad Mike’ Hughes chose fame over science, and it killed him.

78

PM Garage: Our opinions on two cars we’ve cruised in, swerved, braked and parked.

54

Hidden in plain sight: How Hollywood set designers disguised WWII aircraft factories with fake suburbs.

82

Riding: We put BMW’s F 900 XR to the touring test.

88

Provisions: Be a winner – make a chicken dinner.

98

Do it your way: Submit your tips and you could win.

Book review: A World on the Wing by Scott Weidensaul.

This changed everything: Noise-cancelling headphones’ aviation origins.

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60

Challenge: Two readers transform their relics into something useful.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

3

FROM THE EDITOR

CREATIVE OUTLETS lockdown life during the third COVID wave has brought on a mixed bag of emotions and thoughts. Hopefully, by the time you read this, we’re out the other side, and a state of normalcy is returning to South Africa.

(If I never have to hear the term ‘new normal’ again, it’ll be too soon.)

I’ve felt frustration (probably the dominant emotion), sadness, anger and concern (about certain events that unfolded in parts of South Africa recently), and then also varying degrees of contentment, upbeat, fortunate, challenged, and inspired. Through incremental gains I’ve learnt to embrace small positives and triumphs, in a world that’s felt mostly dominated by dissonance.

One of those small victories recently was teaching myself how to solve a Rubik’s cube. Except for a few occasions where I’ve lucked upon a solution for a single side, I’d never solved a cube in its entirety before.

So, starting out, I was a complete novice.

Having watched a few tutorials, I went out and bought a cube, and set about learning to solve it. In case any of you are also up for the challenge, I won’t include any solution hints here, except to say you should rather consider the cube as three levels, than six individual sides. I’m proud to announce that, after eight days, I’m down to solving the cube entirely in around two minutes, without referring to my notes. My goal is under 60 seconds.

It’s been a nice go-to activity, instead of automatically reaching for my phone when I have some downtime, to mindlessly scroll through Instagram, or read more depressing news articles.

I’m also reading a whole lot more, and have several woodworking projects marinating in my mind that I plan to tackle soon. Perhaps the cube-solving part of my brain is also responsible for my creativity.

After all, I did create my first piece of painted artwork (as an adult) recently too – it’s nothing to write home about,

but brushing the acrylics on to the canvas felt hugely rewarding.

Maybe the state of the country and world lately has also left you feeling disheartened. I’m no psychologist, and don’t profess to have any formal insight into this, but I can highly recommend channelling your creative side, and trying out a few things you may never have done before. And it really doesn’t matter how good or bad you are – I’m confident that, like me, you’ll feel a welcome sense of accomplishment afterwards.

Also, enjoy this issue; it’s another goodie in my unbiased opinion. Grab a cup of coffee, kick back with your feet up, and let Popular Mechanics take your mind off to a miscellaneous mix of innovative places.

MARK SAMUEL Editor

PHOTOGRAPHY: MARK SAMUEL

S

ETTLING INTO the rhythm of

Follow the editor on Instagram: marksamuel.za

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SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

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IS EVERYWHERE @popmechsa

popularmechanicssa

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Editor Mark Samuel Chief Copy Editor Roshaan Bouwer Deputy Chief Copy Editor Nicole van der Scholtz Senior Copy Editor Shaneen Noble Creative: Art Director Tauriq Loofer Designer Tyrone Michaels RSA Contributors Tiana Cline, Peter Frost, Tobias Lochner Digital: Digital Group Web Developer Cicero Joseph Webmaster Lizelle Leonard Ad Sales: Sales Director Ryan Nicolle (ryan@ramsaymedia.co.za) Advertising Sales Jean De Ridder, Callie Romburgh Buyers’ Guide Joanne Thompson Debtors Manager Gasant Brenner Production: Production Manager Rushaan Holiday Deputy Production Manager Maggie Wasserfall Ad Design Manager Brümilda Fredericks Published by Ramsay Media (PTY) Ltd Company registration number 1934/ 005460/07 ISSN 1682-5136. Ramsay Media is owned by Highbury Media and CTP Ltd. Highbury Media holds the controlling interest in Ramsay Media. Ramsay Media is managed by Highbury Media’s Board of Directors.

Highbury Media Directors: Chief Executive Officer Kevin Ferguson Managing Director Tony Walker Financial Director Lindsey Makrygiannis Production Director Bilqees Allie HR Director Rizqah Jakoet Legal Director Tracey Stewart Operations Director Rashied Rahbeeni Chief Technology Officer Adrian Brown CTP Ltd Directors: PM Jenkins, TD Moolman, TJW Holden Cape Town Head Office: 36 Old Mill Road, Ndabeni, Western Cape, South Africa, 7405 • PO Box 180, Howard Place, Western Cape, 7450 • 021 530 3300 Gauteng Office: Caxton House, 368 Jan Smuts Avenue, Randburg, 2196 • PO Box 78132, Sandton, Gauteng, 2146 • 011 449 1100 • popularmechanics@ ramsaymedia.co.za, ramsaymedia.co.za

ILLUSTRATION: TAURIQ LOOFER

Published and distributed by Ramsay Media by permission of Hearst Communications Inc. New York, United States of America. We cannot be held responsible for loss of unsolicited queries, manuscripts or photos. For return, they must be accompanied by adequate postage. As a service to readers, POPULAR MECHANICS publishes newsworthy products, techniques and scientific and technological developments.

Due to possible variance in the quality and condition of workmanship and materials, POPULAR MECHANICS cannot assume responsibility for proper application of techniques or proper and safe functioning of manufactured products or reader-built projects resulting from information published in this magazine. Prices listed in features were accurate at the time of going to print – contact suppliers directly for up-to-date pricing, and product availability.

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CAPE TOWN

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SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

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LETTERS

WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND? WRITE TO US

popularmechanics@ramsaymedia.co.za

WINNING LETTER

Toy story The restrictions and knockon effects of the pandemic lockdown have filtered into the woodwork hobbyist’s world in a number of ways.

Exotic wood species have become scarce and more expensive due to import difficulties, so my supply of interesting offcuts has also shrunk.

As a family, we’ve adopted a somewhat hermit lifestyle – we don’t visit friends or attend club meetings, and we do most of our shopping online and have it delivered.

The positive spin-off is that I’ve had more free time to do woodwork, but because of my resource shortages, I’ve had to adapt what I make.

The pile of scrap MDF and melamine offcuts that I previously wouldn’t have touched has become very useful and versatile over the past few months.

I’ve made numerous simple toys for our kids and those living in our housing complex, and as time has progressed, I’ve slowly increased the level of complexity in my designs to keep life interesting. I’m now making garages and have found uses for the very small bits of exotic wood offcuts that I have – they’re ideal to turn into tiny tools and parts.

I haven’t really kept a strict record of the hours I’ve spent on these projects, but I work up to six hours a day making things I wish I’d had when I was a boy. On average, one of the garages takes me about 90

popularmechanics.co.za

hours to complete. These have mostly been given to the boys in our family and our friends’ families, and it’s been absolutely priceless witnessing their unbridled joy and appreciation when I hand the toys to them.

Let’s just hope the lockdown doesn’t last too much

longer – my wood scrap heap and imagination are running low.

Thanks for a wonderful magazine that helps to put some interest and colour into the long evenings, and also keeps imagination and innovation alive.

DOUW KRUGER

It was almost a year ago that your previous letter (and work) won you our readers’ letters prize. Again, it’s hard to fault you on how productive you’ve been during lockdown. So, congrats! I trust that this issue’s prize will help you with your future projects.

– Mark, Editor

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

9

LETTERS

WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND? CRACK THE CODE I took a slightly different approach to solving the locker prank riddle published on page 18 in the May/June issue earlier this year.

I regard myself as sometimes being intellectually lazy. I really wanted to solve it but didn’t want to do all the thinking.

I also needed some coding practise, so I wrote a little JavaScript… When I got it working as expected for the

first two students, I ran it for all, and, ta-da! Riddle solved.

Happiness on all accounts.

ABIGAIL BALL

I think you’re less intellectually lazy than you might think, Abigail. You came up with a fresh way to solve the riddle, which in itself is pretty smart. Next time, include your code, so we can share it with the other readers.

– Mark, Editor

ON THE HUNT I’ve been an avid reader of PM over the years and always find it very interesting to read about new tech and inventions.

Referring to page 61 in the May/June issue, which highlighted various handheld GPS devices, other readers who are hunters might like to know that they can scratch the eTrex

device off the list. There is an app available that can do that on a phone for a fraction of the cost. It’s called Buckshot (search your app store for Buckshot hunting or pro, or visit buckshot.co.za). It’s a compass combined with a GPS – once you’ve taken a successful shot, you point your device in

the direction of your shot and ‘place your Shot-Line’. It helps you to never lose fallen game, by plotting points at a distance from the shooter. It was designed for hunters, and yes, it works very well in offline mode too.

Keep up the great work!

JOHAN IMMINK

Thanks for taking the time to send in your feedback, Johan. I’m not a hunter myself, so am not up to speed with all the tech that’s out there in that realm. So, as always, it’s great to hear from readers such as you who are well versed in their particular fields.

– Mark, Editor

WRITE TO US, ENGAGE IN DEBATE, and you could win an exciting prize. The writer of this issue’s winning letter has won a Kreg Pocket-Hole Jig K4 Master Wood-Joining System sponsored by Vermont Sales (vermontsales.co.za) valued at R4 174.

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PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY IMAGES LETTERS ARE EDITED FOR CLARITY, SPELLING AND GRAMMAR

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At only 3.8 kg, and with a clamping surface measuring 857 mm × 552 mm and overall dimensions of 914 mm × 609 mm, the KR-KTC is versatile and easy to transport.

Vermont Sales is Southern Africa’s leading tool and accessory wholesaler, and has been providing top-rate services for more than 35 years. Over nearly four decades, the company has grown ten-fold, and now stocks the best international brands, and markets well over 20 000 products. The secret to Vermont Sales’ continuing success lies in its diverse product ranges and effective solutions provided to trades and other customers.

Connect with Vermont Sales by visiting vermontsales.co.za, calling 011 314 7711, on Instagram (@vermontsales), or on Facebook (toolsupplier).

Prize

The writer of the winning letter in the November/December 2021 issue will win a Kreg Multi-Purpose Klamp Table valued at R7 540, sponsored

by Vermont Sales.

Highly mobile, this clamp table – known as the Kreg KR-KTC – is the ultimate solution for carrying out wood joinery, assembly and clamping, successfully and easily no matter your work location. The kit has a durable melamine top surface that resists glue and is simple to clean. The two clamp Trak lengths, two 76 mm bench clamps and five clamp blocks make squaring up and assembling your projects a hasslefree process. The owner’s manual offers all the advice you might need to complete your projects.

The kit is compatible with Kreg’s steel stand, but that component comes as an optional extra.

Email us at popularmechanics@ramsaymedia.co.za. Please include high-resolution photos, wherever possible and relevant, for even more chances of winning. Prizes can only be awarded to South African residents.

10

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

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ENJOY THE GOOD KIND OF JAMMING, WE’LL WARN YOU ABOUT THE BAD. With Car Park Jamming Alert, you’ll be warned when a criminal is attempting to jam your car’s remote. Get this and many more features that connect you to your vehicle, only from Netstar.

BUY ONLINE NOW: www.netstar.co.za

C A L E N DA R

UPDATE YOUR DIARY • THIS DAY IN HISTORY MONDAY

WEDNESDAY 1875: Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the 24 adventure novels in the Tarzan series, is born in Chicago, Illinois.

1980: The 16.9 km Gotthard Road Tunnel – the longest of its type in the world at the time – is opened in Switzerland.

5

12

2010: After polluting the Gulf of Mexico for five months, the oil well causing the Deepwater Horizon spill is sealed.

19

OCTOBER 2021

TUESDAY

26

1952: Britain tests its first nuclear weapon, off Western Australia.

3

10

1814: Called the London Beer Flood, eight people are killed when a 6.7 m wooden vat bursts at Horse Shoe Brewery.

17

24

6

2008: Hurricane Ike makes landfall in Texas.

13

20

2008: While on the Shenzhou 7 mission, Zhai Zhigang becomes the first Chinese citizen to carry out a spacewalk.

27

4

1886: Standard Bank becomes the first bank to open a branch on the Witwatersrand gold fields.

11

18

1983: The United States invades Grenada.

1999: Yachtsman Jesse Martin completes his 11-month solo circumnavigation of the world, non-stop and unassisted.

25

1

1960: Wilma Rudolph, who had polio as a child, wins her third gold medal in the Summer Olympics in Rome.

7

14

1931: The Bank of England unilaterally decides to leave the gold standard, the monetary system that’s linked to gold.

21

28

2003: Having lived and worked with bears in Alaska for 13 summers, Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend are killed by a grizzly bear.

5

12

1872: The Holtermann Nugget, a mass of gold embedded in rock, is discovered near Bathurst in New South Wales, Australia.

19

26

8

1890: Agatha Christie, one of the most acclaimed and bestselling writers of all time, is born in Torquay, England.

15

22

1938: Greyhound sets the world onemile trotting record.

29

6

1976: The first electron micrograph of an Ebola virus is taken.

13

20

1922: Voters in a referendum in Rhodesia reject the country’s annexation to the South African Union.

27

THURSDAY

SATURDAY

FRIDAY

2

1947: The first case of a ‘computer bug’ occurs, when a moth gets stuck in a relay of a Harvard Mark II device.

9

16

1889: Nintendo Koppai, which later becomes the Nintendo Company, is founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi.

23

30

2004: A 14-year-old girl is convicted of murder, in the Pietermaritzburg High Court.

7

14

1959: Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the Guggenheim Museum opens in New York City.

21

28

2003: The first of four telescopes in Phase 1 of the HESS project is inaugurated.

3

10

1976: Enterprise, NASA’s first Space Shuttle, is unveiled.

17

4

2008: A fire breaks out in the Channel Tunnel between France and England, resulting in a partial six-month closure.

11

18

1956: Known as TAT-1, the first transatlantic telephone cable – laid between Newfoundland and Scotland – is inaugurated.

Heritage Day

24

25

1971: Walt Disney World, the famous resort complex near Orlando in Florida, USA, opens.

1

8

1958: The final conference on the Antarctic Treaty, aimed at preserving the continent for free scientific study, convenes.

15

22

1675: Gottfried Leibniz is the first to use the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus.

29

2

1888: The Washington Monument is officially opened to the public.

9

16 1970: A land speed record is set in Blue Flame, in Utah, USA.

23

30

31

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TEXT: MARK SAMUEL; PHOTOGRAPHY: HESS COLLABORATION/CC-BY-SA-3.0, FREDERICK A MURPHY, NASA, PUBLIC DOMAIN

SEPTEMBER 2021

SUNDAY

T I M E M AC H I N E It made per fec t sense at the time

1 V

2

1951ting Rescue Boat 0 years ago, depictefde R E B M E T P E 1 S Pilots Self-Infla er of this issue, 7 rolled inflatable li , ov at nt n on the c for their radio-co cribed how the bo io t a r t s lu g s de be itin The il iators wa ompanying article tal torpedo, could er v a d e n w e cc do aft ndrical m ive. The a and how raft to arr the form of a cyli e, ship or aircraft, luxe lifeboat e in deployed d from a submarin transform into a d nopy, and e despatch tes would abruptly tion kit, flares, a ca u two min with food, a distilla es’. il equipped el to travel 300 m u ‘enough f Radio

3

5

2 OCTOBER 1957

3 SEPTEMBER 1964

4 OCTOBER 1969

5 SEPTEMBER 1984

The House That Stores The Sun

Our Star-Gazing Satellite with 20-20 Vision

Now: ‘Hands Off’ Landings on a Carrier

7 Expert Ways to Make a Butcher Block

Along with detailed diagrams, illustrations and photos, this four-page feature described how a home in the northeast United States was built to harness the power of the Sun, collecting the solar energy via a double-paned collector on the roof and storing it in the cellar, ‘to be used in measured quantities’.

This story covered the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, a satellite designed to counteract the negative effects of absorption, airglow and distortion on astronomers’ work. It was to be launched and boosted to ‘500 miles or more’ above the Earth’s surface, enabling us to view stars and planets with unprecedented sharpness.

This four-page report explained the new AWCLS, or All-Weather Carrier Landing System, newly adopted by the US Navy to land planes on aircraft carriers. Using the system, first put into practice in 1967, a plane could be landed on the ship every 30 seconds, after first being picked up by long-range radar.

Few work surfaces are more satisfying than a sturdy wooden top, and making one yourself is a great project, even if you’re relatively new to woodworking. This DIY feature explained seven key ways to go about joining the pieces of wood, to ensure the end product would endure many years of heavy-duty use.

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TEXT: MARK SAMUEL; PHOTOGRAPHY: POPULAR MECHANICS ARCHIVES

4

Durable safety cutter for all your unpacking needs CTR SK-16 Double-wall cartons

Other thick materials such as carpet and rubber sheets

Enhanced metal tip for improved tape slitting

THE BIGGER PICTURE

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SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

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SUPPORT TEAMS can

be seen working around the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft, shortly after it splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Panama City, Florida, early in May. It was carrying four astronauts returning from the International Space Station, a six-hour journey away.

The event was the first night-time splashdown of a crewed US spacecraft since Apollo 8 landed in the Pacific Ocean in December 1968.

Shortly after the splashdown, mission control transmitted the following message to the crew: ‘Dragon, on behalf of NASA and the SpaceX teams, we welcome you back to planet Earth, and thanks for flying SpaceX. For those of you enrolled in our frequent flyer programme, you’ve earned 68 million miles on this voyage.’

PHOTOGRAPHY: NASA/BILL INGALLS

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SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

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H O W YO U R W O R L D W O R K S

MACHINES / BY CAROLINE DELBERT /

The ITER’s 1 400ton cryostat base is lowered into the tokamak reactor pit.

The world’s first fusion reactor is (almost) ready to turn on 18

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

N

UCLEAR FUSION HAS BEEN ‘RIGHT

around the corner’ for decades. But now, that long-promised future is quickly approaching. With tens of billions of dollars on the line, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is almost ready to turn on, 35 years after world leaders, including Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, proposed an international collaboration. While the experimental tokamak – a plasma reactor where extremely hot, charged plasma popularmechanics.co.za

PHOTOGRAPHY: © ITER ORGANIZATION, HTTP://WWW.ITER.ORG/

creates the conditions necessary for atoms to fuse and release considerable amounts of energy – is one of a handful of very costly ‘miniature suns’ in development around the world, it’s arguably the bellwether for selfsustaining fusion, given the seven countries that share its high cost and are invested in its success.

All this time, engineers have been designing and fabricating the planned one million components needed for the reactor. In May last year, they finally installed the first permanent piece at the reactor’s Provence, France, campus: a steel base for the outer shell of the reactor, which has taken 10 years to forge and weld. This piece is the foundation for the ‘giant thermos’, or cryostat, that holds the reactor and contains its heat. The cryostat will be made from 54 parts combined into four main sections, and it will weigh more than 3 800 tons.

It’s a big step on the path toward 2025, when ITER says all the core parts of the reactor will be installed, fully integrated, and ready to produce its first plasma.

