Thursday morning at 8:00 am I maidened my build of japim's PZL 38 Wilk (build log on the 3d printed planes forum). This plane has a wing span a little less than 1 meter (39 inches), and weighs 1.3 kg (2 oz. less than 3 lbs), so it's on the heavy side. But I built in finger grips at the balance point (Wilk build log, Page 3, Posts 43 and 45), which made hand launching a piece of cake. And because it's a twin, I set up counter-rotating props, so I could launch it at full throttle, and expect it to move straight forward. It's got 500 watts of power, so getting it flying did not require anything like an Olympic javelin throw--quite the opposite!

See my hand launch tutorial here:

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...your-left-hand

japim PZL 38 Wilk Maiden 11 11 2021 (4 min 31 sec)

I didn't want to bore anyone with re-posting my updated decals on Lockey's DeHavilland Vampire thread, so I'll just edit my post with a link to this blog entry for those who are interested. I had to make a color comparison using a nice Vampire photo to convince myself that the colors were good. I was thinking that my updated blue was too purple, but evidently royal blue has enough red in it to suggest a hint of purple.

I also just updated the roundel proportions.

It's now ready to fly after a few years of playing with its assembly on and off. The final configuration mimics the usual modern civilian light twins, most of which had retractable landing gear--hence, no wheels.

Installed are two Rimfire .10s, spinning counter-rotating APC 9X6E props. Two 40 amp ESCs are mounted in the fuselage, behind a 3700 mAh 40C 3-cell LiPo. The aileron servos were moved from the bottom to the top for belly landing.

Weight ready-to-fly is 3-1/2 pounds. I'll be hand launching with my left hand holding the bottom of the fuse at the leading edge, with my right hand giving it some up elevator. Take-off will be at full throttle; with the counter-rotating props, the worry of left and down is eliminated. I also don't expect any ballooning on take-off due to its weight.

This year's Marymoor RC Club's group build is Terry Dunn's New Moon, which has a build thread at www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?1521335. The original New Moon plan, with Terry's permission, was enlarged to 150% and kitted by jeffsch, who is a club member, and has his build thread here: www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?3538539. When I saw WAGliderGuy's video on Jeff's thread, I got a good idea of the plane-to-man size comparison, and I decided that it was too big for me. So I got Jeff's permission to build a 125% version out of balsa wood, so that I could still be a participant in the club group build. Since Terry's design is inspired, at least in part, by the Cirrus Vision, I decided to "kit-bash" the front end of a Cirrus Vision onto my New Moon 125%. Just for fun, I've nicknamed it "New/Vision."

One of my rc airplane clubs, the Marymoor RC Club, has a club group build that's still in progress. We're building a profile version of the Grumman Panther that was featured in the Summer 2013 edition of Park Pilot magazine, which is an AMA publication. Prolific long-time designer Dick Sarpolus gave us this design, which takes advantage of the thin profile fuselage to make constructing an EDF jet very simple, yet surprisingly effective. The head of the group build is fellow MAR-C member Jeff Schlimmer, aka jeffsch on RCG, a prolific designer and kitter of parkflyer foamies in his own right, who made the kits for us, his groupies. The build officially kicked off at the April club meeting, and will wrap up with a group picture at our August meeting. I just got mine done yesterday, so below is its picture.

I'll start this detailed hand-launching tutorial with an excerpt from an MSN news report that I saw just today (6/9/2018): "Left-handed people haven't always been treated well through history. They've been persecuted for their disposition, being labeled as evil--or even as witches--despite making up about 10% of the population. In fact, the word "sinister" comes from "left" or "left hand." . . . One thing we do know, though, is that the neurological differences between left-and right-handed people are small, and supposed behavioral or psychological distinctions have largely been debunked."

