The Squamidian Report – Jan. 24 / 15
Issue #661
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Took the little RC airplane down to the ball field one morning early
this week. I hadn't flown any of my units since Christmas because when
the weather permitted flying, the field was covered with snow and I
don't have tiny little skis for my plane. Perhaps I should make
some...food for thought I guess. The snow has long since been washed
away by the warm deluges of rain we've been enjoying so the opportunity
was there. Interestingly, the snow may be gone but the goose poop is
piling up. The local flocks of geese keep the local sports fields and
golf courses nicely mown but they do tend to leave behind incredible
amounts of smelly green fertilizer. So, one must watch were one steps
and make sure any takeoffs and landings are done on the bare sand of
the infield. The only real trick there is to be sure you are within
gliding distance of the infield when the flight battery runs down.
That particular morning was perfect for flying micro aircraft. There
was no wind at all, zero. Even better, there were no hidden ripples
within the air. Often there will be little or no wind but there will
still be small amounts of turbulence that shows up as unexpected flight
deviances, the nose will suddenly rise or fall or one wing will dip or
rise as you fly through the un-seeable currents. This time the air was
so still the plane flew without any interruptions at all. With it
trimmed for the power setting I was using, it could fly the length of
the field without any input from my controls, holding straight and
level flight. Thats really cool, at least for someone like me who loves
that kind of thing. It takes very little warming from the sun to set up
rising air currents that can toss a micro airplane all over the place
without there being any 'wind' at all but this time conditions were
perfect. As to not wanting to have the battery run down when the plane
was out over the field of poop somewhere and having to do a 'forced
landing', an unwanted landing out in the grass would have meant having
to walk through countless 'land mines' in order to retrieve the plane
which would inevitably have come to a stop with it's nose pasted into
the green goo. Not my first choice. So, once I figured my battery must
be getting down a bit I simply kept the plane within gliding distance
of the infield and when the motor shut down I had it glide in for a
nice picture perfect dead-stick landing. The electronics on these units
senses when the battery voltage is dropping toward the critical low
voltage level that could damage the battery and shuts down the drive
motor while leaving power to the control servos that work the elevator
and rudder letting the 'pilot' maintain flight control for landing.
Anyway, while I was enjoying my little flight, 'The Wife' and Kyra and
Willow explored the trail that skirts the edge of the field. A great
morning for all of us.
*
And lastly, Friday (yesterday if you are reading this
today) was the Vancouver Motorcycle Show. I don't know what the other
bike shows across the country are like but this one just keeps getting
smaller and less interesting every year. And to make it worse, its not
even in Vancouver, its way out in Abbotsford, in the drafty old Tradex
building by the airport. There used to be displays by pretty well all
the manufacturers that included all the models each manufacturer made.
There used to be booths full of aftermarket products as well as riding
apparel and anything related to bikes you could think of. Now the few
booths displaying things have almost nothing to do with bikes. Why
would a vacuum cleaner company display at a bike show? Or any number of
totally unrelated types of displays? At one time you could go to a bike
show and pick up all sorts of relevant items at discounted, 'show'
prices. Now, if you can even find something of interest, its either not
for sale or priced higher than you'd have to pay if purchasing from
some store. Very disappointing.
Anyway, my neighbor was interested in going and I had intended to as
well because several members of my riding club were attending on Friday
so I hitched a ride with my neighbor. Makes sense, no point in both of
us driving alone, and besides, he drives a 911 Porsche. Funny thing
was, I didn't ride back with him, we knew ahead of time that another
friend, who lives in the Kootenay's, was coming out to the coast to
catch the show and to drop in on some of his friends and then head on
up to here to spend the night before working his way back to the
Interior. So, I rode back with my friend from the Kootenay's and on our
way in to Squamish we stopped at the gondola. He had never seen it so
we went up and enjoyed a coffee in the upper lodge. 'The Wife' had a
nice roast ready for supper when we go home. The bike show continues to
slide down hill but the day was great, regardless of the torrential
downpours we'd been having.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Over all the years I’ve driven and owned vehicles I’ve most often owned
basic vehicles that at best only had a couple of creature comforts. The
most I can remember is the odd one with Air Conditioning and power
windows. I actually think I can remember at least two that didn’t have
power steering but that was way back in my early driving days with my
first and second cars. Number one was a 1951 Morris Minor 1000 and
second was the ’62 Mini 850 that I bought when the Morris Minor
fell apart while turning a corner at the great rate of speed of
approximately 10 mile per hour. I had no choice but to find another
vehicle when that happened. The front suspension literally collapsed
and broke into pieces. I remember walking to a nearby house and asking
if I could use their phone. I called Joe Gibbel a friend of my dad’s
who owned a Sunoco station at the corner of Bridgeport Rd and Weber St
in Waterloo. He came to my rescue and suggested I let him tow it
directly to Earl’s Auto Parts on Guelph St. I reluctantly agreed to his
