Tornadoes are great at lifting stuff of the ground. A tornado on top of a disc can make it a flying disc. But waiting for a right size tornado to come by, takes too much time. So; let's make one ourselves. But how? How can we make and control a small tornado, and use it for safe flight?

How big a tornado do we need to create? Here a unique movie of two paragliders lifted from the ground by a dustdevil (a very small tornado). It proves that a small tornado can do some serious lifting already:

How does a tornado come to be? Three things:
- A lower air pressure "sucking" air away.
(Making room for the pressurized atmospheric air to accelerate to).
- Far around the tornado, the ambient air should be spinning already, at least come from two opposite directions.
- That vortex tunnel has two ends that need to be closed. One end can be closed by the ground or the ceiling. The other end in nature can be a large area of warm rising air. A ventilator can do the same.

The 1st experiment (2009-04-04), trying to create a tornado tube. It didn't work. The air got sucked away from the center, and the exiting air gave it a good spin. Two problems: the air volume sucked away wasn't much (wrong engine/blower) and the air spinning up was way to turbulent. Tornadoes grow strong by already spinning ambient air, but is easily disturbed by turbulent wind.

Two 3D drawings I made, ideas for a better tornado drive. But I now think they wouldn't work well also because they disturb the air near the center too much.

The 2nd experiment, did work! (2009-04-29)
But the air was very chaotic. The air far around the center didn't spin well, and there was still too much turbulence. The near presence of the smoke machine might also be disturbing the vortex. All the little tornadoes lasted less than a second.

Here are some stills from the movie:

The 3rd experiment (2009-05-24)
We got lots of vortices! They lasted longer and were bigger in diameter. The visibly by smoke and light has improved. Watch the movie in HD!

Here are some stills from the movie:

Experiment number 4 (2009-07-19)
Can a cow fly-by-tornado? Will a cow be sucked all the way up, or will the vortex spit 'm out? Many things in life suck, how does a vortex suck?
Watch the movie in HD!

Here are some stills from the movie:

Experiment number 5 (2009-08-02)
By now we're able to easily create a tornado of about 1 meter tall. Special about this tornado is that it's a "free tornado", meaning; not inside a glas container or such. Coolest of this experimental day was the connecting of 2 fans by 1 vortex. A little hard to make visible, but it surely was there.
Watch the movie in HD!

Here are some stills from the movie: