When a massive winter blizzard locks down a city, most people stay inside, light a fire, and wait for the snowplows. DIY engineering YouTuber Peter Sripol, however, saw it as the perfect excuse to build a sketchy, propeller-driven snow plane out of scrap metal and kids' snowboards.In his latest upload, Sripol set out on a hilarious mission: "In this video we're going to build a gas-powered air sled that we can drive through the snow really fast and also drive through the streets".Cannibalizing a Failed AirplaneTo build the ultimate blizzard vehicle, Sripol didn't start from scratch. Instead, he took an angle grinder to one of his old, failed aviation projects—a heavy, chromoly steel fuselage known as Airplane Mark III."This is Airplane Mark III, which started out as a good idea but then got kind of overbuilt and overweight. It's completely useless to me at this point," Sripol admitted before chopping the expensive frame into pieces.Reassembling the frame into a dragster-style sled, he mounted a 185cc paramotor engine to the rear to act as a pusher prop. To keep the vehicle sliding smoothly, he repurposed a set of children's snowboards for skis, attaching them to a remarkably primitive DIY leaf-spring suspension system.He was fully aware of the questionable engineering involved. "This is not up to any aviation standards whatsoever," Sripol joked while MIG-welding the steel frame back together.To protect himself from the freezing wind, Sripol built a makeshift enclosed cockpit out of free acrylic sheets scavenged from old restaurant COVID-19 dividers. The most absurd feature, however, was the braking system: a literal block of wood on a lever."How do you stop a sled? I guess you just stick your feet out," Sripol reasoned. "But in my case, my feet are in here. So you just pull the handbrake, and that piece of wood touches the ground".Hitting the StreetsWhen the blizzard finally hit, dumping inches of fresh powder on the roads, Sripol took the "air speeder" out for a shakedown run.The machine was an absolute beast in a straight line, easily hitting 40 mph on open, snow-covered roads while blowing past unfazed local police officers. The enclosed cockpit kept him surprisingly warm, thanks to a small 12-volt car heater keeping the acrylic windshield free of ice.However, the dragster-length wheelbase meant it had the turning radius of a freight train. "If you're on like one-way streets trying to turn, you're probably going to get stuck," he noted.The Ultimate IronyAfter testing the sled in empty fields and tearing up a Lowe's parking lot, Sripol decided to use his new blizzard-proof vehicle for an essential errand: a snack run."The Lowe's parking lot's pretty sweet, but I want some chicken wings. So let's go to B-Dubz and get some wings," he announced, steering the roaring propeller machine toward Buffalo Wild Wings.He arrived safely through the snow-choked streets, only to be met with a brutal dose of irony—the restaurant was closed."Even though you have a vehicle that drives around the snow, they close places early. So we have to leave cuz they're not open," a defeated Sripol laughed outside the dark storefront. "We got a snow machine; it's perfectly capable of getting there, but I guess there's no staff there. So I don't know what this thing is really useful for".
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