RE: Baby on the way...
I finished a stable of 5 airplanes just before our first baby came in 2002. I got one more off the boards that year and haven't completed an airplane since. Kept flying pretty regularly for the first few years, but slowly the fleet succumbed to runway rash until I was down to just one flyable old Kadet, and it had a run in with a mesquite bramble in the fall of 2008. It's flyable, but embarrassingly tattered. Both of my kids love to go out to the field, but they are bored after about 20 minutes. Happily, I am close enough to the field that it's not a big deal to run out, fly once or twice and come home again, but like you Juice, I had to give up my shop so the baby could have a bedroom. Lack of shop space is the real killer. The dormant airplanes are hanging from the garage ceiling, but it's just not in the cards to undertake the A&P work that they all need. CA, epoxy, glow fuel, denatured alcohol, and all the other fluids, salves, unguents and emollients that model airplanes need are just not safe around little ones, nor is it really safe to leave a building project set up where little hands can reach. So I am grounded, but I don't regret it any. My kids are fun, and eventually they will be old enough to understand how to safely thin epoxy with denatured alcohol and so on, and we will drag out an old Jetco Cessna 140 kit that I am saving and begin that process that starts with a box of sticks, continues by applying silkspan and dope, and ends with another little plane trundling through the air. The kids will giggle and run after it, and it all starts over.
Posted on: 4/15/2010 12:13 AM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=9661876

RE: Tower Hobbies dropping Sig?
Hope you are right Bob, but I tried that optimism when Tower quit selling Goldberg only to watch them whither on the vine. Nothing left of Goldberg now but the name and an atgreatplanes.com email address. Sig might make it if they get a good web designer in there fast to completely rebuild their e-commerce operation, but they've had the same slow, confusing, counter-intuitive interface for the last 6 years.
Posted on: 9/7/2009 8:50 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=9077204

RE: Tower Hobbies dropping Sig?
You can order from Sig directly, but this is yet another example of how modeling imitates life. Tower has gotten so big that it can put a major, respected, high quality model manufacturer out of business. Just as they smashed Carl Goldberg models a few years back and then assimilated a tiny slice of their line, Sig will go the same way. Once again the mediocrity of low priced crap trumps quality and value.
Posted on: 9/7/2009 12:07 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=9076087

RE: An ARF Nation
[b]Too many people WANT to believe that my original post was intended as a personal attack on ARF flyers. That was NOT the intent.[/b] As a nation we are losing our technical abilities, despite the technical excellence displayed by a small number of R/C flyers, and Kit or ARF builders. The ARF, the TV dinner, the IKEA bookcase are all SYMPTOMS of the loss of our technical abilities. We cannot economically produce things of tangible value any more so we produce credit default swaps, sub-prime mortgages, and collateralized debt obligations instead. Each of these financial instruments are ways of saying "we have nothing of tangible value to trade, so instead, we will give you a promise that our children will produce something of value in the future". Coincidentally, by making it uneconomical for our children to participate in the finer technical points of building model airplanes, cooking real food, reading instead of watching television, playing videos instead of programming computers, wailing on Guitar Hero instead of learning a real musical instrument, we are depriving them of the very abilities that they will need to pay off the debts we have promised they will pay. Our inability to create tangible things of lasting value is our national tragedy and it is why we are the worlds larget net debtor nation, a debt which we owe largely to the worlds two most rapidly expanding creditors, India and China, each of which, cooincidentally are very good at building the things that we used to build. In the end, debtors sink into drugs, crime, and dispair, and sit around waiting for someone to bail them out. Creditors just shake their heads and say, "sorry dude, but you still owe me. Since you can't produce anything of value, I'll just take your house." We find it anathema that a union firefighter, sanitation worker, electrician, plumber or cop is unsatisfied with his salary of under $50,000. Yet we are happy to pay Keith Olbermann $7.5 million, Bill O'Reilly $10 million and Rush Limbaugh $33 million. We call Rush's work valuable and worthy. We say the carpenter is overpaid and we outsource his work to India.
Posted on: 8/9/2009 3:27 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=9002433

