Campitch 2

Pics by: KeithAlanK

This is the new improved Campitch 2.
It has the same features as the defunk Campitch 1 but is larger and beefier. Most notable is that the wing is much larger, by nearly 50%. The span is 2" longer, but the wing is made from
1/4" x 4" Sig airfoil stock instead of 3/16" x 3" stock. The thicker wing allows for a thicker 3/16" carbon pivot rod instead of the 1/8" carbon, then steel pivot rod on the CP-1. The hub assembly is about 1/2" longer on the motor side.

The CP-2 is already leading a better, or at least charmed, life than the CP-1 did. It has made three flights so far with nothing worse than some burn through charring [routine] and a ding on the wing tip.

The first flight back in August had us rolling on the ground, and we weren't even on fire! I launched the CP-2 on an Estes D12-3, it took off from a 2x4 pad low on the ground and ascended to no more than 3ft as it travelled 5-6ft upwind, then curved left going just over a modroc launch rack passing through a gap in the launch rods with scant centimeters to spare, then it drifted back downwind to land right next to it's takeoff point. It looked a lot like an olympic highjumper in action.

Todd, one of my flying buddies said he'd buy me lunch if I would fly it again. I didn't have any more suitable motors for it, so I told him I would if he could donate an Estes E9. For various reasons, I had yet to use any E9's before, so this one was my 1st. Well that turned in a perfect flight, 60-70ft up, transitioning to full autorotation mode about 1/2 way down and landing about 100ft downwind.

September launch dates were all rained out, so I had to wait till October for flight #3. Since the CP-2 flew so well on an E9 I figured it could handle one of my long sugar moonburners. These are sized the same as the E9 though heavier start to finish and has a higher sustain burn and longer duration. Well this spinny thang tookoff and immediately tilted about 45 degrees downwind for about 100ft then curved back and up in a boomerang turn till it was knife edged, pointing into the wind, at which point it ran out of sugar and dropped straight into the ground. Amazingly, the only damage was a little mushing of the wingtip, easily fixed by supergluing my fingertips to it.
The only other time I ever saw a monocopter with quite that flight profile was when I actually launched one with no flybar installed at all. Obviously a flybar with more authority is needed.
Not too surprising really, since the flybar was the same one the smaller CP-1 used.

Tig Bitty Alert

The orange paper has an exact [from the screen] print of
the other side of the shot glass.

This blogpost was substantially written by my brother Keith
and first appeared in his blog; Zzakk's Garage last year. I
edited it to make myself 1st person and made some additions.

Back in 1991 when my brother and I owned a screen printing
company (that did everything but T-shirts) we used to make
personal items from time to time. Keith handled the artwork
/typsetting and darkroom, plus made the screens--I was in
charge of the machinery and tooling (makes perfect sense if
you know us) and then we would do the actual printing
together.

I had Keith pirate the art of Patty Melt [one of Cherry's friends]
whipping out her tig old bitties from a Cherry Comics adult
comic book, and we printed at most a dozen shot glasses
[1 sub-carton]. We shipped two of the shot glasses to Larry
Welz, the comic's author, who then sent us the original and
never-seen-before-now drawing that's in the frame. We
traded a few comments about our favorite liquors and
thoughts on doing a production run. Unfortunately, our
epoxy based glass ink wasn't durable enough for hard use
[we termed it "Souvineer Quality"] so we declined due
to warranty concerns.

We put milk in the glass so our printing would be legible in
the photo, then drank it. Till someone else brought it up,
we never thought about the humor of our choice of liquid.

Probably the only time Keith has tasted white milk since
we made the shotglasses 18 years ago.
Personally, I can't get enough of the stuff.

The first issue of Cherry Comics was titled Cherry Poptart.
A great way to infuriate Kelloggs and Archie Comics at the
same time. There were some not so thinly disguised Archie
characters in that first issue too.

Time to Google Larry Welz and see what he's up to lately.
www.cherrycomics.com If you're 18 or older.

Girl Genius Comics, Steampunk Heaven

Not an artistic page but
Agatha's rant says it all.













2008 Hugo award


A quick plug for Girl Genius comics.
The hero is Agatha Heterodyne, an extremely sparky
mad scientist from a long and dangerous family of
sparky mad scientists. A nice girl actually, but she's
learning fast.
I wouldn't mind being her Lab Assistant.
Phil & Kaja Foglio just uploaded this great photo of
the Hugo award they won for Best Graphic Novel
of 2008. Great trophy. Absolutely fantastic comic.
I can't recommend it enough. You can read a new
page every weekday online, but support your artist
and buy the books, I have the 1st 7 or 8 plus a lot
of other Foglio comics and cool products.

I installed a link in the lefthand sidebar some months
ago but I wasn't fired up enough to do a blogpost
about it till now.

Back in the Saddle, NOT!

I had high hopes for upping my post rate this fall
here at the Lab, but such is not going to be the case.

In late September my landline was disconnected and
I about refuse to pay a further autodebited dime to
ATT/yahoo for their klugey [sp?] email that I have to
constantly wait for advertising to load on. I expect
advertising on Yahoo free sites, but not on something
costing me over $17/mo and is slower than ever already.
GRRRRR!
When the email software switched over, the previously
full featured address book lost everything except the
names and email addresses. All the phone numbers, all
the USPS addresses, all the aliases and side notes. ALL
GONE! DOUBLE GA-ERRRRR!!!
Of course this means my access is limited at the moment,
and I'm losing all my old email files and peoples addresses.

So my friends & relations who read this, please email me
at; kur.kzak@gmail.com
I tried changing my blog personal data to the new email
address and was denied. WTF?
If I can't resolve that issue I'll have to change emails again.
Gee, Google Blog and Google Email together sounded like a
Good idea at the time.

I also aquired a cell phone again after doing without one for
about 7 years and not missing it most of the time.
Thanks K&S.