Two posts in one night

Here is what I have been working on in my free time over the last 6 months. the biplane is scratch built to my own plans. It started out as a sketch on the back of a poster that I then converted to working plans with a CAD program on my computer. I cut everything out (there are LOT of ribs with two wings), built up the frame over the plans and made the tail and wings.


The problem was, the nose way too long and there was no way it would have balanced without a lot of extra weight in the tail. So I chopped it--even though it is hard to tell from the next pictures. If you look close, there are three holes cut out in the nose of the first picture, and only two in the second.
By the way, I cut all those holes in the landing gear too. That was fun.

To show off all the beautiful frame work, I covered it with translucent covering. here is the finished product:

But wait--there's more! Okay, not such a big surprise for those that already know about this project, but since I have alienated all of those people by not posting forever, only complete strangers will ever see this posting, and you, my new, strange friends have no idea what I am talking about. So here it is. . .



Drum roll, please. . .



a little more suspense . . .




It has lights!!! (the soldering was a real bear. Thanks Jon, for the help.)
but it looks cool under the Christmas tree. It should be really visible for night flying--the original intent of the design. I am sure almost no one cares, but it was a lot of fun to design and build. I sure hope it flies.

Am I in?

Now that I have avoided posting on my blog for long enough that it is just me again talking to the air, I will probably do two posts here maybe even tonight. A while ago my brother joined an exclusive group started by one of my friends from high school. The stone lions are the biggest rage of the internet. I hate being shown up by my little brother. So I had to find a stone lion that was stone-lion-y in a Deutschlehrer kind of way. This lion is in fact over a fireplace in the Goethe-Institute that I visited in Boston last month. I saw it in an assembly room during a very crowded reception for German teachers during a convention for language teachers in general. It was the bright point of the evening--except I didn't have a camera with me. Luckily there was another reception the next night, which I was late for, which meant I had to stand in the back next to the wine for an hour--which would have been fine, except I don't drink--but great accomplishments sometimes require sacrifice. When the talk was over (it was an author talking about her book about--and I am not making this up-- two siblings with a sick cat that they cured by feeding it a very specific type of coffee bean that they then recycled after the cat was finished with it, by roasting the passed beans, grinding them, and making coffee out of them--which they then sold. The high point of the evening was when friends of the author served coffee according to the recipe in the book. There are days when the Word of Wisdom really comes in handy. Anyway, when everyone got up to enjoy the "refreshments" I snapped this picture. So, Charlotte, am I in?

RIP

Remember that really fast plane from earlier in the year? Well it saw its end on the last weekend of racing this year. Spectacularly. I lost control around the first turn of the first heat. I am pretty sure my aileron servo stripped out. The only other possibility is maybe the antenna broke loose and so when it got out a ways, It lost the signal. Either way, the aircraft quickly turned into a 100mph lawn dart.Here you can see the nose buried about 4 inches deep into the sod. Battery pack, receiver and 3 of 4 servos seem to be a complete loss. Surprisingly, I think the motor itself survived. This is us digging it out.

CUPRA November Pylon Race - Jeff Packer's Crash from Jon Finch on Vimeo.

These are the people that I fly with. Generally a very generous and fun group. Next race is in March, and I already have ideas to make the next one faster.

Many, many years ago--I think it was the summer after my mission when I returned to Germany to visit friends for the first time as a non-missionary, my good friend Lutz Wagner gave me his father's iron cross from the first world war. (I am pretty sure it was his father and not his grandfather--I believe he was already quite old when Lutz was born).

I was very honored by the gift. With Germans, the idea of friendship is deeper than it is most of the time with Americans, it is something closer to family than anything else. At least with the Wagners, with whom I lived for several months, I know the relationship goes beyond simple friendship. So you can imagine how I felt when I looked one day (for a class) and could not find the iron cross anywhere. To make matters worse, this summer Lutz mentioned that he had had a medal from his father and didn't know where it was anymore. I had to admit to him that he had given it to me years ago, but that I couldn't find it anymore.

Of course there is a happy end to the story. A couple of weeks ago my parents threatened to throw out all my stuff that was still at their house (it's less than 20 years since I lived there) if I didn't go through the boxes and decide what I wanted to keep. Guess what I found? I feel a little like the woman in the parable that cleaned her whole house and found the money she had lost.

