A while back I got a carb and muffler from Larry Driskill to put onto my VA 049. I dutifully measured the threads on the carb and went to my local machine tool emporium to purchase a 6x0,75 mm tap to tap the crankcase to accept the carb. I no sooner went to use it a day or two later and it was gone. Where did I put it?...... Where IS that d*^$ thing..... WHAT *$()$&#*@ HAPPENED TO IT ! ! !....

A day passes, then two, which turns into a week. Yet more weeks pass with no sign of it Sporadic attempts to find the tap lead me the final alternative.... I clean up....[X(] Still no tap. I'm getting a trifle perturbed by this point (vast understatement). Visions of purchasing a second tap so it can find it's brother loom in the back of my cobwebbed mind but you just KNOW that if I bought a second one the first would be waiting to open the door for us when we got home. So I procrastinate.

But here we are a month later and I'm washing up after a night working on my motorcycle and pass the dryer... and there it is sitting on top of the dryer... It's returned from the "sock place". How long it was in hyperspace is anyones guess. But it had travel stickers from various stops with symbols that no human eye has ever beheld... either that or it was in the pocket of the one pair of pants I never looked at until the wife found it clanking in the dryer.

At any rate the adventure is over and I can proceed with RC'ising my VA049. More details and pics to follow.... and fine pics they'll be too. I just brought home a new Minolta A1 5 megapixel digital camera today. The Li Ion pack is charging here beside me so we can join hands and venture boldly into the 3 inch thick manual.....

Oh, and you'll all be happy to know that hte preservative on the tap has been washed off and it's all shiny and squeeky clean.

BRUCE, I do the same thing all the time, and it is usually with something like a tap. The other day I was [ahem] POLISHING the crank in my PAW 15 with a carbide rotary file. To get adequate reach I didn't have the tool in the collet all the way. After my "polishing" was almost done, I went back in to hit one more spot, the tool bit grabbed, spun the crank out of my hand and sent it rocketing across my barn into the abyss of saw dust, scrap metal, garbage cans, tiers of shelves, etc. I actually had to clean the place up and I found it 4 hours later in the bottom of a bucket full of left over framing brackets, with out a scratch on it. The crank work, and a little "polishing" on the top of the exhaust port should allow me to run with the big dogs in 70mph DBAT and then switch back to a smaller venturi for 65mph NOSTALGIA DBAT. Oh, the other thing I "noticed "while the engine was apart, is there are a couple of half round notches on the piston skirt now, and you can see into the crankcase when the piston is at TDC. WE're going to go at it this Saturday in SEDRO WOOLEY, WA.

do you guys ever lose things that are right in front of you???i'll lay a tool down for a second...go to reach for it and it dissapears...now i'm looking for it all over the place,and it's setting right in front of me...

john

Of all the things I lost I miss my mind the most.... I saw that on a key chain once!


Later,
Tim

see you guys pay attention to the Strattera comercials those are tiny parts of ADD,,ever walk into a room and forget what you went there for? I cant tell you how many times I misplaced a drill bit, pair of pliers, roll of tape and just said &*%$ it, and drove to the dollar store and just bought another one.....I lost my Norvel wrench this morning at the field and , I searched for it for 10 minutes it went from the field box to the table and then apparently the norvel fairy carried it off, cause I still havent found it.......Rog

i lost a motorcycle once!i went to a big race meeting and forgot where i put it,i had to wait 'til everyone had gone so i could spot it!

I see that I'm in fine company here......

A sad lot, ain't we....

I've done all that guys. It's enough to make a person threaten to keep the shop clean and tidy... well, almost.

Bigchap, I lost my CAR in a lot one time. It was a little Datsun 1200. I wandered the rows for about 10 minutes before I found it. Three vans a large car and a pickup truck had nestled in all around it and since I parked well back in the slot you basically had to be right in front of the car to even see it. I figure I passed it at least once but must not have looked the right way at the right couple of seconds of time. I was JUST about to go report it stolen when I found it....

must have been a whole bunch of motorcycles there...R/C motorcycles that is

john

I used to think that was funnier 'n hail but now I'm starting to identify with it waaaay too much. But I see I'm far from alone.
I'm still trying to recall if I ever lost a car or motorcycle-----so far, so good.

