Progression of Ideas #1 - Foam Gliders

In my recent presentations I have tried to get across a common theme of ideas and inspiration, this can be seen in almost all aspects of life. Last evening I was watching a television show about the music of the sixties and it was brought out how musical groups were always inspiring each other to expand on their musical styles.  For me I have looked at many project ideas and have taken the ideas in many directions. Probably more common would be to start with a simple idea and make it increasingly complex, with the model foam gliders I created an airplane that required too many pieces and too long to build, so I worked on a progression of simpler models.

The FPG-9 (foam plate glider) gave me the idea and inspiration to create many more model airplanes from foam.

On One Foam Jet II Glider Radio Control was Added

Hammer Down Catapult Glider

Materials for Hammer Down Glider

When I designed the Hammer Down Catapult glider I wanted to use fewer pieces and came up with the idea of creating the wing in one piece from a foam meat tray.

Teachers Built Foam Glider and Added Propeller

Tested New Design With Kids Too

Created a Larger Foam Rubber Powered Airplane

Foam Gliders on Website
Rubber Powered Foam Airplanes on Website

http://www.ideas-inspire.com

Bill Kuhl

Join Simple Foam Free Flight Airplane here  - I have started a Facebook Group for people interested in simple free flight model airplanes made primarily from foam.



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Bud Ramer the Businessman

"Ramer attributes his good fortune to salesmanship and a constant search for new markets. "Any idiot can go out and catch a boatload of fish," Ramer says. "The real trick is finding someone who'll pay for them."

From DNR Webpage

Bud Ramer

Besides my father I know of another guy who built up a successful business from almost nothing, his name was Henry Ramer but everyone knew him as Bud. I don’t know the details of his life I had heard he had been in trouble as a youth.  He had a successful retail and commercial fishing operation in Winona Minnesota for a lot of years. I had met Bud from seeing him at Shorty’s restaurant, on occasion I would help him out with a problem on his computer at the store. He would always try to pay me but I would always refuse, it was more fun to get to go out on his fishing boat instead.

Fish Delivery Truck

Hoop Nets 

What impressed me besides his extension knowledge of the Mississippi River and commercial fishing was his business savvy. He once told me that he would pay the extra money to get some new technology before other people had it because it gave him a jump on the competition. He had purchased some kind of depth finder when it was really expensive but felt even afterwards it was worth it.  I also remember he purchased a special radio control submarine that would pull a line under the ice so nets could be strung under the ice.  Before that long boards were pushed between a series of holes cut in the ice which took a lot longer.

Air Boat

Once a week Bud would drive a truck full of fish to markets in the Twin Cities area, some of the fish were live because he had found a market for live fish.  He knew a lot of people and with his connections he supplied the catfish that was used in the Grumpier Old Men movie, there were pictures at his store of him with the stars of the movie. If something was not making him money, he would cut his losses and discontinue it such as the fish store he had in Rochester Minnesota.

Commercial Fishing by Winona With Bud

Bill Kuhl

Rainbow Connection Software

It sure can be fun to reminisce about the past, in an earlier blog article I had mentioned the business I had for the TI99/4a computer Kuhl Software, it just so happened that a relative of mine Wayne Diercks was doing something similar for the Radio Shack Color Computer. We worked together in some ways and converted programs to run on both the TI and Radio Shack computers plus the Commodore 64. We attended some trade shows for the Radio Shack computer in Chicago and Forth Worth.

MC10 Was Smaller Radio Shack Color Computer

One of Wayne’s claims to fame was his football prediction program “Pigskins Predictions”, the prediction was for picking the winning team for a game. I remember using it in a football pool I was in and darn if the first week I won the pool but the next week someone won the pool by picking the helmets of the team they found most attractive. Wayne had a couple of other programmers working on programs, I remember the one programmer was proficient in assembly language and ended up working for a company that made games for the Colleco Vision game system.

Floppy Disk Version

Cassette Tape Version of Several Games

Computers back in this era were very limited in the RAM memory and also external storage, some customers were purchasing programs that were stored on audio cassette tape, the floppy disks of the time stored very limited data also. Wayne had developed a clever data compression technique that traded a little computer processing for reduced storage requirements. I used this technique when I wrote the computer billing program for construction business and another programmer used it in an accounting program for credit unions.

Rainbow Connection Advertising

Thinking of this reminds me about how terrible I did in school when taking accounting, in fact received a failing grade one quarter. After I decided to return to college to finish a degree in computer science I had to take accounting again. This time working with numbers seemed so much more interesting and I remember getting A’s in two quarters. Amazing how getting to work with some practical application can increase your skill in that area.