RE: An ARF Nation
Hello Everyone, Well, heck. I spent an hour trying to reply thoughtfully to everyone who has taken the time to respond to my original post. But when I tried to post, I got a session timeout message, not something I've seen before. I'm sorry, because I really do appreciate everyone's thoughts and I tried to respond to everyone, but I don't have time today to try to recreate it. So let me try to summarize: First, thank you all for keeping the discussion (mostly) civil. Second, if anyone took my comments as a personal affront, I apologise. In no way did I intend to criticise anyone's RATIONAL economic decision to purchase an ARF rather than build a model from a kit, plans, or scratch. I urge everyone to fly, fly a lot, and enjoy the heck out of whatever you choose to fly. My concern is not that we are buying these models, but rather with the fact that because buying an ARF, or a factory built ham radio, or canned spaghetti sauce is a vastly superior ECONOMIC choice, we are losing the depth of skill, creativity, and the core of technical knowledge and problem solving ability that made us the greatest nation in the world. For just one example, because it makes no sense to build model airplanes from scratch, the intuitive understanding of shear, compressive, and tensile forces on structures like bridges and skyscrapers is never developed. Thus we not only build deficient bridges, we collectively lack the ability to understand what engineers are telling us about the danger that they might collapse. American bridges should NEVER drop freeway traffic into the river. American construction cranes should NEVER collapse, but because we collectively lack the understanding of the technology that goes into our toys, we can't scale up to understand how that same technology applies to the larger things in our lives. Next time you have to sit in traffic for five cycles of a stop light, think about how the signals might have been timed differently if the city council that reviewed the signal timing plan included a member who had build an automated model railroad, or had written computer programs for fun. The skills we need to remain a competitive nation are the skills learned from sewing dresses, building model railroads, constructing forts, growing gardens, tying flies... When those activities become uneconomical to pursue, we lose the vehicles for developing the skills that they teach. We cannot leave technical skills and creativity to the readers of Make, the Steampunks, or to the dwindling population of crusty old craftsmen that still scratch build model planes. If it is no longer economically feasible to engage in technically creative hobbies, we better be coming up with some other way to teach these skills. Our competitive future as a nation depends on it.
Posted on: 8/8/2009 12:32 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8999817

An ARF Nation
I read the "boring airplane" thread and became very depressed. Lots of people lamenting that very few people build, or even have the skill to build anything anymore, and lots of others explaining, accurately, why building is impractical, uneconomical and unnecessary. The tragedy is that both sides are right and it is a phenomenon that permeates American culture. Writer Michael Pollan addressed the same topic in the New York Times today, explaining how the preparation of good food has mutated from something every family did for itself, to something done by corporations and their minimum wage workers, or by superstar chefs on television shows, but not by normal people. We have number crunched everything that takes effort, patience, practice, knowlege, and skill, turned it into drudgework and delegated it to others. Now things like building model airplanes, cooking good meals, making heirloom quality furniture, and crocheting baby quilts, along with all of the character building skills, qualities, and values that go with those things have become relics. I am firmly on the side of the scratch builder, the hand quilter, the home gardener and chef. The fact that we are too bloody lazy to build our own model planes or cook our own scampi is a national disaster. The rise of ARF culture is symptomatic of America's moral decline, and to pass it off with the platitude "to each his own" is a cop out, an apathetic acceptance of an American nation in decline, forfeiting its role as a beacon of freedom, a crucible of innovation, and the undisputed leader in technical skill and industrial quality. An ARF nation is a nation on the ropes, unable to educate it's children, feed itself, manage it's ports, appropriately regulate it's economy, fabricate it's own semi-conductors, provide its own customer service centers or maintain it's own industries. An ARF nation is a dying nation.
Posted on: 8/2/2009 6:45 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8984397

