Well, its time to put the foamies away for a while.

In the meantime, I have the stuff coming to build a new 2m pattern plane. I think it will turn out pretty nicely... Its a scratch build, but oughtta be pretty tough in the air.

I really need to finish up the repairs on the Carden Edge as well....

Spent each naptime today painting up foamies for the ETOC.... Need to frame them tomorrow.


And how about a finished pic.....

Finally decided to break down and put up a proper website. My degree is actually in internet marketing, so I might as well use it. I don't sell anything on the site, its just there as a place to put my vids and pics and other stuff....

Anyway, it was fun to build.

www.chinnaero.com

This has been a really fun week. On Monday, two of my better designs started shipping.

The Extreme Flight 'Chinn Yak' 55SP Arf began shipping earlier this week. This is truly one of my favorite designs that I've ever done. I've built it in everything from 15" span electrics on up to the 47" ARF size. And to have Extreme Flight produce the thing is just awesome.

Also, the Fancy Foamy Vantage began shipping this week from Fancy Foam. I began work on this airplane last year almost immediately after the ETOC. My goal was to design an airplane combining the best of both the European monoplanes used in FAI F3p and the the biplanes which most pilots used in the 07ETOC.

With that goal in mind, I think I succeeded. The airplane builds extremely light without any mods, and flies more like a pattern plane than a 3d foamy which has been modified to fly straight lines. I guess I came at the problem from the 'other' direction. I hope it works! : )

Of course my goal with the airplane was/is to get into the 08 ETOC with it. Can't wait for the final list to come out

Well, its almost a week since that tornado plowed through the area......
Things are mostly back to normal at my workplace. Lunchtime is still odd, because all the restaurants I used to go to during lunchtime are half caved in, or boarded up from the total destruction they endured....

While dealing with the aftermath of the event, I was part of a big team at my workplace that was getting things back online. Among other things, I run facilities, so getting the building usable again was a priority. While another co-worker worked with electrical contractors to get the building on generator power, among other things, I worked on getting sanitary conditions usable. 28 PortoPotties outside the building had to take care of just short of 1000 people.

Initially, I felt kinda down because what I was doing did not seem like it was having a big effect. Then I began to realize what a severe demotivator it is for people to have to face unsanitary conditions. Getting those toilets in place and maintained kept the workforce here and working (people were walking off the job before they got here).

I also spent a good bit of time with our landlord in the warehouse district where I work. I made arrangements for my company to provide generators to the other local businesses to keep them running. While it seems a small thing, doing so apparently helped keep about 4k people working --> no power = no job = no paycheck in most of these places.

This whole community pitched in to get things running and 'back to normal'. While I wish the tornados never hit, I'm glad to have been part of a community that worked hard to keep things moving!

This also put into perspective events like what New Orleans experienced. What we dealt with here was a drop in the bucket compared to what people in Louisiana had to endure, but it definitely helps put it in perspective.

Yesterday, storms hit the Memphis metro area where I live.....

I left work to go get my daughter from daycare, and by the time I got there, the Tornado warning sirens were blaring hard.....

The daycare kept us there for quite a while, and when I got home, the news gave quite a shock.....

One of the tornados that came through Mempho hit the area where I work. It imploded the warehouse behind the one I work in and killed 3 people, while seriously injuring a dozen more.

The mall and restaurants near my warehouse (1/2mile away) was pretty much wiped out as were some neighborhoods nearby.

My own workplace suffered no structural damage, and thankfully no one was hurt.

The building that was destroyed near mine is less than 200 yards away

I found out this morning that another (or the same) tornado that hit my workplace missed my home (about 15 miles away) by about 3/4 of a mile.....

Well, my originally planned pylon racer for the E-fest did not fly as well as I had hoped, so I decided to make a little something else up.....

I scratched this little bird out in a matter of a little less than 4 hours (from raw sheet wood to what you see here).

Took her out this morning and gave her a fling. She flies verrrry well and ridiculously fast!

17.75" span, 2.6ozs rtf.

It really is funny to me how just regular life will keep you busy Obviously the poeple on this site all have somewhat similar lives in that we are trying to jam some enjoyment in the form of RC Flying into our already busy lives.... Its true of every one of us to at least some extent.

For me, the last two weeks have been mind-bending busy.

