One year ago today: April 26, 2014, on deprived grandchildren.
Five years ago today: April 26, 2010, on getting paid to drink.
Six years ago today: April 26, 2009, spyware & shirts.
MORNING
What’s that crackling noise? Since the pad isn’t on fire, that would be my back as I limber up. Wow, I got a solid nine hours in. The Swiss gal from last week never did respond to our e-mail, which kind of leads me to suspect she’s the gypsy type. That’s not a bad thing, I’ve led much of the same life for over ten years now. There’s a lot to be said about not following the crowd. Simply refuse to use credit cards, and already you are a rebel in our society.
I did notice that not that long ago, the Feds began compelling all model plans to print a “lot number” on the major components, like the schematic for the wing, or the chassis of wheeled vehicles. It was shortly after this that the supply of free plans evaporated. Hell, five years ago you could download blueprints for full-size gliders and light aircraft.
More in the addendum, but I feel the Internet has entered a new and dislikeable phase. Most people won’t notice and the Millenials are conditioned from birth to blind acceptance, but it is getting really difficult to find anything useful for free on-line. Yet, this was the very concept of the original system, to allow the unfettered distribution of information. Some could argue it still is, but I’m referring to the quality of that information. It is no longer there, to the extent it ever was in the early days.
Music was free, now you can be arrested for not paying for it. And I tried to find an ordinary template for an ordinary model airplane, the wood or balsa kind. No sir, they want your life history on file first. Hence, the solution [this morning] was to call the club meeting two hours early, just after sunrise. See who else is awake at that time. I’m no early riser, but an interesting life, I think, leads to getting up early for its own sake.
For example, when young, it is probably wise not to be too physiologically driven, when older, it is better to obey what your system is saying. Thus, the “hungry-eat” and “tired-sleep” behavior is best when one is well past the stage of working for a living. It is one thing to get up early because one is totally refreshed from deep sleep, and quite another to do it because one has a dead end job. So, which have I become? Test your character. Am I up early to tackle the world, or have I become an old coot who thinks waking up before dawn impresses people and never annoys them? Don't be swayed that I come from a long family line of the latter.
NOON
"It's easier to find a traveling companion than to get rid of one." --Peg Bracken
Yep, how well I know about families that “get along”. None of them do, it is more of a policy of establishing mutual distances. Sadly, there are some families that do not respect that distance, and you are doomed. So at the club breakfast this morning, I was more than amused to hear this guy report how he hasn’t talked to his brother in three years, and in the first sentence, the brother called him a moron, an idiot and stupid.
Meanwhile, here is that homeless guy with his Flying Dutchman bicycle. It doesn’t show so well, but it has belts and pulleys and a little flag on top. It’s a tourist attraction. I recognize, from my navigation studies, that some of the aerodynamic shapes on his canopy are based on sails. You know, like on sailing ships. A spinnaker, a spanker, a foresail, that kind of shape, just smaller.
Nothing was decided over breakfast except that the club currently has no collective project. Agt. M is rewelding the band saw blades, but nothing I’m building with that has much to do with robotics. I’m still looking at gears. I’ve cut templates, some day soon I’m going to set down for a half day and design my own. I re-watched the wooden gear how-to videos more closely and see that other than having heavier duty cutting gear, the guy is encountering the same problems I have and solving them in similar ways. Unlike me, most builders won’t show their mistakes. I know what to look for and most wooden gears are “hogged out”.
That comes from dragging the saw blade sideways to flatten a small internal cut.
AFTERNOON
“She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry”, this afternoon’s matinee at the foreign cinema. It is concerned with the feminist movement of 1966 thru 1971. It’s as one-sided as it sounds, which has always perplexed me about these movements—there is no opposition. Nobody is marching down main street demanding less pay for women. For that matter, as a Libertarian, I’ve never supported any entity that said anybody could not do what they pleased as long as they pay for it themselves.
It’s a wonderful self-governing system and that's a fancy way of saying I never supported male chauvinism. I would never force anyone to get married and have children or enter a beauty contest or anything of the kind. If they should take it upon themselves to do so, it is out of my hands.
I will merely state that not lumping these together in my mind is not at all the same as being against them. You ladies want birth control and daycare, you go right ahead. But don’t be demanding that everybody else has to like it and pay for it. That’s stepping over the line. I know that there is no real equality out there for anybody but the ultra-rich. There is your enemy, not me, not my paycheck, not even my attitude. You can't have it both ways. The very concept of banding together in society is to extract a degree of conformity and to exclude special interest groups from dictating policy.
One thing I do know is that these groups are never satisfied. It’s a mentality they will turn on each other after a while. I know that if I want to join a certain club, I have to qualify for membership and obey the rules. Is that club therefore oppressing me? Mind you, I recognize though, that when the club gets powerful enough to impose themselves on an entire culture, change means destroying the club itself. Just make sure, ladies, that you don’t get too many innocent bystanders, (like the taxpayer) wounded in the cross-fire. Shoot to kill only.
Go see the movie and make up your own mind. I came away with a strong suspicion that a lot of women joined what they thought was an anti-rape and equal-pay advocacy group were astounded to discover by end of the second meeting they were expected to endorse legalized abortion and public lesbianism as well. Huh? What? No, at that point, it is not all good. And who are you calling “sister”?
EVENING
I got to thinking about the lack of airplane planes on-line and I found the archetypical Millenial post on eHow. The title was how to build an airplane. Step 1: decide what kind of airplane you want. Step 2: Follow the directions. Step 3: Go fly your airplane. This brand of non-answer is why I quit trying to post informative articles back in 2010. It would just be swallowed up by the mass of junk posts like that one.
It has bulkheads and spars and struts. But I did it without any consideration to weight, center or gravity, payload, or landing gear. Over the years I’ve seen pictures of this kind of construction and thought I’d have a go at it. Three hours of doing beats a month of classroom instruction. For that matter, it beats a year waiting for Nova to lift a finger.
I learned a lot, for instance that this type of construction, which I think is “semi-monocoque” will bend and twist quite a bit without breaking. This model looks rough so allow me to point out that the one part I can do with precision is drill pilot holes. As shown here (my cam battery was dying), there are no fasteners used. No nails, no glue, nothing but accurately sized and drilled pilot holes holding this together.
There is no intention here to take up model building and anyway, this is much more than a model since this could be scaled up to a working size. Hence, there is no comparison to a no-brainer plastic shell kit. There are no contours or streamlining on my example unless I put it there. I could put an engine on mine and have a reasonably working facsimile.
My conclusion? It’s not bad for a first kick at the can. And like a robot, I’m fairly confident given the time and money, I could build one well enough. I would have made an excellent mad scientist, you know.
ADDENDUM
Distant avenues is the name of a record label, but also the term I use sometimes to describe the areas of study the serious student touches on but does not pursue. The difference is you get a better balance of knowledge than the college material force-fed to young people with other things on their minds. Thus, when looking at robot structure design, I found myself reading up on aircraft fuselage construction. This goes nowhere, but like the way I budget money, it creates a reserve tucked away just in case. And when that exists, you can look at things more realistically.
I also found there is very little of use on this topic on-line. Golly, where have my studies encountered this before? Don’t think so? Try to find an example of a nested channel wing. At the other extreme, you learn about monocoque construction even if you try to avoid the topic. And the main thing you learn is that it is “so-called”. It is not just monocoque, it is “so-called” monocoque. These engineers will go to any length to be helpful Or is that so-called helpful?
Last Laugh
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