Nice Weather for…
Sunday, February 24th, 2008
Ducks!
More Rain!
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
I hope the plants and the frogs and the ducks and all mud-loving things are enjoying themselves. 
The Fish Plane
Saturday, January 5th, 2008
I’ve started building a plane for rainy-day flying. Instead of a balsa skeleton, I’m using fish bones. Covering is yellow oilcloth.
Battery and all electronics are potted in epoxy, finished with four coats of spar varnish.
Not sure what to do about wings. Need a good photo of a flying fish.
Instead of an airplane prop, I’m using a three-bladed boat prop on a very long shaft, with the motor buried in a waterproof compartment in the gizzard of the fish.
It’ll probably be heavy, but it might keep me flying in these nasty rainstorms.
Seduced by Boats: How We Lost Bob
Sunday, December 9th, 2007
Bob Schleimer is telling me how he got involved in boats. “I moved to Fremont in 1980,” he says. “I had a garage full of planes because I’d been flying since I was 12 years old.
“A neighbor comes by one day, sees the planes and says, ‘Hey, man. You’ve got to get a boat so we can race!’
“He was building a boat at the time. I say, ‘No—I’m just interested in planes.’ But he persists, and he drags me to the hobby store where he bought his boat.
“Next thing I know, I’ve spent about a thousand dollars and I own all the stuff you need to race boats, including a monohull boat with a .21 engine.
The Life Aquatic
Sunday, April 29th, 2007
Saturday, Gary and I drove north into Wine Country, seeking not wine but water.
Gary packed two Slow Sticks into his truck, one with a pair of standard GWS styrofoam and plastic floats, the other with a honkin’ big central float carved out of glued-together pieces of Blue Core foam and two smaller wing floats.
He’s flown both on the grass at Baylands, where floats work better than wheels for most planes.
I don’t have any planes with floats. Instead, I brought my two current favorite flyers, both of which weigh less than 7 ounces: a Mini Speed Wing and a blue foam space cruiser. They’re so small they can fly just about anywhere.
