Squirrels will be appearing in the Atomic Rooster Christmas Art Market!
December 18th, 2012 at 5pm. Atomic Rooster, 303 Bank Street, Ottawa.
Come and get some Squirrels. They’re great gifts for children.
by Bob Hatschek, June 12, 1925 – October 13, 2012
What’s Free Flight? A thrill, a challenge, a puzzle.
It’s other guys like you, the world around, striving for the same graceful beauty of flight.
It’s comradeship across all human barriers. It’s bull sessions through the wee hours.
It’s fierce competition with the highest of sportsmanship.
It’s a battle against nature, her perversity, her law of gravity.
“Free as a bird,” describes God’s most unchained creation. Man’s is a model airplane soaring birdlike in a thermal. You created it. Vicariously you soar with it, with its freedom.
Free Flight is the mist of the dawning’s calm as you test. It’s the noonday sun as your model thrusts for the heavens. It’s the cool drink after a dusty chase.
It’s the piercing scream of a peaking engine, the silence of the glide.
It’s sunburn and poison ivy and weariness to the marrow, made worthwhile.
It’s skill in your fingers. It’s knowledge learned for the knowledge alone.
It’s perfection sought , never attainable. A goal everlasting.
Free Flight is all of these, yet much more! I tell you this, and you may believe. But, you cannot know, unless you know.
Squirrels are great for birthday parties but need some adults that have studied the videos on how to make them.
If you have a younger crowd you can use paper planes instead of Squirrels (or both)
Here is the Peace Plane which is an awesome simple paper plane.
They actually work a little better with recycle paper because the printing process removes some of the water content in the paper.
Dinkar Narwade in India has been receiving lots of positive recognition for his involvement with model planes and education.
He’s printed out this portfolio of some of his activities to show his Block Education Officer.
I met with Richard Lyle Barlow yesterday. He’s very active in the model airplane community and I had the opportunity to snag a meeting with him when he was in town.
He’s a bit of a fan of the Squirrel project and we discussed the project a bit. I also showed him the new Dayton design. He had a couple of great suggestions. one was to slant the toothpick. I think that’s a great idea. It will make it easier to assemble too. It will make it easier to install the part that goes right behind the toothpick since it’s orientation will be more clear due to the angle.
Another thing that came up was the small parts. I used some shards of balsa to widen the motorstick to accommodate the wing mounting technique I learned from Lloyd Shales. This produces 4 small shards of balsa. I will look further in to the wing mount system. I really enjoy the stability and ease of the system so I will see if I can simplify it without using too much wood and avoiding the small parts.
I was able to construct an entire Dayton during this meeting. I must admit it goes together faster than a Squirrel.
I returned to the same venue later for another meeting to help somebody with a Web site. During that meeting I flew the Dayton off the bar a couple of times. In one case it took off from the bar, circled the room and landed right back on the bar. I wish I’d taken video. 🙂