An old mentor of mine once shared findings by anthropologists about the origins surrounding left-and right-handedness in ancient Middle Eastern people. Those people didn't have running water or toilet paper like we do today, so they developed a culture-wide habit whereby they would eat food with their right hand, and wipe their butt with their left hand. Their right hand therefore became known as the "hand of blessing," and their left hand became known as the "hand of cursing." (Can you imagine putting food in your mouth with your poopy left hand?) The right hand as the hand of blessing is reflected in the Middle Eastern-derived Holy Bible in passages such as the one that describes Jesus sitting on the right hand of God. The Bible has been read by a great many people around the world, and as is common with traditional...Continue Reading

First Video with Canon Powershot ELPH 360 HS (3 min 28 sec)

I didn't get around to all the pilots and their planes individually, so this is an incomplete reporting, and I apologize to the rest of the pilots whom I didn't see one-on-one. I personally want to thank ALL the pilots who attended and made this year's event very special (see the Pilots and their planes picture in Part 1).

I'll break this up into two entries, so you can see all the pictures without having to click to a different page. Marymoor R/C Club (MAR/C) in Redmond, WA holds a sport scale contest every summer. There first is static judging of the plane (with documentation). Then there's the flight judging, with three standard maneuvers (climb out, fly-by, and landing) and two elected maneuvers from a set that the pilots choose (such as roll, loop, Immelmann, Spit-S, touch-and-go, etc.). After the first round of flying, we break for grilled hamburgers, sodas, and other picnic-style goodies. Then we do a final round of flying to see if we can improve our points. There are three cash prizes for the pilots with the most points. That's the business end of what is mostly an awesome annual reunion of friends getting together and having fun, fun, fun!

In my blog entry from December 05, 2016, I discussed where you would see Mt. Rainier from my flying field on a clear day. Well, last Thursday was that clear day on the second day of summer. So I owe you guys a pic of that big geological pimple sitting to the south about 90 miles away. Mt. St. Helens is only a stone's throw away from there to the southwest. Imagine what it would look like as you were flying your plane, and this bad boy suddenly exploded!

I met Mark and Karen Brody at the field Thursday. They just recently joined Marymoor R/C Club. They're former full-scale pilots, flying such iconic planes as the Beechcraft Debonair and the Cessna 310 (Whoo-Hoo! Sky King!). Formerly, they were members of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, and Mark proudly owns his A.O.P.A. 50 Year pin. Both are currently still supportive members of the Experimental Aircraft Association (E.A.A.). It was my pleasure talking with this super-friendly couple.

I recently lost my beloved modified 40" foamy Super Sportster (also shown in my blog entry from Dec. 05, 2016). It suffered an apparent brown-out as it was coming around in the Back 40. The grass back there is taller than I am, and the little plane disappeared forever into those engulfing green blades. So to combat future losses and increase my recovery rate, I'm now installing the Hobbico Air Alert in all my planes. It lets out long beeps to quickly help me find the plane if it goes down. And something else I learned is that if a plane has anything more severe than a mild crash, the battery will pop out and disconnect. The Air Alert will not work with no juice to it, so I also routinely install Velcro straps to go around my battery.

I'm slowly recovering from a nasty allergic reaction to balsa fine saw dust, and all my wood building is currently in limbo. Bummer! So since this is my blog, and I can do about anything I want to anyway, let me take this opportunity to share some of my previous artwork before I got into this hobby. After all, if Jay Smith and Thayer Syme can promote Vance Gilbert and his song, "Old White Men," then this old white man sees no problem with promoting his own music. I've only recently got all my stuff up on the internet, which has taken me thirty years to accomplish.

Here's my video on youtube. It's a musical comedy sketch that I wrote and performed in front of a live audience in 1993:

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...+sweet+chariot

And here's eight songs that I wrote and fully produced from 1987 to 2001. They're all good, but my favorite is "Dark Ages"!

https://soundcloud.com/search?q=Jay%...%201st%20Demos

Have fun, everybody!

Three years ago I did a video with a hand-launch small plane to test out a "hat cam" with an "aimer." The still pix of my setup are below. The resulting video (shot with a Pentax pocket camera in Video Mode) proved that the sight attachment helped me to keep the plane in the video frame just about the whole time. And it was my first attempt to do so! With practice, one could get quite steady, I'll bet. I've already thought of an upgrade, which I'll post when I get that project done.