That November – to mark the 40th anniversary of Reagan and Gorbachev’s historic US-Soviet Geneva summit – the reactor will begin a month-long process of heating up to 150 million °C, with a trio of heating elements pulling a combined 50 MW of power, enough for about 10 000 homes. That will bring the plasma to a temperature 10 times greater than the Sun’s in the doughnut-shaped reactor to generate as much as 500 MW of energy for brief bursts.

The Sun’s fusion is powered by colliding hydrogen nuclei (atomic number 1) that fuse and make helium (atomic number 2) while releasing energy. But at the heart of the ITER tokamak is a more efficient duo of deuterium and tritium, two hydrogen isotopes that release even more energy when smashed together.

In December 2025, once ITER is hot enough, the first plasma reaction will last just a few milliseconds to indicate that the fully integrated plant is ready for operation. From there, it will go offline for the installation of final parts before the full-scale fusion ITER plans for the mid-2030s. After the lengthy incubation period and progressively longer test plasmas, ITER seeks to hit a state called ignited plasma. This means the deuterium-tritium reaction becomes self-sustaining – no energy is required for the reactions to continue.

While ITER is designed to be a working power plant, it’s also proof of concept for its components. The biggest concern scientists have will be how well each piece of the reactor contains the plasma and its associated heat. Not only is the plasma constantly popularmechanics.co.za

moving, but any disruption can cool the reactor in a matter of seconds and lose the plasma state.

Inside the reactor, plasma is kept flowing by superconducting electromagnets made of encircling coils of wire. A central solenoid – basically a coil of wire in a corkscrew shape – is bolstered by smaller numbers of external and correction coils.

These are made from the superconductors niobium– tin (Nb3Sn) and niobium–titanium (NbTi). All of the coil assembly is held in a high- vacuum pressure chamber (the cryostat).

The magnets are held at cryogenically cold temperatures of –269°C to help create a temperature buffer.

Actively cooled thermal shields reduce the radiation

"

THE REACTOR WILL BEGIN A MONTHLONG PROCESS OF

HEATING UP TO 150 MILLION °C, WITH A TRIO OF HEATING ELEMENTS PULLING A COMBINED 50 MW OF POWER, ENOUGH FOR ABOUT 10 000 HOMES.

heat load that is transferred by thermal radiation and conduction from warm components (vessel) to the cold components (magnets), and the entire 23 000ton tokamak is cooled by circulating water.

The ITER component-by-component focus reflects a larger goal in the nuclear field to make fusion not just feasible, but modular, too. Instead of reactors tailored for specific sites, this generation of nuclear engineers seeks parts that are easier to manufacture, test, and contain. ITER embodies the modular approach by putting successful individual pieces of technology together into the largest-ever full assembly. With existing information on small tokamaks, ITER scientists feel confident in their goals. But the future isn’t a sure thing – until it happens.

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H O W YO U R W O R L D W O R K S

SPACE / BY CAROLINE DELBERT /

Is NASA working on a warp drive?

20

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

T

HE SPACE AGENCY ISN’T BUILDING AN

engine that can approach the speed of light – yet. A recent internal feasibility report from NASA suggests we could eventually realise the idea of travelling through folded space. In the report, advanced propulsion physicist Harold White, PhD, resolves a major paradox in the leading theoretical model for superluminal (faster than the speed of light) travel, what’s known as an Alcubierre warp drive.

The colloquial term ‘warp drive’ comes from science fiction, most famously Star Trek. The faster-than-light popularmechanics.co.za

ILLUSTRATION: PETE RYAN

warp drive of the Federation works by colliding matter and antimatter, and converting the explosive energy to propulsion. The show suggests that this extraordinary power alone pushes the ship at fasterthan-light speeds.

The Alcubierre drive, first proposed by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre, conforms to Einstein’s theory of general relativity to achieve superluminal travel. It works a bit like the classic ‘tablecloth and dishes’ party trick: The spaceship sits atop the tablecloth of spacetime, the drive pulls the fabric around it, and the ship is situated in a new place relative to the fabric. Alcubierre describes spacetime expanding on one side of the ship and contracting on the other, thanks to an enormous amount of energy and a requisite amount of exotic matter – in this case, negative energy.

Alcubierre’s theory creates a kind of pocket in spacetime where a spaceship can operate outside of physics. He insists the requirement for exotic matter is not implausible within quantum mechanics.

The paradox holding back an Alcubierre, in addition to limitations like a lack of negative energy density, is that the direction of a spacecraft is arbitrary when the drive is used – there’s no steering it. Sci-fi has solved this paradox with ‘stable wormholes’, but NASA can’t fly a deus ex machina to Alpha Centauri.

So White suggests a different paradigm in his report.

Instead of a stationary spacecraft engaging the Alcubierre drive from a stopped position, White explains: ‘In this modified concept, the spacecraft departs Earth, establishes an initial subluminal velocity, then initiates the field. The field’s boost acts on the initial velocity as a scalar multiplier, resulting in a much higher apparent speed.’ The ship would use a rolling start as a directional cue.

5 TECHNOLOGIES WE FIRST SAW ON STAR TREK popularmechanics.co.za

CELLPHONE The original Star Trek’s communicator looks like a flip phone and operates like an advanced two-way radio. It even has voice commands.

"

ALCUBIERRE DESCRIBES EXPANDING SPACETIME

ON ONE SIDE OF A SHIP WHILE CONTRACTING IT ON THE OTHER.

In 2011, White conducted a field sensitivity analysis on Alcubierre’s model to see if he could shake loose any new insights. He found that Alcubierre’s original drive creates a relatively weak field, with negative vacuum energy on the side of the craft being pushed through a fold in spacetime. By making a more robust field, White says, ‘you could reduce the strain on spacetime so the amount of energy the trick takes to work is significantly reduced. Think metric ton as opposed to Jupiter.’

White suggests the proving ground for warp speed could be closer to home than the nearest stars. If scientists can make the so-called ‘negative mass’ required for an Alcubierre drive, even a tiny example could be deployed within Earth’s atmosphere. ‘[T]he idea of a warp drive may have some fruitful domestic applications “subliminally”, allowing it to be matured before it is engaged as a true interstellar drive system,’ he explains. An early example could drastically increase speed and reliability of carrying payloads into space.

Using a small ‘beginner’ warp drive, White suggests, will give scientists something to iterate as they grow the technology.

TRACTOR BEAM In real life, these only work on microscopic particles, not spaceships. But in 2020, they allowed scientists to hold a single atom for the first time.

TABLET In 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced the handheld Personal Access Display Device (PADD), which held reports the crew passed to each other.

UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR Google and Twitter have near-universal language detection in text, just short of Star Trek’s convenient, automatic verbal translator.

GRAPHIC USER INTERFACE The first primitive GUI predates the series’ iconic computer menus, but most people had to wait decades to use one.

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

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H O W YO U R W O R L D W O R K S

SPACE / BY JENNIFER LEMAN /

Could a cosmic lasso divert extinction-level asteroids?

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SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

I

N 2013, A METEOR EXPLODED 22.5 KM (14 MILES)

above Chelyabinsk, Russia, knocking out windows across 500 km2 and injuring more than 1 600 people. It was a wake-up call for astronomers to help defend Earth from more potentially hazardous asteroids.

Of the almost one million known comets and asteroids in our solar system, more than 2 000 have the potential to be hazardous to Earth. These asteroids are typically 140 m wide or larger, on an orbit that swings them within 22.5 million km of Earth’s orbit.

‘Although asteroid deflection might sound like science fiction, it is a serious topic,’ says Flaviane Venditti, PhD, an observatory scientist at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. ‘Out of all natural disasters, an asteroid impact is the only one we have the power to avoid.’

Proposed defensive measures against oncoming asteroids look blunt so far. Later this year, NASA will attempt its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).

This mission will involve slamming an ovensized spacecraft into an asteroid called Dimorphos – scheduled to make a close (but safe) approach to Earth in 2022 – as scientists measure how the impact changes Dimorphos’s trajectory. It’s risky to Hulksmash an Earth-bound, extinction-level asteroid, though. ‘In general, when we move an asteroid, we want to keep it in one piece,’ says planetary astronomer and DART co-lead Andrew Rivkin, PhD, of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. The rock could break apart and create a wave of several smaller ‘citykilling’ asteroids instead. (This risk also applies to an Armageddon-style nuclear solution, we’re told – there are no plans to test a space nuke at this time.)

But Venditti’s team of researchers has suggested a way to sidestep the fragmentation conundrum with something we might call the cosmic lasso method. As the team explained in a paper for The European Physical Journal, this method involves towing a smaller space rock to an oncoming asteroid and tethering the two.

Attaching additional mass would displace the first asteroid’s centre of mass and shift it to a new, safer orbit. ‘Thus, no unwanted consequences related to fragmentation would happen after the deflection,’ Venditti and her researchers wrote.

To test the lasso method, the team ran a series of computer simulations targeting the potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu. Venditti and her colleagues mapped out various deflection scenarios for Bennu that unfolded over the course of 300 years. They tested different mass ratios for the smaller asteroid (1/1 000th the size of Bennu and 1/10 000th the size popularmechanics.co.za

PHOTOGRAPHY: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION CREATED BY ALYSE MARKEL USING GETTY IMAGES

of Bennu), evaluated three different tether lengths (1 000, 2 000, and 3 000 km long), and assessed possible angles at which the tethers could be attached to the asteroid.

Their simulations revealed that asteroids as small as 1/10 000th the mass of the main object would be sufficient enough to pull Bennu into a different, safer orbit – roughly the equivalent of tethering a No. 2 pencil to an orbiting astronaut. ‘The neat trick to this technique is that it changes the position of the original asteroid rather than its velocity, because attaching the two asteroids makes them into a single object, with the centre of mass in a different place than the original asteroid, pre-tether,’ Rivkin notes. ‘And because the centre of mass (and so, its position) is different but the velocity stays the same, the orbit changes.’

An asteroid 1/10 000th the mass of Bennu, with a tether 3 000 km long attached along an equatorial orbit, pulled Bennu off of its trajectory by almost 965 000 km, or 150 times the radius of Earth, according to the paper. However, an asteroid 1/1 000th the mass of Bennu, attached via the same tether, pulled Bennu off course by as much as 9.66 million km (1 500 times Earth’s radius). In the latter scenario, the team found

MASS EXTINCTION, SIMULATED A 2017 study in Geophysical Research Letters analysed the causes of death from 50 000 computersimulated asteroid impacts both on land and at sea. The results were not pretty.

popularmechanics.co.za

WIND/ SHOCK WAVE A simulation of asteroid impacts on land revealed around 60 per cent of fatalities would result from organrupturing shock waves and wind gusts some call ‘hypercanes’, which reach speeds of 800 km/h.

FIREBALL Thermal radiation generated during some asteroid impacts can reach as high as 260°C, more than hot enough to melt your skin. Overall, the study showed exposure to this heat would cause about 30 per cent of deaths.

attaching the tether at a 45° angle resulted in a shift in trajectory of about 32 million km. At a 90° angle, the deflection was about 38 million km.

The lasso plan dramatically lowers the risk of peppering Earth with asteroid fragments, but a lot needs to be worked out before we send robotic space cowboys across the solar system. Actually corralling and attaching two asteroids would be, to put it mildly, complex. ‘The first step is always to analyse the physics of the method,’ Venditti says. ‘If the maths works, then the logistics and engineering side of the method needs to be developed.’ To organise the logistics, astronomers would need to spot the potential threat far in advance.

Bennu’s next close approach to Earth will happen in 2060. According to Venditti’s team, a mission launched by 2035 would give us enough time to deflect it if needed. (But don’t worry. At its closest, Bennu will still be more than 800 000 km away.)

When it comes to defending Earth from marauding asteroids, Rivkin argues that creativity is key: ‘Anything is possible, I suppose, if you’re willing to invest enough resources into making it happen. Planetary defence is a great topic for thinking about out-of-the-box solutions.’ This is the perfect time to experiment.

TSUNAMI An asteroid crashing into the ocean could create 120 m-high waves, according to a 2003 study from UC-Santa Cruz. Overall, the 2017 simulations indicated such tsunamis would only cause one in five deaths.

FALLING DEBRIS When an asteroid slams into Earth, it could send a torrent of rocks showering down upon the surrounding region.

Stand back – the simulations showed these showers caused about 1 per cent of deaths.

CRATERS The risk of falling into a giant hole in the Earth’s surface in the wake of an asteroid impact is only 0.17 per cent, but stay frosty.

Arizona’s Meteor Crater is almost 1 200 m across, but its asteroid was just 50 m in diameter.

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BOOK REVIEW / BY TIANA CLINE /

Flight plan A World on the Wing details the advancements in bird migration science, looking into how big tech has helped unravel decades-long mysteries of this fascinating behaviour.

birder, chances are you’ve looked up at a flock of birds flying in formation, and wondered where they’re headed to, or even how or why they do it.

Researcher and author of A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, Scott Weidensaul, makes the science behind it all easy to understand, and accessible.

Originally intrigued by raptors, Weidensaul’s interest honed in on migration – not just for powerful birds, but also for those that seem so tiny and fragile yet still cross the hemispheres with a speed and tenacity that boggles the mind.

The science and understanding of migration has changed, too.

In the beginning of the book, Weidensaul explains that since the 1950s, we’ve known that

‘Scott Weidensaul, one of our finest nature writers, has produced another instant classic.

Here is proof that a book of solid science can also be a page-turner.’

– Kenn Kaufman, author of the Kaufman Field Guides 24

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birds use the Earth’s magnetic field to orientate themselves.

‘Ornithologists long assumed this ability was a sort of biological compass,’ he writes.

Yet now we know this has only a little role to play in bird migration. Today’s science says the answer lies in quantum entanglements, which is ‘just as bizarre as it sounds’.

Another interesting discovery is that migrating birds can bulk up their muscles before taking flight without doing any exercise. ‘Because a bird’s muscle tissue is all but identical to a human’s, the trigger must be biochemical, but remains a tantalising mystery,’ says Weidensaul.

From China to northern India, southern Cyprus and even South Africa, this book will take you on an exhilarating world trip. Some of it is quite grim – bird numbers are plummeting and dare we forget climate change – but Weidensaul also shares successful conservation stories, and with his charismatic storytelling, the book never feels bland. It shows how passionate he is (his track record speaks for itself – he’s written more than 30 nature books over the years, one of which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist), and how resilient birds are. Filled with maps, beautiful photographs and meticulously researched science, A World on the Wing is a masterclass in the avian ecology field.

A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul (Pan Macmillan) is available in leading bookstores and online.

PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRIS DESORBO, COURTESY IMAGE

E

VEN IF you’re not a

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T H I S C H A N G E D E V E RY T H I N G / BY JIM ALLEN /

Headphones that turn down the volume on excess noise

Bose’s Aviation Headset Series 1.

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A

MAR BOSE WAS FRUSTRATED.

It was 1978, and he’d planned to kill some of the time on his 6 000 km flight from Zurich to Boston by listening to music through some new, foamcovered (read: flimsy) headphones that Swissair supplied to the passengers. His enjoyment was foiled by the drone of the engines, which overpowered the lightweight headset.

Fortunately, Bose was a professor of electrical engineering at MIT, and the head of his own electronics company, the Bose Corporation. By the time he had arrived in Boston, he had scrawled the first steps towards a solution to his sonic problem: noisecancelling headphones.

The idea had precedent – scientists such as Lawrence J Fogel in the ’50s and Paul Lueg in the ’30s had applied for patents on their own versions of the concept, for use in everything from concert halls to helicopters. But Bose came to the idea independently. And nobody had put the pieces together in a way that would work for consumer headphones.

‘In order to cancel a noise,’ says Dan Gauger, a member of the original engineering squad Bose put together to realise his vision, ‘you have to take all frequencies. For each one of those, you have to make a noise at the same frequency, of the same amplitude, but the opposite phase. So you have to combine a +1 with a –1.’ To accomplish this, and make the technology workable enough for mass use, Bose’s team incorporated a couple of crucial innovations of the ’70s, like a small electret microphone. It was composed of high-resistance material providing a permanent charge without needing a ton of voltage and current.

Positioned near the entrance to the ear canal, the electret mic picks up sound so the circuitry can compare the noise outside the headphones to what you want to hear – your music – and produce that opposite phase sound. Then, you hear only the tunes.

Anyone who’s watched a school principal struggle with an oversaturated microphone and an ancient PA system knows feedback can be a nuisance when it’s accidentally generated. But when it’s tailored to zap unwanted noise, it can be your best friend.

Eight years and around $3 million later, Gauger and his colleague Roman Sapiejewski heard news of former USAF pilot Dick Rutan and co-pilot Jeana Yeager’s upcoming attempt to circumnavigate the globe in the Rutan Voyager, without stopping to refuel. But the plane had no sound-deadening. ‘We had 110 decibels in the cockpit,’ says Rutan. The risk of permanent hearing damage increases at noise levels of 75 decibels and greater when you’re exposed to it 24 hours a day, popularmechanics.co.za

as the Voyager pilots would be. In August 1986, the two Bose engineers showed up unannounced at Rutan’s door, and gave a demonstration of the noisecancelling tech. They got the go-ahead and started work on prototypes. With Bose’s headphones shielding their ears, Rutan and Yeager made their nine-day, non-stop flight that December.

‘That got a bunch of attention,’ says Gauger. ‘Within a month or so we found our first market: general aviation.’ Bose started manufacturing its Aviation Headset Series 1 in 1989, the first commercially available noise-cancelling headphones for private pilots. But it wasn’t until they patented TriPort technology, which allowed for smaller, lighter, more comfortable earcups, that Bose brought the tech to consumers with the first QuietComfort line in 2000.

TriPort, Gauger says, is a way of efficiently using earcup volume by carefully placing holes behind the speaker inside the headphone to help generate more low-frequency sound, while still leaving plenty of room for passive blocking of high frequencies.

In the last 20 years, Bose’s headphones have advanced with the times. The company brought noise cancellation to the earbud format with the QuietComfort 20 1 in 2013. And as of 2018, Bose had 44 per cent of the noise-cancelling headphone market. But other brands such as Sony and Apple are driving their own innovation.

Consumer electronics analyst Ambient noise Ben Arnold of the NPD Group, a market analytics company, finds adaptive noise-cancelling to be one of the most exciting developments.

‘You can block out different frequencies of sound while letting others in,’ he says. ‘That’s a big evolutionary step.’

What’s more, Brett Molesworth 1 REFERENCE of the University of New South MICROPHONE / Wales School of Aviation led Positioned on studies in 2013 and 2014, finding the outside of that noise-cancelling headphones the earcup or bud, this mic analyses reduced communication errors and all frequencies of improved task performance in ambient sound aviation settings. But the benefits and routes them of noise cancelling have been to the circuitry realised beyond when you’re just inside the listening to music or piloting a headphones.

plane. The tech has also become a boon for employees in open-concept offices. A 2018 survey commissioned by streaming service Cloud Cover Music found that about two-thirds of workers feel that wearing headphones increased their perceived productivity, and 30 per cent used them solely to tune out ambient noise. And research led by Sun Yat-sen University’s Maojin Liang in 2012 found that noise-cancelling headphones may prevent hearing damage caused by listening to loud music over background subway and street noise.

Remote work has made the headphones even more useful. ‘Everybody’s working from home,’ says Arnold.

‘You’ve got multiple workers and kids learning. That’s another place where the technology can prove itself.’

