Making a Hollow Rotor Boot Cone Part 4

This morning I was able to pour the plaster for my mold. I bought a 24 lb bag of Plaster of Paris (which was only about $13) and a 5 gallon bucket to mix it in. I also bought a fancy mixing rod attachment for a drill. This proved invaluable when mixing that much plaster.



Here the plaster has been poured into the mold. That big bag turned out to not be enough to fill the box. It was just barley enough to cover the cone. I scraped the excess plaster from the bucket and used it to fill the edges (hopefully to give the finished mold more support.)





After letting the mold dry in the sun for a couple of hours it was time for the moment of truth. I would either have a nice mold, or a sloppy mess. Which would it be? Here is the mold upside down (right-side-up actually, I built it upside down) ready to have to foam pad removed.



Cardboard bottom is removed and you can see the foam boot cone.



Success! The foam cone took a little convincing to remove, but it came out and I was left with a nice mold.




Remember how I said the face of the mold would come out looking pretty rough? Well this is what I was talking about.



I will use some kind of sandable filler (probably bondo) to fill in the cracks and gaps, then sand it all smooth.



I wouldn't want to start laying up fiberglass or carbon fiber in the mold the way it is. All those cracks and crevices would make it real tough to get the finished part out of the mold. So, I still have some work to do on the mold before I am ready to start making parts, but that's okay because I still need to order some epoxy.

Making a Hollow Rotor Boot Cone Part 3

Well the north winds are back so I am able to get more work done on the boot cone. Here is the finished mold box:



Those metal angle brackets made it easy to get the corners square and help keep the box sturdy. The duct tape is just to help hold the temporary bottom in place and to help prevent leaks when I pour the plaster.

I used some modeling clay around the edges of the cone. Because the foam block did not have a perfect square edge, some of the plaster would leak under and form an unwanted lip in the mold. Hopefully the clay will give me a nice strait edge. The clay I'm using gets real soft when you heat it, so I used a heat gun to warm it up. It will get hard again when it cools. I'm pretty sure the plaster will stick to the clay so I will have to paint on some liquid mold release before pouring.



Here is a close up of one of the edges. All the wrinkles will in the tape will show up in the mold. Usually you would want to make the part 100% perfect before making the mold because any imperfections in the part will show up in the mold. This, however, is somewhat of an exception because the foam is flexible and there is not much I can do aside from hand carving another boot cone from a different material. I will have to clean up the imperfections on the surface of the mold.



The good thing is that I am using Plaster of Paris which is suppose to be pretty sandable once its dry. I will fill in the gaps with Bondo and sand it smooth so my final composite parts will have a smooth surface finish. And speaking of composites, my buddy Joel hooked me up with a bunch of scrap Carbon Fiber cloth so my first part or two will be Carbon Fiber. That's way over kill for what I'm doing, but what the heck, I won't have to buy cloth to get me started. I will have to buy some epoxy though. I just checked on the stuff that I have had sitting for several years in my garage and there is no way that stuff is going to work.

I'm seeing north winds for tomorrow too, so I should be able to get some more work done.

Late Day 10-20-08

Another evening flight. It was weaker today then yesterday, a better paragliding day. I got about 25 minutes, but was never above launch (Marshall.) It kinda sucks to only get a short flight, but its better than not flying. Even on a total sled ride you get launching and landing practice, and those are two of my favorite things to do. I had a good, no step, landing with my feet touching down just 4 feet past and right in line with the cone. The keel of my glider touched down almost on the cone. That's probably the closest I have been. One of these days I will come in and smash the cone in good ;-)

I also got to fly with Jeff O'Brian again. He was on his way back up from San Diego and stopped by for a flight. I got some decent pictures and a few that would have been excellent if my camera had focused. It's pretty tough to hold the camera steady while trying to fly a hang glider one handed.







More pictures on my Flickr page.

Flying 10-19-08

Another nice cool and soarable day. I didn't get up the hill until late, but it was still fun. Launched Marshall around 4 pm and immediately started climbing in the house thermal. It was pretty light, but consistent and going up. It started dieing out around 4800 ft so I searched downwind. Picked it back up and climbed to 5400 ft in a real drifter. Got back to Crestline pretty low, but the trusty Billboard got me back up above the ridge where Dave was ridge soaring with the place all to himself.

Dave:


I played on the ridge for a little bit then climbed to 5900 ft at the Billboard and went over to Pine. It was the smoothest glide over there I have ever had, as smooth as Torrey Pines! I found one light thermal over there which got me a few hundred feet and decided to check out the people setting up on Marshall. It was Bob K., new guy Chris (about to do his first solo at Marshall) and John Heiny

Bob Waves Hi


I played in the bouyant, smooth air at Marshall for a while, then dived down to land. I want to get some pictures of NewGuyChris and John landing.