RE: All I see is boring planes and boring helicopters
Used to be that everyone had a Super Kaos or an Ugly Stik...but at least they all had different color schemes.
Posted on: 7/30/2009 7:19 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8977241

RE: childs woodworking tool
Good on ya Cougar for wanting to help out your step son. I'm not aware of any such power tool set, but I would suggest that you go with a basic set of simple hand tools. I find that 4th graders, properly instructed are able to use regular hand modeling tools with safety. I supply Stanley Model 99 utility knives for my students to use when building Delta Darts, Super Sixes, and in the bridge building projects. In addition to the utility knife, Stanley has a nice little bullnose plane that works well for shaping and chamfering of balsawood, and a 6 inch adjustable carpenter's square that is superb for small hands and most models. Actually thinking about it, the GP Slot Machine cuts through balsa, but just vibrates against your finger...not really a general purpose cutting tool though.
Posted on: 7/30/2009 4:30 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8976887

RE: What happened to RCU?!
Some people may remember that there was once another site where a thread like THIS ONE would have been deleted! Given the success of RCU, I think the moderation is being handled pretty well. There have been RC forum sites where there was NO moderation, but they don't seem to have survived (Flightlines for example). The great thing that has happened here is that it has grown into a collection of forums where just about anyone can find a home. There are places for obsessively tech oriented, those deeply involved in particular types of flying, or types of models, and a nice general "clubhouse" where the types of RC conversations we would have if we were in a real brick and mortar clubhouse occur. In general, I see a substantially tolerant management and a largely polite user base. RCU seems to me to be an example of an RC modeling forum site in it's maturity. A site that allows diversity of viewpoint and opinion, but is intolerant of name calling and interpersonal altercations.
Posted on: 7/30/2009 4:18 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8976857

RE: 747 AIR FORCE ONE
I did a bit of checking and I think you can all be pretty darn sure that this is not something that is going to get any real funding. Those of you who would like to do something real can do what I did. I bought a box of Delta Darts 10 years ago and called up my local middle school. I got a local lumber yard to donate a sheet of soundboard that I hacked into building boards on the table saw. A local hardware store donated 25 xacto knives, and a fabric store contributed boxes of T pins. I have been building Delta Darts with 12 year olds every year since, and I now can report that several of the kids have graduated from aeronautics and engineering programs. Others just decided that maybe they ought to stay in school. A pair of Kadets, a few gallons of fuel, and your willingness to haul a minivan full of kids to the flying field will do more to help kids stay in school and avoid gangs and other bad behaviours than watching even the coolest jet. Be careful though, the rewards of working with kids are high, though not monetary. You might quit your day job and become a middle school math and science teacher...which is why I'll probably never be able to afford a jet.
Posted on: 7/28/2009 11:12 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "RC Jets"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8972397

RE: 747 AIR FORCE ONE
If there is 21st century grant, or STEM money floating around to build 1/7th scale working model 747s when I can't get approval to repair the eyewash station, replace the broken faucet in my demonstration bench, or install an anemometer for my classroom, somebody at the department of education has some serious explaining to do.
Posted on: 7/28/2009 7:53 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "RC Jets"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8971822

RE: How did you come up with the names?
First initial, middle initial, last name. Set it up as my username on a unix system 30 years ago and have been using the same ever since. Although as the internet gets to be more pervasive, I sometimes think I should change it to something more anonymous.
Posted on: 7/28/2009 9:19 AM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8970322