Bruce wrote:
<I've done all that guys. It's enough to make a person threaten to keep the shop clean and tidy.>

Now you've started meddling. There ARE limits you know. [sm=punching.gif]
BTW Bruce, if you haven't figured it out yet I'm TAndy over at SFA.
Yesterday I finally located the source of the bad smell in the shop that's been driving me nuts for 2-3 years. Needing some medium thick Nordic birch to build a motor test stand I reached up in the eaves of the back room (by the fresh shed snake skin) to take down an abandoned storage box project. Nestled inside was the remains of a dead rat or flying squirrel. At this stage it's far too late for positive identity but I have both pack rats and flying squirrels that love the barn and shop. I never can tell what may have taken up squatters rights in a stored fuselage, but dirt daubers is always a safe first bet. Plays he11 with weight and balance.[] Tom

Bruce, I was walking all over my shop one day looking for a screwdriver... after about 15 minutes I raised my arms in disgust and it fell to the floor. Seems I was holding it under my armpit and actually forgot it there... [X(]

True story!

AJC

Tom, glad you found your way over here. These guys are a lot of fun an probably the most proliferant posters on the site other than the guys in the AMA political forum.

AJ, thanks buddy. You've made me feel much more adequite with that story.... I'm in the habit of putting my pencil behind my ear. One day I did exactly the same as you but for not as long looking for the pencil I KNEW I'd had only a second before. Finally, in disgust with myself, I sharpened up another, used it and put it up to my ear. A pencil fell and I naturally assumed it was the one I'd just put there. So I picked it up and tried to put it behind my ear only to feel the second one.

Some days it just does not pay to get out of bed....

Hey Bruce, I have more.... but I think I will stop with the first one I told you...

AJC

Well, here is a different kind of story..
While out riding my trailbike on some sand dunes I managed to drop my tool bag with all my cool mini fix it tools (including flywheel puller, etc etc that you need if you ride old bikes that have points!) in the sand..... I realised about 20 minutes of riding later. Well, it was windy and the sand was moving a lot (no tire tracks), but i spotted the dull grey of the end of a spanner in the sand after only looking for 10 minutes!... would you believe it! This in an area several kilometers wide! Got all my tools back...[8D]

Now, if i had dropped them in my work area.... [:-]

J.M

Japanman, I know just what you mean. One time a good flying buddy lost his Dynamoe rubber model during the day's flying. It was quite windy and he wandered far and wide looking for it. As it happened we were all staying camped out at a nearby farm so after dinner when it was cooler about 12 of us went out to look. On the way there I commented to my traveling bud that I was only along so that someone else could find it. I'm usually cannon fodder for issues like this. Well we stop and get out of the truck and the first guy explains the line. I'm sighting downrange and see something about 80 yards into the first field. I lift my binos and look to see what I'm pretty sure was a Dynamoe tail sticking up out of the grass. Meanwhile the flyer is still explaining how far away he thinks it is. I walk out to the model and start back with everyone agog. The ice in our drinks back at the farm was still cold when we got back.

I should have run out and bought that Lotto ticket right then and there....

Whew!!! I'm feelin' much better now -- I think. Somewhat similar to AJC, while outside, I reached into my pants pocket for my pocket knife -- GONE! After 30 minutes of looking outside and in, I found it in my other pocket. I guess being so anal retentive, I couldn't cope with the idea that I had stuck it in the left pocket.

As they say on one of the TV commercials, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. But are you to blame when it just slips away from you?

the "other" Andrew

Last summer the owner of the field where I fly was helping a couple of guys find a helicopter that they thought had crashed about 20 rows out in a corn field. They had looked for over an hour when they decided to get out of the hot corn for a while. As they stepped out of the corn and back onto the runway they found it. 2 rows out.

Maybe the most difficult item in the world to find is a TeeDee venturi when you drop it in deep grass.

The runner up is surely a TeeDee spinner. If the prop comes off in flight . . . the only thing to do is begin memorial services because it is gone.

i've managed to lose all six barrels of a vulcan cannon....somewhere in the middle of 2,500 sq. kilometers of desert...
"found" six new replacements in a phantom hanger during a week long exercise at an air force base


also managed to lose a pair of APCs loaded with stingers in the same desert...
good thing they were both found or i'd be pulling a nice 5 year stretch in a military prison



dave

Several years back at SIG's CL contest, I was flying my Charybdis FF Helicopter for the kids after the Saturday contest, using a glow stick on it for the failing light. It was windy so I was severaly short tanking the Cox engine with 4ccs, this usually gave it 20 seconds of flying time, enough for a 100 yards of running for the youths so inclined.

