Category Archives: Outreach

Shipment to India

Education, Outreach,

Some sample model planes just arrived safely in India. I enjoy sending models to far away places. You learn a lot about different areas of the world. I sent some lubricant so my new friend Dinkar (who is a school teacher) can try for some higher duration flights.

This is the second attempt. They always seem to explode. I think it’s the low pressure during the flight across the ocean.

I think for now the best bet is to keep the soaked plastic and transfer it to the rubber bands. You only need a couple of drops per elastic. This must be done after the elastics are tied of course you’ll never make a knot with this stuff on the elastic. In fact, I never lubricate the knot in case it penetrates the knot.

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Decorating Model Airplanes

Experimental, Outreach

I’ve done some experimentation with printing on tissue paper to produce these designs.

You can cut tissue to 8.5×11 then use a glue stick to attach it to 8.5×11″ photocopy paper. You then run it through a color ink jet printer. You just need a little bit of glue on the edges otherwise you won’t be able to separate the tissue. Mind you if you only put it at the very edge you can cut around the edge to release it. Remove the tissue from the photocopy paper as soon as you print it so the glue doesn’t dry.

For the design you can use any graphics package but I like InkScape since it’s free. You can download it and run it in Windows or Linux.

Here are a few designs that I’ve made over the past couple of years.

If you’d like to try and print on tissue here is a Squirrel Template.

Any design ideas out there?

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Dayton and Squirrel-0-Rama

Experimental, Gallery, Outreach,

Last night we had a great meetup. We made and flew Squirrels and two Daytons.

People made the Squirrels from memory. Enough people know how to make them so that’s a good sign.

The Dayton went together very well (and fast). Here is my assessment.

  • The wing had better rigidity than I expected!
  • I flies well with flaps down. I think I will split the aileron into flaps and aileron so people can learn to experiment with that. I’ve done some test since the meetup and it is a great slow flyer.
  • We flew it without trimming. It had a phugoid but I will do some more experiments next time.
  • The paper proves to be light enough.
  • Wheels add a lot of charisma.
  • A few of the laser cuts were the wrong dimensions. Still worked well but I will tweak that stuff for the next run.
  • The assembly and flight are working well enough. After some tweeking to the laser files and the printout, I will attempt a double sided print and do a larger batch for the next revision. In the next build I will make five at once so we can study the flight characteristics further.

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Pub Meet to Assess Dayton Design

Experimental, Outreach,

Did a pub meetup to have another look at the laser Dayton design.

Issues:

  • It’s still tricky to lay out the wing perimeter. Interlocking parts combined with build on tissue has some problems to look at.
  • Small parts are bad. The wing mound doublers are very small. You can see them on the laser cut.
Progress
  • I manually cut one of the fuselage sides to make a gap in it. This is the grove for the toothpick. This worked well so I will include that in the next laser run.
  • The landing gear is only .6g and the plane is 10g. That’s quite promising.
  • Knocking about an inch off the rubber band motor loop makes hand winding easier.
  • The glue stick is only used on four pieces. I’m wondering if it can be dropped. The spars warp a bit when the craft glue is applied but it flattens out in a few minutes. I suspect this will happen as long as we don’t use too much glue.

 

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What Drives Creativity?

Chronology, Experimental, Outreach

I’ve moved into a creative mode of my life and I’ve been looking around to see if this is an environmental change or something in the works of my anatomy.

When I designed the Squirrel I was in a more creative mode as well so I’m reflecting on that too. It was an awesome time despite a divorce and loss of my step son. I moved from a relationship (with an unhealthy person who was in love with drugs and other bad behavior) to a more constructive and creative mode. I left the marriage a happy person but knew divorce had risks to well being.

I made sure I took care of activities that brought myself and others happiness and added value. With the extra time I had after separating I reinvented my model airplane hobby and took up new activities.

Joy in Simplicity

By summer of 2004 I was enjoying simple model airplanes again. I brought them to picnics and other socials. My new friends loved the planes and joined me at cool places like this senior residence. It contributed to the well being and social of everyone involved.

Simplicity meant anyone could join in. Some people took it as a hobby and were able to do so with minimal investment. I even made up kits that had a supply of balsa, materials and tools for some of them without too much cost. Some people just enjoyed it when we were together or when we were at events where I brought the planes. There were no barriers to this activity since it was simple.

Career and Related Social

I kept in touch with my existing friends and continued with social surrounding my software career. Of course many of my new friends had related careers so there was mentorship and ongoing improvement in that space.

All my friends from the software community were very supportive of my new activities. I have gotten to know some of them better. Especially those who have branched into a more artsy and creative areas.

New and Challenging Activities

One thing that came forward was ballroom and salsa. This brought a large and diversified social group. Especially since my policy was to take lessons everywhere rather than staying at one place. Also to attend practices and socials.

Dancing brings exposure to a wide range of music that I’d ordinarily have never come across. This was technically interesting since you learn more about music in a dancing context than just listening.

Dancing has another dimension of partnership and even team work. Today I only do dancing for social and not as a hobby but still enjoy being friends with all my friends in the dance community.

Choir was another thing that came forward. This is serious exposure to music since there was a lot of areas of music that were new to me. Also you learn the music and not just consume it. You see angles of beauty you never even knew existed.

There is also teamwork and social nature to choir. Another great arena for personal growth, the discovery of new people and things and building relationships.

Music is an interesting business and the people I’ve met through that activity have given me a different view. Not only of music but business in general.

My interest in art flourished as well. I visited the National Art Gallery regularly and began to travel more since I didn’t have anybody else to worry about.

Altruism

I was sharing model airplanes for the love of the hobby. As I widened the circles of sharing and ventured into new venues (community centers and so forth) it gave me a good taste of volunteering. This blossomed into doing work for a variety of organizations for model aviation and also general volunteer work. I eventually did regular volunteering. I discovered the importance of many of the organizations and learned more about the wider community. I did work at the Ottawa Mission, Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brother and Big Sister, and many more interesting organizations.

Cross Pollination

To some extent I was a hub bringing people and information from each of these activities together. I’ve always been a very social person but my circle of friends became more dynamic and diversified. There is also some economy in cross pollination.  Instead of doing a choir social and then a ballroom social, I could just bring my choir friends to the ballroom. Or the other way around.  Further the things I learned in one activity was helping me in the other activities.

I learned about social network theory and policy through my career as I had started to specialize in social media and social tools. I learned to be able to assess individuals for a given fitness not by their apparent selves but more by health of their networks and social policy. I learned that all the things and the information you want are only a handshake away in  your existing healthy social network.

Everything that truly made me happy came my way. Relationships came forward and my love life flourished.

The Squirrel model airplane came out of this (and many other things).  I believe the project became very successful and well known because of a few things. I didn’t patent or protect it. I shared it. I didn’t employ selling tactics, in fact I helped those who wanted to make it who couldn’t afford it. I truly enjoyed model airplanes and like everything else I was doing it I shared it for the love of it.

So that’s was my environment at the time I designed the Squirrel. So Squirrel is not just a model plane to me but a bit of an artifact left over from a process of starting my life over.

More Challenge

I think it pays to have a good look at your activities and network all the time. Do you do this?

I understand more about the conditions in which I can thrive so I set various boundaries to stay in the right zone.

I have lots of model airplane (and other) projects in the works and I’m really looking forward to sharing them with you! Stay tuned! Or join me!

 

 

 

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