Off to scout camp for a three days, no power, no internet, and no cell phone. Will be nice to get away, and with some great kids too. No posts for the next couple days.
Jul 29
I thought it would be a good idea to go fly the Spitfire tonight. The weather was great, little wind, and sun was still up enough to see the plane. I took it up to about 100 feet, and did some rolls and loops. Did my first complete stall, including some nice rolls before pulling out of it. Then down low for some nice flyby’s for the kids. Then I finally got the guts to do some inverted flybys, yep upside down flying. The first one was super great, and boy did it make my heart race. I brought it back around for another upside down flyby, and the plane drifted close to the ground that I’d like.
Trouble is that when the plane is upside down, the elevator controls are backwards. So I naturally pulled down on the control, hoping to bring the plane elevation up a bit, but that brought it close to the ground. So close in fact that it drilled a small hole towards China. It hit the ground at 40 miles an hour, right on to the nose of the plane.
Here are the sad pictures:
Main wing is broken, front of fuselage is totall smashed, motor is mangled, and rudder broken off. It will take a couple hours to get it back to normal, and perhaps some $ too. Although the cheapskate in me will put all kinds of time in before ordering parts. This is the best plane ever, and is so fast and well controlled that it always is a great experience to go fly it. ( Thanks for the gift, Lady ).
You can donate to my Spitfire Relief Fund below:
Jul 28
Worked on the a balsa wood plane I found downstairs, that I didn’t remember having. It is kind of small, but good practice. I have spent about 10 hours on it now, and nearly have it all glued together. Fuselage is complete, and sanded, tail and elevator too. Just need to shape leading edge of main wing, then I can start the fun task of covering it with tissue paper.
Jul 27
Worked on some mathematical models today at work, for predicting the time it will take to complete a bug or other developer task. Still only partially implemented, but seems to be working well so far. More info to come.
Jul 26
I think I have finally hit the magical transition from amateur rc plane pilot to ‘half baked’ skill set. I’ve got another hour or so under my belt this weekend, with nice smooth landings, simple stunts, and better timing on when my batteries run out of juice. For instance my SpitFire battery only took 30 more seconds to discharge before I could recharge on Friday.
So now I can hopefully sit back and just put time and money into maintenance, and not major overhauls of wings, fuselages and such. I’m going to pick up another related hobby, that I enjoyed as a kid, building wood airplanes. None of the local shops carry them anymore, and they are actually a bit hard to find. But with a few minutes on Google, I was able to locate Guillow’s and my next plane is here. These are nearly all balsa wood, with tissue paper covering and will break the first chance they get. I am planning on getting a nice 0.049 engine, and setting it up for free flight.
Jul 25
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t frequent the library each week. My normal supply of books come from O’reily, Amazon, Manning or Barnes and Noble. My faithful wife however, takes our two boys to the library nearly every week.
Anyways, today was a luck day, and we made a family trip to the local library to make some copies. I took this as a chance to browse some books on statistics and probability. I found the computer to search book on, and tried for 3 minutes to find any math book with no luck.
I walked through miles of kids books, a pretty impressive one actually, in search for my math books. I gave up looking at the row readings, and just walked up and down each row, using the brute force method of searching.
After 10 minutes, I gave up. I’m confident that there is not a single math book in the entire place. It is interesting that I could find 12 copies of Allure, every copy of Field and Steam, and a thousand copies of those vampire books.
It appears to me that the library systems are loosing ground, or caving into, the cheap, disposible media that people crave. Perhaps they will someday only be a place for the homeless and poor to warm up, check their hotmail account, and play online flash games. ( and borrow a copy of disposable nonfiction. )
Jul 25
Jarl and Nicole had their two newly acquired kids sealed to them today at the Salt Lake Temple. It was a fun day for all. These kids are the best you’ve ever seen, and it’s great that the have a great home now.
Jul 23
If you in SLC sometime and are up for a drive to the South West corner of the valley, you can go to:
N 40 31.002′
W 112 05.559′
The priests and I went out there last night, and found the great spot where you can easily see 5 LDS temples without moving your feet. Had to use some simple binoculars to get the SLC and Timp Temples, but all the rest can be seen really easy with the naked eye.
Jul 23
One day, I got board and decided to learn a bit about Google Maps. So I made this simple site in PHP, http://www.flippinsweetdude.com/maps/index.php. It uses a XML file to fill in all the locations for Ubuntu users, using Google maps. Now that it has over 3k people, it is really slow. If I cared a bit, I would figure out why. But since I forgot all about it, until I was poking around the backup folder on my web server, I really don’t think that it is worth too much time.
Jul 22
Took the day off, to spend with the boys, and help my wife out. Ended up going up to Cub Country ( Fort Frontier ) for the entire day. Ended up with 4 leaders and 12 scouts, a great day of weather, and lots of fun.
Day started off kind of weird though, turns out that I drew the short straw, and had to stand in line to register all the kids. We have 2 combined cub packs, and our Benjamin is from a 3rd community pack. One of the kids brought their cousin from California, so we had even a 4th pack member. The bureaucrat at the table wouldn’t let Benjamin and California kid in, because there was no official print out for the entire pack on his clip board.
I explained my case, showed off the medical form, permission slip and proof of payment. All of which he refused to look at, because his paperwork was incomplete. Either way, I listened to his guilt trip for a few minutes. Begged and pleated, and got pissed off. I think when he started telling me the President Monson would not be happy with me if I didn’t re-register each kid into our pack, that I gave up. Either way he saw that he had completely broke me down, and was satisfied in that, so he let me go. ( I think it would be easier to get into heaven, than signed up for a Scout camp. )
We shot BB Guns, ran obstacle courses, took hikes, played games and practiced lots of knots. All the boys were great, and had lots of fun.