‘Our ears are as important for engaging with the world as our eyes,’ says Gauger. ‘But you can’t squint your ears. Headphones can let you do that.’

PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMES KEYSER/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES ILLUSTRATION: CREATED BY ELENI DIMOU USING GETTY IMAGES (EAR)

HOW NOISE CANCELLATION WORKS

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4

3

2

2 NOISECANCELLING CIRCUITRY / A summing amplifier in the earcup receives the reference mic info and calculates the frequencies opposite to (180° out of phase with) the outside noise.

3 SPEAKER / Receiving data from the circuitry, the speaker emits the oppositephase frequency (alongside your music) to nullify the ambient noise.

With the music off, only muffled noise hits your ears.

4 ERROR MICROPHONE / Positioned near the ear canal, this constantly monitors signalto-noise ratio entering the ear and relays the info back to the circuitry for necessary adjustments.

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PRODUCTS

GEAR &

Must-have hardware for humans on the go

SAMSUNG ODYSSEY G9 MONITOR

LARGER THAN LIFE, and curved all the way, Samsung’s Odyssey G9 monitor is a phenomenal beast. It’s so big and heavy that it takes two people to get it out of the box. This is the ultimate 49” DQHD gaming monitor, with a space-age look and feel unlike any other monitors out there.

With its 1000R curvature (meaning, if the curved monitor were to form a full circle, it would have a radius of 1 000 mm) and ultra-wide display, its credentials are overwhelmingly impressive – it’s as though you have two 27” QHD screens sitting on your desk, side by side. Designed for gaming, it immerses you in the action. The curved shape, says Samsung, helps to reduce eye strain, because no matter where you look on the screen it’s the same distance from your eyes, essentially matching the curve of the human eye.

The stand includes a headphone holder, while the glossy white plastic with black accents at the back give it an ultra-

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premium appearance. In the centre on the back is the Infinity Core Lighting, resembling a warp drive engine. It cycles through 52 colours, or you can customise its appearance to match the rest of your gaming set-up. If you have the monitor sitting against a wall, you might miss out on this detail.

The Odyssey G9 has a colossal 5 120 × 1 440 panel with a 240 Hz refresh rate and VESA DisplayHDR 1000 certification.

The result is an unbelievable gaming experience… But throw in Samsung’s 1 ms response time as well and the performance is exemplary. Cleverly hidden behind a clip-off panel at the back are the dual display inputs, a USB-3 hub, audio and an HDMI port, giving all the connection points you might need.

This monitor is a truly unique, rather over-the-top and utterly extraordinary device. No corners have been cut (if you’ll excuse the pun) with its specs, and for that you’ll pay a high price. But there simply isn’t another monitor out there that offers the same size, aspect ratio, refresh rate and capabilities, all in one.

RRP R34 999 samsung.com/za

BEKO ESPRESSO COFFEE MACHINE The question is, who doesn’t enjoy a perfectly brewed cup of coffee in the morning? If you have raised your hand, you haven’t tried this compact machine.

Often the enjoyment of coffee is more about the whole preparation ritual than it is just about savouring those delicious flavours. Beko’s espresso machine gives coffee lovers a personalised experience. Use it to grind your favourite beans, choosing between five coarseness settings to suit your needs. The integrated steam nozzle produces microfoam, just the way you like it, so you can serve up the perfect cappuccino or flat white. The nozzle height adjustment accommodates three cup sizes, and you can serve single or double espressos, using water from the on-board (and removable) 1.5 litre reservoir.

The stainless-steel construction is corrosion resistant, and made to withstand the 19 bar internal pressure. At only 32 cm (h) × 18.6 cm (w) × 41 cm (d), and 7.5 kg, it’s a machine that easily fits on your kitchen counter, ready to provide you with the perfect cup when the yearning strikes.

RRP R8 999 beko.com/za-en

OPPO A74 5G SMARTPHONE OPPO might not yet be a household name here, but in China and beyond it’s fast becoming one of the most popular smart device brands.

The A74 5G is a good option, especially for those wanting a smartphone at an acceptable price that boasts next-gen connectivity. In the box is a set of wired earphones, a protective case, and a USB cable. At 6.5”, it’s a comfortable and usable size. It runs ColorOS – OPPO’s mobile operating system – which is essentially an Android skin. It’s fast, light and easy to navigate, and excludes unnecessary bloatware.

There’s 128 GB of expandable storage, more than enough for all the photos and videos you’ll be taking with the AI quad camera, which includes a 48 MP main camera and an 8 MP selfie lens. Thanks to the high refresh rate and vivid HD+ display, the device is wellsuited to gaming too.

The facial-recognition and fingerprint-sensor features work seamlessly, while the 5 000 mAh battery delivers impressive results – expect up to 13 hours of video view time before you need to recharge. And after that, around five per cent battery life will still remain, enough to continue using WhatsApp for a few hours.

Our biggest qualm is the plastic body, which is a bit of a fingerprint magnet. But pop it in its case and the problem is solved. The overall design is simple yet beautiful, available in Fantastic Purple and Fluid Black. If you’re ready for 5G and want a decently priced smartphone delivering standout battery life, the OPPO A74 5G might be it.

RRP R7 199 mytfgworld.com

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PRODUCTS

LOGITECH ZONE WIRELESS HEADSET Working remotely means video calls. Lots of them. And that means battling distracting sounds while trying to concentrate.

Logitech understands this, and its solution is the Zone Wireless headset, which enables you to control the acoustics of your environment. Designed for noisy open offices, coffee-shop workspaces, home offices with barking dogs nearby, and wherever else you need to control the sound, this headset is going to be your new favourite work friend. There are buttons on the earcups for volume adjustments, to play or pause the sound, connect to Bluetooth, and control the active noise cancellation (ANC). You can mute the mic via a button, or simply rotate it upwards and it automatically mutes itself.

The earcups themselves are comfy, sitting on top rather than covering the ears, a feature that improves (passive) noise cancelling.

While chargeable using a cable, they are also Qi wireless charging compatible. Expect up to 14 hours of run-time (with ANC activated).

They connect to Logitech’s Login Tune mobile or desktop app, giving you access to more sound-customising features.

If you already make use of other Logitech products (such as a mouse, keyboard or speaker set), the included USB receiver lets you use all these devices simultaneously, without having to sacrifice one to connect to another.

With a set of these on your head, you’re assured of a quieter, more productive workday.

RRP R3 299 firstshop.co.za

NOKIA 8.3 5G SMARTPHONE The name’s Nokia, Nokia 8.3 5G. Wait … what? It’s true – not only is this an affordable flagship device, but it’s also what British secret agent James Bond uses.

Collaborations aside, the Nokia 8.3 5G smartphone is a weighty device (220 g) with an aluminium frame and Gorilla Glass screen that’s built to last. Running Android, it has a dedicated Google Assistant button, and all the expected biometrics, such as a fingerprint reader power button and face recognition. The dual-SIM tray doubles as a microSD reader, if you want to expand the internal storage. But the unique selling point is that the phone is built for creating. From its super-sharp 6.81” extra-large display with HD+ resolution to its PureView quad camera with ZEISS cinematic effects, it’s an on-the-go photographer’s dream device. It captures 16 MP photos that are sharp, well-balanced and look just as beautiful on a bigger screen. Its depth sensor captures perfect portraits, and the colour-grading tools and built-in filters are easy to use.

It’s packed full of useful video features – the ability to take (and share) 4K video is complemented by good image stabilisation and OZO audio, which has a full 360° sonic range.

All is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G chipset, 6 GB of RAM, and a battery big enough to get you through the day, and potentially into the next. Available in Polar Night, a striking blue colour inspired by the Northern Lights, this is a capable smartphone that simply shouldn’t be overlooked.

RRP R10 799 hicell.co.za

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WYZE SCALE IF YOU ALREADY have a connected fridge, a smart toothbrush and a robot vacuum, it’s time for a smart scale, right?

The purpose of connected home gadgets is to bridge the gap between your real life and online life. Wyze, the maker of this scale, is a big name player in this sphere, having already developed affordable gadgets, including plugs and security cameras.

The Wyze Scale is a sleek glass device that does more than only measure weight.

More affordably priced than many of its competitors, this is a device you’ll want if you’re on a #fitspo journey. It tracks 12 different metrics, including body fat, lean body mass, heart rate, metabolic age, bone mass, body water and more. This isn’t all presented on the display – the scale does what scales do best, showing your weight and body-fat percentage. It’s when you’re connected to the Wyze app that you’ll see the extra details, and track them over time.

It can even connect to other popular fitness apps (such as Apple Health and Google Fit) to help give you the full picture of your health status. It automatically recognises up to eight users, adding to its ‘smartness’. This is achieved using a network of electrode sensors built into the glass, which eliminates the ‘tap to turn it on and then get on’ situation of other electric scales.

Set-up is simple. Insert the batteries, download the app, step on the scale and you’re good to go. As with any other shiny black gadget, it’s susceptible to fingerprints (or should we say footprints?) so it’s a pity it isn’t available in white.

RRP R1 136 geewiz.co.za

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PRODUCTS

UNDER ARMOUR GLOBAL HERO RANGE AS WE HEAD from spring into summer and the temperatures start to rise, having the right apparel for those training days out in the heat is more important than ever, and Under Armour has got you covered. The GHL or ‘Global Hero Looks’ range incorporates a selection of items, from running shorts and fitted T-shirts, to tights and shoes, primarily for runners, but well suited to all manner of training strategies too.

The TriBase Reign 3 Training Shoes feature a breathable mesh upper and a bootie construction, with reinforcement added in key areas, ensuring support and traction when you’re in the gym.

The Breeze Run Short Sleeve top is lightweight, rubs less (yep, this means less chance of chafing), dries fast, and is resistant to wear, and anti-odour tech keeps the fabric from retaining any manky smells.

The Iso-Chill Perforated Leggings are made from game-changing fabric that extracts heat away from the skin, helping to keep you cool even during extreme exercise. There’s even a bonded pocket on the outside of the right leg, big enough to accommodate an iPhone 11.

But if you prefer your legs uncovered for training, the Stretch Woven Shorts could be the way to go. They boast nextto-skin comfort without being tight, and feature breathable fabric that quickly repels moisture. There are open pockets, as well as a zippered side pocket to stash light valuables.

Under Armour is constantly innovating to find new ways to keep you comfortable while you’re active. And after a long and chilly winter, we’re sure that outside and active is what you’ll want to be.

RRP from R899 – R2 299 underarmour.co.za

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BEKO POWERSTICK VACUUM It’s hard to believe, but vacuuming is a task some people just love. Others, well, deplore it. Either way, one way to make the job a whole lot easier is to tackle it with a Beko Powerstick cordless vacuum cleaner. It’s powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, which, after three to four hours on the docking station, gives enough oomph for a 40-minute vacuuming stint around the house.

Included are a host of attachments to aid you in your mission. There’s a crevice tool, upholstery tool, dusting brush, pet brush, soft brush, extension hose and elbow fitting, which, when put to use enable you to deep clean carpets, or hard surfaces. Beko’s PerformCyclone technology provides constant and high sucking power, regardless of how full the 0.5 litre storage container is getting, removing even the finest of dust particles.

The 170 W motor is powerful, yet the entire device is lightweight and easy to move around – necessary traits in a mobile vacuum cleaner. After all, vacuuming shouldn’t be more physically taxing than it needs to be, because of cumbersome equipment. The power trigger keeps the device running until you choose to switch it off.

At just 2.6 kg, 126 cm in height and 26.5 cm in width, this sleek and compact home appliance will help to make one of life’s unenviable chores that much more manageable.

RRP R4 999 beko.com/za-en

HUAWEI BAND 6

TEXT: TIANA CLINE, MARK SAMUEL; PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY IMAGES. PRICES CORRECT AT TIME OF PRINT AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE. PRODUCTS AND DEALS ONLY AVAILABLE WHILE STOCKS LAST.

There are generally two types of wearables: watches and bands. The former are typically more expensive, with a bigger screen and more features, while bands keep things simpler. Huawei’s Band 6 offers the best of both worlds. It’s a smart fitness band with smartphone-like functionality – a ‘smart band’ if you will.

It has a bright and responsive 1.47” AMOLED rectangular display positioned on a skin-friendly silicone strap that’s comfortable and customisable. Though an entry-level device, it’s still a water-resistant tracker that will keep you up to date with all the necessary metrics: step count, calories, heart rate, stress levels, sleep performance, and – quite trendily at the moment – Sp02 or ‘blood oxygen monitoring’. Amazingly, battery life is around two weeks while all of these are being tracked 24/7.

For training, Band 6 supports 96 workout modes, and it automatically assesses the type of workout you’ve started, for better tracking. It connects to Huawei’s Health app, which functions well on both Apple and Android devices, but best with Huawei smartphones. It’s a detailed app that provides an excellent overview of your health.

Like several of its competitors, Band 6 does not have a built-in GPS, but this can be overcome by staying connected to your smartphone. In addition to the health-tracking features, it displays messages and incoming calls, provides weather updates, and can function as a camera shutter button as well.

With all of its features, concealed in such a compact band, Huawei is raising the bar for fitness wearables with this device .

RRP R1 699 consumer.huawei.com/za

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NuScale’s reactor design is one per cent the size of a traditional plant, but packs 10 per cent of the power.

By Caroline Delbert SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

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Often touted as a more flexible, powerful alternative to renewables, nuclear’s advantages haven’t outrun its dogged volatility. We associate nuclear reactors more often with disaster than innovation, but as the United States takes more coal and gas plants offline, engineers are hoping fresh reactor concepts could redeem nuclear’s stature in American

energy. Bigger is no longer better. The future, experts say, looks like ‘multispeed’ nuclear energy – a combination of traditional large plants and smaller, safer megawatt reactors.

‘Until now, customers only had one choice for nuclear, and that was a gigawattsized power plant,’ says Rita Baranwal, the assistant secretary for Nuclear Energy at the US Department of Energy. ‘Now, we’re talking about reactors at the megawatt scale that can flexibly meet a customer’s energy needs as demand grows.’

Baranwal says megawatt reactors (one megawatt powers about 650 homes) will be cheaper to build and operate, and could be sited anywhere in the world.

A more context-sensitive, localised nuclear power industry – in which small towns, remote facilities, and big cities find nuclear solutions tailored to their needs – could replace a large swath of fossil fuel power stations, filling in the inert, resource-sucking downtimes left by renewables.

THE TENETS OF NUCLEAR REACTOR DESIGN CAN BE TRACED

back to Enrico Fermi’s original 1942 reactor at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. Fermi and the other engineers at Argonne proposed and designed many kinds of reactors, such as commercial boiling-water reactors and experimental research reactors, says Katy Huff, nuclear engineer and researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s nuclear, plasma, and radiological engineering (NPRE) programme. Argonne spearheaded a creative boom in nuclear energy. ‘All these different reactors were conceived at the same time,’ Huff says. ‘At the beginning, we were trying all of them.’

Not every reactor survived. Just as HD DVDs fell to Blu-ray, so did experiments like the sodium reactor at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory and the gas-cooled Peach Bottom plant in Pennsylvania fall to the more commonplace light-water reactor. Even nuclear-reactor designs owe some success to chance, convenience, and market whim.

The ideal reactor by today’s standards emphasises safety, cost-effectiveness, and adaptability. Ever since engineer Richard Eckert of the New Jersey Public Service Electric & Gas Co conceived of a floating nuclear plant in 1969 – one that could be built off-site, towed to its final destination, and operated over water – there’s been a vein of thinking in nuclear that says smaller reactors are a suitable form of power for the future. That’s where tiny nuclear hopes to prove itself a competitive alternative to the massive nuclear power plants we know.

Generally, tiny reactors have a few advantages over power plants. First, they are more space-efficient. A 2019 small modular reactor design from Oregon start-up NuScale is about one per cent the size of a traditional power plant’s 36

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NUSCALE IS THE MOST CONSERVATIVE OF

containment chamber, though it delivers 10 per cent of a plant’s power output.

And while traditional nuclear plants need a 1.6 km safety buffer in every direction in case of a meltdown, tiny reactors can operate in close quarters with much less risk. That’s the second major edge: safety. Some small reactor designs incorporate fully passive safety and risk-management systems that rely on the steady, immutable laws of physics – such as gravity or buoyancy – to perform safety functions rather than the actions of people or mechanical equipment.

Finally, there’s scalability. Many small reactors are designed with replicability in mind. If a community, factory, or city needs an extra boost of nuclear power, they can just order another reactor.

USNC’s reactor produces 15 MW of thermal power and 5 MW of electric power.

Each USNC reactor has a graphite core (right) that houses the fuel.

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the small-nuclear programmes trying to reach the market. Their reactor design is a traditional lightwater reactor (see previous spread), but smaller, simpler, and – according to NuScale – more scalable. The design eliminates coolant pumps, external steam generator vessels, and other equipment found in existing plants, so NuScale claims it’s cheaper to manufacture, lower-risk for operators, and easier to maintain.

The light-water design gives NuScale an edge in power among its tiny-reactor peers. While other companies are seeking approval for reactors that produce just a few megawatts of energy, NuScale’s design reaches 60 megawatts. For comparison, the smallest nuclear plant in the US produces 600 megawatts, yet it’s 100 times the size of NuScale’s power module.

NuScale’s reactor will seek to complement, not replace, a grid already dependent on renewables. During the day, it can operate at 20 per cent energy production to let the renewables do the work, before cranking up to 100 per cent at night, while the rest of the grid is on solar downtime.

and UIUC are seeking approval to build their own tiny reactor based on designs from the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC), a company taking a more extreme approach than NuScale in an effort to push the field towards new standards of safety and more possible use cases. USNC’s proposed design is rooted in low energy density and low decay heat generation after shutdown, which means less risk of a meltdown. The energy start-up is mindful that volatility has doomed other nuclear efforts in the past. ‘Normal reactors are in the 20 to 40 watts per cubic centimetre power density,’ USNC founder Lorenzo Venneri says. ‘We’re in the 1 to 3 [watts] per cubic centimetre power density.’

KATY HUFF

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‘Fuel for nuclear reactors was developed for nuclear submarines where demands are entirely different from demands of a power plant,’ Venneri says.

‘A submarine is like a high-velocity sports car: It needs to go up and down in power very quickly. That’s exactly the opposite of what a nuclear power plant should be for producing power.’

USNC’s reactor concept uses Fully Ceramic Micro-Encapsulated fuel (FCM), in which a ceramic-carbon and silicon-carbide composite coats granules of uranium oxide. The ceramic protects the grains of fuel, but still conducts heat.

When this fuel is used in a low power-density environment, it creates a reactor that, according to Venneri, can’t melt down. Inside the reactor, a feedback mechanism stops the reaction when it exceeds operating temperature, so nothing can become hot enough to melt. This contrasts an established pattern in nuclear plant design, Venneri says, to ‘push the envelope and then build another envelope around it.’

Engineers such as Venneri calculate risk as the product of probabilities and consequences. ‘We found out that trying to lower the probabilities is a losing game,’ he explains. ‘We want to try to keep the probabilities of adverse events low, but at the same time, make sure the consequences are zero.’

Russia’s floating nuclear power plant In May 2020, Russia’s Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear plant (above) started providing power and electricity to 200 000 people in the far-eastern town of Pevek, Russia.