It started 2 weekends ago, when my team at work suddenly had a multi million dollar project at work scream to a halt. 6 months of planning hit a wall when the vendor delivered the product we were to have installed. Unfortunately, they made the wrong stuff and none of it was compatible with the rest -IE, we could not install anything. As the team leader, I managed to get us a contingency plan going, and the team kicked a$$ (its great to work with great people) so the project is now moving along again.

Then I got home one evening mid-week and my trusty family desktop screeched at me (mechanical freeze) and shot me an error message through the screen. Yup, one hard drive ruined with mechanical lockup. Unfortunately, I had not backed that up in a while. It had all my wife's work as well as all of my cad work for the past 6 years on it. Most importantly, it had every picture I've taken of my baby girl on it.

I can redraw anything, and re-write anything, but I can't get a picture back of my daughter being born...... After talking to a couple of flying buddies that work in the IT field, they helped me realize all the places I had kept those files. The result was that I got 98% of the pics of my daughter and family back. I was also able to get approximately 80% of my CAD files and articles.

Needless to say I'm working on getting my backup setup set in place and running....

Finally, this weekend, while trying to finish up a new prototype foamy for the upcoming indoor precision contests, my wife called and asked if I could come to her sister's house and help them move..... Never one to shy away from helping family I went. When I got there, my sister-in-law's husband was in the foyer of their new house chipping away at a marble floor.

I told the girls I really needed to help him as he had to have the removal job done by this morning. Ten hours later we had the job done, and I had severly bruised and blistered hands and forearms. A lot of work to put down some laminate flooring, but it will look good when done.......

If you've read this far, you must be terribly bored, so back to airplane stuff.

The cool news is that during those 2 weeks I managed to finalize the graphics and final build for my new indoor pattern plane. I also built the first production cut of it. I've also got the manual for the Chinn Yak .40 size Profile Arf almost done.

Something else cool worth mentioning is the little 'secret weapon' I'm building for the pylon race at the E-fest. Should be fun!

I have a long standing rule that I don't fly what I did not design and build. Only recently did I ever break that rule, and only because becoming a dad just does not allow as much time anymore....

Anyway, I thought I'd put up some pics of some of the designs I've done over the past few years.... I guess I did it in part to remind myself of what I've done.... (and part to be a show-off LOL).

Here ya go....

Put her up in the air today. Weather was beautiful and calm, so I gave her a very light toss and she was cruising away

Cruises at about 1/3 throttle, climbs at 1/2 and climbs strong a full.

Now its time to detail this little beauty out

Little further along with this pretty little bird.....

Covered it in Coverlite. Lot of work with those compound curves, but it turned out really nice. Very light so far.

Time to start detailing...

Little more progress on my Indoor Scale Stinson. Still really nice and light!

Its running 2 falcon servos along with a 5.5 gram Mighty Midget Outrunner.

Well, holiday 'fun' has kept me out of the shop a bit. Good news though is that I've finished another great foamy design and a manufacturer has agreed to market the design.... More details on that later.

I spent most of early December finishing up the Ultimate Indoor Foamy Build Thread. Parts 4 and 5 are yet to go up, but should go up within days.

I spent some time yesterday during my daughter's naps to build a new road bike for my wife. She commented that she wants to start riding with me. I don't know if she will, but it was fun to build the new ride. Its pretty sweet - an older Trek frame that is downright tiny mated to a full Shimano Ultegra set I had laying around. I polished for several hours to get it looking like it does and I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.

I've also begun work on my entry for the scale competition at the E-Fest. Should be fun if it turns out like I think it will....

Now on to my New Year's resolution for the year......

Last year, I made a resolution to get below 200lbs by the end of the year. I started a 226, and I weigh 198 today..... My goal for the end of 2008 is to get below 180lbs. I think I can get there.....

My secondary goal is to get my wife riding with me. That would be really cool

This past summer, I had the opportunity to do a full review of the Extreme Flight Vanquish. I loved the airframe so much. Well thought out and a joy to fly. Unfortunately, I put mine in about a dozen flights after I finished the review.

I finally got the gumption up to get myself another. Very rarely do I ever fly someone else's designs, and even more rarely do I ever like one enough to get another.

EF shipped mine out last week and I've got it flight ready now. Can't wait to get it in the air.

I assembled this one with Futaba servos and only put pattern throws on it - no 3d.

I also added some deflectors in the fuse to direct airflow over the batteries somewhat more.

I finished the Juka last night. Finished installing gear and getting the whole plane set up.