Video Of Me 109 2 (3 min 26 sec)

This has been a long time in the works for me. It has been said that CAD has a steep learning curve. Whether or not that is true for anyone else, it had been certainly true for yours truly. Last spring, I sent Charlie Bice at Manzano Laser a test cut file, but it was embarrassingly newbee-ish, as I didn't have my units and boundaries designated. Charlie was kind enough to tweak everything into shape without charging me for his design services. But this time around, I wanted to make sure that the cut file was ready to be read by the laser cutter. Tom Jacoby was at the helm now, and he informed me of the good news that my latest test cut file was A-OK! So, below is the picture of the laser-cut 1/16" balsa sheet with my images on it. Now that I've got that down, the door swings wide open for me to make my own parts from plans or my own designs. I still draw everything in Photoshop first before transferring the "cut files" to CAD, where I trace over them. That's because I've used Photoshop for 15-plus years, and even though I'm sure it's clunky compared to CAD, at least I know how to take a design from beginning to end with it. In CAD I would just be fumbling and fuming because I'm not that far along yet, and I would really rather dispense with the anxiety right now. Maybe later things will get easier, and I'll look back and laugh, but right now my baby steps have brought me to an exciting entry level in the world of CAD!

Just in time for Old Saint Nick! These 1/9th scale Songbird-style spinners are my fourth and last design contribution to the Park Scale Models Bobcat. I've given you fellow Bobcat builders:

1) A semi-scale tailwheel installation procedure with template

2) A Songbird-style canopy with template

3) Bobcat-specific retract installation procedure with template

4) This 1/9th scale Songbird-style spinner with templates

Merry Christmas 2016 to all you present and future Bobcat builders! ...Continue Reading

I had no idea it was going to be this cold when I left Seattle. Redmond is about 30 miles NE of Downtown, and at a higher elevation. When I got to the field, there were sprinklings everywhere of either huge sleet or small hail, about 1/4" to 3/16" in diameter. My weathertainment channel said 40 degrees, 4 mph wind, and mostly sunny. I figured there would be a lot of guys out there. But when I got there, it was a ghost town.

So anyway, here's pictures of my (land) club, Marymoor R/C Club, in Redmond WA, on this frigid Sunday, December 4th, 2016.

Coming up next--1/9th scale Songbird-style spinners

Below is my flat spot machine, and the results show how square the wheel is.

I thought I could knock this out in a couple days. But I wanted to present you guys with a system that you could replicate successfully. That's the Scientific Method in action!

I still have to do the flat spots. That's coming up in Part 2.

On my way to rough-balancing this bird, it looks like I need to post some things in between.

Below are four pix that will show how I had to manipulate my motors.

(To the sound of fanfare) Here it is! All the wood is out of the box and on the plane now. At present, I'm at the same place that Zeke was when he started the Bamboo Bomber thread on the Scale kit/scratch build forum. I started with my build on page 20 of that thread last July.

Next is doing a rough balance, to see the fate of that 9 gram servo in the tail.

"Next is to build the starboard wing and nacelle. I'm slow, so give me a couple weeks."--Entry 13, Wednesday, November 2nd. Not bad on the time at all!

Below is a few pix I owe you guys. Thank you, Jason Cole, for telling me how to put text in my pictures. You're the one who also taught me how to hand launch my small models with your Alfa warbird videos at what was then (the real) Hobby Lobby.

The 3rd pic is of the wood glue I use. I get mine two blocks away at the downtown Ace hardware store. But I've also seen it sold by Hobby Town USA in Redmond, which is my closest LHS. Depending on the application, sometimes the best glue is not the most high-tech stuff. For me, the downside of waiting 24 hours to cure is more than compensating for how soothing it is on my nerves when I need time to position my piece.

Next entry will be my milestone of having all the wood from the kit on my plane.