The 70 megawatt plant, housed on a non-motorised barge, took three years to build and another decade to begin operations, running up a price tag of $740 million against initial estimates of $140 million, though it has a lifespan of 40 years. Lomonosov is the first floating plant of its kind, but its plans are designed for replicable manufacturing. It is the 11th industrially operated nuclear power plant in Russia, and the northernmost in the world.

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THE CALIFORNIA-BASED START-UP OKLO IS TAKING RISK

prevention even further, to the point where they’re eschewing America’s legacy of water-cooled reactors. Their advanced fission microreactor can use sodium as a coolant (among other methods), so it doesn’t require water. The 1.5 megawatt plant, Oklo says, functions much like a battery in producing electrical power. It’s self-contained, and it can self-sustain for 20 years without refuelling.

‘The industry typically takes this incremental approach to things,’ says Jacob DeWitte, Oklo co-founder and CEO. ‘But in our mind we have to do things more transformatively, frankly for the planet’s sake.’

The Oklo reactor uses high-assay, low-enriched uranium fuel (HALEU) to achieve greater efficiency and power-per-volume given its size. HALEU is enriched to between five and 20 per cent of the isotope U-235 – the isotope that, when split, produces heat in a nuclear reaction – compared to the three per cent lowenriched uranium in a typical power plant. This potential groundbreaker has more legwork ahead for approval than its water-cooled cousins, but Oklo is banking on its undemanding spatial and financial design. Its demonstration site at the Idaho National Laboratory spans just a quarter-acre. ‘We’re still fission, but other than that, we use different fuel, different cooling, different technology,’ says Oklo co-founder and COO Caroline Cochran.

PHOTOGRAPHY: NUSCALE, USNC, GETTY IMAGES

IF THE CURRENT NUCLEAR ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

were a circulatory system, only the major veins and arteries would be pumping – those are the giant power plants.

But tiny reactors can be like capillaries, extending power to the extremities (small towns, remote industry encampments, tiny islands, and specific city blocks) of the nuclear-power body.

‘If you look at current big reactors and where they’re being installed, they’re going into countries that have a need to decarbonise,’ Westinghouse Electric Company CTO Ken Canavan says. Countries such as China and Poland are ‘replacing multiple medium or large coal plants with single nuclear,’ he says, and these countries have contexts where large nuclear plants are appropriate. ‘If you look at other countries that have smaller grids, they don’t have the capacity to put on a big nuclear plant.’ That’s where reactors such as the one at NuScale – just 20 m tall and 3 m in diameter – can be of service.

Canavan does hedge, however, to say traditional reactor concepts could make a comeback after tiny nuclear hits retail. He says tiny nuclear might disrupt nuclear energy beyond what we can project today, and in a future where popularmechanics.co.za

more things will need electrical power (not the least of which A plant using will be your car) than ever, a ‘multispeed’ or ‘multidimension’ NuScale’s tech expected nuclear energy market is likely to emerge. Here, anyone wishing is to be fully to replace a remote diesel microgrid can find a solution in operational by 2030. nuclear, or a combination of nuclear and renewables.

For now, Oklo, USNC, and NuScale focus on small markets as their entry point because in the United States, large plants are either ageing out or are too stigmatised to be replaced. Finding common but untapped use cases for tiny nuclear, such as rural towns, will be key to reinvigorating interest in nuclear power technology, and finding ways to integrate nuclear alongside or into renewable-focused grids will be important to acclimating the world to nuclear. A 2020 University of Sussex study found that the development of large nuclear plants staunched wide portions of global renewable-energy development between 1990 and 2014, but another 2020 report on the near future of energy showed four separate scenarios that demonstrated runaway growth in renewables alongside modest growth of nuclear energy. We see these things as competitors; they could coexist.

By 2040, if these small reactor projects are successful, we could see a selection of plant sizes, technologies, and types of locations enter the American energy landscape. ‘If you look at the way everything is going, it’s about personalisation,’ Canavan says. ‘What’s that worth to us? The capacity [small reactors] offer, and the capability they provide, is just irreplaceable.’

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571.5 M ( 1 87 5 F E E T )

563 KM/H (350 MPH)

‘MAD MIKE’ HUGHES REJECTED SCIENCE AND CHASED FAME.

Mike Hughes’s home-made rocket launches near Amboy, California, on Saturday 24 March 2018.

by DAVE HOWARD

IT KILLED HIM.

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T H E MO O J AVE D ESERT HA A D C A ST IT T S SP P ELL L R ‘MAD D MIKE E ’ H UG G H ES S THE NIGHT OVER E T HOU U G H T T O FLY Y TO O T H E E DGE O F SP P A C E. HE It’s no wonder why. The sky is fall-overbackwards big, wrapping around you in a way that hints at infinite possibilities.

After buttery sunsets fade into glowing orange then purple light, the heavens do their high-wattage flexing. Maybe this struck him as an invitation, and maybe that celestial pull was amplified by the proximity to Hollywood, where his fantasies of fame could be spun up into life.

It was some intermingling of these elements that brought Hughes and his friend Waldo Stakes here, like so many others who found their way to Southern 42

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California’s mythological landscape from places like Oklahoma City and Chicago: hungry but broke, flogging a dream, bristling with intelligence, and willing to chase an idea that others might consider unreasonable – like launching a man into the sky in a home-made steampowered rocket.

Pause for a moment and think about the undeniable elegance and utter simplicity of it: heating water until it launches – in a rocket, like from a child’s drawing! Thousands of feet up! Has there ever been an idea so fanciful and yet so completely attainable?

And what if that was just a precursor to something even more fantastic – being the first civilian to send himself more than 100 km up to the edge of space?

All of this made total sense to Hughes and Stakes in the two years since this latest idea had come. But then there was a problem.

On the evening of 21 February 2020, Stakes, a self-taught rocket scientist, was arguing with Hughes about their rocket launch scheduled for the next day outside Barstow, California. Stakes was haunted both by a dream a friend had had – a detailed vision popularmechanics.co.za

Pieces of old rockets built by Waldo Stakes and Mike Hughes sit on Stakes’s ranch in Apple Valley, California. Stakes poses for a portrait on his ranch in a shipping container filled with daredevil and speed memorabilia.

of a nightmarish crash – and by modifications Hughes had made to the projectile after three failed launch attempts.

Stakes implored his friend to reconsider, to ditch the fourth try, and to focus instead on their plan to touch the edge of space.

But Hughes, as always, had his reasons – he had a new audience to win over, one more rung of fame to ascend – and the argument went nowhere. As much as Stakes was meticulous in his planning and strident about his science, he had a steadfast rule: The pilot is the daredevil putting his life on the line, and so that man, and that man alone, makes the final call.

Mad Mike was the pilot. And Waldo Stakes knew without a shade of doubt: Mad Mike wanted to launch.

Once Hughes discovered his ability to reach the podium in dirt-bike competitions, Stakes says, he left home and never came back. He raced on tracks and on ice, and eventually worked on NASCAR pit crews for drivers Randy LaJoie and Rob Moroso. He ascended to crew chief on a NASCAR Craftsman Truck team. And thanks to his childhood tutelage, he was a skilled fabricator, once building the race car that Tom Cruise crashed in Days of Thunder.

At the same time, he drove a limousine to earn extra income – a gig that spanned more than two decades of his life. After a

while, none of that seemed enough, and he began looking to mine his unusual abilities for fame of his own. In 1999, he tried to build a car from leftover pieces and drive it to qualify for NASCAR’s Winston Cup Series. He adopted the nickname Mad Mike, gave himself the title of the world’s most famous limo driver, and in 2002 set a Guinness Book World Record by jumping 103 feet (31 m) in a Lincoln Town Car stretch limousine. The landing left him with fractures in his back, but Hughes was undeterred, trying the next year for a new record of 125 feet (38.1 m). He didn’t

ike Hughes grew up a garage rat in Oklahoma City, forever rattling around the family auto-body shop.

His father Jay worked on cars and raced them, and the story goes that Mike, the older of two boys, started attending the old man’s events when he was two months old.

The elder Hughes was keen to indoctrinate his boys into his passion, says Bob Ponder, Mike’s uncle. Both took to the work, and through years of tutelage Mike became accomplished in bodywork and began competing as well. ‘His father wanted them in the racing business,’ says Ponder. ‘So they raced motorcycles, cars, whatever their father would help them get or build.’

Mike started racing motorcycles when he was 12, tearing around tracks of ice on studded tyres. As a young man Hughes turned pro, competing on the American Motorcyclist Association’s flat-track circuit.

In 1979, in his 20s, he became a champion speedway motorcycle ice racer.

The family believed him to be a savant.

‘Mike was brilliant,’ says Ponder. ‘He was a reader. He read everything he could get his hands on.’

Still, Hughes never went to college, and the obvious conclusion is that instead he simply pursued what he loved. But his close friend Stakes says Hughes never had a stable home from which to launch his life. ‘His dad was mean,’ Stakes says. ‘He smacked Mike around for no reason at all, all the time.

Mike spent all of his young life trying to please his dad.’

PREVIOUS SPREAD: ASSOCIATED PRESS (LAUNCH), THEREALROCKETMAN.COM/TOBY BRUSSEAU (PORTRAIT) THIS SPREAD: KENDRICK BRINSON

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He had made only modest progress when, in 2011, his phone rang. he community of home-made-rocket scientists is small and self-selecting.

Waldo Stakes figures he knows most folks who have seriously dabbled with rocket engines, and when he heard about Hughes’s Snake River plan, he decided to call him. ‘I was curious about this rocket he was building,’ Stakes says.

He found Hughes working in the back of a transmission shop in Redmond, California, and living out of his car. For his part, Hughes knew Stakes by reputation as someone with cachet in the arena of home-made rocketry, and he asked Waldo for an assessment of the vessel he was building. ‘I said, “It’s horrible,

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and it’s gonna kill you,”’ Stakes recalls. ‘And he’s like, “Why?” And I gave him 20 reasons why. He was trying to copy the Evel Knievel thing, but the Skycycle was a bad idea. It comes off the ramp rotating like a badly thrown football.’

Still, two things impressed Stakes. One was that while Hughes knew little about rocketry, he’d actually built a reasonable approximation of a flying projectile. Stakes frequently fielded calls from idle dreamers with no skills or know-how, and Hughes actually had the chops to fabricate a rocket.

And Stakes had passed his own daredevil days, so if he was going to advance his passion, he needed someone else in the cockpit. Hughes’s track record suggested that he would actually pilot the rocket if he popularmechanics.co.za

PHOTOGRAPH: KENDRICK BRINSON

hit the distance, and the car rolled on to its roof before he emerged unhurt.

The limo jump earned him an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, but his 15 minutes ticked away too quickly for his liking. In 2007, he self-published an autobiographical tell-all book about NASCAR, and a year later, he began working on his latest attentiongrabbing stunt.

Looking to the biggest name in the daredevil realm, Hughes thought he would attempt Evel Knievel’s unsuccessful Snake River Canyon jump from 1974. That required replicating Knievel’s rocket-powered Skycycle X-2, so he hunkered down to work – but rocket science requires money and precision, and Hughes was broke and often impetuous and prone to corner-cutting.

ILLUSTRATION: KYLE HILTON

Stakes’s memorabilia takes up several shipping containers on his ranch.

succeeded at building it. Anybody willing to endure a broken back jumping a limousine, and keep at it – those types were rare.

Stakes was just a few months older than Hughes. Growing up in Chicago, he’d been a sickly child; he contracted a series of tonsil infections that he says spiked fevers up to 108°F (42°C). Some doctors believed he had brain damage. ‘I was like the boy in the plastic bubble,’ he says. ‘I don’t know if it made me smarter or dumber. If I was any smarter, I would’ve probably been a physicist or something like that – I had that kind of smarts.’

After his tonsils were removed at age five, his life took off. His mother fostered his early love for science, and in sixth grade he won the Chicago all-city science fair. His father owned a car-parts shop and taught him how to install motors; his mother fuelled his passions by buying him Estes model rockets. He had borrowing privileges at eight libraries across town and would go from one to the next for new material, reading about aerodynamics and rocketry. When he was 14, his older brother bought him a 90 cc motorcycle, which he modified for racing in farm fields. ‘I was a lunatic,’ he says.

He started drag-racing both cars and motorcycles as a teenager and fell in with pioneering racers experimenting with rocket engines who were setting quartermile records 100 mph (160 km/h) faster than conventional cars. After moving to California in the 1980s, he set out to build a rocketpowered ice racer. And in 2012, Automobile magazine dubbed him ‘Rocket Man’ – Stakes told the writer that he was ‘building an icon of American technology.’

‘I think of myself as an artist,’ he said. ‘I’m Michelangelo working on the Sistine Chapel.’

It didn’t pan out. He burned through his money and couldn’t find a sponsor, even though, he says, ‘it would go straight and was capable of 1 000 miles per hour.’

Like Mad Mike, Stakes has the tendency to turn up as the protagonist in complex narratives that veer into the surreal. His next project was a car outfitted with a modified intercontinental ballistic missile engine. Unbeknownst to Stakes, his partner on the project went on a drug binge, swiped the engine, and sold it to an Australian team. The current version of the Aussie Invader – a land speed record challenger – is ‘running my engine, stolen from me,’ he says. And worse yet, he soon received a visit from agents from the FBI, Homeland popularmechanics.co.za

HOW MIKE AND WALDO’S ROCKET WORKED The steam-powered rocket operates on the same principle as a jet engine, creating thrust by expelling gas behind it. It’s Newton’s third law of motion: Every action (shooting steam) has a reaction (flying rocket).

WAT E R TA N K The rocket motor consists of a 112 gallon (424 litre) water tank with three internal immersion heaters. Over the course of four hours of heating, the water reached 205°C and 247 psi (17 bar).

COCKPIT AND HEADREST

RUPTURE DISC A rupture disc sits at the bottom of the tank.

The rocket is launched by opening this pressurerelief valve.

D E L AVA L N O Z Z L E The superheated stream exits the rupture disc through a de Laval nozzle.

Though a crosssection of the nozzle looks like a Venturi tube, a de Laval accelerates exhaust to a supersonic speed as the steam’s pressure drops.

THRUST ENTRAINMENT DEVICE This cylinder at the bottom of the rocket keeps the thrust plume contained to maintain a straight rocket path.

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Security, the OSI office of the Air Force, and NASA’s Security Operations regarding his use of missile materials. ‘They came down on me like you wouldn’t believe,’ he says.

It’s hard to imagine what the government agents made of Stakes. Eventually, he says, ‘They realised I was a legit, straight-up guy … and they used me for a couple of programmes they had. We looked into – uh, I can’t really go into it, but just kind of like James Bond without the cool guns and the great-looking women.’

Which is right around the time he found Hughes. ughes, then in his mid 50s, was youthful and lean, wore his blondgray hair in a carefully blow-dried haystack, and was prone to spouting theories that anyone in any position of power in government is corrupt. Stakes was built like a tugboat, sported cursive script tattooed on his biceps, and could spitball on the intricacies of rocket aerodynamics at 200 words a minute. Different, certainly, but when they started talking about everything they might do, it was as if they were looking in the mirror.

Stakes invited his new, financially strapped friend to live at a small ranch he’d inherited in Apple Valley, on the southern fringes of the Mojave, in exchange for covering the $300 monthly mortgage payment.

He showed Hughes how to balance his rocket and change its stance, how to pull the centre pressure back, filling notebooks with drawings and measurements. Stakes envisioned a rocket based on a design that legendary engineer Robert Truax pioneered in 1965.

The concept is essentially a tea kettle with its spout on the bottom: Fill a cylindrical, stainless-steel tank with water, and crank it up to 400°F (205°C) using a propane torch.

From the cockpit, the pilot engages O-rings at the bottom of the tank, causing steam to

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pour out a nozzle in superheated torrents powerful enough to propel a rocket. Stakes and Hughes built theirs to hold about 650 pounds (295 kg) of water, capable of providing 4 500 pounds of thrust (20 017 Newtons), to ensure they could beat Evel Knievel’s launch record of 500 feet (152 m) (the distance they estimated that Knievel travelled over Snake River Canyon before the wind knocked him into the gorge below). Once the rocket hit its apogee, the highest point to which it could climb, Hughes would deploy parachutes and begin its descent back to the ground.

That was the idea. Stakes got Hughes started with two reinforced stainless-steel tanks he had purchased years prior. ‘I wasn’t sure he was ever gonna get it figured out, but a year and a half to two years later, he was making full power on a steam rocket,’ he says.

Hughes dubbed it the X-2 SkyLimo. There were logistical hurdles involved in the Snake River jump, so they got permission to launch in a canyon in Winkelman, Arizona, in January 2014. Stakes’s mother died shortly before the launch, and he asked his friend to delay things for the funeral. Hughes declined. After all of the work he’d put into it, Hughes seemed impatient, determined to will the launch into being. ‘When Mike set his mind on something, he was like a bulldozer that would knock everything out of his way,’ Stakes says.

This became a pattern. Though self-taught, Stakes was painstaking and methodical, checking and rechecking his maths, a student of gravity, drag, and launch angles. Stakes says Hughes ‘had a very high IQ’, but he was a riverboat gambler, a guy who wouldn’t always buy into science even when he was betting his life on it. He saw the laws of physics as something he might hedge, like an investor shorting a stock.

‘Mike would ask you, “What do you think about this?”’ Stakes recalls. ‘He’d sit down and take a bunch of notes, and then he wouldn’t do anything you told him to. He just had so much faith in himself.’

HE SAW W TH H E L AW W S O F PH H YS SIC S M E TH H ING G H E M IGHT T AS SOM HED D GE E , LIK K E A N IN N VE E STO OR O RT T I N G A S TO O C K..

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Hughes enters his steam-powered rocket before his fatal launch on 22 February 2020.

Stakes talked to Hughes like he was an obstinate, wayward little brother – someone who might actually get somewhere if he would only just listen. Hughes deferred to him on points of science but otherwise engaged in sibling-like battles. They fashioned these dynamics into an enduring friendship. Stakes and Hughes ‘had this really cool bond,’ says Tone Stakes, Waldo’s son. ‘They loved to debate, and it became this Laurel and Hardy routine.’ Once when they went to Del Taco, one of Waldo’s favourite fast-food franchises, Hughes triggered a friendly argument by questioning Stakes’s request for doublecooked Crinkle-Cut Fries. Stakes took the bait: Of course you’d want them like that; they’re extra crispy that way! Hughes countered that that crunchiness comes at the expense of the potato flavour – and that set them off on a lengthy round of verbal jousting involving the God-intended form and function of the humble French fry, the various merits of cooking-oil temperature, and so on.

Only after they finally reached a consensus – that Hughes’s undercooked fries were better with ketchup, and Stakes’s were superior as a stand-alone side – did they agree to move on.

The launch was a success – and a fiasco.

Stakes had told Hughes to set the launch angle at 58° or more, so the rocket would climb vertically enough to gently return to Earth via the parachutes. Hughes, still thinking about his limo jumps and wanting to cover the greatest distance possible, set the ramp at 52°. At that angle, Stakes explains, ‘you’re coming down at the same velocity you left at.’ If you go more or less straight up into the sky, gravity gradually reels you in, slows your velocity. Hughes’s low launch point meant that his arc was more like a bullet aimed at a target.

