On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:03:25 +0100,
(E-Mail Removed)
(The Older Gentleman) wrote:
>Lozzo <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>> It reminded me of an incident that happened at about 11am yesterday
>> while I was waiting for the boss to appear at work. A lone single
>> engined wartime fighter plane was flying slowly above just too far away
>> for me to determine exactly what it was. Despite squinting I couldn't
>> make out of it was a Spitfire or Hurricane, it was one of either
>> because I recognised the engine note. An old boy of about 80 walked
>> past and looked upwards when he saw me gazing, so I turned as said "Is
>> that what I think it is?, he turned and with a smile on his face said
>> "Don't panic lad, it's one of ours" then walked away.
>
>Heh. I swear some of these old boys polish their one-liners and wait,
>for years if necessary, to trot them out at exactly the right moment.
>
>Craftsmanship, that's what it is.
>
>I've mentioned this before, but when the kids were young, they went
>sailing their boats on Clapham Pond, and it being a Sunday, the old boys
>were out there with their yachts.
>
>And this geezer turned up with a massive model of some old four-stacker
>liner: Mauretania, Titanic, whatever.
>
>And he set it going and as it was a windy day, the pond was quite
>choppy, and sure enough, it started shipping water and went down, screws
>still turning and lights still on, exactly like a model in a Pinewood
>Studios tank. Marvellous, it was.
>
>And the old boy donned waders and sloshed out into the pond (it's only
>about three feet deep) and recovered his pride and joy, and as he made
>it back to the bank with the ship in his arms, one of the other old
>boys, without lifitng his eyes from his own yacht, said deadpan:
>
>"You've got to watch out for the U-Boats in this pond, mate..."
>
>I nearly ****ed myself laughing.
Noice one.
When I was in my teens I built a balsa model of the aircraft carrier,
USS Kittyhawk by scaling up from an Airfix plastic one I had. Big
enough to load a motorcycle battery inside it and power two electric
motors that I had bought. But because I was on a restricted budget, I
was using the radio control servos from my model aircraft and was
trying to figure out how to control the engine power without having to
fork out more money for dedicated controllers.
So I got a coil out of an old hot water kettle and wound it around a
piece of balsa and then attached a wire across the servo so that as it
rotated it would go from high to low resistance and control the speed
of the engines.
I had not realised how much power a 6V motorcycle battery could
generate, so on the maiden voyage, it gets to the middle of the pond
and the coil had heated up so much that the balsa I wrapped it around
caught fire and smoke starts ****ing out of the flight decks. I had
made a default setting where the wire slid right off the coil and my
mate who had another boat there manage to push the thing back to
shore.
Oops :-)
--
Kev