RE: What is it worth to us?
Great, now I know that you are willing to discuss real prices in the real world and that is critical. Many R/C ers seem to think that once they own the airplane, they have some sort of constitutional right to a flying site, on public land, for free. Now lets play with some numbers. They may seem shockingly high, but I suspect that 10 years from now they will seem naively low. The thing about land is...They ain't making any more of it. So clubs that want to be flying 20 years from now need to OWN their land, and the only way they are going to keep it is if they are associated in a very friendly way with a compatible industry that MUST also have land. I've had the good fortune of living where land is cheap and have been priviledged to fly from nice big flying sites, so I think the minimum size for a flying field is a quarter-section, 160 acres. If I had to start from scratch, I'd look for an irrigated quarter appropriate for growing grains or hay. I'd team up with the most financially savvy members of the club and I'd form a corporation or LLC that would buy the piece of farmland. These people would have to have the financial strength to guarantee the loan. Then I would find a farmer who would lease the land and grow hay or grain on the overflight area. The LLC would lease the land to the farmer for farming and to the club for flying. Flying activites would have to be scheduled around the farming, but that should be doable. The idea is to have the farm income cover a substantial part of your mortgage payment. I'm not familiar with land prices in your area, but I'd make a really wild guess that you could buy and improve an appropriate piece of farmland for half a million. When I run numbers like this ("Back of a napkin calculations") I over-estimate costs and under-estimate revenues. I use the very rough formula that when you take out a mortgage, you will pay back about 3 times the amount borrowed over a 30 year period. So if you borrow $500,000, you need to pay it back at the rate of $50,000 annually. Hopefully you can realize $25,000 from the farm lease and your charter members will put up a chunk of a down payment, so maybe you can reduce your mortgage payment that way. Still, you need to assume that you'll have to service debt to the tune of maybe $30,000 annually, probably more. Divide that by 100 club members, and you are at dues of $300. But you'll need to cover contingencies as well, insurance, maintenance, club house, sealing the runway. For a well planned and well managed flying site with a nice clubhouse and a properly and safely laid out runway, I'd say that a $2,000 initiation fee and annual dues of $400 would be reasonable. However, that would put flying out of reach for MANY modelers. Cheaper than golf however (local country club here: initiation fee , $30,000, annual dues, $5,000).
Posted on: 7/26/2009 10:52 AM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8964748

RE: What is it worth to us?
I'm thinking that around here a sufficiently large parcel without water rights would go for around $30,000. Add $20,000 to pave a runway and maybe $10,000 for other improvements, so $60,000, put down 10K, finance the rest at about $600 a month for 30 years. Depending on how many in the club, let's say 25, the annual dues would need to be about $300 to cover the mortgage, insurance and maintanence. Round it up to $1 a day.
Posted on: 7/25/2009 11:59 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8964016

RE: J-TEC scale instrument panels
Have you checked to see if your credit card has been billed? I recently discovered that my card issuer has a website where I can check to see all recent and pending transactions. If I order something online or mail order, it will show as "pending", or "payment approved" until the item actually ships. When it ships, then the credit card account is actually debited. If there is no indication that your credit card payment has been approved, probably the retailer never actually recieved your order.
Posted on: 7/25/2009 11:32 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8963973

RE: Tower hobbies leaves a bad taste in my mouth
[quote]....Tower merely places it in their hands....[/quote] Actually, Tower may not even do that. Read John McPhee's book [i]Uncommon Carriers[/i]. For many online retailers, UPS warehouses the goods directly from the manufacturer, picks and packages the order in a box with the retailer's name on it, and delivers it to you. The retailer is nothing more than a catalog and a web page that takes orders and forwards them to UPS to fulfill. For some companies, if you return a product for repair or warranty service, UPS handles that too. Several manufacturers including "a well known camera company", according to McPhee, use UPS to handle every aspect of their business from the time finished goods leave the factory, and including all repairs. I understand that FedEx has similar arrangements with some businesses. Business is slow for many companies, and shippers can't make money running empty trucks, so they are waiting until they have full ones before moving them, which may mean dispatching a truck every other day, instead of twice daily as they were when times were better. EDITED TO ADD > there is a website [link=http://boxoh.com/]called BoxOh[/link] that you can use to track your shipments in detail. Once you have a tracking number, you can put it into BoxOh and it will show you ON A MAP all the places your package went on it's way to you. Some times the route is very odd. I find that sometimes shipments from Tower for example, go from Nevada to Denver and then back to Utah, then actually pass through my town to a city 30 miles east before coming back to me in southern Colorado.
Posted on: 7/25/2009 10:52 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8963853

