I have been planning this for a over a year. Lurking on The Flying Giants and other sites getting ideas and learning. Last week I moved out of my old 1 bedroom apartment into a new house which means I finally have space to start this project. I’ll be building a 35% Carden Extra 260. So far only the kit has been purchased but I have some clear ideas on how it will be built and whats going into it. This will be my IMAC machine for 08/09 and I’ll be starting in Sportsman.

So some background on my experience is in order. When I was 13 I built a 6 foot span Spectra motor glider that I never flew. Before that I was building stick and tissue free flight models. Then there was a long hiatus fro the hobby for high school and college. I finally learned to fly in March of ’06. More recently I built an O2 electric profile and I have designed and built several of my own foamies. I have never built a giant scale airplane. I have about 5 mins of stick time on other peoples giant scale airplanes (Air McNair’s 35% comp arf 330 & Dan Bierlys 40% Wild Hare extra 300). I have never worked with foam cores before or painted fiberglass or used a scroll saw. I have never even started a gas airplane engine. So I’m a Giants n00b and this thread is going to be from that perspective. Its probably going to go into more detail than most build threads out there because its all new to me. The build will be shown in all its ugly duckling stages and any “oops” moments will be posted here.

It was hard to choose which airplane to build. I picked the Carden because I really like the looks of the airplane over the other 260 kits out there. I would have prefered to build a 300 but at this time no 35% 300 kits are out here. I couldn’t imagine spending this amount of time on an airframe that I personally didn’t like the looks of. Its a personal choice and it has consequences. This is more involved than say a Dalton where everything is laser cut for you. I wont be cutting any corners, I want a light, straight, contest grade airplane. Building is a hobby and flying is a sport. I’m as much a fan of building as I am of flying so there was no question, I was going to build from sticks.

The first step for me is setting up a flat straight build table. In fact I need two tables, one for tools and one for the building/layup work. The tables are going to be built based on a design I found linked from FlyingGiants. The build table is long and narrow, topped with a solid core door. The workbench is topped with some 3′x4′ ply that come pre cut from the hardware store.

Building Tables

I found a door at the Home Depot for $42, solid core, 30×80. I went for the cheapest and narrowest door I could find. I rented the miter saw for the project and ended up needing it for two days to get finished. You kind of have to cut as you go as not everything is going to be cut exactly right. After the first table was finished I discovered that the saw wasn’t square, it probably had 1-2 degrees of bevel. Make sure you square your saw before you start. I got the work table and all the legs for the build table done in one day. I had to make a couple of extra trips out for 2×4′s. The second trip the wood I got was softer than the first batch and that just sucked. I ended up throwing away 3 pieces and going back to Home Depot for more wood. The design is really solid and the 33 inch hight is sort of magic. Its tall enough for standing and short enough to sit at.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could ban a particular site (e.g. experts-exchange) from your Google search results? (One of the interns just pointed out that a greasemonkey script exists specifically for blocking that site).

I have been lusting for a couple of Apples devices. Specifically the Apple TV and the iPhone. I haven’t pulled the trigger on either one yet because they are expensive.

I was really hopeful when the Apple TV came out. Steve Jobs refers to it as “The Hobby”. I believe this is an allusion to the idea that they know that such a device is needed but not exactly what needs to go into it. It can’t refer to the hobbyists that have been modding and hacking the device to add those things in. The first software update, 1.1, took away all of the tools that made modding easy.

It’s just missing too many things. The biggest beef I have is the lack of support for video formats. this is not a limitation of the device or even the codecs on it. Modders have even found a way to trick iTunes into sending all kinds of video files to the ApplyTV, which it plays quite happily. Not supporting every reasonable video format in iTunes and on the AppleTV out of the box makes this a non starter for me. You cant take over my media experience if you don’t play all my media.

Here is an example. I get loads of videos from FlyingGiants.com in all manner of formats, WMV, AVI, Xvid, ogm etc. None of that will play on the device and none of them will import into iTunes. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could subscribe to an RSS feed of the videos and get them delivered to me like a podcast? The XBox360 does a much better job of this and its comparable priced and, oh yea, it plays games! Hey Apple, get with the program, not all legal, legitimate, virtuous media originates on a Mac in Quicktime. The ApplyTV needs to be omnivorous.

No Net Radio. iTunes has stream support, why cant the AppleTV? I would like to be able to kick a little SomeFM in my living room without having to go mess with my PC. Seems like a glaring omission to me.
No Web Browser. Come on , they put Safari on the iPhone and that screen is tiny. The Nintendo Wii has a good web browser. i think though that this might require a better remote to really be easy to use, something like the Wii’s gyroscopic technology really is ideal for this.
So i had my hopes up, even after its release that the AppleTV would mature into the HTPC we have all wanted but never quite archived. It could still be that device it just needs a few things. Unfortunately those things are at odds with Apples corporate media strategy. Still if you don’t care about those things its the best HTPC going.
The iPhone on the other hand seems to be just about perfect. Its like they designed it for me personally or something. That thing is just Bad Ass. No Edge data is a bummer but Wifi is a huge bonus. I can live without the edge, the few times that I really needed net access on the go were for checking e-mail or getting directions. I never needed to watch YouTube.

My current phone has a lot of the iPhone’s features. Its a music player and lets you surf the net. It just seems neolithic with its small screen, clumsy interface and T9 text entry, next to an iPhone. I know I’m going to get one, it is a forgone conclusion. I haven’t this been excited about a cellphone since I got my first one. Still the $600 price point (come on, wants the 4GB model?!) makes this an item that may be on the “do want” list for a long time.

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