Way Too Cold To Fly

And so, more guitar nostalgia. In about 1976 I bought a nylon stringed classical guitar from Lubbock Music Center. It was a Yamaha G-65.

I had that guitar a long time. At one point I sent it by bus express to my sister. And when she outgrew it, I got it back, eventually selling it on eBay for a little more than I paid for it, back in 1976. 

First Flights

First two flights with the Easy Trainer 1280 and the FMS receiver/transmitter revealed a range problem. I flew it out about 300 feet and the motor quit. Control surfaces were still responsive, so I could land safely. Once the plane was landed and close to the transmitter the throttle worked. I tried it again and had the same result. So I switched to the Dynam 6 channel 2.4 ghz receiver and 4 channel transmitter (same ones you get with the Hawk Sky) and made several more flights with no problems. The receiver installation required a bit more foam trimming on the canopy but the result is very neat and all the wiring is out of the way of the servos in the fuselage and the two antennas are in a good spot for best reception. I'll put up a picture, eventually, showing how it all fits together. I've got an 1800 and a 1300 mah lipo for this plane and both fit very well. The larger battery requires a few clicks of up trim. This plane is much easier to launch than either the EZ Hawk or Hawk Sky by Dynam because it has no tendency to nose dive and requires only a little up elevator on launch. I've got the plane trimmed but I'll set the elevator clevis so I get more elevator deflection. Not really necessary, but it'll be just a bit easier to fly. I see no need to use a 3 cell battery. There was plenty of speed and power from the 7.4 volt lipos. I set the transmitter knob  to get maximum deflection on the control surfaces (turned full right). This is a good plane!

Guitar Nostalgia

I guess this is the nostalgia part of my blog. It is too cold and windy to fly the freshly completed FMS Easy Trainer from MOTIONRC, in the PNP version, so I'm going to post pics of a few of the guitars I have owned and played over the years. I bought my first guitar in Lubbock, from a pawnshop, when I was a freshman at what was then Texas Technological College. That purchase really started something! I don't have any photos of that guitar, but I do have photos of the guitar I bought after that, a Bruno Conqueror, from a music store in my hometown, while I was back there during the summer. The first pic is one I found on the web of that guitar:

Nice looking guitar! Pretty high quality. It had a bolt-on neck but played well and sounded good. I played it through a little Alamo amplifier.

The following are pics of me with that guitar, taken that summer:

There seems to have been a bit of a Buddy Holly influence going on. I took that guitar back to Lubbock with me the following semester but used it as a trade-in on a Candy Apple Red Fender Jaguar-- this pic is one I found on the web, since I have no pics of that Jaguar:

This guitar does look just like mine. Later I acquired a nylon string classical guitar, a Regal. I have a photo of me with that guitar:

I'll have more pics, documenting most of my other guitars, in a few days... 

 

Almost Finished!

The Easy Trainer 1280 is an easy build. I made a few modifications to improve cooling of the ESC and battery, and to provide space for larger batteries. I put dark graphics on the wing bottoms to aid orientation. I decided to use a standard FMS receiver and transmitter. I'll be putting up some pics to show how I've packaged the internals and modified the canopy. All I've got left is to reinforce the nose with some epoxy applied internally, in the battery compartment, and set up the elevator linkage. I decided to use only the plastic bolts provided to hold the wing in place-- no glue. The elevator required shims on one side to get it level with the wing. If the weather will cooperate today, I'll get it in the air.

The New Plane Arrived

I ordered it from Motion RC. It got shipped via UPS and arrived in perfect condition yesterday. I've got a choice of receiver/transmitter combos. I'll take my time putting this together. I had one of these FMS Easy Trainer 1280 planes before, when I was still learning basics, and made a few mistakes. That plane never flew as well as it could. I want to get this one RIGHT!

The EZ Hawk Keeps Flying

I haven't flown the EZ Hawk in months. It needed some adjustment. The elevator clevis set-screw had come loose. The double-sided tape holding the receiver in place won't stick tight anymore. I corrected all these little things and got several good flights yesterday, and in the evening it was time for the aerobatic Firebird Stratos. The FMS 1280 should arrive tomorrow, Monday, by the end of the day. I've got my workbench cleared and plan to get that plane in the air as quickly as possible. I want to use it as a camera platform.

Estate sales recently yielded two wood chess boards, large enough for tournament sized pieces. They were unfinished and it was fun to do the staining and finishing. Results were very good. They seem to have been someone's craft project and were nicely done. They go really well with antique wood chessmen I got on eBay a few months ago.

New Plane

I've got room for another plane and I've ordered an FMS Easy Trainer 1280 from Motion RC, in a PNP version. I'll use a Dynam transmitter and receiver, 2.4, same one I used in my home-built. I've got two 2S batteries for this plane, and a 3S with the right connectors in case I want to soup it up. The 50 inch wingspan is a reasonable size and should be just fine for my camera.

On The Guitar Front

Last weekend I found a Gibson Maestro Epoch guitar in a pawnshop. It didn't cost much and I thought it might make a good project guitar. The pickups, dual humbuckers, sounded OK, the electronics were OK, and it looked a lot like a Les Paul Studio, but with top edge binding. It is very heavy, finished in black, has the Les Paul single cut-away and head stock shape, but a flat top and a bolt-on neck. The bolt-on neck does not bother me a bit. I've owned lots of Fenders. After living with this guitar for a while I decided it needed to have the higher frets leveled, and the primitive tailpiece/bridge needed to be replaced with another with individual bridge saddles. I ordered one from Stewart-MacDonald, based on the old Leo Quann BADASS bridge design. Yesterday I got a chance to do the work. I removed the old strings, removed the neck, leveled the frets by reseating them, installed the new bridge, re-assembled, and discovered that I would have to change the neck angle. No problem! A bolt-on neck can be shimmed. After re-stringing with medium light GHS strings, I set intonation. That's a tedious process. But the guitar frets true and can be intonated to a high degree of accuracy. The action is lower but I still have a problem at the 19th fret. It is just high enough to cause some buzzing on notes fretted at the 18th fret. I rarely play in that position and it only affects the 3rd through 6th strings. I'm going to live with it until I change strings. At that time I will hone the offending fret. I like the action now. Maybe after that little bit of extra fret work I'll be able to lower it a little more. This is a nice guitar now, sounds just as good as a Les Paul and it cost a heck of a lot less! I put on strings gauging 042 to 009, and that is probably too light. When I restring I'll use 046 to 010. That should be perfect.