Well, I managed to get a full tank in it, or it went desperatly lean like they do from time to time and off that sucker went. I was launching towards the west side of the runway, and when I was up against the barbed wire on the east side of the runway I remember not really being able to see the little red glow stick way out there, but it was going up not down. Guess it found some ridge lift out there somewhere. As the light disappeared in the distance, I marked where it was going with a radio tower, climbed the fence and headed in the general direction. The problem with walking a straight line in Iowa in June is the dang corn rows go evey which way and I was soon lost, well, off course. I had the moon up above me and the sounds of people flying nighttime combat behind me to keep me located, so I kept walking, and walking, and walking. Suddenly it occured to me just how long I had been walking. The moon had been covered up by clouds and there was no longer any engine noise, just the noise of corn blowing in the wind. Several times I would turn around quickly only to see a coyote who was really confused about just what I was doing in his field, he would slink back into the shadows. So here I was in the middle of the night, in the middle of Iowa (worlds biggest corn field) in a tank top and shorts and sandles, with no idea where I was let alone my model. So I kept looking figuring I'd come up against a road sooner or later. About 30 minutes passed and there was a gap in the clouds, I recognized a constellation, turned around and started walking the otherway. Another 20-30 minutes and several fences later, I came up to a fence next to the road a pasture east of the field, I put my hand on the fence, right on a barb, and stepped into a 3 foot deep hole. Somehow I didn't puncture my hand. As I was falling, Bob Hennigson drove by. I got over the fence just as he stapped 50 yards away, pointing the car towards the pasture with the highbeams on. He got out and just gave a big holler at the field. Now I'd been out in the dark for quite some time, so much so that I was dark adapted. The glow from Bob's car was just brilliant. Bob on the other hand was accustomed to the light of his headlights, so when I walked up behind him in all this simulated daylight and asked 'As long as you're here, can I get a ride back?' it was to him as if I had just materialized out of thin air. I think he had to change his underwear. I guess they had waited a couple hours and then decided that they should go looking for me.

Made it back to the field and my tent and bedded down for the night. I woke up bright and early the next morning, went and got my bead on the territory and started walking again. You can go so much faster if you know where you going. After several pastures, I was walking in a lowle when I stepped into a cow footprint that must have been 1.5 feet deep. I looked up while pulling my foot out and noticed a piece of red part of the way up the next hill. I remembered thinking that it was either a milo stalk or my Charybdis, so I trotted up the hill to, a milo stalk. 'Ahh ta Hell with the damn thing then!' I exclaimed and on turning, there it was 20 foot to the left!

I picked up my Charybdis and was back to the field ready to go. When questioned about how that darn thing actually flew in the bright, pre-stunt plane morning, I gave it a full tank and we watched it go up and come down about 20 feet away. Then somebody pulled a stunt ship out and free flying missles were relegated to the back of my van.

Easily 4-6 hours that I wouldn't trade fer nothing.

GREAT story! We oughta change our forum title to "1/2A fliers and story tellers association"

I agree, thats a great story..

( I have a great one of when I got lost in the bush for 6 hours, while solo mountainbiking, allmost drowned while trying to cross a large swamp and even got chased by a black bear - just made it home before I collapsed and passed out from heat exhaustion and dehydration - I would tell you the whole thing, but it isnt model related.. )

AJC

Geez, all this just because I laundered a tap? I feel like I'm on the set of an Opra show....

OK Bruce, one more for you to "bring it back home"...

Just remembered that about a month ago, I couldnt find the chuck key for the air drill in my shop. Well, my partner was using it last so I blamed him for misplacing it, and seeing as how it was a funny size, we had no other key that fit. For a week, I would grill hime to make certain he didnt just forget where he put it...

Well, the next load of laundry, after I put my clothes into the dryer and turned it on, guess hwat I heard (rattle rattle...) opened the door and voila'!! There is the nicely washed key. I guess I put it into my work-pants pocket and went home with it, which got thrown into the laundry basket.

I of course appologised over coffee the next day

AJC

Tell the story. Had you not escaped we wouldn't have you here to share your engine wisdom with this motley crew. If that doesn't represent a strong relationship then there's no justice. Besides, I have a buddy in Thunder Bay that used to be a bear guide before he 'went straight' and took a 'real job'. Some of his stories I would instantly discredit if I didn't know him well enough to realize that he can be utterly trusted. (Although I may well have influenced him with my insistance that a good yarn is too valuable to be hobbled by bare fact) So give it up-------we wanta hear it. Tom

i've done it again!i was just looking for my glasses so i could fire up my p.c.,i looked for 5 minutes 'til i realised i had them on!