Time for new radios again
About every ten years the state of the RC art changes enough that I feel like I need to buy new radio gear: The first radio set I bought was World Engines Expert gear in the early 1970's. As a 12 year old, I really didn't do my homework and I was never all that happy with the radio. It frequently needed repair, which meant boxing up the gear and mailing it to World Engines as there was no local radio shop that would work on it. I'm sure many others here remember that before the late seventies, radio gear needed to be looked over by a good technician pretty frequently. Even for adults today boxing up the radio and mailing it off for repairs is a chore. But for a kid in the 1970's it was a huge chore and probably the single largest impediment to my developement of flying skills when I was a kid. After the fifth or sixth round of repairs, I wised up and bought Kraft in 1977, which could be repaired by L. N. who had a shop in the basement of Tom Thumb Hobbies in Denver. Ironically it never needed repairs. In fact, it not only still works, but also, the old American made GE nicads still hold a charge. Later the gold label rules came into effect. I bought my third and fourth radio sets from Sanwa/Cox/Airtronics in 1989. This was pretty good gear and I still fly it, but it's ending it's service life. The reversing switches are dodgy, and worn gimbles and pots make all the controls pretty sloppy around neutral. Pleased with the life I got from the Airtronics gear, I bought a computer radio from Airtronics in 1999. It's been fun to have the multi-channel mixes, expo, dual ranges and all, but I am less than ecstatic about the mechanical integrity of the gear. Things like wimpy neutral return springs and sticky labels that peel off far too easily are annoying, and the transmitter has too many grooves and crannies that seem to accumulate castor coated dirt and grit. It was also annoying that while the old transmitters would talk with the new receivers and vice versa, I couldn't connect up the old servos to the new receivers. Now my son is old enough to start seriously becoming involved with his daddy's hobby, so we are building a pair of Senioritas. I am contemplating the purchase of a pair of new radios, each set up to buddy box with the other. While I will be content to putt-putt around with the Four Star, the Kadet, and the electric Q-Tee that I bought when my little boy was born, I expect that he will be attracted to increasingly higher levels of performance and complexity. Anyway that's a lot of background for a question. I haven't kept up with the changes in R/C technology over the past few years and I am wondering what you guys are thinking. What is the state of the art? Who is making quality gear? What would you recommend as good quality 5 to 7 channel gear? I'm not looking for every bell and whistle, just good sport flyer gear. What are YOUR preferences and prejudices?
Posted on: 7/23/2009 1:24 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8957783

RE: The end of RCM and civilization as we know it
Now that's the kind of thing I am talking about. Fixing a bike tire is the kind of job that every 10 year old ought to be able to do. Yet the other day I was in a line at the customer service department of a retailer in the big city. In front of me was a guy with a bike, demanding a refund. The bike had clearly been ridden through some rough terrain and it had a flat tire. The guy was mad. He told everyone in earshot that it was the third fu...er...crummy bike with shi....cruddy tires he'd gotten and he darn well didn't want to exchange it this time. I feel like I ought to add bicyle tire repair to my science curriculum this year, but first they have to learn Crescent Wrench and Screwdriver....
Posted on: 7/20/2009 1:09 AM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8947814

