{"id":25481,"date":"2024-06-05T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/?p=25481"},"modified":"2024-05-31T11:20:03","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T18:20:03","slug":"camosun-student-builds-worlds-first-flying-canoe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2024\/06\/05\/camosun-student-builds-worlds-first-flying-canoe\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun student builds world\u2019s first flying canoe"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the imagination of Camosun Mechanical Engineering Technology student Dermot MacDougall comes the Millenium Phoenix\u2014the world\u2019s first flying canoe. Built as a capstone project with four other Camosun students, MacDougall proved to himself with the canoe that he can bring an outrageous idea to fruition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was thinking one day, I was at school, how cool would it be to make, like, a hydrofoil boat? How cool would it be to make something that you could just bring out to the lake, you could hop on and fly around on?\u201d says MacDougall. \u201cAnd keep this in mind\u2014I was listening to a lot of Top Gun<\/i> music at the time, so I was thinking about that. And I was thinking, well, it\u2019d be kind of hard to make a boat itself. The hydrofoil stuff I kind of think I could do, but making a boat, maybe that\u2019s a bit beyond me right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, MacDougall had an 18-and-a-half-foot-long canoe that he could put hydrofoils on and accomplish the gist of his idea. He pitched it as his capstone project and after a few returns to tweak the design, it was accepted by his instructors.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun student Dermot MacDougall and his Millenium Phoenix flying canoe (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThat maiden flight was in August, and I had started this back in December,\u201d he says. \u201cSo, it\u2019d been eight months leading up to this.\u201d<\/p>\n

With only one successful lift-off from the water completed the day before the showcase, the flying canoe set out to be graded.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, on that maiden voyage, when we did first hit the flight, I was really nervous beforehand because this had turned into me having some silly idea driving home from school to now I had four other students working with me; I had my professors out there; I had friends out there. Everybody coming to watch to see this thing at work. It turned into quite the ordeal, and it was this huge capstone project. So, I was pretty nervous about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Out at Elk Lake with one instructor in the flying canoe, one in the safety boat with two teammates, and another instructor watching through a drone feed, the maiden voyage took flight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe finally get lined up and I pull the trigger, which is our throttle because we use an electric [motor], and I start going in the boat,\u201d says MacDougall. \u201cSo, I press the trigger and it\u2019s got quite a lot of power. There\u2019s waves splashing everywhere, the boat\u2019s rocking around. You can hear all the metal pieces shaking, shaking, shaking, you\u2019re jolted back in your seat, you\u2019re moving, shaking, shaking, then\u2014boom\u2014silence and I could hear nothing else at this time. Just boom, silence, smooth. And I hear my professor say \u2018dry hull,\u2019 which, I just remember… I don\u2019t even know how to say how excited I was then because that just meant the boat had lifted out of the water. So that was great. That was the coolest feeling ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting about a foot to a foot and a half out of the water, the flying canoe successfully took flight. MacDougall says as he \u201ccame back to reality\u201d he could hear his teammates screaming and cheering from the shore. He says he did around 10 test flights, each of which was roughly one to two minutes long. However, the true test of success for MacDougall came later.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew my project was successful when people started asking me what\u2019s next,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd that was the most satisfying part of this project once I was done. People weren\u2019t being like, \u2018Oh, that was crazy.\u2019 They\u2019re asking, \u2018So what\u2019s the next project? What\u2019s the next crazy thing?\u2019 That was… As a student, that is the best feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the imagination of Camosun Mechanical Engineering Technology student Dermot MacDougall comes the Millenium Phoenix\u2014the world\u2019s first flying canoe. Built as a capstone project with four other Camosun students, MacDougall proved to himself with the canoe that he can bring an outrageous idea to fruition. \u201cI was thinking one day, I was at school, how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25482,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-june-5-2024"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25483,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25481\/revisions\/25483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}