A soggy day in northwest Georgia...

No traffic on this newsgroup from my ISP for a while now. It makes me wonder if my ISP is not passing posts along.

Today has been one of those soggy days that you see in the old Sherlock Holmes movies of London. Not quite raining, but lots of moisture over everything. Kind of a very light drizzle.

I've been a Lazy Bee fan for a while now. Haven't flown one, but I've owned the kits of many Clancy aircraft off and on over the years. I started to build the stock Lazy Bee once, but got stalled on the wingtips. I didn't have the right size of coffee can for bending and forming the wingtips. I've often thought of designing my own model with similar wing area and moments, but eliminating the PITA parts of contruction for squarish, conventional types of wingtips.

If anyone remembers Al Capp's Lil' Abner cartoon strip of many years ago, there was a fellow that used to ride around the country side on a large tricycle. It had an outhouse looking building sitting behind the driver and the rear wheels looked like big Trexler inflatable doughnut tires. The Lazy Bee styling always reminded me of that tricycle.

It wouldn't be difficult to design a model that flew very much like the Lazy Bee, but would be simpler to build, minus the great appearance.

So what have you folks been up to?

Ed Cregger

Reply to
Ed Cregger
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Hi Ed Sounds like you're in the doldrums too. Damn, for 50 years i had never once thought about that rolling outhouse in the Li'l Abner strip, but wasn't the guy's name Humphery? People have built flying doghouses. Why not a flying outhouse? You could name it Humphery. :-) The junta-from-within that's got our Country by the throat has got me really, really down. It's beyond belief that in a scant 6 decades it could come down to this, huh?

Bill (oc)

Reply to
oldcoot

"Ed Cregger" wrote

It has been very slow, with only perhaps 6 or so post per 24 hours.

It sucks here in NC, too, with fog yesterday, then periods of heavy rain, too.

Don't let the wingtips bog you down. There are an infinite number of ways to skin this cat.

I have built them with some scrap balsa, and made segments glued together, wider, but shaped with the curve on the outside, with two layers built up, with one piece laminating over the top of where the joint of the piece below is placed. Kinda like if you used wood to make a frame around the outside of an octagon, using miter joints at the corners, then made another layer on top, with the top miter joints being made halfway between the previous corners, then cut and sand on the outside to make the curve.

I have done it using the thin strips to laminate multiple layers, also. It is indeed a very light way to make a strong curved structure. The key to me, is to get the wood correctly soaked. I made a tube out of 1 1/2" PVC, with a cap on one end, and on the other end a "test plug" (a rubber cork with a big washer on both sides of the cork, and a bolt to squeeze and expand the diameter of the cork) to make it water tight. Then, put the amonia and water in it along with the strips to soften over night. After the wood is so easy to bend and form, you can use almost any method to hold it in place.

I made a form out of plywood the exact shape of the wingtip, and once out of ceiling acoustical tile. After stacking the soft wood on it, I have put nails through the form, and rubber bands hooked over the wood and onto the nails to hold it all while it dries. I've also used duct tape.

I have also built them flat on a building board made out of cork or ceiling tile, and used blocks of wood or nails to describe the shape, and either nails or pins or blocks on the outside to hold it against the form nails. After it has dried, it is easy to glue it together using the same method to hold the shape.

At any rate, don't sweat the details; just get through the task. If they weigh more, it will not fly as quickly or quite as slowly, but it will still fly quite well with a big enough engine. I used an OS FP.15. I have flown in35 MPH wind (at the beach) and with a heavy cheap 35 mm autowind camera, and standard servos and receiver and a 4 ounce fuel tank full, using standard weight covering. It still flies.

Another mod I made was with the landing gear. I made landing gear with

1/16" wire, with it bolted to the bottom, with the axles about 3" lower than the standard placement, with no straight through solid axle. I did that to get more angle of attack to get it flying at a slower speed, and to get the whole thing up so it could take-off out of tall grass. I also made the wheel spacing a little wider, to make for more stable ground handling.

Nothing wrong with that, but I think the looks would suffer, and perhaps some of the flying characteristic, to an extent.

Yep. My family calls it my "Cartoon Plane."

Nope. Experiment away. I also beefed up some of the fuselage joints, and made it tougher. Try too keep the weight under control, though I know I said they would still fly. I just got tired of fixing joints, so I made it so it would not break the first time.

I have lost track of how many of them I have built. They are my favorite planes to fly when the wind gets up, or when you don't feel getting too fancy. It is fun to hover to a landing, or to fly backwards.

Finally got a HDTV, so been setting it up, and had to modify the built in cabinet where it sits. Loads of fun. It is about time I got building on one of my awaited or half done projects, soon, after I get done modifying and organizing my shop.

Take care, or any way you can get it!

Reply to
Morgans

On Tue, 6 Jan 2009 14:14:34 -0500, "Ed Cregger" wrote in :

You can always check what you see through your ISP against Google Groups:

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It's gotten up to 30 F in Buffalo. Some snow and freezing rain expected overnight.

I destroyed an 8-foot Bee built by a friend in two days:

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I still feel miserable about that. It was a lot of fun.

Finishing some school work and getting the second edition of the manuscript of my third book ready for the copy shop. I've been doing some mental modeling and may actually take a few steps to turn the ideas into reality Any Day Now.