RE: Has RCM folded?
I think it would be wonderful if the magazine was scanned and became available on cd rom, but you guys need to besure that the copyright holder approves. It's not just a matter of getting permission from whoever owns the rights to the magazine itself. Probably the authors have some rights as well. Because many of the articles that appear in the magazine were written before the rise of computers, each author may have some rights that didn't even exist when the article was originally published, rights not addressed in the original contracts. My knowledge of intellectual property law would barely fill a thimble, but it seems to me that the best way this could be handled would be as a project of the AMA museum. Collection, preservation and dissemination of the information in the old issues for non-profit, educational purposes could fit within the eleemosynary role of the AMA. If historic issues of modeling publications are in the museum's collection, then preserving them by digitizing them would be a worthwhile project, and once digitized, the issues could then be made available to students and researchers trying to recover and record the story of the development of Das Ugly Stik, for example. That's actually a project that might encourage me to give an extra donation to the AMA. Imagine if they could make old issues of Air Trials, Model Builder, AAM, et c. available to historians of the hobby.
Posted on: 7/20/2009 12:56 AM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8947785

I can't believe that no one has started an Apollo 11 Thread!
40 years ago today they finished the countdown and sent Apollo 11 racing toward the moon. I was only 7 and all I remember was that for 8 days my parents had our little 13" black and white TV running day and night. This was the only time in my life that I remember the television even being turned on for anything longer than a Bronco game. I'm told that my R/C set has more processing power than the computer aboard Apollo 11, and that the computer on my lap right now has more power than ALL of the computer used in the Apollo program combined. I know from family photographs that in the summer of 1969 I built my first real flying model airplanes. I had a Guillows Nieuport, and Ranger 21 and Spirit of St. Louis. I remember that I never finished the Nieuport because of the tissue covering. The Spirit was tough to assemble because of the way the lift struts were combined with the landing gear on the prototype. But that Ranger 21 flew, and higher and further than the North Pacific Sky Streeks and Sleek Streaks that had been my flying model experience up to that point. I was too young to comprehend the tumult of the summer of 1969, but the first manned missions to the moon stand out in my memory. While we have had many notable breakthroughs in the past 40 years, I can think of no other technological advance in which we acquired so much knowledge in such a short time since 1969. NASA is streaming the audio of the Apollo 11 flight here. Cool Stuff http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/apollo11_radio/index.html
Posted on: 7/16/2009 11:13 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8939940

RE: Helicopter flyer get out of my *&%$%^ way
Hey, do you guys know how a snowboarder says hello to a skier? "Whoa, sorry dude, I didn't see ya..." I saw my first model helicopter in the early seventies. A DuBro ?505? and back then it was so amazing that anyone would even TRY to fly one, that everyone parked their planes to watch. For a while, ski areas banished snowboarders to some remote part of the mountain until they realized that snowboarders were becoming a sizeable part of their customer base. Here at 8000 feet, I am told helicopter models are marginal and so far I have resisted the urge to buy one, but when I see them, they sure look fun. If I was a dues paying member of a club, I'd be a bit upset if a helicopter was hovering over the runway, but if I was a helicopter pilot, I'd be equally miffed if I couldn't fly. Seems like there ought to be a way to share the field and maybe it involves designating dedicated helicopter areas and frequencies. Certainly though, helicopters need to fly the designated traffic pattern, or stay well clear of fix wing operators, same as they are required to do under the full scale rules I think. There, my two cents worth on a topic about which I know nothing!
Posted on: 7/14/2009 3:50 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8932993

RE: Freeflight Forum
Lots of fun to be had with Free Flight. I knock out WhipperWhizzes for my kids pretty frequently and I keep Delta Dart kits on hand for when older nieces and nephews are around. Stored away I have most of the parts cut out for a Tepid Cocoa, and there is a Baby Phoenix that Easytiger gifted to me a few year ago that is pinned down to a building board on a high shelf, the last thing I worked on before I had to turn my workshop into a nursery in 2002. With RC assist, you can have the thrill of an OOS without actually losing the model, and I have thought that maybe an approach to purity could be had by building a class c or d model with traditional dethermalizing gear and just a minimal radio that could actuate one aileron to drag the model back into the vicinity if you hook a boomer. What's the status of the Builder of the Model rule? I've always thought that the skill of freeflight was largely about design and construction and that if you didn't build the model yourself, you should still be able to fly in competition, but with the requirement that you share the trophy or whatever equally with the builder. Maybe it's already that way, a way for guys who are darn good builders and designers, but maybe lack the stamina to chase them accross farm fields and deserts in 110 degree weather to team up with more athletic flyers...a great way to pass on the skill and lore. With the names and handles I recognize here from other times and other forums, I bet a freeflight section would have a small but intelligent following.
Posted on: 7/14/2009 3:30 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8932930

