combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

Nice to hear from you Dickeybird..! Your presense here has been sorely missed the past several years..as well as Jeremy's.
Yes indeed, get your peepers fixed and stay sharp with a .22. I think target practice is healthy exercise.

Big Al-RCU

Hi DB, good to see you are getting back into 1/2A R/C. Long time no-see.

Comments:
Item #2, re, eyesight. You may recall at SMALL 2003 that I didn’t trust my eyesight enough to fly a small quick plane at a strange field in front of spectators. I conned you (along with Jeremy & Digger) to demo it for me.
Well good news and bad news.
The good news is that shortly after that I had cataract surgery and with the implants available now-a-days vision is nearly good as new even without glasses.
The bad news is that it didn’t do CRAP for my slow reflexes.

Item #4, re, software. I’ve been using Mach 3 (on a Sherline mill) ever since Art renamed it from Master 5. But from what I’ve seen from your posts on other forums, you are way ahead of me. I just bought a copy of Dolphin CADCAM and learning that is my resolution (challenge?) for this year.

Happy New Year
Al

dmbaerry

Thanks vicman,
I will look into meeting some of the members there also and visiting the Flying field. Any contact suggestions?

vicman

My Feedback: (10)

Electric Delta here in RCU has been a member in the past and lives in Burlington.
Jay Marsh is active there and is the AMA asssistant vp.

MJD

My Feedback: (1)

Things to do in 2013 I missed on my first list:

1. Spend a few days off cleaning and organizing my dysfunctional workshop to get it back in order.

85% done!! I took a school holiday off, the full two weeks, and spent a few hours nearly every day tearing my workshop apart and cleaning/organizing/purging. For reference I am a confessed packrat and have 30 years' worth of accumulated goodies crammed into a 14' square workshop. So if I am not extremely diligent about organizing and putting things away anytime I work on anything, it spirals out of control in the blink of an eye. For the last half of 2012 it was pretty much "out of order" and driving me nuts. Friday was "hump day", where I started closing up and marking dozens of plastic bins and stacking them in their newly cleaned places, and hauling out a few bags of pure crap. It's not done, but I am immensely satisfied with the progress.

I decided to stack my 1/2A sport RC kits in one spot, once I found them all, and was pleasantly surprised to find I had the following: Mach None, Upstart, Mini Pacer, Baby Birdie, HOB P-51. None of these are exactly major building projects. The Baby Birdie is the only one I have started, I built the fuselage and stab ages ago and had just finished fitting an Enya CX .11 to the nose in the bright idea of hot-rodding it, when the project to a halt. Now that sufficient time has passed for the status quo of 1/2A radio gear to have improved by several leaps and bounds, AND the bench is almost clean again, I think it may be time to resurrect that project.

skaliwag

My Feedback: (1)

You will not regret getting the Baby Birdie finished.. A fabulous little flyer. Mine had a Medalion .09. The Enya .11 should give it muscles in it's exhaust.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

Way to go MJD!
I dread the idea of dying and leaving a massive, toxic wasteland full of stuff for my heirs to get stuck with shoveling into dumpsters..but that's just too bad for them.
It is actually scary to look at all the toxic dust that settles in every nook and cranny and to know that I've breathed in my fair share of it. A really well equipped shop should have a room dedicated to spray painting, sanding, grinding, etc....with powerful ventilation and all the dust collected in filters.

vicman

My Feedback: (10)

Good grief, don't remind me or even get me thinking about all that stuff.[&:]

I have been working on a plane a scratched about 10 years ago getting it back to airworthiness.

Tom Nied

I got one project, 90% done a Sig Wonder. Would love to complete that.

straitnickel

MJD, fantastic news for everybody

MJD

My Feedback: (1)

I was invulnerable for most of my modelling/working career, or so I thought. I buggered up my lungs for months when I worked in Co Springs, due to inadequate protection while abrasive cutting endless pieces of filament wound glass/epoxy tubing. To this day I am very sensitive to any fibrous dust, and since end up with bronchitis at the drop of a hat and have had pneumonia a few times. As to solvents.. I hate to think what I absorbed over the years. MEK is a brand of hand cleaner, isn't it? I used to marinate in dope fumes as a youth (we're talking butyrate/nitrate "dope" here folks..), never gave a thought to it. Getting dizzy was part of the fun..

We can all handle these nasties within limits, but I think modelers tend to create situations where exposure is far above what should be considered safe. Even plain balsa dust is not a good thing in the lungs.

DeviousDave

I moved over the Christmas/New Year vacation. My shop was packed up as orderly as I could make it but I'll be darned if I can find half of my stuff, and now that I'm moved in I don't know if there will even be room to set a shop up. Some of it is here, but I have boxes and boxes of planes at my dad's and a friend to help them survive the moving/unpacking phase. Now that I'm here I don't know where it will go...


Where there's a will there's a way I spose.

straitnickel

MJD,
I did it the same way, I'm just building a model plane, what could be the harm?, We were ten feet tall and bullit proof back then, right?

