Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2013 i Popular Mechanics

In celebration of Father's Day we dedicated the June issue to dads everywhere: a compilation of advice, life lessons, and stories. Readers responded with nostalgia, gratitude, and some good tips from their old man too! "Thanks for this issue," writes Adam Bledsoe of Bend, Ore. "Those of us who are fortunate to have dads in our lives tend to take for granted what they have taught us." Darrin Baker of Milwaukee was also moved to introspection. "Read the whole issue, learned quite a few things, and thought a lot about what my father has taught me," he writes via Facebook. Scott Shaw of Brentwood, Tenn., was touched: "I have been a POPULAR MECHANICS reader for as long as I can remember, but I don't think I have ever shed a…

TEST DRIVES Nissan Juke NISMO Volkswagen GTI Ram HD Chevrolet Silverado Bentley Flying Spur MERCEDES-BENZ SPRINTER The $400,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom and $24,000 Ram 1500 don't appear to have much in common. One is the acme of automotive extravagance; the other epitomizes blue-collar, working-class values. But as the cliché goes, appearances can be deceiving. Underneath the disparate bodies lies a shared automatic transmission—the ZF 8HP eight-speed, from German-based auto-parts supplier ZF Group. And these two are not alone. You can find the 8HP paired to 25 different engine families in vehicles sold in the United States. If you count every make, model, body style, and driveline configuration, the number of places where this transmission shows up is enormous. The popularity of the 8HP isn't all that surprising given current industry trends.…

A series of classified documents leaked by former National Security Administration contractor Edward Snowden put government officials on their heels in June—forcing them into an uncomfortable debate about privacy and national security. But the leaks also raised questions about the role of U.S. companies in America's surveillance operations. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, defended the programs as legal—and, indeed, it seems that the NSA's snooping efforts were conducted with the oversight of Congress and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts. Nevertheless, privacy advocates reacted with outrage. Within days of the disclosures the American Civil Liberties Union had filed a lawsuit against the NSA. There is still plenty of mystery surrounding the two programs, but Snowden's documents show the outlines of one surveillance operation that collects the metadata about—but…

1.GIANT MECHANICAL LEG Jonathan Tippett; Vancouver, British Columbia When I arrive, Jonathan Tippett has just finished his lunch and is fighting his way through a badly translated user's guide to a batch of lithium iron phosphate batteries. The sun has come out after a long, drizzly late-spring morning, and he's seated at a small red folding table in the parking lot outside the eatART laboratory, in an industrial complex of warehouses and shipping containers. In the distance the North Shore Mountains still have their snowcaps. I wipe the water off a chair and sit down to join him. We talk for a few minutes about giant spiders and snakes, but I've come a long way to watch Tippett jump up and down on one leg, so I ask if I…

• SO, DASH CAMS• RUSTY DRIVE• WAX ON DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY 1/10 Spend any amount of time crawling around and under cars and the challenge of getting enough light to see what you're working on becomes tiresome. Shop lights are fine for inspection and tinkering in easily accessed spots, but in tight spaces or when you need both hands, they get in the way as much as they help. Halogen stand lights are too hot, and flashlights or headband lights don't deliver enough lumen oomph. We have never found a satisfying solution to this problem on store shelves, so with a bit of PM ingenuity, we're solving it ourselves. The result is our low-profile rolling shop light. (Patent pending … No, really!) The name needs work, but the idea is…

Tool Test BEST BUY DEWALT DWD112 RANKING Price: $55–$90 Amps: 8 Speed: 0–2500 rpm Cord length: 96 in. Chuck: Two-sleeve ratcheting Likes: Torque aplenty and grips a drill bit like a vise. Dislikes: No lock-on button. BLACK & DECKER DR340B RANKING Price: $37–$48 Amps: 6 Speed: 0–1500 rpm Cord length: 72 in. Chuck: Single-sleeve Likes: A solid little drill with an easy-to-grip chuck. It takes twice as long to drill a hole as one of our pro models, but it's fast enough for a homeowner. Dislikes: The spare screwdriver bit is placed so that it can poke you in the hand. BOSCH 1012VSR RANKING Price: $80–$130 Amps: 6.5 Speed: 0–1100 rpm Cord length:…