I used my new laser cut hardware, and it worked well. This set is good for a Freestyle airplane. I'll definitely need to make another set for precision airplanes (more spacing)

The airplane finished up at 135 grams with a 2 servo setup and the new Berg 7 side pin receiver with an Azarr antenna. I love the new receiver! All Dymond 4.7 servos and an Axi 2203-46 for power.

After finishing it, I had to take it out for the obligatory 'first spin'. It handles much like I expected it to. Maybe a little lighter on the wing and the fuse than I had expected- but thats a good thing.

After cutting last night, I got out the airbrush and sprayed some paint! If I'm lucky, tomorrow or late tonite, I'll get it assembled.....

I finally finished messing with the drawings and went ahead and cut a full JUKA. Like always, I tile printed the plans I drew in CAD, then taped them together carefully, and finally glued them to the depron with 3M Removable Gluestick. A few swipes with a #11 blade and I had myself a foamy kit....

While I was cutting, I added in the same aileron counterbalances that I'm running on several other airplanes.

The horiz/ele is a bit odd to me on this one... the full scale has a ProBro style 'dog-eared' elevator. I went ahead and drew the foamy with that feature as well.

The fuse is overly tall. Really, its a caracature(sp?) of a JUKA. Truth is that most foamies and profiles are. Frankly, most competitive IMAC planes are 'interpretations' of the real things (10% my a$$ LOL)

Hopefully I'll get to spritz some paint on this one before turkeyday festivities begin at the in-laws.

Last night, I spent a good amount of time fiddling with the drawing of the JUKA I'd like to finish up.

Before going to bed, I decided to cut a fuse out to see how it sized up. Frankly, I did not like what came out of the depron.....

So I decided to re-draw much of the fuse. I really wanted more side area on the fuse to allow it to float a little more when in KE. Span went up a little as well.

Attached below is the revised drawings....

I really want a new freestyle airplane for this year, so its time to knock it out...(already finished my new precision design).

I've designed countless foamys now, including some that have seen production or been published in magazines. I believe most other designers follow a similar method for their madness.

I start off by deciding which direction to go- Scalish? Wild? Bipe? Mono? For this one, I've decided to go somewhat scalish and a monoplane. I hope this will end up being a good enough design to fly in freestyle's this year, and I hope it will suit my flying style as well.

Wife is at work, baby is asleep, so why not start working on the new bird!

For this design, I decided to do a foamy of Jurgis Kairys' JUKA. This is a totally unmodelled airplane. Only a couple of Euro designs of it have been done, including the one by CPLR for New Power. Incidentally, I managed to get the opportunity to get one of those for a magazine review.....

I wrote Jurgis and asked for a 3view, but never got a response after several tries..... So I went trolling the net for every picture of his airplane. Knowing the call letters helped the search in several aero databases.

Once I got all those pictures, I studied them for about a week. Trying to 'burn' all the interactions of all the shapes into my mind so I could interpret them into shapes in depron and carbon.

I started the design work by drawing a scale accurate 3View of the airplane. Then I 're-interpretted' the shapes to be something I though would work better and to take into account the balancing of areas all around the airplane.

Finally, I shrunk the interpretted 3view to the span and length I wanted. Only once I'm truly satisfied with the shapes and how I think they'll cut, I'll go ahead and draw in much of the structure such as the tabbing of the fuse, and the part lines. Redrawing that stuff if I decide a wing is too big is a nightmare!

This will take me a week or so to get this airplane looking like an airplane and totally flightworthy, hopefully the holidays will help....

Oh yeah.... I learned CAD back in school and have a ridiculous amount of instruction in velum/graphite drafting. Therefore, I CAD like I used to use the pencil and straightedge in projecting the shapes out.

Here's the first drawings.... I'm going to tile print them and hope like crazy that they look good printed full size!

Finally got the workshop back in running order.... Took 4 hours to tear apart, and took 4 days to get it back in running order.....

Final specification - 2 car garage which has to hold the wife's car, my vintage car, all my bicycles, the mower... and finally, one 'working workbench', 2 storage benches and one cabinet.

The working bench is a home built frame with a solid core door on top, then topped with sheetrock to have something to pin to. I leveled the entire bench to within 1 tenth of a degree all the way across the board. I doubled the lighting while I was at it.

Rehung all the pegboard with backing spacers and added 50% more. I also cleared all the working surface... My goal is for it to NOT be a storage area - Of course that is my bad habit, but I might be able to overcome it....

I also built some profile racks while I was at it to hang the two profiles that previously lived on the floor and had recently been hit twice by the wife pulling into the garage.........