Chris on his nice Dream Glider:




John's Colors


More pictures on my Flickr page.

Track Log

Flying 10-18-08

Today was a cool, sunny and on-shore wind day. I launched Crestline around 1 pm and didn't have much trouble getting a 2 hour flight. There was lots of lift and buoyant air, some of it pretty strong. I flew to the cut-off a couple of times but couldn't get much over there, which kept me from going further east. I did get to 7000 ft over The Billboard though and chased Wisconsin Paul over to Pine:





Mark Hoffman came in right under me (he must have seen my camera:




Pine Flats:




Self portrait:




There was a lot of people out today taking advantage of the good flying weather. Marshall Launch:




A Paraglider:




Check out the colors in the evening sky. There is a layer of almost purple in there:

10-17-08

I got a short but nice evening flight in today and took a few pictures. Here is new guy Lee:



Check out these weird cloud formations:

Making a Hollow Rotor Boot Cone Part 2

This morning I made a trip to the hardware store and the shop. I got the box built and will be close to ready to pour the plaster next time the north winds come.

The sides of the box:


Test fitting:


The base is just cardboard laminated with the Teflon tape. When the plaster dries I will turn the mold over and remove this part.


The edges and corners were caulked to prevent leaking.

Making a Hollow Rotor Boot Cone Part 1

My Rotor Harness (which turns out is the older Rotor KickAss, not the Vulto) has a soft squishy foam cone in the boot which does nothing but form the pointy tip of the harness. The Woody Valley Tenax Harness has a plastic shell which can be used for storage. I want the same functionality from my Rotor so it's time to make a fiberglass boot cone.

I plan to use the stock foam boot cone as a tool to make a plaster-of-paris mold. Once I have the mold made I can pull as many parts from it as I desire (or as others want to finance ;-) .) My flying buddy Joel hooked it up with some Teflon tape which I used to laminate and seal the foam cone:

In progress:






Finished laminating with tape, ready for molding:



Tomorrow I will go into the shop and start building the mold box. I hope to get everything ready to go, so when the north winds return I can be ready to pour the plaster. I don't want to miss any of the dwindling number of flying days we are getting out here.

Cruzing Torrey

Saturday I finally got to fly Torrey Pines. The forecast was saying North winds at Crestline and strong west wind at Torrey. I decided to take a mini road trip and check it out. I got down there around 12:30 and conditions were perfect. It was blowing in a steady 18+ mph. That kept many of the PGs on the ground and the hangs owned the day.

I filled out their super waver and had to watch a 15 minute video on the rules. It was actually fairly well done, high production value. I took my time setting up and made sure to get as much info from the locals as I could. Many thanks to Predator-Joe for the mentoring.

I only flew twice and both were pretty short flights. The flying was pretty much like everyone says (Boring Pines, Snoring Pines, etc.) But it was some of the clearest air your will ever see in Southern California. I flew with the camera on my keel for one flight and then strapped it onto Joe's glider. Here are a couple of frames:

Flying with Joe:


Thermalling over the golf course:


Joe caught this image of the peer to the south:


I was on that beach with a friend of mine in the summer of 2006. As we were relaxing in the sand I saw hang gliders and paragliders flying up at Torrey. I thought "oh yeah I wanted to try that someday..." It's pretty satisfying to know that what was once a dream of mine is now a reality.

Flying in the Clouds!

Today was a cold and windy, but really fun flying day at Crestline/Marshall. We had a low cloud base, 6400ft, and lots of lift. Once up in the clouds it was easy to stay there. We usually don't get to fly in the clouds here in SoCal, so its kind of a special treat when we get to.

I launched Marshall at about 3pm and just floated around for a bit until I snagged a nice cycle that got my up to 6200 ft and back to the Crestline cut-off. I eventually got to about 6600 which was plenty high without getting too much into the cloud. Temperature was pretty low, 48 degrees, but I was dressed pretty appropriately.

I think I finally got the Rotor harness (which BTW is the Rotor KickAss, not the Vulto.) dialed in. It was pretty comfortable today and I was able to thermal pretty well in it. I still want to do a little tinkering with it to get it just right, but I'm pretty close now. I think I will end up liking it.

1 hour 20 minutes was enough to get me nice and cold.

New HG Video!

I have finally finished up a new Hang Gliding video I've been working on over the summer. www.designbydave.net/video Click on the video thumbnail on the far right, titled "Andy Jackson Tour Part 1." This is basically a visual (in flight video, Google Earth, Seeyou) tour of my local flying site. In the video I fly the basic Marshall - Crestline - Pine lap (see here and here) and try to point out the thermal hot spots, altitude required to get to the next spot, landmarks and what ever other little bits of info I could think of. It is kind of meant as a "cheat sheet" for new or visiting pilots and to just give the overall impression of what its like to fly here. I have some pretty cool HD footage and I think you will enjoy it. Especially at the end when I catch a booming thermal over Pine to 8900 ft.

