I finally got fed up with living in the city and ended up moving out to the sticks. Actually, I’m living at the old family place out in the sticks. It’s been a learning experience, but all in all I really enjoy where I’m at. One nice thing is being able to do stuff like take 10 steps out the basement door and cast a line in the pond. Or go out on the porch and bust a few caps, and nobody gets all up in a bunch and calls the cops. Also, my yard is big enough (including the pond) to do some flying. Pretty badass since I have an electric Lazy Bee with the floats.

Anyway, last Saturday Mom came to visit (a weekly thing, I think she like it when I grill stuff for her), and she helped me clear some brush out by the gate. Dad never let her run the cool toys, so I gave her a crash course on the front end loader (I was busy driving the Gravely with the sickle bar, and it’s, no shit, a half a mile to the gate). She really liked running it, and wants to do it again. Running the loader is work, no denying it, so after dinner I said “wanna learn to fly?” She was all like “I don’t want to break any of your planes”, but I had an ace up my sleeve. I pulled out the Parkzone Vapor. It was dead calm outside, and just perfect for it.

I showed her the basics and got it set on the throttle and handed over the DX6i. Yes, she was fixated and within a minute she had spiraled it into the ground. No biggie, no damage, so I sent it on its way again and demonstrated what she did and how to not do it again. Mind you, this was the first time she’s ever flown RC. The second flight went much better and I could tell she was riding a surge of adrenalin, so when she handed it back, I took it and said good job.

I could tell she had a blast from the big grin and the shaky hands, I’ve been there. She said she wants to learn more and do some more flying, but only on the Vapor. I got a 2 meter glider that’s just begging for some stick time, and I’m sure I’ll get her hooked on gliders soon.
E

A buddy hit me up to do a little wood / metal project a while back, and I decided to get motivated on it. I got the first section of brass plates bored, countersunk and tapped with three 1/4-20 bolts. We had initially planned to use nuts and washers for fastening, but after I looked at the nuts and the brass bar I decided to tap the bar and ditch the washers and nuts. I’ll flush cut the excess bolt stock and probably endmill it true flush before polishing the whole length (3′, in 1′ segments). Then I got this hot idea to alternate the bolt direction (down – up – down) and flip the middle section so it alternates the whole length as well. I’m pretty stoked about how the first section has turned out so far. I figure another two hours for the other two sections, maybe another two for setting up the table saw to channel out a 1/4″ deep by 1″ wide slot on two sides of 2″x2″ oak stock, another hour matching the metal segments and drilling the nine through holes, then another hour or two laying out and drilling six other holes (four through metal) as well as drilling and tapping the wood for other hardware, finishing could take a day. It’s going to be kind of steampunk with some happy goth tossed in for giggles.

I did have a moment looking for a tool over by the Southbend lathe. The last time I worked with that machine was shortly before Dad died. I had to suck it up and get on with it. Those aren’t my Dad’s tools any more.

And this looks fun. Might have to scale it up a hair and fab one out with full propo.

Pen Gallery

I got the battery deck made, and gained a keel compartment underneath it.  I still need to reinforce the false bottom to take the weight of the battery, but that’s no biggie.  Both hull fittings are in place, with the fire monitor system complete up to the pump outlet.  I’m still pondering how to affix the bilge pump to the hull bottom.  

Doesn’t sound like much, but it was a full weekend of boat building.  19 new pix in the build gallery.

Almost done with the basic decking.  I didn’t get the chance to take pix of the fiber glassing on the main deck this evening, but it’s glassed and hardening right now.  I’ll probably start sanding it, and the hatch, tomorrow.  

Next up will be fitting the main deck to the hull, then working on the bulk heads and interior decking.  I’d like to get it in the water soon, but I don’t know if I have enough ballast to get it to the waterline.  At the very least I can test the control systems and drive it around a bit.  I’m sure I’ll get some video of it in the water.

Finished machining the rudder pull-pull wheels and installed the complete rudder control system in the hull.  Using the larger wheels seems to provide a very strong, accurate setup that returns to neutral with little effort.

I got the main deck assembled today.  I still need to finish gluing the members, and I have to make the hatch, but it went together pretty easily after climbing the learning curve with the forcastle deck.  The hatch is going to take some work, since it’s a pretty tight fit (and I haven’t even started glassing it yet), and the kit wood isn’t square on one end.  Meh, it’s all part of building I guess.

I’ll try to get some pix of them before and after I put them in the hull.

First time I’ve run up the drivetrain on the Darby since installing and fiber glassing.  The motor noise in the vid is the twin Pittman motors.  I’m getting close to some sea trials.  I’ll post some pix of the skeg build in the gallery.

I’ve decided to post pictures of the Darby project on Recon. Mostly to keep a photo log of its progress, and to start to bring a non-angry side of me out. Dad and I started this project back the end of last year, and due to some things, work has gone kind of slow. I guess in a way it’s like that Butthole Surfers song “it’s better to regret something ya have done, than to regret something you haven’t done”. But I digress.

When we first started working on it, we were taking a fair number of pix during the build. Since neither of us had much, if any, experience building a fiberglass hull large scale model ship, we went to RCGroups and RCU for some advice and help. That turned into a depressing joke. I don’t know if it’s indicative of that niche, but they had some strange ways. Dad started a thread, and posted a few questions, which didn’t get answered, and most of the posts were at best “ho hum”. I had to literally (no joke) draw a picture of Dad’s question and finally I got a couple replies with the same answer. But threads would blow up on topics that were at best trivial. We soon gave up on the whole forum “community” and the thread got burried quick.

So, I’ve decided to post the build here on recon. I know, it’ll be intersperced with random rantings and obtuse links and pix, but hopefully someone may benefit from the pictures and logs that are sadly missing on the interwebs. I’ve tried to find good build logs for this project, and 99.9% of what I find are sites with a couple “hood open” shots and a beauty shot or two. Not very helpful for beginners.

I posted most all of the pics in the gallery: HERE (which oddly enough is album #69) The ones that are in there now are in no particular order, but future ones should be. I’ll try to post descriptions on the pics as well.

I’m out.

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