Second Flight Yesterday

The second flight of my scratch-built RC plane was its last, not because it crashed but because it simply did not fly well enough. Space is at a premium. I don't have room for a mediocre plane. I stripped out the motor and servos and other gear. I think I'll order some kind of ARF or PNP aircraft, and use one of two 2.4 GHZ transmitter/receiver combos I've got sitting around, unused. A PNP version of the FMS 1280 Easy Trainer would be great, if I can use batteries I already have. A Bixler powered glider would be OK too. I've got a lot of options. I've got room for one more plane with up to 55" wingspan.

Fossils Confirmed, But Not What I Thought

I'll be providing more details later, but this morning I had an appointment with a paleontologist at the Texas Tech University Museum. In short, most of my fossils are of coral, age ranges are Permian to Cretaceous, and the "tooth" and "claws" turned out to be endocasts of extinct clams. These clams had some oddities. Endocasts of these clams do greatly resemble Oviraptor and Deinonychus claws and have been marketed as such to the unwary. These clam species bit the dust during the great extinction event marking the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary. The corals are also extinct, and have been for a long time. None of these fossils (they are fossils, at least) are particularly rare. So I will probably display them. It is possible they were collected in Texas, since they are not uncommon at several Texas sites. Exact locations will never be known, therefore exact ages can't be given. I will have more information when I have time to upload it. What we are dealing with here are specimens of CANINIA TORQUIA RUGOSE CORAL, Pennsylvanian-Permian, 315 to 250 million years ago, and endocasts of RUDISTED CLAM of the family CAPRINIDAE, and they are Cretaceous, approx. 110 million years old. The claw like features are of the upper part of the shell, which was not hinged, and the tooth-like feature is an endocast of the lower part of the shell. These were very odd clams!


It's great to live in a university town! There is knowledge and expertise at your fingertips! I hate to think of what Lubbock would have been without Texas Tech!

More Fossils And A Good First Flight

It was calm and warm Saturday, in advance of a bitter norther. We went back to the estate sale that yielded so many great finds, and I bought all the rest of the fossils I could find. This was the last day of the sale and everything was reduced in price-- 50% I spent less than $20. I got another claw, this one was smaller and broken off, and what seemed to be bits of phalanges still covered by scraps of calcified skin. Darned if there wasn't a large carnivore (probably theropod)  tooth in the mix, and something that looked like a small, calcified, theropod foot. I talked to a lady who knew the couple whose house that was, where the estate sale was held. The husband was an Engineering professor at Texas Tech, but he had an interest in geology and paleontology and mineralogy. He died several years ago and his wife lived there alone until she needed nursing care. The woman I spoke to had helped care for her in her home. I kept information about the sale as a kind of provenance.  At any rate, I took pics of my total fossil "haul" from this estate sale. Are these things authentic dinosaur fossils? I'm not sure how to authenticate this stuff.

UPDATE: These are actually fossils of ancient coral and cretaceous reef-building clams. See my other posts on this topic.


After we got back, I flew the plane I constructed from scratch and it flew well enough. Not too much trim adjustment required. I'll have more to say about it after I get a chance to fly it again.

Fossil Recurve Dinosaur Claw?

My wife and I go to many estate sales. Recently we visited an estate sale in the home of a local rock hound. There was a tremendous amount of stuff: tools of all kinds and sizes and varieties, gems, minerals, lapidary equipment, jewelery, and fossils. Or what seemed to be fossils. Among other goodies, like a very nice set of ebonized boxwood Staunton chessmen, obviously turned on the lathe in the workshop, I bought, for $3, what seems to be a fossil dinosaur claw. It looks to be from a Deinonychus or similar, measuring 4" in the longest dimension and weighing a little over 10 oz. It is not resin, but stone. I think it might be the real thing. I'm going to put up photos, and I'll tell you why I think it is real and not a cast. UPDATE--1-11-2014: This looks a lot like a claw but it is part of a RUDIST clam, an endocast. I learned this by consulting a paleontologist. Many people have been fooled by these fossils. This is a genuine fossil, however, and is roughly 110,000,000 years old.

These are high resolution photos. They can be downloaded in native resolution. I see evidence of  tendon attachment points, blood vessel passages, and wear and tear from use, ages ago. The rock material seems too complex in composition to be anything but natural stone.  If I am correct, this is quite a nice find, for an estate sale. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing where this specimen might have been collected. Feel free to comment. I might be putting this on eBay.

No Flying-- Too Cold, Too Windy

So I got my homemade RC plane just about done. The following photos illustrate. I had to make a change, by moving the wing farther back so I could get a reasonable cg location without adding a lot of nose weight.

While working on this plane I realized that there is an easy way to build an airfoil using Dow blue foam and foam core board. The method can produce symmetrical, under-cambered, or flat-bottomed wings. All I have to do now is locate the correct blue foam, which does not seem to be used very much in this area. I can get all the pink stuff I want but that does not allow sanding. I need stuff I can sand, in order to shape the leading edge.