Signs Of The Times

[Richard Miller]

Two pages into your current copy of RC Modeler, in the lower right hand corner, you'll find a picture of some kids, ten, eleven, along in there as years go, with their kits, boxes big enough to serve as bunk beds for the kiddies.

When I was that age, my kit, provided I could scrape together the 10-cents to buy it, was a little box smaller than a carton of cigarettes. My mind boggles at the comparison.

This is not, I want to make clear, a complaint. I am perfectly happy that it should have been as it was, that I was forced to solve all the inherent problems myself. I consider that I was one of the lucky ones, and I wonder where it can go from here.:confused:

-Richard

[Dave Robelen]

Hello Richard,
I too came thru the $.10 kit thing, and feel a lot richer for all that I learned as I built from the simple kits, and read magazines full of technical information along with more than one construction article per issue. Society has changed. I have 6 children, and even with all of the exposure to modeling, none really felt motivated to stick with it. Here we are in a "plug and play" culture, with the hobby moving toward the big bucks (turbines, helicopters, $1800 engines, etc.) However, we still have this BB and contact with modelers of like mind, so I stay motivated to explore, build and keep pressing my frontiers.
Hang in there buddy, Dave

[GHMBO]

Hi Guys
It looks like a lot of us cut our teeth on Comet kits with print wood and spruce gang cut strips. High tech was the introduction of the flexable double edge razor blade and fast drying Testors glue. One of the many good changes is the internet that allows us to communicate. I used to read the magazines in isolation, but now I can many times, have contact with the magazine authors. We now belong to an unofficial world wide group rather than a club of a half dozen local guys. I depend on this BB to keep me in the hobby loop. Thanks Guys.
Jim

[FLB]

Hi Richard, Dave & Jim,

You know my english but I will try to write my part. ;)

I'm too young to have known the $ 0.10 kit thing and too old to belong entirely to the "plug and play" culture.

One hour ago, I was watching a TV broadcast on the first films ever in Europe (approx. 1890-1913). Among other things, I saw one of the first flight of a Wright flyer in France . It was like hanging in the sky, 10 meters high and so slow. Just a century ago...

50 years later you could built a airplane model knowing the flight principles.

Today you can buy a scale turbine if you want as Dave said.

What will it be possible in 50 years?

It's true that today if you want to start our hobby it's easier (and more expensive most of the time) but I think that if you want to experiment and go further, it's always as difficult. Experience is not for sale. And there is so much to do with new materials and tiny electronic equipments coming every day...

Our hobby stay demanding. When you build a plane the wrong way, it won't fly well. Of course, now you can pay for a ARF but who want to buy all his life just ARF models. And for example, I have to rediscover myself where the olders went through... And I agree with Jim. Internet is marvellous for sharing. 10 years ago, I wouldn't be able to write this message to three americans living on the East and west coasts of the United States while I'm french living in Canada...

All is going faster and faster. I hope not too fast. :(

Maybe in 50 years, we won't see threads speaking about taking pictures with a penCam in a small GWS Tiger Moth but about taking pictures of the moon's dark side with a small rocket as you are well installed in your workshop. In fact, I don't know if we will be able to do that, not for a technical progress problem but for a mind evolution problem. Jim said in another thread that our planes are the weapons of the future. I agree with him. We are maybe living the best hours of this hobby before a stronger reglementation comes to contain flying areas and in flight pictures taking growth for example...

I don't want to be the "killjoy guy" but when you see the extensive possibilities of your hobby and the world where we are living now... Hope it won't come too soon... I've still so much to learn ;)

Good evening guys :)

Best regards

Frederic

[Richard Miller]

Frederic,

What overrides almost everything else in a discussion of this sort is the central idea of a man with his HANDS ON something of hands-on scale.

I remember quite distinctly those days in the late '30s when I wrangled 15-cents from my stepfather, took it to the drug store where all the aviation and model magaines were on display, and got my "Flying Aces" or whatever it was. In those days, at least as I saw it, it was hands on all the way.

As the decades passed and things developed you could no longer reach out and touch it; the raw piece of wood, glue you made yourself by dissolving celluloid in acetone; doing the whole thing with your own hands - short of cutting down the tree, of course.

There is an intimate psychological and psychobiological connection between the mind and the hands, and woe betide him, I say, who abandons his hands, and what they can do, for abstractions and the accrudements of power. There's something very essential there, and human beings lose it at their peril.

"Accrudements of power"? you say. It's a malapropoism of a late landlady. I love it.