500 Years of Aviation History Through Models Presentation

Recently I gave another aviation presentation as part of the Frozen River Film Festival Fringe Friday activities, much of the presentation was like previous presentations but with the addition of rotary wing flight (helicopters and quadcopters).  For being during the work week and so much else going on I thought attendance was really good. My estimated time of 25 minutes was a little short and I had trouble getting the tiny Estes quadcopter started for some crazy reason. Also I had so much stuff on the tables I was having trouble finding things I needed for the demonstration.

Added from my previous Aviation History presentation was flying the Mini Vapor RC plane, two different quadcopters, the floating ball demonstration, two wood models of Leonardo Da Vinci ideas and a walkalong glider. I tried to carry through with the theme of how ideas and inspiration shaped not only the history of aviation but the model aviation projects I have done as well. With the floating ball demonstration I commented how there still seems to be debate on how the airflow over a wing creates lift.

Mini Vapor RC Airplane

Ball Floating on Air

Leonardo Da Vinci Aerial Screw

Leonardo Da Vinci Ornithopter

When I got to demonstrate the walkalong glider made of super lightweight foam I was running out of time. The next day at the film festival a couple of people that I did not know complimented me on the presentation which made me feel good, I know it will be improved the next time I give this.

Walkalong Glider

Tiny Estes Quadcopter

People enjoyed my story of the AR Drone that Drowned.

Bill Kuhl

Path to Learning Physics

2013 has been an interesting year with my science guy activities but for 2014 I want to concentrate further on the educational aspects related to the projects on my website. I have been going through a process of trying to re-educate myself on much of what I might have learned in school in math or physics courses. Besides reading books there are so many educational tutorials on the Internet that are really helpful, a resource not available when I was in school.

An outline on how to approach learning physics and math which are so interrelated seemed to be a good first step for me.  To me it starts out with working to get the basic understanding and then work with the sample problems to be become more comfortable. I am finding some of the model aviation books that were rather technical in aerodynamics are now making more sense to me.


My Outline for Learning Physics includes becoming comfortable with the following:

• The vocabulary
• The symbols used in equations
• Units of measure especially the metric system
• Working easily with the trig functions
• Working with and interpretation of graphs and working with data
• Force diagrams

Feel free to comment or add to my outline items.


Happy New Year,

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

Leonardo Da Vinci Ornithopter Kit

After building the Leonardo Da Vinci Pathfinder kit for the Aerial Screw I decided I just had to build the other flying kit, the ornithopter or flapping wing.  Leonardo was truly an amazing man but I do not think I will get a tattoo of a Leonardo sketch just because Miley Cyrus did.  Working over the Christmas holiday I had the kit assembled in a couple of days, the fit of the parts was good. My plan is to use both of these models in another aviation history presentation.

Completed Kit

Like the Aerial Screw it appears that no prototype was ever actually built by Leonardo, just the same the thought that was put into this is really amazing for the time period.  Model ornithopters are fairly common and I have built or bought a couple.

The Parts

Pilot Cable System Pulls Down Wings

Crank Mechanism Pulls Shaft Back and Forth 

Wings Levers Pull Down and Wings Go Up

The gears that were used in both kits made from wooden dowels and wood circles were of interest to me also, this type of gearing was typical for Leonardo's ideas. To find articles of this on the Internet I had to turn to my model airplane friends on the Internet to point me to the correct terminology. This type of gearing is known as "peg and cage"; the cage gear can also be known as a "lantern gear". The gearing part was just for model operation, if full-scale version the idea was the pilot would be pulling the wing halves down by a cable system as can be seen in the model.

Peg and Cage Gears

I find it interesting that it was not until 2006 that a man carrying flapping wing flying machine flew successfully. This was with the help of a model jet engine providing 60 pounds of thrust and the flight was only for 14 seconds.  Another flapping wing airplane without an engine was also tried but this was towed aloft.  Human powered propeller driven airplanes carrying humans have flown for many miles.

Bill Kuhl

Understanding Seconds Squared

In dealing with any physics problem of acceleration you will run across the notation of meters per second squared  m/s² often.  It has been established that the acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 m/s² whether a young Sir Isaac Newton was really hit on the head with an apple and came up with the theory of gravity is questionable.   The square of a number means multiplying it by itself 4² would be 4 x 4 = 16.  It is easy to visualize units of distance squared but the idea of time squared just did n’t make sense to me.  With a quick Internet search I found I was not alone, many people have been asking to have this clarified, and the following are parts of the most understandable explanations for me.

Distance Squared easy to visualize

Think of it Like This

One way of thinking of this is by wording it meter per second per second or as the velocity per second. This can be written out as   velocity  (meters per second) / time (per second).  If you look up the rules for division of fractions you multiply the divisor by the reciprocal.  In other words the numerator and divisor are flipped around the same can be done with the m/s² notation.

Bill Kuhl