Anyone have a plastic bag?

I shall very likely need one, after the first flight of the “Boomerang“. It is pre-loved which meant an evening of the kind of extreme dullness that only a wet rag can provide. Not because I really cared that the fuselage smelt as if it had been used as an ash tray, and a few – possibly vital bits – were hanging a bit loose.

No, the chairman, no less, of the club I’ve joined popped over and offered sage advice regarding which bits plug in where, and what not to touch if you want to finish your life with the same number of fingers you started with*

At the end of this, I was no less confused but probably better informed. I plunged in anyway, armed with some stinky foam and a vague idea of how flange A may interface with widget B. Less than two hours later, my engineering prowess had joined the radio to the receiver, the battery to the servos and – even – fuel into the compressed tank.

I did consider starting it but history predicts one of two things would happen.

a) It would explode taking the house and about a acre of field with it. I would be identified by flecks of surprised atoms floating across the charred countryside.

b) The bugger”d just fly off completely unharnessed by any radio signal. I’m still considering this as the safest way to effect the maiden flight.

Even after meeting me, the kind chap is still keen to teach me to fly it properly. Which I’m hoping to try next weekend assuming Murphy-Shoe-Eater hasn’t got to it first. This morning I was met with wagging tail, hungry expression and the remains of Random’s two week old trainers.

He did give me the “who me? what those? no, know nothing about those gov” expression, although this protestation of innocence was somewhat undermined by the lace hanging out of his mouth.

Anyway, it seems I have somehow ended up with three planes, one recently crashed, one ready to fly and one needing all sorts of trickery involving z-bends and micro adjustments. Sound like a job for the big hammer!

* I’m considering offering this as a service to some of the more “local locals” to get them back to 4 per hand.

H’mm that suddenly looks a bit serious

Today I’ve been breaking things. Planes, wings and promises mainly. Avid readers of hedgehog (and I’m setting a pretty low bar here – being able to manage your own cutlery passes for Mensa for inbound hedgies) will remember in this post I crowed over near future ownership of something similar but different.

There is complexity here, but essentially boredom, beer, eBay, the attention span of a special needs moth and an inability to say no has led to an MTB like dive into relative stupidity. So while this pre-loved trainer is replete with engine, flight box, starter, gas and something scary involving fuel pumps, I’ve made a creative leap into buying another one that’s almost exactly the same.

Madness is merely method lacking explanation and my justification was a) I don’t like backing out of deals even if I seem to have done lots of them b) this fiendish looking craft is missing a radio system and c) realistically they are nothing more than expensive consumerables with me at the controls.

c) is important as this morning I launched the little electric* into a gusty sky, having courageously re-trimmed** it the night before, and the next five minutes were nothing more than a growing conviction the bugger was overrun with alien mind control. 8/8ths cloud didn’t help much and the only time I really worked out where it was, was when I was digging it out of a frozen field.

And while replacement parts are cheap for this little soil basher, the same cannot be said for the big mutha now in my ownership. The previous owner terrified me with tales of extreme balsa action, and the 200 step instruction for starting the engine. In true hedgehog fashion, I nodded sagely and went in search of a stiff drink.

During which Carol decided to relocate the wings from their clearly unsafe position behind a cabinet, bedded down on two inches of foam and wrapped in a blanket*** while failing to understand that there isn’t much difference between six foot of wing and six foot and a bit of door aperture. There is no way I’m skilled enough to effect any kind of repair, so I gaffer taped it up and hoped for the best.

This has served me well with MTB’s and it’s important to play to your strengths I feel. Which is why I’m considering a radical approach of installing no radio at all, and just launching the plane at full chat into a big sky. I’ll feel none of that terrible responsibility to bring it back in one piece and it’ll probably be less damaged than if I were at the controls.

And best of all, I can crack open a beer as it disappears over a far horizon. I tell you, that and the knob gags are going to ingratiate me to the new club in no time at all.

* I believe RC has even more euphemistic potential than MTB. Except everyone except me appears to be 900 years old and universally sponsored by the denture industry. Knob gags have so far failed to amuse. I’ll keep trying.

** I’m not explaining this. It’s dull, hence my approach being to wait until I was partially pissed before hitting the spanners.

*** Let’s just not go there eh? Although I will say that House Harmony is not at an all time high this evening.

Fly like a ….

… turd. That’s more than an adequate description of the manikin like gyrations of the little SuperCub I’ve been abusing over the holidays. I’m yet to be convinced my twiddling of the sticks* is in any way controlling the random perambulations of the flying rabbit** as it terrorises innocent patches of sky.

It’s more that a few thousand bits of foam happen to be flying in the same direction. Only when it magically appears back overhead does the full horror of my total lack of spacial awareness become terryfyingly apparent. I must be the only man ever to be dive bombed by his own air force. Well apart from the British when the Americans forgot to update the arial SatNav.

On another long trudge to fetch the bloody unsteerable thing from a far away field, I under-breathed admitted that maybe I needed some help. Nothing new there, but specifically in the art of bringing the plane to heel. I’d tried shouting at it – a technique daily demonstrated with the dog and even less successful; the dog just stands there with a “who me?” look about his fizog, while the plane buggers off over the horizon – and when that didn’t work sort of ran out of ideas.

But my grumpy DNA mixes badly with kind people explaining gently how to do things. It’s not that I think they’re wrong, it’s just that I can’t bear not being right. And my brief immersion into the Radio Control fraternity suggests Mountain Bikers + 20 years and even more bloody pedantic.

You know how it’ll go; I’ll turn up somewhere, do my best to be quiet and still then somebody’ll quote a rule at me, and the next thing it’ll be smashed balsa everywhere, and the police will become involved. Instead I decided the best way to learn was to up the ante in terms of danger and cost. That picture goes by the precedent name of “boomerang” which suggests it’ll be arriving back on earth in a smash of glazing and expensive parts.

We’re talking over ONE HORSEPOWER of raw power there people. And a radio system that has the word “computer” emblazoned all over the manual. And I’m buying it secondhand because – as everyone in the know knows – trainers are flown by calm, rational people who hardly ever scream “Oh Fuck I’ve dropped the controller and now IT’S COMING RIGHT TOWARDS USEVERYBODY DOWN!” before a noise like the world exploding, and the traditional burying of the remains in a carrier bag.

Now with my unblemished history of second hand motors and computers, nothing – snigger if you must, but I tell you – nothing can go wrong. Especially since some poor unsuspecting bugger has offered to help. I feel money may have to change hands after the first flight.

I have neither the time or money for another hobby. Apparently we’re in training for the HONC***, the house spreadsheet has entered scary new worlds of advanced calculus, and there’s all sorts of stuff going on at work that really demands my full attention.

Still, always time to polish a turd eh?

* Not that stick. This is bloody well hard enough already.

** As named by one of my children. Yes, it was the random one.

*** New year, new rule. No beers with more than 4.5{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} alcohol content. Oh yeah, I’m serious about this race