A New Treasure!

Multiple launch controller anyone?

My Little Powny

Far, far too cool. I wanted to do the same, but make cute ponies that transformed into weaponized robots. Custom My Little Ponies

Mars Lander

It's August, 1976. I'm with the parents and the two brothers in Penticton, staying at the Golden Sands Motel, just across the street from the SS Sicamous and Okanagan Lake. The Parental Units and the Grand Parent Units are there for (shudder) the annual Penticton Square Dance Festival. Brothers and I have turned down several requests to join them at the festivities. "There are kids your age there! They have dancing for teens just like you".
I hesitate to tell them my street cred at school is below acceptable levels as it is... square dancing would just be another boot to the head - we decline. Parents are disappointed - too bad.

I decide to go for a bike ride to the hobby store I saw on my way into town - "Penticton Hobby and Shaver store"... I recall several hobby stores I visited that sold model kits and electric shavers - there is still one on Fort Street in downtown Victoria - weird combination.

Anyway, once there the $20 the grandparents have given me is requiring spending. I choose a model rocket kit - Estes Mars Lander, skill level 5. I've decided it's time to leave the tube/nosecone/four fin level 2 and 3 kits to try something more challenging. Besides, when else am I going to have $20 to spend all in one place? (Effectively, this is the equivalent today of me having about ten times as much).

I return to the hotel and dump the contents on the dining room table ( we've got a suite, of course ).

Holy Crap.

There's like, six million pieces here!
The instructions are a hundred and twenty five pages long!
Skill level 5? More like skill level 50!

I quickly come to the conclusion that my abilities are not matching my ambition i.e. Screw this noise. No way I'm going to be able to build this.

It's got to go back...

I carefully repackage everything and bike back to the hobby store. The guy there is pretty unsympathetic - It's already opened... How's he going to sell it if he takes it back?

At this point, I remember feeling pretty stupid. I've just thrown away more money than I see in months, and there's no going back. I'm guessing the expression on my face, plus the tears welling up in my eyes must have softened the old guy's heart. Store Credit? Oh... yeah, absolutely.

I end up with the Sky Dart, which makes me happy. Probably my second favourite model of all time next to the Orbital Transport.

So a couple of weeks ago, I see a copy of Sport Rocketry magazine in the local hobby store. On the cover is a picture of that same Mars Lander, now a collectible ( built or unbuilt ). A company called Semroc builds a replica kit.

It arrived on Friday.

Leaving a Legacy

Most Faithful Followers of this blog will already know I am leaving the hallowed halls of Point Grey Secondary School this week to start a new job at South Delta Secondary School.

Yeah... weird.

I started at PG in September of 1989, so I'm just shy of twenty years of faithful service.
There's definitely some mixed emotions here, leaving the familiar for the strange. But hey, I've honestly been ready to move on for some time now - for better or for worse.

flowchart

Mai Telescopes - Let Me Show U Thems

I have two telescopes, both with stories.

The stories start with a desire to have a telescope. I got one when I was a kid, a little 3" Tasco refractor with a crappy alt-azimuth mount, single magnification and a wobbly tripod. I would have loved it, except for its flaws.

There's a definite catch-22 to any interest in that, they all seem to require an initial investment that has to be enough to break above the "craptacular" quality level. My Tasco ( as are pretty much all "department store Christmas telecopes" ) was below that point. But if it turns out that the interest ends up waning in a few months/years, then its a bit of a waste of money.

This is probably one of the main reasons I like to make things. I know in my heart I will never develop a true passion for anything, but I want to at least experience it. So although I want a $1500 8" goto scope with GPS, I'm happy to settle for making my $75 4-1/4" Dobsonian.

"Dobby" started out with plans from The San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers
. I decided to go a little more modest and scaled things down to a 4-1/4" mirror that I picked up on ebay. I suppose I could have ground my own mirror, but that's getting into the whole passion thing again. Dobby saw first light in 2004. I was concerned that optically, I would have garbage - the precision is pretty important and this is just plywood and brass wire. But the optics are great. The mount is a bit crappy though. The box is about 1/8" too big for the tube, which means I have to wedge it in there, and the altitude tracking is very sticky, which means when I want to nudge it up a bit, it ends up flying way past where I want it to go. One Day I'll get around to fixing it.

This 6" reflector came from a garage sale, oddly enough about the same time as I was half way through constructing Dobby. I haven't got a name for it, although I've considered "Neville". It came with a behemoth of an equatorial mount that was pretty worn out. I tried repairing it, but it was so poorly designed in the first place I ended up just bailing on it. It seemed to be a home made contraption, judging by the 50's era Soviet Engineering style construction ( Aluminum? What is Comrade? Using best quality gauge 3 pig iron - is good! More bolts here! And here! )
Anyway, I finally broke down last week after seeing a mount on ebay for a reasonable price. It's terribly underweight and there's more vibration that there should be, but it works well enough to pass my quality/price ratio.

Of course, I still want one of these.

More Popcorn (Medieval Style)