All posts by Darcy

Paper

Experimental

I’ve been thinking about this for a while so I decided to give it a try.

I made my own corrugated paper (cardboard). It came out pretty strong. I think this could have some potential. Especially if combined with tissue. Perhaps a plane can be made without wood?

It’s pretty difficult to make the paper folds close to each other. I discovered a technique I’ll put on video if I’m able to make this work.

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Smaller Things

Experimental

Sometimes small things make me happy.

At the post office yesterday the server was very friendly since it was quiet time at the outlet. I wrote out the declaration forms for the parcels and she helped me with taping since I forgot some of it. Actually we fought over who got to do the taping and she won.

I have been thinking of printing the declaration form as part of my label printing but she made an awesome suggestion. She said that lots of people use stickers to add details to the declaration forms. Right away I knew what to do. When I am gluing labels, I can use the same glue to stick information to the form. Of course it won’t transfer through to the sender copy so I have another copy that can tear off at the time of mailing (either from the package or the customs form). It can be stuck to the sender copy and stapled to the receipt.

I was able to implement this right away as it only took a minute to change the labeling system. I just did my first one this morning!

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Delivery of Model Planes

Experimental, Outreach
This is one of my motorbikes used for travel between Chicago, Montreal, Boston, New York City, Toronto and area. This particular model gets 65 miles per gallon in the city. This has been a great tool for summer fun and model aviation.

I’ve been personally delivering model planes to Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and surrounding areas for free. For the outside-Ottawa cities I’ve been coordinating deliveries with other trips and workshops. This is helpful for promoting model aviation, science, making things and is also really fun.

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of requests for people to pick-up model planes in the Ottawa area and I’m starting to like that because of efficiency (hey come to me instead of me going to them).

I’m considering doing local pick-up only and then saving my free deliveries for those who want to do some actual flying (or some other arrangement). I think it makes more sense. Especially lately as I’ve started to do more model airplane activities just for fun.

In fact the more I think of it, the more I like the idea of having my regular model plane meetups for the Squirrel and having people come by for pick-up. If I have one about once per week, that should make life easy.  Then I’ve got public relations, pick-ups and some social all rolled into one. Of course the people doing a pick-up may elect not to join the social. 🙂

I want to do more model planes and less logistics. Thoughts?

 

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Dayton Test Build from Kit

Experimental,

I just did a Dayton kit build. It went together very fast.

What worked well:

  • The motor stick came out very rigid!
  • The paper is really easy to deal with. Printing or decorating will probably come forward for kids.
  • Wheels are pretty cool!
  • The wing has a quarter of an inch more chord! I may reduce the wingspan to 11.5 or 11″.
  • I realized that the upright wing tips overlap with the leading and trailing edge. This makes sure the four corners of the wing are glued. With Squirrels children often leave gaps. You can cap them with shards of balsa but it’s better to not have a gap.
  • The angle of incidence of the tailplane seems to be okay. More testing to come but the rise is 3/16′ over 3″.

Problems:

  • I forgot the toothpick grove. I just used blocks to mount the toothpick for now. In retrospect, I realize the grove can be made by having a gap in one of the fuselage sides. After inserting the toothpick and capping it, it should be strong and will not require as much glue dry time for the toothpick.
  • It’s still a little tricky to assemble the wing. I used the wing tips as spacers to glue the leading and trailing edge. Then glued the wingtips later. I need to see a few people do this to convinced myself it’s easy enough.
  • The stabilizer notch in the motor stick could be tighter and deeper.
  • The laser cut shows where to mount the wing but the fuselage isn’t even for the tape.
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