-Richard

[FLB]

Hi Richard,

It's hard for me to have such a discussion. It's like an exercise. My english isn't good enough to express correctly my ideas or to be sure having understanding well... :(

I agree entirely with you when you say : "There is an intimate psychological and psychobiological connection between the mind and the hands, and woe betide him, I say, who abandons his hands, and what they can do, for abstractions and the accrudements of power. There's something very essential there, and human beings lose it at their peril. "

I'm personnaly trying not to lose this connection. I'm a 3D computer graphic "artist", doing day after day virtual modelisations & animations of products, bodies, etc... nothing really real, nothing concrete that I can touch, feel with my hands (except the keyboard :p). There are advantages and disadvantages to this situation: no material limits to your imagination, discovery of new ideas you won't have had but also risks to be trap in a virtual, superficial and easy world, lack of pleasure having building something real...

After several years I came back to my hobby to preserve and deepen balance between mental and manual.

I really enjoy doing computer graphics. It's at the beginning of its story and most of the time there are new ways to do things to explore and a lot to learn hands on. Building airplane models is complementary. It helps me in my work because I'm used to search solutions, to read plans, to evolve in a 3D space, etc. It's like a state of mind. Hopefully, I'm not too specialized so I can work on something from the beginning to the end. It's becoming scarce. I want to preserve this artisan's mind.

I hope not to be out of subject... :rolleyes:

Frederic

[Richard Miller]

Frederic,

Several thoughts. D'aboard, vous faites tres bien avec votre Anglais, so don't worry.

Next, mixing the two, the abstractions on the screen and the blank of balsa in the hand. Sounds good to me. It reminds me of how the Egyptians used both heiroglyphics - I didn't understand that :confused: for a long time - and a written script. One serves one half of the brain/mind, the other the other.

I lay up fuselage blanks now and then. Laminations of a profile for some model I'm contemplating. When the glue's dry I set to carving. Boy, do I love that!:p Anybody who doesn't know that kind of pleasure, or carving a prop, is missing a lot.

Blessed the man with a craft.

-Richard

[FLB]

Hi Richard,

I didn't know that about Egyptians... In fact, they can be considered as precursors for our instructions leaflet ;)

Frederic

[FLB]

Hi Richard,

About Egyptian's hieroglyphs... I know that they got also two senses or meanings. They could be use as ideograms or as phoneme like our alphabet. Another way of thinking and interpreting the world...

Frederic

[Richard Miller]

Frederic,

This right brain-left brain, do it with ideograms or do it with script, use grunts or use phonems, words and music, words OR music, is endlessly fascinating. Let me suggest you look into "The Alphabet and the Goddess" for a real eye opener.

And tell Dave - Hi Dave! - that Jammer - that title is "Concepts of Mass" - is turning out to be really fun.

-Richard

[Dave Robelen]

Hi Richard,
I am still waiting to get to town when I can check the college library. You sure have whetted my appetite for this read in the meantime. On a semi-related subject, have your readings or experiences given an insight as to why airplanes ALWAYS turn out heavier than designed? It may only be a gram or so in some cases, but full scale or model, this phenomenon fascinates me. I can weigh all of the components, materials, estimate adhesive weight, etc, and I always underestimate. I hate to start just tossing in a factor for excess weight, but maybe that is the simplest solution to keep the bases covered. Most likely, it is one of Murphy's laws at work, alongside the ones that add a little drag to a design, or reduce the lift a bit compared to calculations. Maybe when I grow up I will undrstand;)
Regards, Dave

[FLB]

Hi Dave,

Maybe this is the weight of the soul of the new airplane... :D

Regards

Frederic

[Richard Miller]

Dave,

I have AN answer. Discontent seems to be built into the human condition. The canine condition too, for just as fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, dogs gotta itch. Every dog's got its flea.

Christina Rosetti has a little quatrain about the road leading upward, all the way to the end, uphill all the way to the end, and as you undoubtedly know, as I do, it does that, never level off, at least not for long.

Some nagging, persistent discontent is built into the system and it manifests now this way, now that. The only thing worse would that it not be there, and that we wouldn't be constantly impelled to try to get those components lighter and make the
:mad: thing come out on spec. That we wouldn't be challenged constantly to do a little better than we think we can.

As I say, my best shot.

-Richard

PS I'm reading a little of Jammer every day now. What fascinates me above all is the narrative, the community of minds, and there are many more than you might anticipate, that has concerned itself with the Concept of Mass. That and the powers of discrimination, of which Jammer is a master. To which add how very very often, up to and including Einstein's energy-mass equation, there proves to be circular reasoning. We always seem to begin with some a priori item we're unaware of.

RM

[Dave Robelen]

Hi Richard,
Boy, you are into some "heavy" stuff. I do believe I get a downhill now and then- A great day at the field, Locked up in a gentle thermal, a covering job that actually came out neat (I hate covering). But then, there is the quest for lighter, smaller, slower, flying in the living room, all those neat goals that keep the coals lit.
Have a good night, Dave

[Richard Miller]

Dave,

The heavy in the service of levity. Dialectics, about how the lowest touches the highest, which brings me to asking *you* for some elucidation.

I have no formal education in any of the things I talk about, like aerodynamics, and physics, and math. I try to figure things out for myself, and when I can't I go to the best sources I can find. Not infrequently, as with acceleration and velocity, I think I'm being given the run around.