The morning of launch, Hughes heard a hiss – a pin leak in a recent weld. The rocket, leaking steam, was now essentially a pipe bomb that could tear open and explode at any second. Instead of aborting, Hughes ordered the crew out of the area, slapped on his sixpoint harness – a process that, done correctly to be fully snug, takes around five minutes in a race car – and hit the launch button. Soon after leaving the launch pad, it went into a horizontal flight, and absent the need to fight gravity, surged up to around 563 km/h.

Hughes briefly passed out from the G forces (though he initially denied this to Stakes), and, dazed when he came to, panicked and threw the chute. The parachute, designed to open in airstreams of about 160 km/h, popularmechanics.co.za

PHOTOGRAPH: MERCEDES BLACKHART

shredded. The rocket covered 419 m in 11 seconds, easily beating Knievel’s record.

But Hughes hit the ground at 60 mph (almost 100 km/h). It could have, and probably should have, killed him. He used a walker for two months afterwards. he first attempt may have gone awry, but it proved to both Hughes and Stakes that they had a workable concept. Emboldened, they pushed forward on a second rocket, convinced they could make one that could travel further. But the second launch attempt was even more of a debacle. Hughes and Stakes argued about Mike’s decision to use cut-rate parachutes, after which Stakes boycotted the flight attempt. The rocket prematurely ignited before Hughes had even clambered inside, and a crew member was seriously injured.

Hughes pressed on, and in 2017, hooked up with an organisation advancing the notion that Earth is flat. Hughes was single and estranged from his two adult sons; he lived alone with four cats, and spent dozens of hours sponging up various forms of internet quackery. (He believed in the legal hoax that spelling other people’s names in all capital letters makes them a separate entity that can be acquired by filing paperwork with the state of California. He would then sue those parties for using his ‘property’.) What Hughes actually believed about the planet’s shape remains the subject of a surprisingly vigorous debate, but what’s unquestionable is that Hughes was opportunistic. If someone offered him money, he would take it without bothering to negotiate, says Tone Stakes. The younger Stakes, who makes his living working with NBA players to sell game-used shoes and is familiar with contractual language, tried to help Hughes at various times in talks with sponsors and television offers, but Hughes, true to form, uniformly rebuffed him.

Waldo Stakes was not a fan of Hughes’s new flat-Earth benefactors. ‘Fishy,’ he says.

‘Everything they said was lies. They made it up as they went.’

Still, with new sponsorships in place, including Juan Pollo, a rotisserie chicken restaurant chain, Hughes built his most powerful rocket yet: a projectile with an increased capacity of 424 litres of water that would provide more than 7 000 pounds (31 138 Newtons) of thrust. After an unsuccessful launch due to several mishaps, including one where the crew damaged the rocket by dropping it, Hughes and Stakes tried again in early 2018. They gathered in Amboy, California, a Route 66 ghost town owned entirely by the founder of Juan Pollo.

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PHOTOGRAPH: KENDRICK BRINSON

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Mad Mike is featured prominently in this shipping container on Stakes’s ranch. The parachute separates from Hughes’s rocket shortly after takeoff during his fatal launch.

parachute at home next time u fire urself into the air!’ Many other commenters addressed him in far more profane language.

Toby Brusseau, co-director of the 2019 documentary Rocketman, about the Hughes launch in Amboy, believes the flatEarth gambit was simply part of Hughes’s insatiable hunger for attention. ‘I think he was using that for the marketing,’ the filmmaker says. ‘It was Mike’s best marketing tool, and his worst.’

The global story made Hughes famous, though, even as he prepared for a third launch attempt in Amboy. In addition to technical problems, the team’s plans were thrown off course at multiple points by the Bureau of Land Management’s insistence that Hughes stay off of federal land – a tricky proposition, given that they didn’t know

PHOTOGRAPHY: MERCEDES BLACKHART

The night before the launch, they sat around a small campfire, gazing into the incandescent canopy overhead. Hughes said, ‘Waldo, you think you can get me all the way to space?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Stakes said. ‘I’m gonna have to think about that.’

Then he said, to the entire group, ‘You know, you can go up there and see if the Earth is flat.’ Everyone laughed.

Among the informal gathering that night was a reporter, who soon after ran a story stating that Hughes planned to fly to the edge of space to see for himself whether the

planet was flat. The bizarre story was picked up by the Associated Press and published all over the world.

The flat-Earth partnership was good for headlines and an undisclosed sum of cash, but Hughes’s new patron cost him steeply in public perception. The scruffy daredevil and wannabe folk hero had morphed into a crackpot involved in a paradoxical attempt to use science in order to undermine it. In his public statements, Hughes mostly took a ‘we’ll see’ approach to the question of the planet’s shape rather than repeat the deluded incantations of a true believer.

But headlines called him a ‘flat Earther’, and venom seeped into his social media feeds. ‘Do the world a favour,’ one of his Facebook page visitors wrote, ‘leave the

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‘MAD’ MIKE HUGHES

exactly how far the rocket might fly. As a remedy, Stakes’s friend Garren Frantzen suggested they launch vertically, up into the sky, and see how high they could go. That removed concerns about where Hughes landed, and set in motion the evolution of ideas to come.

Hughes’s March 2018 launch became the apex of his career as a daredevil, literally and figuratively. The rocket soared to 1 875 feet (571.5 m), and hit 350 mph (563 km/h).

The only glitch was that Hughes was late deploying his second parachute, which popped out when he was just under 200 feet (60 m) above the ground. The harsh landing caused compression fractures in two vertebrae. ‘I’ll feel it in the morning,’ he told the Associated Press.

The stunt made news around the world, and provided a triumphant ending for Rocketman. To top it off, Stakes called Hughes a week later to announce an epiphany: He had come up with a way to fly his friend to the edge of space. called a rockoon – a portmanteau of rocket and balloon. Stakes wasn’t inventing this: The idea of floating things into space has been vetted since near the end of the Second World War, when a Nazi V-2 first made its way above Earth’s atmosphere. Wearing a space suit, Hughes would travel inside a steel fuel tank that Stakes had MacGyvered into a space capsule.

The container would be attached to a helium balloon 40 storeys high, which would lift the ship 32 km above Earth’s surface. Once the balloon could ascend no further, the spaceship’s hydrogen-peroxide rocket engine would propel the craft another 68 km up, all the way to the Kármán Line, the border between the planet’s atmosphere and space.

Upon hitting apogee there, the spaceship would deploy a ‘ballute’ – a 2.5 m-diameter helium balloon in the nose of the craft that would keep it upright through the first part of its descent. Eventually a series of parachutes would automatically deploy and lower the rocket to the ground regardless of whether the pilot was still conscious.

‘Everybody laughs like it can’t be done,’ Stakes says. ‘It can totally be done. I’ve gone over all the maths.’ He estimated Hughes’s chances of surviving the trip at 50:50, but Mad Mike was willing to take those odds, and he promised Stakes that if he looked back at Earth and saw a blue ball, he would admit as much.

‘I thought that if we put this together, the whole world would want to see that,’ Stakes says. ‘They’ll want to see a couple

THE IDEA WAS

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of hillbillies put together a spacecraft and go to space.’

As Stakes began chipping away at the idea, which they estimated would cost $2.8 million, Hughes’s headlines pinged the radar of producers at Los Angeles-based World of Wonder Productions. The creator of reality shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race and Million Dollar Listing, WOW’s executives conjured a show featuring regular folks trying to reach space on a budget. The company sold Homemade Astronauts to the Science Channel, and signed Hughes and Stakes as their stars.

Though Rocketman had already been released, the producers wanted original footage of Hughes in flight. Hughes set to work building a new 5.8 m steam rocket, and in the second half of 2019, with WOW’s cameras present, he and Stakes tried repeatedly to launch. The first time out, the rocket sprung a leak. The second, the entire rocket overheated. (Stakes tried to cool it down, but when Hughes climbed inside, the seat burned a waffle pattern on his back.) The third time, a nozzle in the tail sprung a leak – not enough to foil them if they moved quickly, but a spooked Hughes decided to abort.

Stakes believed the metal plug they’d used to cork the steam inside the rocket was compromised, and came up with an alternate system: They would use a kind of rupture disc, a metal plate that would seal up the steam until it was intentionally punctured to release pressure – in this case, to launch. Stakes proposed a metal toe ball, like the ball on a trailer hitch, to punch the hole at launch. But Hughes instead devised an actuator that would pull the plate away.

Stakes didn’t like it: There was a chance the steam wouldn’t come out uniformly. ‘Mike,’ he said, ‘I’m 100 per cent against this.’

He consulted fellow crew member Danny Bern, who has nearly 60 years of experience working on pressurisation and pneumatics systems for the stunt and racing industries.

He was part of Danny Thompson’s recordbreaking 448-mph (721 km/h) haul in a piston-powered car at Bonneville in 2018.

He’d volunteered to help Hughes five years earlier, and they’d become friends – still he sided with Stakes on the rupture disc. ‘But Mike was very independent,’ he says. ‘You couldn’t change his mind on a lot of things.’

‘He wouldn’t have none of it,’ Stakes says. ‘And since he’s his own fabricator, I said, “Okay dude, we’re good.” I was mad at him for a month.’

And as a fourth attempt arrived, on 22 February, the presence of the film crew imbued the launch with a fresh urgency.

‘The production company had had enough of us,’ Stakes says. ‘They were $60 000 over budget because we’d had them come to three launches – we were under the gun.’

Others agree that there was a tacit pressure.

‘I definitely think that was a piece of it,’ says Tone Stakes, who negotiated his father’s contract with WOW. ‘Because they were kind of hinting at the idea that, well, they didn’t really have enough to put the fourth episode together, and they wanted a little more action, because that was when they thought they would be able to really pitch the network and see about getting a longerterm partnership.’

He adds: ‘Mike was one of those guys that, anytime somebody offered him money, he was their guy all of a sudden.’ (A WOW spokesperson declined to comment on whether there were implicit or explicit expectations that Hughes do the launch.)

Stakes could see Hughes warring with himself. The side of Mad Mike that valued his own life was permanently at odds with the attention- and approval-starved part of him that was determined, at age 64, to make a name for himself before it was too late. When they had first met, Stakes recalls, ‘I felt sorry for him because I could tell he’d never had anybody on his side.’

After setting up for the launch, Stakes drove Hughes home the evening of 21 February. The desert blurred past outside the windows of Waldo’s pickup truck, a 2002 Ford F-150 with 441 000 miles (709 700 km) on it that he’d nicknamed the Gray Ghost.

Hughes would spend the night home with his cats, his typical prelaunch ritual. Stakes used the quiet moments on the road to talk Hughes out of the launch. He said his friend Garren Frantzen had had a nightmare in which a rocket soared into the clouds, then crashed to the ground before its parachutes deployed.

Stakes says the dream struck him as a meaningful premonition, but Hughes waved him off: ‘Garren’s just trying to rain on our parade.’

Stakes tried a different tack. ‘There’s so many other things we can do,’ he said. ‘We’ve already proved we can build a steam rocket and jump it.’ The incremental gains, he said, weren’t worth the risk.

‘Let’s take any money we can raise and let’s go to space,’ Stakes told Hughes. ‘Let’s quit screwing around with these things. Those things are gonna kill you. Every time you get in one of those, you throw the dice.’

Space, though, was worth the risk: Their exploits could inspire future scientists.

Hughes was adamant. ‘I’m gonna do it,’ he said. ‘I want them to have their own footage.’

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‘MAD’ MIKE HUGHES

Stakes replied that no matter what happened, this was his last steam-rocket launch. He was irritated that Hughes was doing it for the TV crew. ‘F*** the production company,’ he said. ‘Forget these guys.’

But he knew Hughes wouldn’t listen. the Mojave appears at night, during the day it’s transformed into something forbidding: all sun-bleached scrub and searing UV rays and scorched earth – all things prickly, jagged, and venomous.

On launch day, the sky was hostile. The crew had reconvened on private property eight miles (12.8 km) south of Barstow, and at least initially, everything proceeded smoothly, says Stakes. Rain had been in the forecast, but he knew it would hold off – after 30 years in the desert, he can smell oncoming precipitation. Bern would be operating the radio, communicating with Hughes. Mad Mike’s goal was to fly a mile up.

The steam was superheated by early afternoon. Stakes has a typical launch routine: Sprinkle a few drops of holy water from the Vatican into the rocket’s tank; then say prayers with the team and with Hughes individually. This time, Hughes refused the holy water; prayers would have to do. ‘The juju has to be good,’ he says. ‘You gotta get right with God, because you could be seeing him in a few minutes.’

Hughes climbed inside the cockpit and strapped in. Clouds wheeled across the sky.

Hughes rotated a ball valve a quarter-turn to launch, and the rocket leapt skyward with an infernal hiss.

Stakes knew almost instantly they were in trouble. Just off the ramp, the vessel ‘jinked’, as he put it – jerked to the right.

To his eye, the projectile was also carrying far too much velocity. It was inside the cloud cover 3 000 feet overhead within a handful of seconds, which would mean travelling at least 500 mph (805 km/h). ‘I’ve never seen anything move that fast with a man in it,’ Stakes says.

Mad Mike’s rocket briefly disappeared from view into the clouds, then gravity caught it. As it plummeted straight down, Bern repeatedly screamed into the radio, ‘Throw the chute! Throw the chute!’ But there was no reply, and the craft’s two rocket-grade parachutes never emerged.

After 22 seconds aloft, the rocket, travelling faster than 400 mph (644 km/h), collided with the desert.

AS MAGICAL AS

was predictably swift and fierce. In the wake of his death, one last cycle of Mad Mike indignation churned

THE PUBLIC RECKONING

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though all of its wearisome life phases. A tweeted video of the fatal flight sparked more than 3 800 comments, some as brutally blunt as ‘Natural selection’.

The wreckage ‘looked like someone took a bunch of aluminium foil and crumpled it in their hands – remember, this is steel – and threw it on the ground,’ Stakes says. He and Bern discovered that Hughes’s launch adaptation had failed him. The rupture disc came out of the rocket unevenly, turning it into what looked like ‘a slightly bent tortilla,’ Stakes says. Where the pressurised steam escaped first, on the left side of the tail, it was so powerful that it sheared a bolt off the engine’s nozzle, opening the nozzle excessively wide and causing the vessel to accelerate at a ferocious velocity and lurch to the right just after the launch. Though the jink didn’t look catastrophic, Stakes says, ‘inside the cockpit it would be like somebody hit you in the head with a sledgehammer.’

If Hughes didn’t black out from that wrenching motion – or break his neck, which Bern thinks is possible – the G-forces from the rocket accelerating so violently likely knocked him unconscious.

Any of these factors would explain the untouched parachutes.

The fate of the television show is uncertain.

World of Wonders declined to comment.

Waldo Stakes still talks about moving forwards with the rockoon project, with a new astronaut, but his son sees a difference in him since Hughes’s death. ‘It’s not anything we’ve moved on from, and I don’t think it will be anytime soon,’ Tone says. ‘I think it’s something that will be with him forever.’

The younger Stakes says he misses listening to the conversational swordplay between his father and Mad Mike. ‘Sometimes you listen to them, you’re like, “I don’t know if this guy’s really smart or really crazy,”’ Tone says.

‘I think it’s a fine line, and sometimes you go back and forth over that line.’

Perhaps Mad Mike’s legacy can straddle that line. His headlong pursuit of celebrity will rankle many people, and even those close to him acknowledge that the idea of it consumed him. ‘Mike was one of those guys that wanted to leave his mark on the world,’ Tone Stakes says. ‘He wanted to have a name.’

Bern says that Hughes remained an enigmatic figure to the end, someone who chose quixotic home-made rocketry over profitable income and who lived like a ‘hermit’ in a half-empty, unkempt house with an unmaintained garden. He urged Hughes to at least charge admission to the launches – if he was going to risk his life, he might as well

make money. But it was as if for Hughes, the legacy was the only currency that mattered.

‘He lived and breathed those rockets,’ Bern says. ‘It’s hard to explain, but it was his life.’

The question of what it’s reasonable to risk your life for will likely haunt us for as long as we occupy the planet. But Toby Brusseau had an epiphany when he was shooting Mad Mike’s 2018 launch. To capture footage of Hughes in the cockpit during the flight, the film-maker needed to turn on the GoPro cameras he’d installed inside the rocket just before launch. He had to hurry. ‘This thing is a bomb,’ Stakes says of the steam rocket.

‘If it cracks or breaks a weld or something, it’ll kill everybody within a couple hundred feet instantly.’

The desert was so bright that the cockpit, by contrast, was pitched in blackness, and Brusseau couldn’t make out whether the battery pack was turned on. As he strained to see, Stakes and Hughes hollered at him to hurry up already, the rocket so jammed with superheated steam that it was almost quivering, and Brusseau himself was keenly aware that he was straddling a seething cauldron. But those sustained close-up shots of Hughes inside the rocket as it launched and floated through the sky to rising cinematic music before the craft landed with a rough jolt? Mad Mike’s face is filled with fear and uncertainty and determination, and also a kind of awe at what they have achieved. That would be the best footage in the movie.

Long after Brusseau had hurried down and away from the rocket, it hit him flush that he’d just risked his life for his film. Sure, it wasn’t an intentional decision – he’d just wanted that footage and went for it – but for a moment, he’d lost himself to the pursuit of his passion project, taking a chance he couldn’t have imagined if he wasn’t so spun up inside his quest.

Beyond his audacity, and a few misguided beliefs, Hughes was not so different than anyone who wanders into his basement or garage having hatched an idea in their head, and plunges ahead to see what their hands and brains and tools might do. Maybe that guy will build the fastest car on Earth, or design a new way to desalinate seawater to slake the world’s thirst, or find a way into space on his own. Mad Mike had the dreamer part of that equation down cold – the ability to see what he might mean to the world once he became the first human to forge his own path to the edge of the stars, the person willing to navigate a place where none of the rest of us could go. That was the easy part. It was only here on Earth that he could never quite find his way. popularmechanics.co.za

How Hollywood Set Designers Hid America’s WWII Aircraft Factories

BY CORY GRAFF

In the US Army’s greatest cover-up, Boeing’s Plant 2 disappeared under a 10 ha suburb of burlap, chicken feathers, and wood-framed cars.

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A

as the sun rose over the horizon, a Japanese aviator worked to get his bearings above enemy territory. Anti-aircraft shells rocked his floatplane bomber as he looked for his target, a giant aircraft factory. The imposing building and expansive runways should be unmistakable, but there were only houses below.

American interceptors would surely find him soon. Seconds turned into minutes he couldn’t afford. He was still searching in vain when a pair of American P-40 Warhawk fighters zoomed in behind him, lining up to end his failed mission.

In early 1942, this scenario played out clearly in the mind of US Army engineer Colonel John F Ohmer Jr, though the intended mark for his greatest illusion – the Imperial Japanese Navy – had yet to actually appear. The art and science of camouflage had infatuated Ohmer for years. After joining the army in 1938, he combined his love of magic and photography to find inventive ways to fool the eye and the lens. When Ohmer went overseas to study Britain’s wartime concealment efforts, he marvelled as German attackers wasted their bombs in open fields brilliantly attired to appear as vital targets.

As commander of the US Army’s 604th Engineer Camouflage Battalion, Ohmer campaigned to demonstrate his craft by obscuring Hawaii’s Wheeler Field in 1941.