suggestion and had to find a replacement in short order. My dad took me
down to Heffner Motors on King St east in Kitchener. They were the BMC
“British Motor Corp” dealer and I bought myself a 1962 Mini 850 for
$350.00. As I remember back to those days, the Mini wasn’t much
better than it’s predecessor for reliability. Life went on and my
tastes in vehicles changed over the years. Of course marriage and
family have a lot to do with what vehicle one drives. We’ve had many
vehicles over the past 42 years of our marriage (we celebrated our 42nd
anniversary on the 19th of this month) and as life progressed so did
the quality of the vehicle or vehicles we’ve owned. However like I said
earlier, most of them were still not filled with fancy gadgets. Early
in a couple’s marriage a vehicle is not usually a priority as far as
fancy goes. As long as it ran, had good tires and brakes and a heater
for the winter, little else was required. We progressed from a 1963
Dodge slant six / push button to a Datsun 510 that was basically a half
ton of rust held together by a gallon of white paint and after trading
the Datsun for a 10 year old TV set we finally bought a reasonably new
car. We bought a 1973 Mini 1000 in 1974 so with it only one year old we
figured it should last us a while! In 1975 we bought our first new
house for the huge sum of $39,900 and we were set for life, so we
thought. One morning as I was driving to work from our little
back-split Dutchman home on Calmcrest Dr in Laurentian Hills area of
Kitchener and as I turned right onto Westmount Rd I was broad sided by
a teenager in his dad’s huge Ford Country Squire station wagon. Well
the little Mini was no match for that 4000 lb piece of American Pig
Iron as I used to call American built vehicles of that size! The kid
had come out of a construction site that was the new extension of
Westmount Rd without so much as slowing down and nailed me right in the
driver’s door. The crash put the Mini out of commission for a few weeks
and me out of commission for 12 weeks of therapy and months of
backaches. After we got the Mini back from the repair shop it just
never seemed the same. Carole and I had just started our family with
our new baby Adam and decided we had better purchase a larger and safer
vehicle to accommodate our growing family. We purchased a 1967 Buick
Riviera. It was a beauty but we soon realized that being a two door
vehicle it wasn’t very practical for loading the new baby into the back
seat. I looked around and found a 1973 Oldsmobile Ninety Eight four
door in pretty good shape. The Olds was the first vehicle we owned that
had a load of features. It had A/C, a full stereo with a tape deck,
power windows, cruise control a velour interior and tilt steering. We
thought we were definitely in the lap of luxury! That Olds lasted us
one year until we decided it was just too expensive to keep with almost
$2000.00 in repairs over that period of time. I guess we just happened
onto a LEMON with another chunk of American Pig Iron! Car after car
passed through our possession not to mention a few pick up trucks and a
van. We finally progressed to higher quality vehicles and as time went
by, vehicles became more and more reliable. With our last couple of
vehicles we’ve done much better. Our previous vehicle to the present
one you all may remember was a 2002 Jeep Liberty and we just loved that
one! It had most power features that today’s vehicles have and after
driving it for 13 years and having very little in the way of problems
with it we finally decided to trade it in just for the sake of having a
newer vehicle with much less mileage on it. The vehicle we now have in
place of that Liberty is another Liberty. It’s a 2011 Jeep Liberty and
this one is finally loaded! It pretty well has every feature one could
ask for and it specifically has two features I’ve always wanted in a
vehicle, it has “heated seats” and “remote engine start” features! I’ve
been making good use of both of these features and after thinking we
finally had the cream of the crop with these two “winter blessings” I
heard some disappointing news on TV the other night. The first article
mentioned on the news was the fact that vehicles with remote start
systems on them have been suffering a rash of car thefts while their
owners were in their homes and their vehicles in the driveway warming
up! What a kick that would be to come out to find you’d warmed up your
vehicle so a thief could be comfortable after stealing your car! The
second disappointing news report was one telling anyone with electric
seat warming systems in their vehicles to be very wary of leaving their
seat warmers on too long as they have been causing fires in a large
variety of makes of vehicles across Canada and the USA! Just what I
need is an over heated seat burning my new car to a crisp!
Now, I’ve checked and the makers of our Jeep have had no recent
problems with vehicle fires caused by the heated seats but, that news
report is just bugging me enough to be in the back of my mind every
time I feel that lovely warm rush under my backside!
You would think that the makers of such high-end vehicles would be able
to come up with a feature that would make them impenetrable to thieves
once the remote start was activated! You would also expect that they
would have a device incorporated in the seat heating system that would
shut it off automatically if it got too hot! I think it’s called a
“Thermostat”!!!!!!!
I guess I’ll just have to appreciate that fact that I’ve been warned
about both problems and keep them in mind so it doesn’t happen to me!
I say “Good Luck” to that! I’m sure that no matter what system is
invented to prevent such happenings the thief will come up with a way
to defeat it!
That’s it for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now … Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
If walking was good for your health, the postman would be immortal!
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Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.
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