Difficult to get a message from the lull in messages here in the last days - but here are my suppositions:
In much of North America there is deeeeeep snow and solid water. American Muscle Footies (and their owners) are curled in safe dens in a protective torpor hibernating and dreaming stirring dreams of past triumphs and future glories. (in these dreams the hardened balsa rams roll imperiously over the emaciated pencils from yurrop and whatever the other furriners bring)
In the cave workshops all over the UK gnomes and kobolds (and an ogre) are planning, fabricating and fettling Footies for the racing year about to arrive. So busy are they that there is little time to waste in posting - even bold challenges to the upstart invaders. A lone gnome is fettling an unlikely submarine footy and occasionally muttering to a charming cephalopod called Darcy.
The entire bottom of the world (top as they see it) is aestivating to avoid the summer heat but there are faint sussurations of carbon tissues being crocheted by skilled winners into ever-sleeker craft.
This is how I read the quiet, but then I might be wrong
andrew
The real problem here is that I have to clean up a bit before I can proceed. I can’t find a level spot to work on, and it’s too early for spring cleaning. Besides I haven’t watched all my DVD’s.
Meanwhile I plot new designs in my head. (where they probably should stay)
I have some bass wood to carve a plug out of and all the tools I need. I just have to stay away from the computer long enough to accomplish something.
And Finally…
I have to stop cooking. It takes too much of my evening time. Rotisserie chicken, Chinese takeout and an occasional pizza will speed things up considerably.
Pete
Busy people are busy, you are a busy person.
Busy people can always slip a little more into the day because everything is flexible (as long as there are flat surfaces visible)
A proven therapy (two proven therapies) for the ideas in your head are to:
A) confess them on the Radical Footying thread - you just stand and say “I’m Pete, and I have an idea” the group can then gently help you through this crisis*
normally by showing that their ideas make yours look relatively normal**
B) manual marine therapy can help. Build the D*** thing. Wise contributors will tell you why it cannot be built; or if built will not beat their toys. You will get a good laugh and feel better
**is there ANYTHING in the rules preventing me from deploying a micro black hole - entering it and emerging at the finish as the WINNER?
Are balsa and ply footies in any risk from Wormholes?
I was thinking of making a cast of my foot for the hull and using a symbol of a hull on the sail, in reverse of the normal footy way of doing things.
My “radical” ideas are pretty straight forward but it would be interesting to see what they add up to.
A zillion years ago I made a model, probably seven or eight inches long that a girlfriend swiped for her pet rat. (she was a lab worker and was very used to rats) Though the boat was very casually made, it did have a shape and I argued the merits of the shape with another sailor who told me all the reasons I was wrong. I still think he was arguing from the standpoint of “That’s not how my grandfather taught me.” and I want to give the hull a try. It has evolved a bit, but the real problem is that the original intention was for a two man planing hull, and footys are displacement hulls, so I am forced to adapt my thinking. My solutions are a mixed bag and I really want to see how it sails (if I get around to making it) before I extol the virtues of something that combines that many untested ideas all in one place.
I will say that one idea is going into my plywood hull and it is something I haven’t seen yet in a McRigged footy. Not that I’ve seen that much since I got interested.
Pete (rising from his torpor and comfortable seat, and deigning to do some work for his very tolerant boss)
Oh, and about micro black holes. An engineering friend and I calculated the Schwarzschild (sp?) radius of a black hole with the mass of a frisbee. It turned out to be small enough to pass easily between an atomic nuclei and it’s orbiting eletrons (or electron cloud if you prefer.)
Any black hole big enough to visibly distort light (in other words, be seen in some manner) has got to be VERY massive, though it will certainly fit in a footy box. I would prefer to be in another town when it gets measured!
groans, as the silly octopus-loving british gnome allows light into the burrow… “go’way, i’m sleeping!”
no, somewhere here, beneath the “torpor” of winter there is something of footy nature brewing in the cold waters of LIS… (cue heroic, somewhat ominous music) “its coming, but you don’t know when…” :devil3: lol.