His superiors rejected his proposal because of the $56 210 price tag (nearly $900 000 today). Then on 7 December 1941, Japanese attackers bombed and strafed Oahu’s exposed airfields, along with the naval base at Pearl Harbor. Wheeler alone lost 83 warplanes, each one nearly worth the cost of Ohmer’s proposed cover-up.

With America at war, it seemed like only a matter of time before America’s West Coast bases and factories became the next targets of the Japanese navy. Enemy raiders were spotted skulking offshore. One Japanese submarine shelled an oil storage facility near Santa Barbara and in the early morning hours of 25 February 1942, air defence gunners around Los Angeles blasted 1 400 shells into the spotlight-pierced night sky, chasing the ghosts of unidentified aircraft.

The threat of an imminent attack led Ohmer’s superiors to reassess the value of his vision. He received a dream assignment, one that was simple in concept, but colossal in

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scope. He had to make everything worth bombing, from San Diego to Seattle, disappear. The long list included airfields, oil depots, aircraft warning stations, military camps, and defensive gun batteries. The most visible and vulnerable targets were a dozen or so distinctive, wooden aircraft assembly buildings. Military leaders fretted that just a few air-dropped incendiary bombs would burn them to the ground. The loss of just one major aeroplane-producing facility could lengthen the war considerably. If a factory such as Lockheed burned in 1942, the military would lose roughly 3 500 fighters, bombers, and cargo planes they were counting on. It could easily take a year or more to get such a facility up and running again.

Ohmer turned to Hollywood to find the most adept civilian workers, raiding movie studios to leverage the skills of set designers, art directors, painters, carpenters, and landscape artists for the urgent task, along with a handful of willing animators, lighting experts, and prop designers. Ohmer knew

that these artisans worked fast and already understood the fundamentals of illusion from building elaborate movie sets.

Some of the concealment efforts were relatively simple. Southern California aircraft-building facilities such as Consolidated, North American, and Northrop quickly disappeared under a confusing web of drab paint and camouflage netting. The Army called the jobs ‘tone-downs’, meant to blur and obscure the distinct lines of the plants.

Factories located in urban areas, such as Lockheed in Burbank, Boeing in Seattle, and Douglas in Santa Monica, induced the cover-up crews to go much further. In order to make the big facilities vanish into their native landscape, artists and craftsmen created false neighbourhoods on the tops of enormous assembly buildings, complete with realistic-looking streets, trees, gardens, and homes.

Crunched for time and resources, the army and the Hollywood crews understood that the illusion only had to be good enough to popularmechanics.co.za

On the roof of Boeing Plant 2, trees and structures were often shorter than the workers. Boeing’s faux suburb design mimicked the nearby South Park neighbourhood.

confuse an enemy pilot for a few critical minutes. As Douglas Airview (a magazine from the Douglas Aircraft Company) put it, ‘This would give defending planes and guns their chance. In the bookkeeping of war, that possibility is worth any cost.’

Ohmer’s trickery worked so well that American fliers looking for Douglas became lost, complaining someone had absconded with their once-familiar buildings and runway. Lockheed’s disguise was so wellexecuted that the Warner Brothers studio facility suddenly stood out as the most imposing complex in the San Fernando Valley. Jack Warner worried that his moviemaking complex might be mistaken for the hidden aircraft factory. Unconfirmed rumours circulated that he hired a company painter to scribe a huge arrow on the roof of one of his massive sound stages, along with the words ‘Lockheed That-A-Way’. popularmechanics.co.za

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the crown jewel of ohmer’s concealments took place near Seattle, where the Boeing’s Plant 2 sprawled over 65 000 m2 of floor space. Inside, thousands of men and women churned out a new B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber roughly every 90 minutes.

Ohmer placed his top movie studio recruit on the Boeing project, architect John Detlie.

He was pure Hollywood, married to movie star Veronica Lake. Before Detlie joined the war effort, he was an Oscar-nominated art director and set designer at MGM. In Seattle, Detlie assembled 13 architects and draftsmen, eight commercial artists, seven landscape architects, five engineers, and a soil-management expert.

Thwarting an enemy reconnaissance flier took more than simply covering the factory building. A sharp-eyed scout might zero in on the adjoining airfield, parking lots, or ramp areas. Making Boeing’s entire production facility disappear meant sowing confusion over several square miles of land.

Disguising the active runways and taxiways as an innocuous urban scene called for a two-dimensional solution to not impede aircraft operations. Planners envisioned a pattern of visual noise composed of lawns, buildings, and roads criss-crossing the active airfield. First, builders mixed finely crushed rock into bitumen, an asphalt-like substance, and applied it to areas heavily trafficked by aircraft. The mixture provided a dull texture that gobbled up reflections and shine emanating from the airfield’s large, flat concrete surfaces. In non-traffic spaces, the men added wood chips and cement to absorb light.

Over the rough texture, workmen used paint to create an intricate top-down view of a typical neighbourhood, devised by Detlie’s crew. Its pigment, developed by Warner Brothers, was reputed to ‘resist disclosure of the camouflage through infrared photography’. Oil mixed with the custom paint helped establish a convincing crosshatch of artificial roads. On the airport’s infield, men constructed 15 cm-high false buildings made from concrete blocks. From overhead, the ludicrously small structures cast realistic shadows and gave just a small amount of depth, giving more life to the scene. The finished deception looked amazingly impressive from the ‘attacker’seye-view’ at five to ten thousand feet. Only as a pilot came in low for landing did the hidden runway lose its illusion.

To blot out expansive ramps and automobile parking lots surrounding the factory, workers installed 30 m wooden masts in sturdy concrete footings before webbing the tall poles with heavy steel cable.

The WWII aircraft that camo protected Production numbers from January 1940 to August 1945 at the six largest US West Coast factories.

NORTH AMERICAN: INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA

16 447

Including 9 949 P-51 Mustang fighters, 3 208 B-25 bombers, and 2 163 AT-6 advanced trainers Camo: Tone-down LOCKHEED: BURBANK, CALIFORNIA

13 385

Including 9 423 P-38 Lightning fighters and 2 189 Hudson patrol bombers Camo: Urban neighbourhood camouflage CONSOLIDATED VULTEE: DOWNEY, CALIFORNIA

11 687

Including 11 537 BT-13 and BT-15 Valiant basic trainers Camo: Tone-down CONSOLIDATED VULTEE: SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

9 630

Including 6 725 B-24 Liberator heavy bombers and 2 833 Navy patrol bombers Camo: Tone-down DOUGLAS: LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA

9 439

Including 4 285 C-47 cargo planes and 3 000 B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers Camo: Tone-down BOEING: SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

7 340

Including 6 942 B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers Camo: Urban neighbourhood camouflage

Boeing never finished covering its parking areas, but similar projects utilised hundreds of masts and more than 300 000 m of cable.

Builders would stretch acres of camouflage netting from the suspended cables, creating a dazzling pattern of fields, lawns, and buildings over parked cars and newly built aircraft. At another factory, more than 350 000 m2 of string netting spanned the parking lots. These nets were interwoven with burlap strips and blocks of fabric, then dotted with wads of green-painted chicken feathers affixed with tar to look like vegetation. But when it rained, the paintinfused feathers smelled awful. And when it was warm, fuzzy green tar-coated plumes drifted off and stuck to fresh-from-thefactory aeroplanes.

Workers obscured the heart of Boeing’s facility, Plant 2, with 10.5 ha of camouflage netting stretched across the roof to create the appearance of a new faux ground level elevated roughly 15 m above the surrounding landscape. The building’s uneven bays and distinctive saw-tooth profile required the netting to be supported by wooden scaffolding or steel cables in low spots.

Reinforced catwalks, sometimes masquerading as sidewalks, included wood and wire handrails to keep a distracted

Source: Army Air Forces Statistical Digest, WWII, Men and Equipment (Table 75)

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PHOTOGRAPHY: BOEING

A fresh B-17 is rolled out of Plant 2. The edge of the rooftop camouflage was painted and built to match the true ground level.

maintenance person from straying off the supported path and plunging through the netting.

Detlie’s mock rooftop neighbourhood at Boeing called for 53 houses, a dozen or so garages, greenhouses, a garage, and a store.

The width and length of the structures stayed life-size, while the height, barely perceptible to fast and high-flying aircraft, was truncated.

For the sake of speed, cost, and the rarity of wartime materials, many of the rooftop houses were only about two metres tall.

Beams affixed to the factory roof penetrated the netting vertically to become the corner posts of the artificial structures.

Clad in burlap and plywood, the houses wore dark panels for windows, and light and earthy exterior paint tones seen in any American neighbourhood of the era. Roofs, which would be most visible from the skies, often appeared in white, red, or a dark gray hue.

Two full-height houses on Boeing’s rooftop were real, providing the living quarters for army gun crews protecting the factory.

Roads and driveways made from oilstained burlap overlaid the netting and spanned the rooftop scene. Dotting the roads, workers built dozens of imitation autopopularmechanics.co.za

mobiles from wooden frames clad in fabric.

Unlike the graceful, rounded cars of the late 1930s and early 1940s, the fake autos were slab-sided and plain. Plant workers lashed down the artificial cars to keep the lightweight structures from moving on windy days.

In the neighbourhood’s yards, workers created artificial vegetation ranging from expansive victory gardens to 3.5 m-tall trees.

Each of the 300 imitation trees began with a trunk and main branches hammered together from lumber. Artists made foliage for the trees and bushes from chicken wire and fibreglass flocked in painted feathers – these all-weather tree construction methods were used a decade later when Disneyland opened in 1955.

In an attempt to break up the distinctive shadows created at the edges of the massive building, workers camouflaged its outer walls in a multicoloured pattern and constructed cantilevered wads of artificial foliage along its perimeter.

The factory’s tallest chimneys disappeared inside strategically placed pump houses and sheds while smaller vents received a coat of red paint to look like fire hydrants. The tinderbox setwork required an actual fire-

suppression system, too, made up of 100 functioning fireplugs, 67 sprinkler units, and concealed fire-fighting towers equipped with powerful spray nozzles.

Factory employees accessed the rooftop site via hatches and patrolled on the catwalks above the plant. As they inspected and repaired the neighbourhood they called ‘Wonderland’, they also moved cars around the scene and even rearranged laundry on clothes lines to maintain a lived-in look.

Periodic application of new paint shades assured that the bogus vegetation and artificial lawns continued to look realistic in every season.

As America pushed its forces across the Pacific, the threat of an attack on the continental United States became less and less likely, yet the factory camouflage stayed secret until July of 1945. That month, as Allied forces closed in on the Japanese home islands, army officials felt safe enough to permit national publications to run with the story of the strange neighbourhoods made from burlap, plywood, and feathers.

Though the Japanese bombers never materialised in American skies, readers marvelled at the ingenuity and achievement of one of America’s most peculiar wartime engineering feats.

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CHALLENGE / BY ANDREW DANIELS /

READER PROJECT:

Make something old into something cool The mission was simple: Grab old junk and repurpose it into a brandnew creation. This is what was built.

VACUUM BLUETOOTH SPEAKER The builder: Derek Coulter @derekmcoulter Coulter, a Pittsburgh-based industrial designer for Dick’s Sporting Goods, grew up fashioning new stuff from scraps on his family’s Iowa farm: a zip line out of pulley wheels and channel iron, a downhill racer out of a 2 × 6 and old cabinet doors.

The best thing about upcycling, Coulter says, ‘is taking something that has lived a good life and giving 60

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it a second chance’. That was the case with the Cadillac vacuum cleaner he salvaged from his late grandmother’s junk pile. His idea: turn the beatup appliance into a functioning Bluetooth speaker.

Once Coulter stripped the vacuum down and discovered it was a sheet-metal cylinder, he fetched a few basic materials – including deconstructed Sony speakers, a Lepai mini amplifier, and five- and 12-volt power bricks for the USB and power, respectively – and figured out how to make them all fit together.

It wasn’t easy. ‘The hardest part was choosing the order of operations – there was a lot of standing and staring into space before each step,’ Coulter says.

Plus, he’s still honing his electrical skills, ‘so I don’t leave [the speaker] plugged in when it isn’t in use,’ he says. ‘I’d rather not burn my apartment down if I messed something up in there.’

Still, after a couple of weeks of work and expected bumps, Coulter has a retrotastic device that ‘sounds great and gets plenty loud,’ he says.

‘I got exactly what I wanted out of the process.’ popularmechanics.co.za

TV MINIBAR The Builder: Dean Wilbur

PHOTOGRAPHY: DEREK COULTER, DYLAN WILBUR

As an auto mechanic in Milwaukee, Wilbur spends his days fixing other people’s prized rides. By night, however, the lifelong DIYer gets his hands dirty with his own projects, from building furniture out of odds and ends, to restoring a ’71 Camaro.

For this POP MECH Reader Challenge, Wilbur retrieved a find that he’d been sitting on for some time: a Capehart television console from 1951 that his wife scored from eBay in the hopes of converting it into a cabinet. ‘Timing was everything,’ says Wilbur. ‘This project has been on my mind for a while, but the deadline of the challenge definitely helped wrap this thing up, and the theme was perfect to describe what we were doing.’

First, Wilbur stripped the set, which proved to be the trickiest part. ‘It was so well-built, with a lot of glue, nails, and screws that were pretty well-hidden,’ he says.

‘It was fascinating to see the level of detail and quality that went into manufacturing back in 1951.’

Once he had cleared that hurdle, Wilbur grabbed a piano hinge and magnet latch to set about rebuilding the front of the TV set so it could swing open to reveal the inside storage space. After building a lamp from the TV tubes to illuminate the shelving, Wilbur recruited his son, Dylan, for the last major step: designing and printing a vintage test pattern – please stand by – to adorn the cabinet.

Now, Dylan proudly displays the finished product in his apartment, with a toast to his dad’s ingenuity.

‘This was definitely a team project – I relied on the creativity of my wife and son to make this happen,’ Wilbur says. popularmechanics.co.za

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P R AC T I C A L K N O W L E D G E

WOODWORKING

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DIY PROJECT TRADITIONAL JOINTS

WOOD FOR THE JOINT Superb French sycamore and kiaat boards were generously sponsored

by Rare Woods SA (rarewoods.co. za) for this project. These contrasting wood species clearly show the structure of the half-lap joint.

KIAAT (PTEROCARPUS ANGOLENSIS)

Joints are a crucial part of woodwork. Our new series of ‘how-to’ articles will explore a variety of traditional woodjoining methods, all aimed at making your own furniture.

Techniques for making half-laps all remain the same, and with that in mind, we kick off with the T half-lap joint. / BY TOBIAS LOCH NE R; T E CH NIC AL : M AT T H E US OD E NDA A L /

T

humankind has been joining pieces of wood together. From sailing ships and great cathedrals, to doors, windows, wainscoting and the many forms of fine furniture, wood has been joined together to create both the utilitarian and the magnificent.

Every woodworker employs joints, either cut by hand or by machine.

These joints often form a visible part of the beauty and class of an item, while other joints are completely hidden. Woodworking joints should be strong and work with the seasonal movement of the wood to allow the piece to last for generations. The strength can be derived from glue, from the specific shape of the joint, or from fasteners such as screws or nails, or a combination of any of these.

When parts of the joint are shaped to interlock, the joint has both mechanical strength and adhesive strength. Mortise and tenon joints, dovetail joints and lap joints are examples where both mechanical- and glue strength is excellent. The larger the surface area within the joint that is glued, the stronger the joint will be.

First up in our traditional joint series are half-lap joints, variations of which include the cross half-lap, T half-lap, corner half-lap, mitred corner half-lap and dovetail halflap. This article will specifically walk you through the process of making a T half-lap joint, but remember that the principles and techniques of creating any lapped joints are exactly the same.

HROUGHOUT HISTORY,

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Also known as African teak, Mukwa, Muninga, paddlewood and wild teak, this species is closely related to African padauk (both being members of the Pterocarpus genus). Both are extremely durable, stable in use, and easy to work.

Kiaat has an impressive strengthto-weight ratio, which makes it a choice timber for a wide range of applications. The heartwood colour ranges from a light golden brown to a medium brown with reddish or purple tints. Grains are straight, wavy or interlocked and the texture varies from fine to medium. Kiaat has excellent working properties, is dimensionally stable, and joints, turns, glues and finishes exceptionally well.

FRENCH SYCAMORE (ACER PSEUDOPLATANUS)

Like other members of the true maple genus (Acer), European or French sycamore is a hardwood whose sapwood is way more sought after than its heartwood.

The sapwood varies from almost pure white to a light creamy colour with tinting ranging from golden yellow to muted red. The heartwood is generally medium to dark reddish brown. Grains vary from straight to very wavy, and some pieces have dramatic patterns.

Due to its fine texture, it’s easy to work, and turns, joints, glues and finishes very well, boasting an excellent natural lustre. Boards are typically quarter-sawn – the species is renowned for its use as a body wood for stringed orchestral instruments, as it possesses excellent resonant qualities.

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WOODWORKING

20 mm

A 10 mm 10 mm

50 mm

PART A: THE HALF-LAP

A

50 mm

MATERIALS The joints in this new series are intended for practice. Cut a few pieces of off-cut wood for each part of the joint, enabling you to practise variations of the joint. On each successive joint you’ll hone your skill and accuracy, and after completing them you should be comfortable with incorporating them into your next furniture masterpiece.

50 mm

50 mm

PROCESS

T HALF-LAP JOINT

STEP 1: Once you’ve prepared the pieces of stock, clearly label the chosen working face and edge on each part; always use those two surfaces as your references. Layout the cutting lines, positioning part A on part B to form a ‘T’, making sure you’re marking and scribing accurately at all times.

» Several wood pieces 150 mm long × 20 mm thick × 50 mm wide » Accurately plane all surfaces to be true and square

TOOL LIST The selection of tools required to create these joints by hand is relatively small. » Marking knife » 0.5 mm mechanical pencil » Western tenon saw or Japanese dozuki saw » Small try square » Steel ruler » Marking gauge » Bevel-edge chisels » Shoulder plane » Smoothing plane » Block plane » Router plane » Mallet

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STEP 2: Clearly mark out the waste areas on both boards. With a sharp chisel, create a small kerf on the waste side of all of the scribed lines to allow your saw to register correctly for the cut. Kerfing is especially helpful on the edges of the boards to prevent tear-out during the saw cut. It’s also extremely helpful in making an accurate and true saw cut.

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50 mm

B

20 mm

B

PART B: THE HOUSING

10 mm

STEP 3: On part A, cut the waste out with your hand saw, remaining fractionally

proud of the scribed lines in both axes. Work down to the final floor level of the joint with your router plane. Using a shoulder plane, clean up the final waste on the shoulder of the joint, making sure it remains at exactly 90° to the edges and face of the part.

STEP 4: Saw the two shoulders of

the joint in part B, once again keeping fractionally proud of the scribed lines.

Once the shoulders are cut, take a chisel and remove the bulk of the waste from the joint to a very small amount less than the scribed depth. Next, use your router plane, and working from both sides of the board work the floor of the joint down to the final line. With a sharp chisel, carefully pare away the tiny amount of remaining waste on the two shoulders of the joint.