RE: The end of RCM and civilization as we know it
I too thank you. You and all your shipmates, and the soldiers, airmen, and marines that your service supports as well.
Posted on: 7/12/2009 11:15 AM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8926358

RE: Need suggestions on vehicles to haul airplanes
Find VW Kombi Microbus...I'm tellin' ya, it somehow just doesn't read like a "soccer dad" kind of van. The girls think it's cute. Is there still a flying field at Jantzen Beach?
Posted on: 7/12/2009 9:00 AM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8926118

RE: Need suggestions on vehicles to haul airplanes
My first airplane hauler was a 1968 Skyway 3 speed bicycle. I added some load blocks to the front carrier rack to hold the fuselage, put the transmitter and field gear in my book bag and carried the wing under my arm. Lucky it was under 2 miles to the field. Later the field was further away and I hauled planes on the back of a Vespa P-125 a few times. If I hadn't been in college, and mostly not flying, I would have built some sort of carrier for the scooter, but this was marginal and in college I didn't do much flying until I bought a... 1971 Super Beetle, which comfortably hauled a Super Kaos and an Ugly Stik...with the rear seat folded down and the passenger seat removed. Traded the Beetle for a 1968, yes, it was chartruse, VW Westfalia Microbus. It could have held a dozen planes, except that I was living in it, and driving to, from, and all around, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Western Canada, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah. But all it hauled was a Jetco Cessna 140 and a Peck Polymers Cub, both of which I [i]still[/i] haven't finished building, though I cut out all the ribs of the cub while enjoying a late sunset near Kluane Lake, Yukon Territory. [link=http://www.remarkablecars.com/main/volkswagen/volkswagen-00004.html][b]I should have kept that bus![/b][/link] My '76 International Scout was a remarkably poor plane hauler (Sterling Gazariator). Paradoxically, my 1981 Honda Civic Wagon was much better (Super Kaos and Ugly Stik) My 1978 GMC double cab pickup never held a plane, but I built a Kadet Senior while full timing in the 32 foot Shasta 5th wheel that trailed behind it. Needing to carry a wife, 2 toddlers and their car seats, I picked up a '95 Camry Sedan. It carries wife and toddlers...well they are kindergarten and first grade now...or it carries 1 first grader and an LT 25, which is about as big as a 4*60. Not bad for $600. Yes, $600, and you can tell by looking at it. But it carried us all to the Oregon Coast and back. It never complained, except when I left the parking brake on from Klamath Falls to the Dalles and boiled the brake fluid... Mostly though I haul models in my very first new car, a '91 Ford Ranger. I have a couple of old shower curtain rods wrapped with pipe insulation that stretch accross the bed. I use bungee cords to secure the planes to the shower curtain rods. It easily holds a 4*-60 an LT-40 Kadet and both kids. The passenger cabin is tight, but there's room to spare for airplanes. Rangers seem to run for freaking ever. Mine's got 235,000 miles on it, goes 28 on a gallon, costs under 250 bucks to register and insure for the year, and still runs like a champ. It even still looks presentable because Ford figured out how to make low VOC paint stay on the year before. My second new car is a surprisingly poor airplane hauler. By the time I pack wife and kids in my '99 Cherokee, there's room for the Cutie, or a Delta Dart. Anything bigger and there are wings and fuselages between people's heads. If it was my only car, I'd build an roof rack for planes, but this is rarely necessary because my wife would rather have time at home when I take the kids to the flying field.
Posted on: 7/12/2009 1:00 AM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8925178

