Indoor News and Views

The Un-Winder

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After a decent flying session, I e-mailed Kang Lee. He e-mails me back, tells me I am doing great, but wants some more data. How many turns remaining at the end of each flight?

Me: I don’t know.

Kang: Not sure it is all printable here, but the gist of it was that I was a lazy guy and that I needed to start recording that info as it will be important later.

I understood what he was saying. I could see the merit. There is just one problem. Me. There is no way I could see myself consistently unloading an F1D motor, hooking up my winder and counting backwards. Kang called it right: I’m too lazy.

This is what I confessed to Art Holtzman when I asked him to make me a doo-hickey, as I called it then.

Tell me what you want, he says.

I want half a winder. No handle. No chain. Just a counter and hook, something I can hook my rubber up to and have it give me the number of turns left.

Art: Can’t you just take the motor off and hook it up to the winder and turn the crank backwards like all the rest of the guys do it?

Mike: I think I just explained this. I’m too lazy to do that. I know myself.

Art: Give me a bit.

Understand that this is a Friday afternoon. An hour or two later, pictures of this device start to appear in my inbox. A bit later a fully built unit is being packaged up, some money is exchanged, and on Monday evening, it is sitting at my door.

The one of a kind Un-Winder!

The last couple of weeks I have had a lot of practice with this, what I dubbed ‘the Un-winder’, at the EAA contest and later at Racine Memorial Hall.

Now I can walk my model to my table, unhook the motor, attach it to the Un-Winder and get a count of how many turns remain. Easy as pie. Just apply some finger pressure to the motor if a lot of turns remain to slow the unwinding down – No brake or anything special is needed.

Note: I also own one of Art’s winders and love it – Art urged me to swap the larger counter from my early winder to the Un-Winder. The newer counter picture is shown on my winder picture below.

Art’s Chaingain winder with the new smaller counter.

Please contact Art for more information. Art Holtzman [upwind120@gmail.com]

Regards.
Mike Kirda

PropBlocks.com

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When I first got back into indoor, I started carving a new prop block. Several hours later, half finished and discouraged, I stopped and did a web search and found an article describing a fixture for a bandsaw that seemed quite promising.

It took a lot of calling around to find someone with some old 1/8″ blade 6 teeth per inch stock. It must still be made, but it hasn’t been in the pipeline for years. I had them weld one up and send it to me. The fixture itself was pretty simple, using old on-hand 3/4″ nominal plywood, some screws, aluminum channel and a thick hardwood dowel. A lever arm rides up an angle and the angle defines the helical pitch.

After cutting a few for myself, I brought some to an indoor flying session. Requests for more follow.

This past year I decided to make them available more widely, so I opened a website: propblocks.com

I have since rebuilt the fixture a couple of times to increase the accuracy on it.

I offer blocks in both Poplar and Balsa. Normally blocks are 2.5″ wide and 2.25″ tall – wide enough for most outlines for indoor. I can make them wider within the limits of the fixture. Blocks are normally cut to 10″, but I can offer 8″ or 12″ blocks, maybe slightly longer.

Please check out the website.  I hope it will be interesting to you.

Regards.

Mike Kirda