What to do to combat isolation boredom...

I dunno, but I’ll be curious to see if there’s a spike in the birth rates 9 months from now. If so, you might have your answer as to what people are doing to help pass the time. :)
 
It just dawned on me--I have a brand new, untried golf ball cannon. I have almost 300 old golf balls, miles of fuse, and a pound of Pyrodex. I live in the woods.

Tim
 
It just dawned on me--I have a brand new, untried golf ball cannon. I have almost 300 old golf balls, miles of fuse, and a pound of Pyrodex. I live in the woods.

Tim

You'll run out of Pyrodex before anything else. Have fun!
 
Ain't nothin' gonna break-a my stride
Nobody gonna slow me down, oh no
 
I dusted off the building board and X-Acto knives. Last week's project was a Guillow's Spitfire; this week, a Fokker DR.I. They're designed for rubber-band free flight but I like to convert them to rc.

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This might be a dumb question, but I have no RC experience. How do you fly an RC Spitfire with no ailerons?
 
This might be a dumb question, but I have no RC experience. How do you fly an RC Spitfire with no ailerons?
3 channel R/Cs are pretty common (1 control for elevator, rudder, throttle). The rudder tends to drop the nose when you yaw enough one way and the elevator compensates for it. At least that's how I understood the 3ch Cub I had.
 
3 channel R/Cs are pretty common (1 control for elevator, rudder, throttle). The rudder tends to drop the nose when you yaw enough one way and the elevator compensates for it. At least that's how I understood the 3ch Cub I had.

I thought 3-channel planes usually had a lot of dihedral, which keeps the plane stable and allows you to turn using only rudder. If I remember correctly they’ll typically have around 15 degrees of dihedral vs most aircraft which are 3-4 degrees
 
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3 channel R/Cs are pretty common (1 control for elevator, rudder, throttle). The rudder tends to drop the nose when you yaw enough one way and the elevator compensates for it. At least that's how I understood the 3ch Cub I had.

Yes, not the most elegant way to do it, but I didn't want the weight/complexity of ailerons on something this small. The Fokker's getting ailerons, which are not that effective, so I'll cheat on the transmitter with some aileron/rudder mixing.

It's hard to get these to fly right! I usually fly 'em a couple times and they end up either crashed(!) or as display models. Most of the fun is in the building.
 
Been wondering if November and December we see a slight rise in birth rates across the countries/states/counties with strict COVID19 lockdown requirements
 
Getting rid of weeds in the backyard.
Cleaning drawers in the cabinets
Shredding papers from the 1990s and 2000s
Taking dog to park
Finally got a flight in today.
Working - a real paycheck after 3.5 yrs of part-time teaching.
 
Taking my son to the hangar to learn to replace a motor in a car. But when he loses interest in that, I work on the plane a little.
 
It just dawned on me--I have a brand new, untried golf ball cannon. I have almost 300 old golf balls, miles of fuse, and a pound of Pyrodex. I live in the woods.

Tim

Be sure to post a video. Interesting to see how far you can "drive" a golf ball.
 
I'm building stairs for my old Jack Russell Terrier to use for getting on our bed. I've tested them with my 200 lbs., they don't even wobble.
 
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From what I've read, a lot of commenters are crying 'no fair' on the speed run. I'll recuse myself from that discussion.

For food, I slow-roasted a small rib roast yesterday while it was still 70F here, and have been enjoying it today while it's been snowing all day.

Regarding the excellent model-building work by SoCal RV Flyer, I humbly offer this:
 
As my single friends, both male and female, have observed: this is not helping our dating lives.
We're all certainly hoping for 'pent-up demand' when this is done!
 
Everyone is talking about all the food they're making and I'm living on frozen Chicken Nuggets(and anything else that comes frozen, ready to microwave)... just like before.
 
As my single friends, both male and female, have observed: this is not helping our dating lives.
We're all certainly hoping for 'pent-up demand' when this is done!
:yikes: That was about the last thing on the mind of this single friend. I was thinking how peaceful it is without having to be cooped up with someone else. :rofl:
 
:yikes: That was about the last thing on the mind of this single friend. I was thinking how peaceful it is without having to be cooped up with someone else. :rofl:
Even the dog is not getting me up 2-3 times a night to go out.
 
The best I can do these days is to enjoy the crack of dawn.
 
I'm apparently allowing single-thread tasks to end up stuck in a loop...

started cleaning off the bookshelves of way too old reference books, CDs, zip drives ...
which led to clean out the file cabinets (like Murphy - old tax docs, client project folders, etc)
which led to the closet (half "junk" and half "telecom" with assorted cables - from CAT 5,6 and voice patch cables all the way back to SCSI cables)
which led to more boxes of even older tax and client project folders ... all on the floor in front of the closet
which led to "hey - time to replace the Time Capsule with a more fault-tolerant NAS and backup solution
which let to "might as well rebuild the network infrastructure while I'm in here" (after getting an email from comcast telling me my cable modem is now on their "obsoleted" list

which led to "better get another cup of coffee and ignore the mess behind me"
 
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Building an RC pattern ship, skeet shooting, target shooting, reloading,
motorcycle rides (on and off-road) bicycle rides etc. Basically, anything that doesn’t include another person standing right next to you.
I’m very disheartened when I go to the store as only 10% of the Oregonians are wearing a mask. True, I live in a more rural area, but I don’t think they realize the effect of not wearing a mask is going to have. I believe part of it is most of them don’t have access to a mask. Best to continue my routine of staying in the basement or doing activities on my own. Glad I live in a rule area at this time.
 
I’m very disheartened when I go to the store as only 10% of the Oregonians are wearing a mask. True, I live in a more rural area, but I don’t think they realize the effect of not wearing a mask is going to have.

They’ll touch their face with their hands, mostly. They’re not going to have much of an effect on anything else. Wouldn’t worry about it much.

Mental health maybe, for those bad with sizes of things. Cloth masks make people feel like they did something.

Then they go to the car and touch the outside of it, to take it off. They don’t leave it outside their home, or take it straight to a specific location to quarantine it for cleaning, they grabbed the door handle on the way in, never went back to wipe it, they didn’t wipe and unpackage the groceries or leave the non-perishables in the garage for a week, didn’t stay outside of the kitchen and pantry until they were fully washed up... well, you get the idea.

Can take that all out to whatever extreme one likes, and many prepping transplant patients do in normal times... pretty easy protocol to look up if someone wants to.

But the masks made out of cloth are probably about 95%+ misused right now and mostly are just serving as colorful decorations.

My fave was the photos of the guys in full suits and the wrong kind of respirators coming out of a store, tossing the groceries in the cab of their pickup truck, climbing in, and then stripping off the gear inside the cab, here locally. LOL.
 
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Definitely one of my fave memes so far. LOL.

One way aisles baby! :)
 
But the masks made out of cloth are probably about 95%+ misused right now and mostly are just serving as colorful decorations.

And most folks are not even wearing the gloves correctly.

To be effective the gloves must be changed. I mentioned that to a Walmart cashier that the gloves are useless for stopping the spread of contamination unless she changes the gloves between customers. Otherwise any contamination just keeps being spread from one customer to another. Think dentist/doctor. Do they use only one pair of gloves a day, or do they change gloves when changing patients?
 
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