KERFING IS EXTREMELY HELPFUL IN MAKING AN ACCURATE AND TRUE SAW CUT. popularmechanics.co.za

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WOODWORKING

STEP 6: Apply a thin coat of the adhesive you’ve chosen to all mating surfaces of the joint, assemble and clamp until cured. (Don’t over-tighten the clamps.) Once your practice joint has cured, take a sharp and well-tuned hand plane and clean up the final faces.

A

WIREFRAME DRAWING OF BOTH COMPONENTS

B

STEP 5: Test fit the joint. Do not force the parts together! If you’ve taken enough care and worked accurately, the joint should ideally go together with firm hand pressure or a few light taps with a mallet.

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OVERVIEW: Although the T half-lap joint is reasonably simple to make, as with all woodworking joinery, paying careful attention to layout, accuracy and crisp edges is paramount in creating strong and beautiful joints that you’ll be proud to include in your furniture making. To practise and hone your joint-making skills, make several more variations of half-lap joints, such as the ones photographed here.

BUY YOUR WOOD HERE: RARE WOODS SOUTH AFRICA STARTED BY Seamus and

WRAP-UP

PHOTOGRAPHY: HENK VENTER

Have a request or suggestion related to the woodworking articles? Drop the editor an email (popularmechanics@ramsaymedia.co.za) and we’ll try to accommodate your ideas in future issues of the magazine.

IN THE NEXT ISSUE: With summer arriving, we’ll be building a small side table for indoor and outdoor use using only lap joints for the frame.

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Brendan’s dad Rory HarcourtWood back in 1982, and based in Epping Industria in Cape Town, with a branch in Knysna, Rare Woods has the largest and most diverse selection of timber available on the African continent. There is more than 8 000 m³ of timber available, made up of more than 130 domestic and exotic species.

Whether you need large slabs, turning blanks, lutherie parts or anything in-between, you can order your timber online and it’ll be delivered by courier to your workshop door – it couldn’t be simpler.

If you’re looking for some really special woods for your latest project, log on to rarewoods. co.za or ring the Cape Town office on 021 535 2004, or the Knysna team on 044 382 6575.

Sign up to the Rare Woods newsletter and receive a R100 discount off your first order of R1 000 or more. All online purchases to the value of R1 000 or more qualify for free delivery throughout South Africa.

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TOOL REVIEW / BY MARK SAMUEL /

REVIEWED Festool cordless plunge-cut saw

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THE RIGHT

(FES)TOOL

FOR THE JOB A Festool plunge-cut saw is a versatile addition to your workshop. Add ‘cordless’ to the equation, as well as Festool’s rail system, and you have a highly capable all-rounder that’s suited to a range of cutting applications.

W

HEN I WAS A

boy, my dad was always doing woodworking projects, so I was exposed to a garage full of hand- and power tools. My dad has a safety-first philosophy, so wearing eye-, ear- and body protection when operating power tools was the norm.

(He was the operator, I was the helper.)

But all the protective gear in the world didn’t make me less afraid of his radial-arm power saw. That thing seemed angry, and the unreasonable sounds it made while dad was cutting certainly backed up my theory. Like an enraged predator, it looked poised to devour a finger, hand or forearm in the blink of an eye.

That impression has always stuck with me, when it comes to power saws, so when I received a new Festool cordless plunge-cut saw from Vermont Sales to review, I had a nagging apprehension deep in the reptilian complex of my brain. Was this tool going to exhibit those same angry traits as my dad’s decades-old saw?

I can happily reassure you that the answer is a resounding no. Never have I used such a politely behaved, easy-to-operate and well-designed power saw. Festool knows a thing or two about making power tools.

This cordless plunge-cut saw takes the notion of circular saws to the next level. It’s designed to be exceptionally

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safe, operating in a way that makes it very difficult to injure yourself.

Every component on the saw that can be adjusted is bright green, a clever feature on all Festool power tools. The depth-of-cut adjustment (up to 55 mm on this model, or 5 mm less when paired with a guide rail) is green, the cut-angle adjustment lever is green, the safety trigger is green, the cut speed dial is green, and so are the knobs for detaching the batteries. Even the zipper on the sawdust bag gets the treatment.

While it’s simple enough to use the saw on its own for standard rip- and cross-cuts, add in an optional Festool guide rail (available in several lengths), and the results of your cuts will be highly accurate. The saw glides smoothly along the rail, cutting neatly and splinterfree (due to the rail’s splinter guard).

While the benefits of cordless are vast, this saw can be bought in corded format too, which will leave a smaller dent in your wallet. But if you’re someone who works frequently in different locations, outside, on worksites, or in places that don’t have electricity, the powerful dual 18 V 5.2 Ah Li-Ion battery system (delivering a maximum of 36 V with both batteries fitted) is hard to beat. The saw can be used with a single battery, in the lower slot, resulting in a lighter and more manoeuvrable tool – with slightly less power – delivering between 2 650 and 3 800 rpm. On full 36 V power, with both batteries slotted in place, you’ll get up to 5 200 rpm.

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TOOL REVIEW

1

2

4

7

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3

5

8

6

9

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EVERY COMPONENT ON THE SAW THAT CAN BE ADJUSTED IS BRIGHT GREEN.

PHOTOGRAPHY: MARK SAMUEL

1 Festool’s Systainer system keeps your tool safe when you’re not using it.

2 The depth of cut is easy to adjust using the split scale (giving measurements with and without a guide rail in place). 3 Clip and unclip the dual batteries with ease. The machine can be used with a single battery. 4 Disengage the trigger lock with your thumb, and then operate the machine’s on/off switch with your index finger. This helps to prevent accidental activation of the saw. 5 As with all Festool products, the saw is beautifully made; all green components have a purpose (for example, for adjustments, or to turn it on and off). 6 Adjust the rail gliding tension here. 7 View your work through this little window. 8 The dust collection bag is removable. 9 Change the saw speed using this small green dial.

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The batteries incorporate cooling and Bluetooth technologies, however the latter cannot be used in South Africa, as compatible accessories are not imported. The LED battery monitor keeps you informed of the charge status, so if you’re doing many hours of cutting, you’ll know exactly how much juice you have left. When you’re getting low, simply unclip the batteries, slot them into their chargers, and top them up. A read-out on the chargers tells you how long you will need to wait until they’re recharged – usually just enough time to grab some lunch and a refreshing drink before continuing with your work.

The saw has the ability to bevel over, to cut at angles of between –1° and 47°. To achieve this, loosen the clamps on the front and back of the machine and make the required adjustments.

Releasing a green lever at the front lets you achieve –1°; a green pin at the back gets you the additional 2°, up to 47°.

Changing the blade is exceptionally simple, using the FastFix (you guessed it, green) lever on the top of the handle.

Within Festool’s range of saw blades, you will find options to suit most applications and materials.

Working in a healthy environment is important, especially when some sawdust contains harmful particulates.

The saw’s dust collection system comes with a detachable dust bag, or, for improved dust extraction, use the included adapter to fit the saw to a workshop vacuum, or even better, a Festool extractor. This is where the Bluetooth battery tech would come into play, if the relevant accessory was available here, linking to and remotely operating the extractor.

Depending on your budget, you can accessorise this Festool saw in a number of ways. For me, combining it with the rail system is a no-brainer.

Precise work that’s repeatable becomes so easy to achieve. The rail can be clamped to work surfaces, and any play between saw and rail is adjusted away using two rotating dials on the base of the saw. Channels on the top of the rail let you connect rails together, resulting in much longer cuts if needed.

You can easily add to your Festool collection, as everything is compatible with each other, including the brand’s multifunction tables, and the many other power tools in the range that utilise the same battery system.

The saw is housed in Festool’s unique Systainer, a stackable container system that protects your expensive hardware when not in use, and allows you to transport it easily and safely.

The basic unit (excluding batteries) is priced from about R13 250. So yes, this saw is costly, but if you scour online forums researching track saws, you’ll battle to find a more revered product.

This is a woodworking companion that will serve you well for many years, and for extra piece of mind it’s backed by Festool’s comprehensive warranty.

Thankfully, this is nothing like dad’s radial-arm saw. It’s a machine that has the potential to transform your woodworking, safely and stress-free.

MORE INFO The recommended retail price for a basic Festool Cordless Plunge-Cut TSC 55 is R13 235, but this comes without batteries (from R2 995) or a charger (from R1 650).

These items need to be ordered as optional extras, just like the rail system.

To find out more, and to get specific pricing, visit festool.co.za, vermontsales.co.za, or call 011 314 7711.

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CONSTRUCT AN

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EASY-TO-BUILD BOOKCASE WHAT YOU’LL NEED TOOLS:

» Drill » Kreg Pocket-Hole Jig » Mitre saw » Tape measure » Speed square » Pencil

HARDWARE:

G

OT BOOKS

lying around that need a neat home?

We have the solution.

This bookcase offers ample storage and display space, all in a compact footprint. It’s super easy to build using 38 mm × 38 mm and 19 mm × 235 mm boards, plus pocket-hole screws.

The vertical dividers create built-in bookends and make the whole structure stronger without adding complexity.

40 32 12 1 1

32 mm coarse-thread Kreg Pocket-Hole Screws 64 mm coarse-thread Kreg Pocket-Hole Screws Paint-grade Kreg Pocket-Hole Plugs (optional) Wood glue Right-angle drill attachment

WOOD: 4 2 1

38 mm × 38 mm × 2 400 mm pine board 19 mm × 235 mm × 1 800 mm poplar board 19 mm × 235 mm × 1 200 mm poplar board

38 mm

Four 38 × 38 × 2 400 mm boards Leg 953 mm

Long rail 813 mm

Short rail 235 mm

Two 19 × 235 × 1 800 mm boards 235 mm

Top and bottom shelf 889 mm

Middle shelf 889 mm

One 19 × 235 × 1 200 mm board 235 mm

Top shelf divider

Shelf divider

279 mm

260 mm 260 mm

Shelf divider

PARTS LIST: Quantity

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Name

Dimensions and material

4

Leg

38 × 38 × 953 mm pine

4

Long rail

38 × 38 × 813 mm pine

4

Short rail

38 × 38 × 235 mm pine

2

Top and bottom shelf

19 × 235 × 889 mm poplar

2

Middle shelf

19 × 235 × 889 mm poplar

2

Shelf divider

19 × 235 × 260 mm poplar

1

Shelf

19 × 235 × 279 mm poplar

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DIY WITH KREG

PROCESS STEP 1: MAKE THE FRAME PARTS

Cut four long rails, four legs and four short rails from the 38 mm × 38 mm pine boards, as shown in the cutting diagram. Set your Kreg Pocket-Hole Jig for 38 mm-thick material and drill pocket holes at the ends of the long rails and short rails, as shown.

Next, set your Pocket-Hole Jig and drill bit for 19 mm-thick material. Then drill pocket holes centred on one side of each of the short rails, as shown. These holes will be used to help attach the shelves later.

When you’re done, sand the parts smooth using 120-grit then 150-grit sandpaper.

38 mm

Long rail 813 mm

38 mm

Leg 953 mm

38 mm 235 mm

Leg Long rail

Pocket holes drilled using 38 mm thickness setting

Short rail (Bottom view)

Short rail (Side view)

38 mm

Pocket holes drilled using 19 mm thickness setting

STEP 2: ASSEMBLE A PAIR OF FRAMES

819 mm

Leg 57 mm

Long rail

Position two long rails between two legs, so that the upper long rail sits flush with the tops of the legs, and the other long rail is located 57 mm up from the bottoms of the legs, as shown. Now attach the long rails using 64 mm coarse-thread Kreg Pocket-Hole Screws. Repeat this process to assemble the other frame. If you plan to finish your shelves like we did – with clear finish on the frames and paint on the shelves and dividers – now is a good time to apply it to the frame assemblies and the short dividers.

STEP 3: MAKE THE SHELVES AND DIVIDERS

Cut four shelves, two shelf dividers, and one top shelf divider from the 19 mm × 235 mm poplar boards, as shown in the cutting diagram. With your Kreg Pocket-Hole Jig set for 19 mm-thick material, drill pocket holes where shown in the top and bottom shelves, the middle shelves, and the three dividers. When you’re done, sand these parts smooth.

If you want to paint the shelves and dividers as we did, now is a good time to do it. Yes, you’ll have to wait for the paint to dry before moving on with the assembly, but you’ll save time in the long run, as painting now is much easier.

Glue and screw short rail to shelf

Short rail

Top/bottom shelf

Short rail 64 mm 178 mm

235 mm

203 mm

Top and bottom shelf

50 mm

235 mm

889 mm

Top shelf divider

279 mm

19 mm

235 mm

50 mm

Middle shelf

889 mm

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STEP 4: ATTACH SHORT RAILS TO SHELVES

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235 mm

Shelf divider

Once the paint and finish are dry, move on with the assembly. Glue and clamp two short rails to the bottom shelf. Make sure the pocket hole on the side of each short rail faces inwards. Secure each short rail to the bottom shelf using one 32 mm coarse-thread Kreg Pocket-Hole Screw. Repeat the process for the top shelf.

260 mm

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STEP 6: ATTACH THE MIDDLE SHELVES AND DIVIDERS STEP 5: ATTACH THE BOTTOM SHELF

Now you can position the bottom shelf assembly on one of the frame assemblies, as shown, and attach it. Use 64 mm coarse-thread Kreg PocketHole Screws to secure the short rails to the legs.

Use 32 mm coarse-thread Kreg Pocket-Hole Screws to attach the bottom shelf to the long rail.

Leg Bottom shelf

Cut two 260 mm-long spacers from the 38 mm × 38 mm boards.

Rest those spacers on the legs and against the bottom shelf. Position the middle shelf so it rests on the spacers. Secure the middle shelf using 32 mm coarse-thread pocket-hole screws. Next, position the divider as shown. Use a square to make sure the divider is located accurately, and then attach the shelves using 32 mm coarse-thread pocket-hole screws. Depending on your drill, you may not be able to fit the drill and driver bit between the shelves. This is where an inexpensive right-angle attachment can be handy, as mentioned in the tip. Repeat this process to attach the second middle shelf and divider, but this time offset the divider from the opposite end of the shelf.

292 mm Spacer

Long rail

Shelf divider Middle shelf

Upper face of bottom shelf sits flush with upper face of long rail

Spacer 260 mm

Long rail Leg

Leg

Spacer

38 mm

TIP:

STEP 7: ATTACH THE TOP SHELF AND DIVIDER

Set the top shelf assembly in position on the frame assembly. Use 64 mm coarse-thread pocket-hole screws to secure the short rails to the legs. Use 32 mm coarse-thread Kreg Pocket-Hole Screws to attach the top shelf to the long rail. Position the top shelf divider, check it with a square, and then attach the top divider using 32 mm coarse-thread Kreg Pocket-Hole Screws. If you want to plug the pocket holes in the dividers, go ahead and glue them in, trim the plugs flush, and then paint them.

DRIVE RIGHT WHEN SPACE IS TIGHT

When space is limited, it can be difficult or impossible to position a drill and a long square-drive bit for driving pocket screws. A reasonably affordable solution is to buy a right-angle attachment that works with any drill. Combine this attachment with a 76 mm square-drive bit and you can drive pocket holes almost anywhere.

Long rail Leg Long rail

Leg Top shelf

Bottom shelf

Long rail Top shelf divider 292 mm

Middle shelf

Middle shelf

Top shelf Spacer 279 mm

Upper face of top shelf sits flush with upper face of long rail

Short rail

STEP 8: ATTACH THE SECOND FRAME

To finish up, you can attach the second frame assembly. Again, you’ll use 64 mm Kreg Pocket-Hole Screws to secure the short rails to the legs, and 32 mm Kreg Pocket-Hole Screws to attach the shelves to the long rails. With that done, you’re ready to move your new bookcase to its location, and then load it up with your treasured books.

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KREG PRIZE GIVEAWAY

KREG MULTI-MARK

tool!

Send an email with the subject line ‘Kreg prize giveaway’ to popularmechanics@ramsaymedia.co.za, detailing the steps of your project and how it turned out, and you could win a new Kreg Multi-Mark tool. Be sure to include high-res photos of your project’s progress (if you can) and, importantly, of the finished product. (Original pics snapped with a cellphone are fine, but don’t reduce them in size when you attach them to your email.)

THE PRIZE Kreg’s new Multi-Mark is a highly versatile marking and measuring tool, ideal for a variety of household or job-site applications. It’s accurate, adaptable, and will have you covered in most measuring and marking scenarios in your workshop and on DIY projects.

The Multi-Mark simplifies laying out and measuring. It has three scale configurations, offers both imperial and metric measurements, has a handy built-in torpedo level, a 5 mm reveal gauge for trim and casing, and it boasts a durable compact design.

So whether you’re transferring a measurement, laying out mitred corners, aligning project parts, or setting bit and blade heights, the Kreg Multi-Mark will help you to get the job done.

BUY KREG: Kreg is one of the leading brands at Vermont Sales, the generous sponsor of this prize. Look out for Kreg products at most of the top specialist outlets countrywide. For more information contact Vermont Sales on 011 314 7711, or visit vermontsales.co.za.

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TEXT, PHOTOGRAPHY AND ILLUSTRATIONS: KREG TOOL COMPANY (PROJECT COPYRIGHTED; USED WITH PERMISSION; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

WINA

Tackled any home DIY projects lately? Have you refurbished your bathroom, built a jungle gym in the garden, or made a bedside table out of wood? We want to hear about it!

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DRIVING

PM GARAGE Opinions on cars we’ve driven

FIGURES

Jaguar

» 2.0 L, 4-cylinder turbodiesel » 9-speed auto gearbox » 5-year/100 000 km warranty » 5-year/100 000 km maintenance plan » 147 kW; 430 Nm Priced from: R938 800 As tested: R1 024 880 jaguar.co.za

E-Pace R-Dynamic HSE D200

I

N NEARLY 20 years of testdriving cars, I’ve never been behind the wheel of a Jaguar, until now. The new E-Pace was a treat of an introduction to the brand, an immaculately crafted vehicle inside and out.

The newest iteration of the marque has a refreshed exterior and upgraded interior – a tranquil cabin that cossets you in elevated levels of comfort. It’s exceptionally quiet inside, and everything – from the softer surfaces to the more durable 78

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plastics, to the meticulously stitched upholstery, right to the cascade of tech features – has received the highest attention to detail.

Under the bonnet is a 2.0litre four-cylinder turbodiesel, producing 430 Nm of torque and 147 kW of power, and reallife fuel consumption figures in the 7–8 L/100 km realm, a little higher than I was expecting. Jag claims a 0–100 km/h sprint figure of 8.4 seconds, and a maximum speed of 211 km/h.

While the badge and nomenclature clearly define this as a Jaguar, the exterior styling is somewhat nebulous – far from unattractive, but also not overly distinct. Glance at one of these as it whizzes by, and you might not know what type of SUV it is.

Sitting in the driver’s seat, the all-round visibility is limited – I had a sense of being somewhat hemmed in – but this is entirely remedied by the ClearSight Interior Rear View Mirror, and 3D Surround

Camera technology, which helps to guide you as you manoeuvre the vehicle. The ClearSight central mirror takes a little getting used to, but it’s an invaluable feature, providing almost surreal high-def clarity to the rear view, in rain, mist or at night. It’s particularly useful when the rear cargo bay is loaded to the roof with all your gear. And if you don’t like this feature, flick a switch underneath and change it back to a conventional mirror. popularmechanics.co.za

The tech that’s been tucked into the E-Pace is what really sets it apart. The Pivi Pro infotainment system features a highly intuitive menu that’s simple to navigate, a refreshing change from some upmarket cars I’ve tested. In addition to the super-bright 11.4” central touchscreen, the sizeable 12.3” HD Interactive Driver Display has been designed to augment the driving experience, with features such as turn-by-turn navigation, and a range of popularmechanics.co.za

digital dials and media menus.