I advance the throttle of my faithful "Cub" and accelerate down the runway and into the air. A point comes when the *acceleration* ceases and *velocity* takes over - equilibrium flight. I'm assured there's a difference, but I can't figure out how *I* know, or how the *Cub* knows :confused: when one stops and the other starts, or why I should worry.

Help.

Hi Frederic, if you're there.

That website you recommended is a winner. It took me a few days to explore it properly, but I did find just the sort of thing I was after, so thanks.

-Richard

[FLB]

Hi Richard,

I'm here, I'm here... But at your "eagle english level", it's hard for me to pass through the language barrier. Breathing miss me... ;)

I will search for a french version of "The Alphabet and the Goddess". It will be easier for me if I decide to read it...

Pleased that this web links helps you. Unfortunatly you nust have remarked that knowing russian and its cyrillic alphabet, even if it is not Egyptian's hieroglyphs :D, could be helpfull in some case...

A bientôt. :)

Frédéric

[Dave Robelen]

Hello Richard,
About that Cub. First, I would not worry about it all that much. Real, true equilibrium flight is pretty much a rarity in the world of outdoor flying. The aircraft is almost always accelerating in at least one (and usually more) axis simultaneously. True equilibrium flight is mostly useful for calculations when working on performance predictions. You could go out on a really still morning )or evening) and trim the model until it is flying exactly straight and level hands off at a stable speed. You would then have equilibrium, but you would have to change it in short order to turn the plane (or chase it).
Thanks for the philosophy, Dave

[William Robison]

Psychology, psychobiology, and a French Canadian who seems as nice as he can be. What a thread for discussion! I have enjoyed reading through it to this point, and as I am sitting here at 5:30 in the morning looking through a lot of these forae I might as well drop a couple coppers of my own into the mix. Question regarding direction. Is this going to get into metaphysics? How about epistemology? Or should it get back to re-hashing old memories? It's supposed to have at least a small connection to hobbies, not too many people make a hobby of esoteric discussions. My vote goes to re-hashing and "Interesting Related Experiences." FLB started out talking about 50 years ago, and 50 years from now. I started playing with flying toys 60 years ago, my dad bought me a nice rubber job, I remember its name as "ConquerAir" or some close variation. It had a sheet balsa wing and empennage, the fuselage, nose cap, and the propellor were made of very thin sheet aluminum. The fuse was formed of two side pieces that latched top and bottom, and the (rubber) motor was fully enclosed. I last remember having it in the early 50's, so it lasted me about 10 years. All the wooden parts had been replaced several times by then. Also, if you want horror stories about flying models during the 2nd world war ask anyone who built, or tried to build, a "Joe Ott" kit. No balsa then, to speak of, except in the Cleveland kits, they were 'way too expensive for me. The Joe Ott kits had spruce (I think) stringers, and thick paper formers and ribs. I don't think I ever completed one properly. I'd get the fuselage half built, then the stress of the stringers would accumulate to the point that all the paper formers would collapse, the thing would turn into a straight cone instead of a fuselage with compound curves. Asuming you got the fuse put together properly, or just decided to have a conical body, you still had to assemble the wings. Paper ribs, remember. The framework was easy, but they always warped. Just like Dave Robelin's weight, the warps and the extra ounces are added when you aren't looking, by the warp and fat gods. Where the wings always turned into a mess was after you had covered them. The only covering that was remotely useable was good old *** tissue. (Side note - "Politically Correst Nazis", get stuffed. An educated Nipponese is offended just as much by "***" as he is by "Japanese." Our word "Japan" comes from the CHINESE language, and the Nipponese hate Chinese almost as much as they hate Koreans. Their word is alternately, in our spelling, "Nippon" or Nikkon." Correct pronunciation is about halfway between. Note the "Nikon" camera brand, the ideographs translate directly as "Japan Camera Company," pronounced Nikon.) And there was another set of inimical gods that installled wrinkles. (Now they put bubbles in film coverings.) To get rid of the wrinkles you had to wet the tissue to shrink it. That's when the glob gods had their chance. A little too wet and the ribs would dissolve, turning everything into one big glob. If you wetted it just right the warp gods would hit as it dried, not wet enough and you could hear the wrinkle gods laughing at you. I did weight the pnels down to dry, but they always warped anyway. When you finally managed something remotely resembling the picture on the box it would never fly well, the fat gods were built into these things - remember hard woods and paper are automatically too heavy - but we still built them for a couple reasons. Building gave more enjoyment than frustration, they were fun to fly even though they really didn't fly well, and we stayed with Joe Ott because unless you built solid models or had the money to buy Cleveland kits (I still wonder how they were able to get balsa when no one else could) Joe Ott was all you could find. Anyone else have pleasant memories of Joe Ott? Or did anyone else have a ConquerAir? RSVP. Bill