MJD

My Feedback: (1)

My biggest problem was creating places for all the "bits", and to determine at what level of detail I stop being totally "AR" by separating everything into compartments, and just make a bin that says "this kind of stuff". I ended up with a large number of small plastic bins (the 6-7" wide by about a foot long kind with pop off lids) with various categories such as "Rx and Rx batteries", "spinners", "tanks and fittings", etc. This seems to work. And, I made bins for all the projects in the works - with the parts, instructions, etc all in one small-as-possible container rather than the original bulky kit box.

I say this because some months ago, I thought buying a stack of the large flip top bins was the answer - I ended up with piles of large 1/2-3/4 empty bins. When the volume of the shop is so restricted things obviously have to be more efficient.

Some of my revelations border on plain stupidity. I have a rolling tool chest, and a medium size portable tool box full of small tools. The rolling chest is full of engines in the three large bottom drawers, the middle drawers are full of props, and random hardware in the small drawers. No tools to be seen. Meantime, I have tools all over the place.. 2+2 = "hey dummy, pull all the hobby crap out of the tool chest, find somewhere else for it, and put ALL your tools in one place". There are other examples.

Previous life/job, I used to watch the machinists in awe, as they would meticulously return everything to its proper place and clean their benches and machines before the next job. Funny thing is, whenever they needed something, they knew exactly where to find it and it was right there, and without appearing to be in a hurry they methodically got a lot of work done.. strange how that works. I find it much easier to toss stuff off to the side without looking and rush onto some other unrelated task.

What's that saying about being your own worst enemy?

I also noticed I really need to inventory all my Cox parts.. and separate them by engine type into little boxes. I doubt I'll ever burn through all the .010 glow heads and props, but it's nice to feel secure.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

I combine metal work, carpentry, model building, auto repair, chicken brooding all in the same barn. I've got wild birds that make their way in, occassional weasels and mice. I had a bunch of cast aluminum engine stuff in a drawer that got dissolved by rat piss. It's just a zoo out there. The best thing that ever happened was running across a bunch of free cabinetry for storage.

Tom Nied

Rat piss dissolves aluminum? I would never had thunk. Weasel piss? That's got to be nasty.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

It turns the aluminum into powder. Since I've located the chicken coop next to the barn the mice haven't been around as much.
Weasels are funny because they like to come up and watch you as you work. I think they could be semi domesticated with selective breeding.

fizzwater2

My Feedback: (61)

Our local Target stores have a shoebox sized plastic tub with a snap on lid. I use quite a few of these to store engines, got one for Hitec radio stuff, one for JR radio stuff, one for Spektrum radio stuff... etc.

I started using these because the basement is deep (9' walls) and the water table fairly high, so during the humid summers, it can get kinda damp down there. I save those bags of dessicant from packages, from our receiving department at work, etc - and throw some of them in the boxes with engines, radios, tools..

So far things are working out just fine, and with the boxes being transparent, you can usually pick the right one off the shelf without having to dig around too much.

MJD

My Feedback: (1)

My shop gets nasty humid as well. I run a dehumidifier all summer to keep it under control. Even so, cardboard or paper shoved into dark corners gets musty after a while. Learned that on a couple of kits and some other odds and ends the hard way, standing on end in the corners. Luckily one was a Multiplex foamie so no worries. Shoebox-size plastic bins are indeed the bee's knees for that problem for parts, and if I have to prop large stuff up in a corner or crevasse somewhere, I cut a chunk of 2" insulating foam as a base.

I pulled a framed up but not covered delta off the wing racks this weekend.. and found about a cup of sunflower seed husks inside the sheeted bays either side of the radio compartment. Evidently some mouse thought it had found a great hiding place by climbing through the lightening holes in the ribs. Oddly, no damage.

Rat piss is alkaline, aluminum doesn't like that much.

Cobra1

My Feedback: (42)

Sell one more airplane than I buy - just to keep my wife happy

Boomerang1

I've got 2 small engines, an OS10 FP and an MP Jet 04 diesel.

I would like to see both in the air this year. - John.

MJD

My Feedback: (1)

I always thought the Goldberg EP Super Chipmunk would make a nice OS .10 conversion.

How about a Tomboy for the MP Jet? Or any 1/2A Texaco design.

Mr Cox

The OS .10 would be a bit heavy I think, the electric ARF's seem to be rather weak in the structure, the expected lifetime is not like on traditional scratch built planes. I reinforced mine around the firewall and fuselage sides (with triangular pine) and it is holding up well so far, while landing gear is quite weak though and the wing might not handle a stiffer one. I have put a Norvel .074 in mine and the weight is lower than the recommended on electric power (19oz instead of 22oz). Flys nice, even at low throttle, but the wing incidence is a little high for my taste, and that's not so easy to change.

Mr Cox

My resolution was to clear out some old projects. Here is a second project that have been waiting for finishing, something a little faster to go with an ASP .12 engine. It is not pretty but will hopefully move around nicely (30" wingspan and a total weight around 23oz);

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

I like your Red Racer Mr. Cox..!