Full-colour TFT Head-up display is projected on to the windscreen for the driver, where the speed is viewable almost without having to take your eyes off the road ahead.

Special attention has gone into improving the Jag’s interior air quality. Push the ‘Purify’ button to activate Cabin Air Ionisation, which filters all air entering the cabin using Nano technology, removing allergens and odours.

The vehicle’s wearable Activity Key is an innovative accessory, alleviating the need to carry the key fob. Designed as a water- and shockproof watch, the wearer can lock and unlock the vehicle, operate the automated tailgate, and sound the alarm. It’s perfect for surfers or kite-boarders – it’s fully submergible, so there’s no worrying about how you’re going to get back into your vehicle after your session.

Three driving modes – Comfort, Eco and Dynamic

– are manually selectable, depending on your preferences and the road conditions ahead, each one subtly adapting the steering, transmission and throttle set-up.

The driving experience of the Jaguar E-Pace is effortless, extremely responsive, and supremely comfortable, while the abundance of driver aids makes motoring a whole lot safer. If you’re shopping in this sector, be sure to schedule a test-drive.

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DRIVING

PM GARAGE

FIGURES

Volvo XC40 D4 Geartronic AWD R-Design

W

HAT

immediately struck me about the XC40, is that Volvo hasn’t simply taken an XC60, shrunk it down, and slapped a new model name on it. It’s unique, different, and beautifully styled in its own right. For a midsize crossover, its proportions are faultless.

The stance is aggressive, yet not overtly so. The Thor’s hammer headlights, blunt grille and front bumper combination looks almost predatory, a quality reinforced by the large wheels, slightly flared wheel arches, high door-line and raked windscreen. The rear has received the attention it deserves, boasting characteristic Volvo tail lights that ease up the C-pillar, and a subtle wing at the top of the poweroperated tailgate. The steep bodywork angle, beneath the 80

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

The Thor’s hammer headlights, blunt grille and front bumper combination looks almost predatory quarter window, is an understated yet discerning attribute.

The interior complements the car’s handsome looks, expected, sure, but not always a given. Materials and finishes have that expensive look and feel, which is fitting, because the vehicle is pricey. The upper and lower dash levels are divided by a metallic strip, a design element that continues into the front doors.

Tall, narrow air-con vents border the central touchscreen, a large, well-organised interface that houses the infotainment system and a host of function

controls. The driver’s seat is electronically adjusted, while the passenger has the misfortune of having to do it manually (unless you choose this as an optional extra).

The Volvo name is synonymous with safety, so it’s no surprise that the list of standard features includes City Safety (with pedestrian, cyclist and large animal detection, and front collision warning with full auto braking), Driver Alert Control, Lane Keeping Aid, Intelligent Driver Information System, and Road Sign Information display, among others.

Acceleration from the 2.0-litre turbodiesel is decent, but probably not quite what I was expecting considering the compact overall dimensions; the word punchy isn’t really a descriptor I’d use. Steering is accurate, the vehicle responding to turns as though it’s on rails, in part owing to the dynamic all-wheel-drive system. Highway cruising too is immensely rewarding, particularly if you opt for the Driver Assist Pack (an extra R23 500), which includes Adaptive Cruise Control with Pilot Assist.

If you don’t need the cavernous space of the XC90 (or its associated price tag), or the dimensions of the XC60, the more-compact XC40 is an attractive contender in the highly competitive midsize crossover space. For looks, features and performance, it’s a premium option that will not disappoint. popularmechanics.co.za

TEXT: MARK SAMUEL; PHOTOGRAPHY: MARK SAMUEL, COURTESY IMAGES

» 2.0 L 4-cylinder turbodiesel » 8-speed auto gearbox » 5-year/100 000 km warranty » 5-year/100 000 km maintenance plan » 140 kW; 400 Nm Priced from: R804 350 As tested: R870 950 volvocars.com/za

RIDING

BMW F 900 XR / BY PETER FROST /

BMW believes its new F 900 XR is more than a super commuter.

Challenge accepted – we took the high road and put it to the touring test.

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M

Y MORNING COMMUTE IS, as AA Gill

might have said, as predictable as a cheese sandwich. Trevor in his M3 – I know this from his personalised number plate – not happy until his organs are jostling for space inside him, is lane hopping and usually ends up back where he started. The Renault Megane incubus, in a puffer jacket, has a rictus grin as he checks in every morning for his traffic jam Zoom meeting.

The Fortuner tailgater tribe, reliving the weekend’s Cederberg obstacle heroics. The hands-free make-up artist in an Audi Q2, the counterpoint khakis in 30-year-old bakkies held together with hope and desperation. But most predictable of all is the peloton of BMW F 800s that crawl carefully past me, a tightknit, button-down platoon, 6:15 am alarms synchronised so they all appear at the R26 traffic light together. These Five-GoAdventuring types are always in spotless dayglo all-weathers, headed to a brace of sit-ups at the gym, a low-sodium packed lunch dug out of their Thule backpacks and the rigours of a cost-benefit analysis report ahead, due Friday.

For these Everymen did BMW make the biking equivalent of a spagbol – the absolutely predictable, entirely familiar family of adventure commuters known as the F-series. These paralleltwins helped the maker sell more than 180 000 bikes in 2019.

But even as the dad bikes were flying out the showroom, BMW Motorrad CEO Markus Schramm was hinting that the sector needed something of a hot curry to wake it up. That kick turned out to be 2020’s F 900 R and XR. Spagbol in the hands of Gordon Ramsay. Take the recipe and play. F 900 XR, suggested BMW, could tour as well as commute.

It’s 7 am on a freezing-cold Karoo morning. Out on the R27 heading east beyond Vanrhynsdorp on the F 900 XR, I’m wondering if this was such a good idea. Months before (see the May/June issue of PM) I’d aced the Northern Cape on the 900’s (much) bigger brother, the addictive S 1000 XR, a stellar achievement as certifiable as it has been successful. It’s far colder now, wetter too, a strong westerly whipping across the Knersvlakte and I’m missing the large fairing of the S 1000.

The F 900 XR, unlike its naked brother, the F 900 R, has an adjustable two-stage fairing, but it’s battling to keep the tempest at bay.

I check the bike’s rear-view mirror. Nothing. Or at least a whole lot of everything – huge sky, a brindle of complementary earth tones. Ahead, Vanrhyns Pass, snaking up the West Coast escarpment into Nieuwoudtville and clivia country. Beyond the little town I would breathe easier and easier; Calvinia with its silly postbox and glorious Hantam range; the loneliest turn-off in the world to Kenhardt up the R27; and straight on, past whitepainted stone corbelled houses, the sweet, sweet R63 getting ever rarer, a black ribbon through a convex landscape of endless space. Free of taxis, trucks, load-shedding and COVID anxiety.

I was heading for the tiny town of Loxton, a tenuous BMW link my excuse. Deon Meyer, he of various nail-biting fictions, came by Loxton in 2004, working for BMW Motorcycles, developing the GS Challenge. The dorp had what no other place had and he fell in love. He found the perfect place for his bikers to congregate, eight kilometres out of town, on a farm called Jakhalsdans. And, when he came back a few months later to develop the routes, he found much more. The oasis of a town, the people, the culture, the landscape, the crisp, clean air, the

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SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

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RIDING

BMW F 900 XR

weather extremes, the winding dirt roads. Seemed like as good an excuse as any – go find Meyer’s wonderland.

Vanrhyns Pass arrives, evil gusts powering off the escarpment, buffeting the 900. I had already worked out that the XR’s small fairing is a limitation for real touring, but now a positive; the 900’s key characteristic – agility – comes into its own. Thomas Bain’s Vanrhyns is a doozy, climbing 600 m in just nine kilometres.

It begins with sweeping, wellcambered arcs, tightening towards the summit before finishing in a series of spectacular hairpin bends at the top. The F 900 XR relishes every second, making up for what it lacks in torque with a dexterity usually only seen on a purposebuilt sports bike. Certainly not a commuter or, perish the thought, a dual purpose adventurer. The foot pegs, high as they are on the frame, are never going to see the tar, and the light, chuckable quality of the chassis positively demands that you drop a knee and channel Tom Sykes. It’s huge fun and the top of the pass arrives with not a small serving of regret.

The R63 extends almost from coast to coast, bisecting the Karoo.

Its heart is wherever you want it to be – Graaff-Reinet with the Valley of Desolation, Victoria West and the Art Deco Apollo movie house, Bedford with its beautiful farms.

Linking them all is motorcycle heaven, endless tarred stretches, relatively empty, good for getting the measure of any machine.

Beyond Nieuwoudtville, the bike’s touring limitations once more become apparent – although the capacity of the parallel twin has been increased from 853 cc to 895 cc, and there are 77 kW and 92 Nm on tap, fast overtaking is less authoritative than it should be.

And absolutely crucial if you’re going to use the F 900 XR for exploring is the optional R6 000 Touring Package, which adds cruise control and an electronic preparation for GPS. Cruise control

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Anticlockwise from top right: » The manually adjusted, two-stage fairing is ideal for urban work. » Cruise control and heated grips are must-have additions if distance cruising; both are optional extras. » XR suspension travel is not as impressive as GS models, so cruising can be a choppy affair on bad roads. » BMW’s chain is self-lubricating and requires no pre-tensioning.

Opposite page: Riding position is a mite peculiar, thanks to those high foot pegs, but familiarity breeds contentedness.

The F 900 XR relishes every second, making up for what it lacks in torque with a dexterity usually only seen on a purposebuilt sports bike.

popularmechanics.co.za

on a tourer without a full fairing quickly becomes the single most important extra on the bike; set the speed, move around to limit the buffeting, bingo, you’re sorted.

If you need to constantly have your paws on the grips, much harder work.

Comfort is also a factor on the XR. Although it has better spring travel than the naked R (170 mm at the front, 172 mm at the back) it’s way short of the 200 mm given to the bigger GS models. That translates into a generally choppier ride over South Africa’s less-thanideal platteland road surfaces. It’s not awful-awful and certainly not a deal-breaker, but our advice would be to check that R8 000 Active Package, which adds more comprehensive suspension manipulation into the electronics mix (as well as heated grips). Of more concern is

popularmechanics.co.za

the small 15 litre fuel tank, which promises a range of just 370 km (at an average of 4.2 L/100 km). That’s a pretty woeful range for a tourer.

I found myself double- and triplechecking the distance to empty figure on the (seriously impressive) 6.5-inch TFT screen.

Loxton finally, the tiny village down on the right hiding among the grid of huge pines. From the ridge of the R63 the view is extraordinary; beyond the dorp, the Karoo stretches out forever on its quiet, empty way to Fraserburg.

I ride into town, or rather towards the church, a laying hen of a thing, fat and squat around which the four businesses of Loxton assemble.

It’s something of a habit – arrive in Loxton and check in at the Rooi Granaat. It’s like coming home, that first cup of coffee in that high-ceilinged room.

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RIDING

BMW F 900 XR

SPECS 895 cc, water-cooled four-stroke, 4 valves/ cylinders, 2 overhead cams, dry sump in-line 2-cylinder Bore and stroke: 86 × 77 mm Max torque: 92 Nm @ 6 500 rpm Max power: 77 kW @ 8 500 rpm Compression ratio: 13.1:1

PERFORMANCE Top speed: 210 km/h Tank size: 15 litres Economy: 4.2 L/100km Range: 370 km, depending on riding style

TECHNICAL Transmission: Constant mesh 6-speed gearbox integrated in crankcase Drive: Endless O-ring chain with shock damping in rear wheel hub Front suspension: Upside-down 43 mm telescopic fork Rear suspension: Cast-aluminium dual swing arm, central spring strut, spring pre-load hydraulically adjustable, rebound damping adjustable Front brake: Dual disc brake, floating 320 mm brake discs, 4-piston radial brake calipers Rear brake: Single 265 mm disc brake, single-piston floating caliper Front tyre: 120/70 ZR 17 Rear tyre: 180/55 ZR 17 Wheelbase: 1 521 mm Measured curb weight: 219 kg RRP: R195 000 bmw-motorrad.co.za

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Outside, the winter cold is intense.

The dirt road off to Fraserburg has a strong pull, but on the F 900 XR, with its dainty road tyres, it would be suicidal. Instead, I walk the town, past Deon Meyer’s old place.

Director Darrell Roodt spent a good portion of his R3.5m Jakhalsdans budget here, though you’d never guess it now, deserted but for the sound of that cold Karoo wind.

Then, distant at first, clearer now, the familiar thump of a two-cylinder opposed twin. Into view comes BMW’s all-conquering leviathan, the R 1250 GS. It’s an Adventure, decked out in blue, white and red, metal panniers and a healthy topcoat of mud. No stopping at the Granaat, it turns, accelerates down the Fraserburg road, gone before it was really here.

I watch it go. Back in Cape Town, I’ll be the happier person, the F 900 XR a nimble-footed compadre; but out here, where time is measured in hours in a storm, the GS still rules.

Helmet on, mirrors, throttle, pull away. Rinse, repeat. Knersvlakte here we come.

Above: BMW’s fairing is simplicity itself to adjust, even on the fly, by means of a hefty lever. The fairing itself needs to be larger for hard-core distance cruising.

Middle: The latest 6.5” TFT display is one of BMW’s best to date – always visible, easy to use from the left-hand handgrip, and now a conduit to phone connectivity.

Bottom: A theoretical top whack of 210 km/h suggests plenty of straight-line speed – the reality is a machine more adept at nippy urban manoeuvres and weekend jaunts than transcontinental journeys.

PHOTOGRAPHY: BMW

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P R OV I S I O N S

CHICKEN DISHES / BY P M F OO D TE A M /

Poultry offerings Y S A E

T S A O R N E K C I CH

Prep time: 5 min

Cooking time: 1 hour

Serves: 6–8

TIP To prevent the chicken from blackening in the oven, cover it with foil and continue to bake as directed.

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SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

WHAT YOU’LL NEED: 1.8 kg chicken ¼ cup olive oil 3 tbsp mustard 1 tsp salt

STEPS TO SUCCESS

1 2 3

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Rub the chicken with olive oil, mustard and salt.

Place the chicken on an oiled baking tray and bake for 10 minutes at 220°C. Reduce the heat to 180°C and cook for an hour, until chicken skin is beautifully crispy.

Delicious, and relatively easy to prepare, chicken is a staple in most South African households. Give these four simple dishes a go, and impress your family.

WE’D HAZARD A GUESS that there aren’t too many South

Africans out there who’d refuse a delicious roast chicken dinner – one that’s crispy on the outside, juicy and tender on the inside. However you choose to prepare chicken, it’s important that it’s cooked to perfection… Here are four recipes to get you started on your culinary chicken journey.

WHAT STEPS TO YOU’LL SUCCESS NEED: 1 4 cups chicken stock 2 cups roast chicken, broken into chunks 150 g rice noodles, cooked 4 bulbs pak choi, chopped 1 lime, zested and juiced Handful of basil

2 3

Bring the chicken stock to a rapid boil and add the roast chicken chunks and rice noodles.

Boil for 5 minutes, then turn off the heat and add the pak choi to the pot. Allow to stand for a few minutes.

To serve, ladle the broth into bowls and garnish with lime zest, juice and basil.

Prep time: 10 min

Cooking time: 10 min

Serves: 4

TIP If you’re pushed for time, use a store-bought rotisserie roast chicken for this recipe.

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P R OV I S I O N S

H C N E C I R

N E K C I

CHICKEN DISHES

D A I A S A SAL

TIP To give this recipe a subtle tweak, use jasmine rice instead of brown rice.

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: ±45 mins

Serves: 4

IS IT COOKED? Underdone roast chicken is no fun, for anyone. If you don’t have a food thermometer, a good way to check if your golden roast chicken is also done on the inside is to simply insert a knife or fork. If the juices run clear, you’re good to go. An alternative is to wiggle the chicken leg.

If it comes off easily, your chicken is most likely cooked to perfection. popularmechanics.co.za

WHAT YOU’LL NEED: 2 cups brown rice ¼ cup pickled ginger 2 cups shredded roast chicken 1 cucumber, thinly sliced 3 tbsp black sesame seeds, toasted 4 tbsp soy sauce

STEPS TO SUCCESS

1 2 3

Prepare the rice, cooking it for about 45 minutes.

Divide the rice into four bowls and top with ginger, chicken and cucumber.

To serve, sprinkle with sesame seeds and drizzle with soy sauce.

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P R OV I S I O N S

CHICKEN DISHES GET THE MOST FROM YOUR ROAST

Prep time: 10 mins

Cooking time: 5 mins

Serves: 4

WHAT YOU’LL NEED: 8 small wraps 4 tbsp light mayonnaise 1 lemon, juiced 2 cups shredded roast chicken 2 cups finely chopped red cabbage Handful of chopped coriander 92

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021

STEPS TO SUCCESS

1 2 3

Toast the wraps in a pan until they’re golden around the edges.

Mix the mayonnaise with the lemon juice and spread on to the wraps.

Top each wrap with chicken and cabbage, and garnish with coriander.

TIP To change up the flavour, try wholewheat wraps.

RECIPES AND STYLING: CHIARA TURILLI PHOTOGRAPHY: SAMANTHA PINTO/HMIMAGES.CO.ZA

If you want your roast chicken to come out juicy and tender, brine it for 20–30 minutes in a saltwater solution before baking. If there’s no time to brine, slather the bird with butter or olive oil, working the fats under the skin.

For more depth of flavour, stuff the chicken with aromatics such as herbs, vegetables, and citrus – infusing the meat with these flavours. Try adding aromatics to the roasting tray too, which will create a delicious gravy that you can pour over the chicken when serving.

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D O I T YO U R WAY

Clever tips and lifehacks

WIN WITH MASTER LOCK Write to us with your tip and you could win a prize from Master Lock. This issue’s top contribution has won:

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CLUTCHING AT STRAWS Thanks for the free sample of WD-40 that was supplied with my recent subscriber issue. It’s great to have such a useful product in a small can that can be tucked into a pocket in the car or on the shelf of your office.

Many of the spray-can products seem to come with a handy straw for spraying into small places. The problem is that once you remove

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the straw from the side of the can, it gets lost. As a solution, I tape a short length of heat-shrink tubing to the can to keep the straw from getting away. Use a piece that is a loose fit for the straw and tape it tightly enough to the can to grip the straw accessory. You can easily slip the spray straw in and out without it falling off the can.

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RESERVATION OF COPYRIGHT The publishers of POPULAR MECHANICS reserve all rights of reproduction or broadcasting of features and articles and factual data appearing in their journal, under Section 12 (7) of the Copyright Act, 1978. Such reproduction or broadcasting may be authorised only by the publishers of POPULAR MECHANICS. Published by Ramsay Media for the Proprietors, POPULAR MECHANICS, 36 Old Mill Rd, Ndabeni, Western Cape. Distributed by On The Dot Supply Chain Management, and printed by CTP Web, 12–14 Boompies St, Parow, Cape Town.

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