“I was thinking of making a cast of my foot for the hull and using a symbol of a hull on the sail, in reverse of the normal footy way of doing things.”
You can be treated! there was a French sandal manufacturer who was cured of similar leanings (his name, btw was Philippe Feloppe)
Your creative mindset makes me think that
A) no-one sez that the footy has to be sailed long axis forwards (it would be very stable in roll)
B) a foam flipflop would be a fast footy - to build anyway
What did the rat do with the boat?? Minds are boggling round the world!
Are you by any chance (holds garlic forwards) a physicist?
Thank you for the result of the calculation - if an american Muscle footy is say, precisely 6 inches wide; what proportion of the speed of light would it have to achieve for Fitz’grd to make it illegal?
The rat didn’t know what it was, but I also made him a gothic harp and a carving of a book. He couldn’t read so the book didn’t need pages. My girlfriend titled the book “The Pied Piper of Hamlin - A Cautionary Tale.” He was way friendlier than the average hamster and probably smarter as well.
No problem with Fitzgerald, dimensions are reduced in all cases. On the other hand if you could go slower than standing still you might have a problem. On the other, other hand if you could go that slow you would never win any races.
The rat bit is getting even more esoteric. Several of your readers are asking themselves - can this rat sail a footy tactically?
(It might be necessary to take away the harp and glockenspiel for a time.)
My understanding of Fitzgerald was that dimensions in the direction of travel are contracted, while dimensions transverse are increased. Hence the immortal Limerick
There was a young fencer called Fiske
Whose lunges were strikingly brisk
So fast was his action
that Firzgerald contraction
reduced his sword to a disc
But I digress (I think that I should take that as a motto)
In my case silence(about time I hear you all say!!) is caused by…building of Footy for Liverpool event,
building Micron hulls to sell to others to get me to Liverpool event…and lastly sorting out final design(at last) for BobAbout 2(have built several proto balsa hulls this past week) and thinking about offering a kitset for same.
My reason for thinking about kits is (A) create funds to get to Liverpool and (B) My kids being extemely disappointed with the performance of the plastic footys I bought them for Xmas(should have built them my own designs)
There is no expansion anywhere. Only contraction. The disk that Fiske was too brisk with probably included the bell of the sword.
I am not a physicist, but I have been reading the Scientific American since 1950 or so. After a while it starts to stick.
The boat was probably too small for the rat, but a footy would have been like a fourteen footer to a human.
In any case, I’ve started drawings of the one I hope to mold and I really will keep it secret until it is finished and I see if it has any potential at all. It is straightforward but very different. I guess it could be considered a lightweight muscle boat if that term means what I think it means.
The North Americans may be hibernating, but it’s by no means true that all of us who have soft water to pay with are hard at it. Recovering from Xmas means reading all the books that have come into the house under the guise of presents. Never buy a book for your partner that you don’t want to read yourself. Phin is siting on the bench waiting for me to put arig together which is an essential preliminary to determining the sheet runs, which have to be settled before the deck goes on permanently.
Before that I have to clear a horizontal space on which to do some work and get some of the historical collection back into the front room from which they were moved to let the buildrs get at the wall that needed propping up.
Russell
It is enlightening to learn that there are limericks that are not rude. Even those with a scientific theme. Fitzgerald indeed. Someone please compose footy limericks to share. I know that there is great literary talent out there.:graduate: Following is merely semi nautical…plaigerized at that.
There once was a pirate named Yates
Who did the fandango on skates,
But he slipped on his cutlass
which rendered him nutless
and practically useless on dates.
My silence is in part because I am in the last stages of a secret build of a low tech, fat footy. It was to be called Titan but is being renamed ‘Torpid Troll’ in honour of this thread. Sadly it’s performance will probably reflect it’s name…