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Now, More Pleasing Odor!
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Take 1 ordinary hand operated bicycle pump. 1 small tank
containing 0.1 M^3 of helium, and a mylar (or other symilar air
tight fabric) bag shaped like an umbrella.
When it starts to rain, you whip out your Umbralloon, press
the red button, and VOILA the mylar bag inflates with helium.
You
clip it (tank, and pump) to your belt with the belt clip it
came with and head on your way, with your Umbralloon
floating above you, but kept there by thin plastic tubing.
Need to put the umbralloon away? simply pump the air pump
and all of the helium is pumped out of the mylar (or other
symilar air tight fabric) bag (through the plastic tubing) and
into the small helium tank.
Whole package comes with tube clamp, to set the height at
which the Umbralloon floats, and a belt clip, which can also
be clipped to your collar for those really windy days.
Pump
http://www.trirex.com.tw/index.jpg
The one on the left is what I was thinking of [swimr, Oct 05 2004]
Inflatable Umbrella
http://www.halfbake...flatable_20Umbrella
a similar and baked idea [FarmerJohn, Oct 05 2004]
[link]
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What's the point of this? I don't understand. Hands-free umbrella? |
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-Hands free
-Opens easily
-compact
-cool |
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So the pump and tank are small then? I was imagining something large, like scuba gear. |
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nono, hold on, I'll find some links...whole package would
be around the the same size or smaller then a
conventional umbrella. |
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<later>
Yeah, I only found one link, but 0.1 m^3 of helium could
probably compress pretty small |
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Rain on this item will cause loss of buoyancy due to weight of the raindrops on the surface before rolling off. Blimps have this trouble in rain as well. |
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A floating umbrella would perforce spend its time down-wind of you; given that the rain is also wind-blown, I think it's pretty obvious this is not going to work as planned. |
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The inflatable bit for the canopy is grand... but hold it in your hand you lazy sod... and again, I don't know about where you're from but here rain and wind are usually like a pair of 7yr old best friends who annoy you in tandem ... or something... so I would be worried about rigidity problems... not for the first time...errr |
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