We millennials had a couple of character archetypes we may select to aspire to in highschool, with sk8er boi being among the many most coveted. In any case, who wouldn’t need 2002 Avril Lavigne to fall in love with them? However regardless of what Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater led us to imagine, skateboarding is definitely actually troublesome. Many people set our sights modestly on the standard kickflip and couldn’t even pull that off. However expertise is meant to be the good equalizer and so Allen Pan determined to attempt to use that to grow to be the sk8er boi he all the time wished to be.
Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater 3 + 4 simply launched and the nostalgia issue is big for these of us who spent numerous teenage years grinding the rails of that franchise. To assist promote the sport, Activision reached out to Pan and requested him to construct one thing associated to skateboarding. He noticed that as his alternative to lastly pull off a kickflip — and even only a fundamental ollie.
His preliminary method was to show a skateboard into an insanely highly effective drone. It had round 60 kilos of thrust and that undoubtedly isn’t sufficient to raise a full-grown man, however Pan figured the droneboard may do some sick maneuvers beneath his ft when he jumped into the air. He even turned to Jake Laser for help, as that dude has nearly as a lot expertise with drones as he does with the free weights on the fitness center.
Sadly, the droneboard concept was unsound. There are a number of explanation why it didn’t work, however the greatest problem was that it couldn’t react quick sufficient to each overcome the power of Pan leaping and flip itself round in the course of the brief period of time Pan was within the air.
However Pan’s subsequent concept was extra promising. He mounted CO2 pressure-actuated pistons to the underside of a skateboard deck that present quick upward power when activated. The rider can set off them by releasing a button on a PlayStation controller related to an ESP32 growth board on the skateboard, which opens the solenoid valves between the CO2 cartridges and the pistons. When each hearth on the similar time, the skateboard does an ollie. When one fires, the skateboard does a kickflip.
Nevertheless, pulling that off nonetheless requires exact timing and so Pan headed to a neighborhood skatepark to search out somebody extra skilled. There, he simply occurred to stumble throughout skateboarding legend and man you didn’t notice was nonetheless alive, Bam Margera. The person has had a tough couple of a long time, however he nonetheless has talent with a skateboard. That talent helped him pull off a kickflip with Pan’s board.
With the data that the feat was potential, Pan gave it a strive himself. And succeeded! Or principally succeeded. He didn’t land it, however we are saying it nonetheless counts and now Pan is a licensed sk8er boi. We count on that Avril Lavigne can be getting in contact with him very quickly.
