Oddzon, Inc.

William S Law

Thomas H Grimm

Sung Hoon Kim

Arturo Meuniot

Abraham Flatau

Arne Lang-Ree

Mark C Sorensen

Robert B Brownell

John W Hunter

Chester F Vanek

Christopher Fruhauf

A launcher for a ring airfoil includes a magazine assembly holding a plurality of ring airfoils. The magazine assembly is coupled to a launching mechanism, and the launching mechanism provides an indexing motion to the magazine assembly. In use, the setting action of the launching mechanism indexes the magazine assembly allowing a ring airfoil to engage with the launching mechanism for subsequent launching. Additional ring airfoils may be launched by repeated actuation of the launching mechanism without reloading the magazine assembly with ring airfoils.

Repeater launcher and ring airfoil

Toys and methods for safely and reproducibly launching ring airfoils in a flying orientation. The toys generally comprise a member, a ring airfoil support mounted on the member, and a propelling element configured to move the ring airfoil support along the member from a first to a second position. Contact between the ring airfoil and the ring airfoil support causes the ring airfoil to move with the ring airfoil support as the ring airfoil support moves; this contact is overcome as the ring airfoil support decelerates at the second position, causing the ring airfoil to be launched with forward or both forward and spinning motion. The toys further may comprise a housing to protect the toy and user, a return element to place the toy in an engaged, launch-ready configuration, and a trigger to hold the toy in the engaged configuration until launching. As an additional aspect of the invention, components of the device may be chosen so that the characteristics of the ring airfoil at launch are within certain safety limitations.

Ring airfoil launcher

Growing community of inventors

Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

William S Law