RE: Has RCM folded?
Well said Grampaw. More than 4 years since the last issue was published and it is still fondly remembered by many modelers.
Posted on: 7/11/2009 8:06 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8924960

RE: SIG?
What was the source of this rumour? Was it a person professionally involved in the hobby industry? If your source is not a person who is in a position to know, or the Montezuma, Iowa newspaper, then spreading this rumour, or starting it, is not a good idea. On the internet, rumours take on a life of their own and can become self fulfilling.
Posted on: 7/11/2009 9:37 AM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8923802

RE: The end of RCM and civilization as we know it
Thank you all for the thoughtful replies. I am flattered by the response and gratified to know that my thoughts are consistent with those of a pretty bright subset of society. [b]Mr. Boulton[/b], I have been, at times, tempted to "go Galt". Some say I did when I quit law practice and opted out of the political opportunities then before me. But I chose teaching math and science to do my own small bit to reverse the trends I mentioned in my initial post. I see 150 twelve year olds each day. If I can just get a few more of them to turn off PlayStation and take apart an old hand mixer instead, it will make a difference. Still, in my classroom, I had pet mice named Dagmus Taggart and Milton Freidmus, (but I also had John Musculus Keynes, Thorstien Veblemus, and Ludwig von Misemus.) [b]Mr. Scholefield[/b], I hope, is correct in thinking that the realities of economic recession will stimulate us to do more, design more, build more, and create more...that is more tangible, concrete, and intrinisicly valuable things. I do note that the shelves of my public library are a bit less full. I know several families who have stretched their budget by cancelling cable. When analog TV ended, one decided that they didn't need one at all. (Alas, I am not the head of that family...) As for [b]Opting Out of the Recession[/b], I often felt like a chump during the bubble, making extra payments on our mortgage when our peers were choosing ever larger homes, fancier cars, and vacations financed with home equity. But one value of a History degree (with a scattering of economics, finance, and accounting) is learning that history does repeat itself. When others were buying Lexi, we were striving to eliminate all debt. Now, if either of us are laid off, it will bruise, but it won't break anything. In regard to [b]Challengingly Technical Reading[/b], one of my summer's projects is to work through a translation of Euclid's [i]Elements[/i], which task has me constantly referring to [link=http://mathworld.wolfram.com/]Wolfram Mathworld[/link] when I am out of my depth. My failure to understand Euclidean mathematics is not Euclid's fault. It's my job to acquire the background knowledge. When writers are compelled to dumb down their text to the lowest dullard denominator, the knowlegeable reader is bored and the one who lacks knowledge remains ignorant. Learning anything requires work and whether the article concerns the strategic situation in Whereinthehelistan or using linkage geometry to optimize aileron differential, the writer should not have to resort to a "For Dummies" format. (I do admit that I freely consulted my copy of [i]The TI-84 Calculator For Dummies[/i] when I was learning how to use mine.) Initially I had addressed a few other points, but one thing I learned today, is that if you start the post before dinner, leave it to go eat, and then return after dinner to proofread before posting, your session times out and you lose it all. Cheers, and again, thank you all for your kind remarks. Christopher Dahle
Posted on: 7/10/2009 11:05 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8923057

RE: Hanging airplanes
I don't think it will hurt them any. I've done both with no apparent harm. However, gas or glow, they will drip oil if you hang them vertically.
Posted on: 7/9/2009 8:41 PM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8920124

RE: The end of RCM and civilization as we know it
[quote]ORIGINAL: tailskid Well written, but I do have to reject your statement: ''Thus a kid with potential to contribute to society becomes a lawyer instead. '' [/quote] Sorry Jerry, You are right, even though I retired from law practice to become a math teacher, I still shouldn't take pot shots like that. Chris
Posted on: 7/9/2009 12:45 AM by Author "ctdahle" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=8918019