ON MY WAY TO THE MILE-HIGH CLUB. 1886: Scientists in Jules Verne's Robur the Conqueror, aka The Clipper of the Clouds, predict a future of "flying machines" that allow man to walk on air. 1955: Stanley Hiller debuts the Hiller VZ-1 Flying Platform, which includes two Nelson H-59 engines, a fan, and two large propellers. One step closer to everyone having a jetpack, right? 1958: Thiokol Chemical Corporation markets its jump belt, a strap-on rocket fueled by nitrogen tanks, not as a flying machine but as a device to enhance athletes' jumping and running ability. 1960: Bell Aerosystems engineer Wendell Moore develops the Bell Rocket Belt for the U.S. Army. The device runs on hydrogen peroxide and includes hand controls for steering the flight. Problem: It can only thrust for…

     • NEWS      • TRENDS      • BREAKTHROUGHS Despite video footage and smartphone shots of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, the FBI still had to resort to the old-fashioned "do you know this person?" technique to identify the men. Modern facial-recognition software alone can't process fuzzy images, but when Marios Savvides, head of Carnegie Mellon's CyLab, applied his super-resolution algorithm to an image of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (not for the FBI investigation), the rendering was the 56th best match out of 50,000 faces. Savvides expects a fuller version of the software to be available within three years. — RACHEL Z. ARNDT Enhancing Images "We can render a 3D model using a single 2D image." — Marios Savvides, director of the CyLab Biometrics Center IMAGE 1 (SURVEILLANCE) After collecting photos taken by witnesses…

The editors of Popular Mechanics would love to hear your opinion of the issue you're reading right now. Your responses—positive, negative, lukewarm—will help us shape future issues of the magazine. Take a quick survey and you'll be eligible to win $5000. Visit sepsurvey.popularmechanics.com to get started. No purchase necessary to enter or win. Reader Feedback Sweepstakes. Sponsored by Hearst Communications, Inc. Beginning January 1, 2013 at 12:01 AM (ET) through December 31, 2013 at 11:59 PM (ET) go to sepsurvey.popularmechanics.com and complete and submit the entry form pursuant to the on-screen instructions. One (1) Grand Prize winner will receive $5,000, one (1) Second Place winner will receive a $500 American Express gift card, and ten (10) runner-up winners will receive a $100 American Express gift card. Odds of winning depend…

It's a quiet morning in San Francisco, with soft sunlight illuminating patches of thick fog billowing over the Golden Gate Bridge. A solitary unmanned aircraft—a 4-pound, battery-powered wedge of impact-resistant foam with a 54-inch wingspan, a single pusher-propeller in the rear, and a GoPro video camera attached to its body—quietly approaches the landmark. Raphael "Trappy" Pirker controls the aircraft from a nearby hill. The bridge is within sight, but the 29-year-old enjoys the scenery through virtual-reality goggles strapped to his head. The drone's-eye view is broadcast to the goggles, giving Pirker a streaming image of the bridge that grows larger as he guides the radio-controlled aircraft closer. Pirker, a multilingual Austrian and a master's student at the University of Zurich, is a cofounder of a group of radio-control-aircraft enthusiasts and…

     • BRIGHTEN YOUR PHONE      • SPEED UP YOUR WI-FI Since the early 1900s filmmakers have tried to take advantage of our two eyes by making 3D movies. Now, thanks to an influx of relatively affordable 3D TVs, you can enjoy the extra dimension outside of the movie theater—with videos you've shot yourself. For big-budget movies, cinematographers use two cameras linked together and separated with a beam splitter. But unless you have Hollywood-level money to throw around—a rig costs at least a few thousand dollars—you're better off with a cheaper dual-lens camera, which can achieve the same effect. (There's even a smartphone, the LG Thrill, that shoots 3D with stereoscopic lenses.) On these cameras the lenses record two videos simultaneously. Shooting I'm a video buff, but until recently I'd never dabbled…

Q I keep seeing the insane videos from Russian dash cams. Considering how crazy drivers are getting in the U.S., should I have a dash cam in my car? A Videos of nearly cataclysmic meteorites or a livestock truck losing its load of cows do have a way of bringing light to a little-known subject like dashboard surveillance cameras. Their ubiquity in Russia owes to high rates of insurance fraud and the need to have irrefutable evidence in a court of law. Dash cams have been in use by U.S. law enforcement for decades, which you've no doubt seen on countless late-night syndicated TV shows, but they've historically been expensive and complicated. With high-quality digital cameras now cheap as dirt, in-car recorders can be had for the price of a…