I also have a 720p HD h.264 version available via bittorrent (I am currently the only seeder so be patient as I try to get others up and seeding.)

I also redesigned the Flash video player to be a bit more user friendly and incorporated some new features. It now uses Flash Player version 9 which allows for, amongst other things, the ability to watch a video in full screen. The design is overall more update friendly as well, which means it will be easier for me to add content.

New Title Banner

^^^ Check it out ^^^

Harness Pictures

There was no flying today, cloud base was too low. I got my harness out to figure out how to fit all my glider bags into it and took some pictures:



These pictures pretty much demonstrate the range of flying angles I can get the harness to do. The last image I did a little photoshopping on to make the harness match my glider ;)

New Harness and a Nice Evening Flight

Thanks to John Wright today I got to take a Rotor Vulto Harness for a spin. I have been sort of on and off looking for a harness like this for a while now. The problem with finding one seems to be that every one that flies with them is between 5'8" and 6'1", I'm 5'6". John bought this harness a while ago from a guy back east, but the harness turned out to be a bit to tight for him. It fits me pretty well, but I need a few inches of extra foam in the boot.

I launched Marshall and found myself slightly PIOing a bit. I think this was because the harness will roll about the single hang point and that is something a regular harness will not do. It was a pretty weird feeling but it didn't take more than a minute or two to get use to it. I also noticed that the harness tends to oscillate in pitch when flying at high speeds. Again, I think this is something I just need to get used to.

I really like the ability to change my pitch angle while in flight and without taking my hands off the basetube. for flying fast or going out on strait line glides I like to be in a feet up, head down position. This position sucks for thermalling though, as your arms are really close to the basetube giving you less leverage. So for flying fast and strait, I can get really head down but then rock back upright a bit when its time to thermal.

I found the harness to be pretty comfortable as well. The inside is pretty soft and there is extra padding in select places. I will have to get a good long flight on it (2 hours +) to know for sure, but I think it will be more comfortable than my old harness. The one exception to comfort is the shoulder straps, they could use a bit more padding.

The landing went pretty good. These types of harnesses seem to have a bit of a learning period which usually results in a few scraped knees on landing. You can't just pop upright like a regular harness, you have to make it go up. It's kind of like doing a push up on the basetube. There are a number of landings in this video that demonstrate this (there are also some nice low, high speed passes and a dragonfly doing barrel rolls so its worth the watch):



For my landing I had a couple of options. Conventional wisdom would say to go upright early, before starting the approach. This way you don't have to worry about any techniques, you just fly and land the glider. However I never really liked flying while upright. You either have to reach down for the basetube, or hold the downtubes. Neither of which give you the amount of pitch authority that I like to have on landing. So I opted to stay prone throughout the approach patter like I usually do. My rationale was that I would rather fly a nice fast safe approach like I always do and risk messing up the flair, then risk doing some kind of slow and possibly unsafe approach. I have wheels and an LZ with nice grass so if I ended up on my knees or belly, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

I stayed prone throughout the approach until I had rounded out on final. I was able to get it upright enough, but my feet kinda got stuck. I am used to having at least one foot out of my harness while on final, but with this harness I need both feet in the boot to make it go upright. After a little half second of scrambling, I got both feet out of the boot, both hands on the uprights and got just enough flare to land on my feet. It was a bit squarely, but I think I just need a bit of practice.

The flight was nice too. It was blowing in pretty nicely at Marshall which made it ridge soarable. The air was very buoyant which made it easy to stay up and just enjoy the moment. I got to fly with Joal and Rob (doing spins on a Falcon, show off!) I also got to watch Keith do his second radio solo and Lee his first. Congrats guys!

Another Nice day!

We just keep getting too many nice days out here. I launched Crestline around 1:30 pm into pretty gusty winds.


Dave Launching Crestline 10-01-08 from David Aldrich on Vimeo.

The Billboard was working, but it was trashy and inconsistent. That is, until I got up above 6000 ft, then it smoothed out as I climbed to 7500 ft. I made it over to the turn out and eventually got to Strawberry Peak, but I was over there pretty low. Climbed back to 8000 ft and tried to go west, but Pine wasn't really working. I was pretty tired about and hour and a half in so I decided to see what was out front. I got about half way to the towers from Marshall when I found a light but consistent thermal that I decided to ride until it quit. It ended up being a nice 4000 ft climb up to 9100 ft. It drifted me all the way back half way to Lake Gregory. Went out on glide over the Arrowhead Resort and then the city.

Pretty tired and I had to pee. made a nice no step landing 6 ft from the circle (who the hell moved that thing 6 ft to the left anyways? ;-) ) 2 hours 20 minutes. Max altitude 9100 ft.

Thanks to Buddy Lawrence for driving!