Marty

Reply to
Martin X. Moleski, SJ

"Martin X. Moleski, SJ" wrote

So I'm not the only one to build in my head, before cutting wood, huh?

Many times, I never write down the first detail, but just build as I saw and planned it, from what I saw in my head. It is a fun mental exercise, to me.

So what is developing in your mental drafting department?

Reply to
Morgans

On Tue, 6 Jan 2009 23:25:12 -0500, "Morgans" wrote in :

Nope. :o)

I haven't built anything without SOME drawings (yet).

  1. The wing plan for Mad Dog II. I've got the cores cut but I have to lay out the flaps, ailerons, and servo boxes.
  2. Airbrushing the Renegade and prepping it for test flights. It's at the horrible stage of being 95% finished.
  3. Deciding what to do with my second-hand Ultimate. I'm leaning toward ripping off the covering (Ultracote) and recovering it. I think the Ultracote should come off OK.
  4. Messing with engine assignments. Should I put the Saito four-stroke gasser (36cc) into the Patty Wagstaff and move the MVVS 35cc into the UltraSport 1000? Or should I take the Saito 1.80 from the Stick and use it on the UltraSport? Will a Saito .91 fly the UltraSport OK or do I have to get a 1.20 of some kind? Should I build the Great Planes Extra 300 kit around the big gasser and leave the Wagstaff ARF alone? It ain't broke (yet).

Those are at the top of the list. **BUT FIRST** I have to wrap up the next version of the manuscript for RST 101. Classes start next Monday.

Marty

Reply to
Martin X. Moleski, SJ

I accidentally found this newgroup on an RC forum

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As you guys must know there is a ton of activity on dedicated web sites and a lot of people today don't even know that usenet news exists!

Regards,

Zen

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Reply to
zenlanset.com.3ls0go

On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 20:14:08 -0600, snipped-for-privacy@lanset.com wrote in :

Yes, I know it well.

Once upon a time (in the 1980s) there was Fidonet and any number of bulletin board systems for dial-in exchange along with (the) usenet (Usenet, USENET). I'm sure some cultural archeologists could pinpoint the peak with greater accuracy, but I'd guess the time when usenet newsgroups dominated computer-assisted conversations was somewhere between the Great Renaming (1987) and the September that Never Ended (1993).

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The fear during those years was that usenet would become so popular that servers could not keep up with the traffic. Hardware followed Moore's law and stay ahead of the surge, even including the strain imposed on the system by binaries, spam, and the cancel wars. That was what was behind the death of usenet posts in the 1980s and early 1990s.

I found my way to this newsgroup in November of 1995. Derek Koopowitz replied to my first post:

I'm now working with Derek on a website for pattern pilots:

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I guess I'm officially part of the problem. :o(

Marty

Reply to
Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Hi, Bill. Sorry for the delay in responding. I guess my first response didn't make it to the group.

I think you are correct about the fellow's name that drove that trike equipped with an outhouse.

I think that a lot of us (baby boomers especially), bought into the Hollywood propaganda films described America as being. A little research will reveal that our youthful impressions of what America was all about never truly existed. Ask any Native or African American. We were sold a bill of goods. Money has always ruled and probably always will. Along with power comes discrimination. It's just the way of the world.

I've got "floater-itis" again. I'm never far from having a flair-up, to be honest with you. While it is true that I do love fast, high performance model airplanes, I also have a weakness for lazy flying, Panda-like handling models. If it isn't the Lazy Bee, it's a Telemaster of one size or another. Other favorite floaters are Ben Buckle's replicas of old time free flight models (with R/C assist, of course), the old M.E.N. Trainer 20 (undercambered airfoil equipped wing), etc.

One of the really neat things about being a modeler today is having access to YouTube.com. One can usually find videos of most models available. They would have helped me tremendously back in the early seventies as far as keeping my will to build still alive. People tend to do things that they think they do well. I've never been more than a mediocre builder. Some videos showing the actual thing flying would have helpedme a great deal.

Ed Cregger

Reply to
Ed Cregger

Ed G. wrote,

It was the Humpherymobile, was it not?

Bill(oc)

Reply to
oldcoot

The Humpherymobile was from the Joe Palooka comic strip circ 1950.

Red S.

Reply to
Red Scholefield

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Dang it, Red. Now you have me wondering.

Ed Cregger

Reply to
Ed Cregger

Double-dang it, Red. Then, were Humphery and the Humpheymobile denizens of the Joe Palooka strip and not Li'l Abner..?? Memory is a terrible thing to lose. :-)

Bill(oc)

Reply to
oldcoot

Google is your friend:

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Reply to
David Hopper

Nice Joomla! web site Marty. I have tried to get acquainted with that CMS but so far keep getting tangled up in its proprietary terminology and conventions.

Reply to
zenlanset.com.3lveon

On Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:47:10 -0600, snipped-for-privacy@lanset.com wrote in :

Other than Dokuwiki (which is very different), Joomla! is the first CMS I've set up and worked with on the inside.

It's not bad, all things considered.

I played a little bit with PHPNuke and have seen a demo of Drupal. I understand how someone coming from a different Content Management System could find Joomla! confusing.

Marty

Reply to
Martin X. Moleski, SJ

That's why they invented Google. :-)

Red S.

Reply to
Red Scholefield

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