Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Connecting in 2015

As the New Year starts I have given much thought to how I can expand on some of my real passions in life, mainly my model aviation hobby and my science related projects for students.  I have been building a more advanced free flight model airplane for an electric competition class known as “E-36”.  The airplane kit is a Super Pearl E-202 that I had obtained plans and partial kit from PearlFreeFlight.com. In this partial kit the smaller parts that would require more cutting are supplied laser-cut and the longer strips of balsa I obtained at a hobby shop or had in my personal stash. Additional parts that will be needed are the electric motor, timer, ESC, battery, carbon boom, covering and some small miscellaneous parts. Much of the electronics are coming from Texas Timers.  To me it is often a more educational experience if you are forced to research and obtain parts from various sources.


E36 Under Construction
On my website Ideas-Inspire there has been a good amount of activity lately and even a few questions on building the projects. Mousetrap powered cars are again most popular but interest in the syringe hydraulic arm is still high and model aviation related articles. I have been experimenting with a rubber powered car from Doc Fizzix but need to find somewhere indoors to run it.  There is a Science Olympiad event related to this and I would like to be of more help on this.



Dox Fizzix Kit Rubber Powered Car


Recently I connected on Linkedin with many people working in STEM-related careers, a few have contacted me and seem interested in what I have done. One person in particular is Milton Bertrand that has a social media website related to STEM known as Geazle. There is a huge amount of capability with the Geazle system and I am urging everyone interested in STEM to join. I plan to write in more detail about Geazle in the future.





Before the current blast of artic air I had a chance to do some model airplane flying outdoors. Someone sent me some simple rubber powered free flight kits. One I built in a day and had it flying outdoors on Christmas day, another one of the planes is under construction.  Last Saturday was relatively warm also and I flew some other simple rubber powered model airplanes. There was another person flying a RC seaplane from the snow and I talked to him. Turns out we had met before flying indoors and he had a unique model plane created from two RC Champs connected together.



Double Champ




RC Seaplane Landing on Snow



Bill Kuhl
http://www.ideas-inspire.com

Related Links

http://www.geazle.com/
http://www.pearlfreeflight.com/Buy.html
http://www.texastimers.com/
http://www.docfizzix.com

http://scienceguyorg.blogspot.com/2014/12/blue-ridge-dart-rubber-model.html



2 comments:

  1. I have always been interested in flying machines. Helicopter is one them. I have a couple RC helicopters that I fly indoors. As a matter of fact, I always buy them. I never took the interest to build one. After reading this blog post, I will have to research and build one over the course of the year. In addition, I will consider model flying airplane. I thank your for this great post.

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    1. Thank you so much for your comment. I have purchased a couple of RTF helicopters and find them challenging to fly. I prefer model airplanes but that is what I started with. It is amazing how cheap RC can be but of course it can be expensive also.

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