Spruce up your deck now while the weather is still good. The change in seasons brings moderate weather that permits deck cleaner to work more effectively because it doesn't dry too rapidly. Plus, once the job is done, it's easier to apply a new finish—cooler temperatures reduce the chance of lap marks. Before you clean, make repairs. Replace splintered and rotted parts, and sand down any rough spots. Be sure to use stainless-steel or weatherproof fasteners, not drywall screws or plain steel fasteners, which rust. If you haven't checked your deck for structural soundness, now is a good time. "It's particularly important to inspect where the deck attaches to the house to ensure it is not at risk of collapse," says Bill Jacques, national president of the American Society of…

    • GEAR     • TOOLS     • GADGETS The new console is the boxiest Xbox yet, but its functionality presents a profound synthesis of Microsoft's learning from the eight-year evolution of the Xbox 360. The Xbox One ($500) aims to be the sole portal for all that comes through your TV. Using an HDMI pass-through, the One can install its own voice-controlled, searchable channel guide on any set-top box; it can also integrate your viewing experience with the world of content that the machine offers (games, social networking, Skype, Internet Protocol TV). Even more impressive is the enhanced Kinect sensor, with an HD optical camera and infrared cameras that can track skeletal joints in six people at once. It can even sense your heartbeat. This drab-looking black box is very interesting indeed.…

In 2010 Jay Cross was a business major at the University of Connecticut, and he was frustrated. He needed 36 credits to complete his degree, but didn't know when he'd finish because some of the required courses were no longer being offered—and UConn couldn't say when the problem would be fixed. Instead of waiting it out, he went online in search of answers. After wading through a swamp of diploma-mill scams, he hit on a legitimate alternative. It was a standardized testing program called CLEP (for College-Level Examination Program) that allowed him to earn credits for what he knew, regardless of how many hours he'd spent in a classroom. Instead of attending lectures, Cross used online study guides to master the material. Within four months, he had received a diploma…

The experimental French trimaran Hydroptère has a footprint the size of a basketball court and a 100-foot-high carbon-fiber mast that can fly 6000 square feet of sail—made variously of carbon, Kevlar, and Cuben fiber—yet there's not much room aboard. There's barely even a deck, just a scrim of netting that stretches between the narrow center hull and two pontoons. I hunker down next to the bowsprit, which I'm told is the best place to soak up the action away from the spray that's thrown by Hydroptère's two underwater wings, one under each pontoon. Hydroptère is a hydrofoil: Half plane, half boat, and it doesn't just sail—it flies. With any luck, those wings will take Hydroptère across an ocean. It requires a crew of four to man the boat. The co-skipper,…

Summertime, and with surf fishing the dining can be as easy as tossing hooks and a sinker into the saltwater a few feet from your towel. "Chunk a hunk of shrimp into the waves and you never know what's going to bite—that's what people love about it," says Ryan White, owner of fishing outfitter Hatteras Jack in Rodanthe, N.C. "Kick back on the beach and catch a few rays while you catch dinner. Now, that's living." You don't have to fish deep to fill a cooler. Flounder, redfish, and blues feed in three key spots: next to sandbar breaks, where wave action scoops out the beach profile, and in channels bordering sandbars. But having the right rig is important. Here's how to put together three: a pair that target brawny…

• DECK CLEANUP• DIMMING CFL LIGHTBULBS• ⅜-inch drills SMARTPHONE APPS FOR HOME IMPROVEMENT For today's handy homeowner, a well-designed smartphone app can be as essential as a hammer and a box of nails. Still, like hand tools, some apps are total clunkers that waste more time than they save. I dug into more than 50 applications created to help DIYers design, renovate, automate, and maintain their homes and gardens. After all the testing was complete, I deleted the duds. Here are the ones that I kept on my phone. BY DAVID AGRELL Get inspired If you're planning to remodel, it's not enough to have a vague idea of how you want the results to look. You need concrete examples to crystallize your plans and communicate your ideas. Before renovating our…

Looking at the cosmos through a telescope is a transformative experience. The rings of Saturn, the clouds of distant nebulae, and the familiar yet alien surface of our own moon all come to life. Build a simple smartphone mount and you can capture and share crisp images right from your backyard observatory—yes, smartphone cameras are that good now. Russ McAllister from Cabot, Ark., designed this rig for his iPhone and posted the plans on Instructables.com (search for "iPhone mount for telescopes"). We've made a few adjustments to simplify the process and to fit our oversize Google Nexus 4. The project can be done in an hour, for just a few dollars. INSTRUCTIONS Step 1: Wooden Base Create shelf for phone by gluing small piece of wood (A) across large piece…