Objects are really just things that should not be important to us at all, but when they become symbols then that changes them altogether. I can't help but think about the changing meaning behind this one. When it was given, it was a symbol of one man's service to his country--a country that, by the time the cross was awarded, did not even exist anymore. For years during the socialist era, it must have sat in a drawer, nearly forgotten as it would have represented a time of capitalist empiricism to some had it been displayed too openly. It was also a symbol of war and militarism and so somewhat ambivalent in the best of times. To Lutz, I would think that it would serve as a memory of his father. I should probably give it back to him.

To me, however, it is a reminder that the family I am a part of is bigger than that I was born to, or that have been born to me, that there are people that I hope to enjoy the eternities with. That, I think, is what it means to have a Pearl of Great Price.

After 5 years. . .

Let me take you back 5 years (I am watching Back to the future right now, so this kind of fits) We had just moved to Missouri, and I finally had space for the Mustang I had built before I left for graduate school in Ohio. As usual it needed some repairs. I took my son out with me when it was finally ready. It was a little cold, but that hardly matters when you are flying. I fired up the engine, and checked everything out and taxied out onto our grass runway, took a deep breath, and began my takeoff run. Ten feet into the air, the engine killed on me. The resulting "hard" landing put the gear up through the top of the wing. My son's compassionate response? "Can we go home now Dad?"

When we got back to Utah, I finally got around to finishing the rebuilt wing. Then it was a matter of waiting until my own father could be there to watch.-- I got tired of waiting for that, so I took it out to fly again today, just five years after its last flight. The weather was perfect. The engine was running great. The takeoff, well, the takeoff was very smooth.





. . . Until the throttle stopped responding that is. I had to fly around until the engine decided to stop, which was sooner than it should have been, so I have some more work to do and then try to land it dead-stick, without power. Mustangs don't like that, by the way.

Luckily the landing went as well as can be expected. There is some work to be done, but not too serious, if I can figure out the vibration problem.

My Wife is in D.C. for the Weekend

Three words can best describe the mental state of a house lacking all estrogenal influence:

Armpit fart hugs

One guess which of the four very refined young men here came up with that. I think it best if I don't include any images with this post, other than the one that just formed in your head.

Why it is Good to Have a Backup National Identity

Let us review: after beating Australia 4:0 in the preliminary rounds, Germany then defeated--no crushed--England in the first knock-out round. Saturday morning, the German national side turned its sights on South American powerhouse Argentina. Everyone expected that finally someone would give the Germans a run for their money.. The result? once again the opposition is humiliated by Germany's lightning quick counter attacks and swarming defense.

Anyway, my boys and I have been enjoying cheering for a winner for once, and we hope that the fun will continue a little longer. As a friend of mine pointed out, the German team reflects the change in German culture over the last 40 years. On the team is one player of Turkish ancestry, two from Poland and one from Tunisia. Germany is increasingly a country of immigrants-- and not just the guest workers of fifties and sixties, and I find it very encouraging.

On the other hand, the United States managed to not embarrass themselves at the World Cup. They tied England and overcame some horrendous calls by the referees, with a injury time goal to make it out of group play. Against Ghana, they managed a heroic comeback only to lose out 2:1 in overtime, ending the hopes of espn to have a successful World Cup. --On the bright side, if the U.S. ever did win the soccer championship, it would be the end of all foreign relations, and the rest of the world really would hate us. So it is nice to have a backup Country that you can identify with--especially if that team has scored 15 goals in the last five games (almost as much as in an American football game.
So to all my friends and coworkers that have connections with Argentina, all I can say is, too bad. You chose your second country poorly. Time to learn German.

Adam's new girlfriends

My son Adam playing cards with Heiko Hengst's daughters in Hohenstein-Ernstthal

Here We Go Again

Today is the first of May and my first full day back in Berlin. May Day is of course the international day of the worker when the socialists remember the call to unify themselves in revolution against the establishment. The establishment celebrates May Day by holding hands behind plastic shields to make sure the socialists are properly anti-social within their carefully established space. In Berlin these marches are countermarched by the Neo-Nazis, who celebrate May Day here by dressing in black, and by throwing rocks at the socialists and the establishment. The counter-marchers are then counter-counter-marched by others who just want everybody to get along–especially if they can get a good drink while doing it. Soccer is not the national pass-time of the Germans, protesting is. Most of the citizens take in the road blocks and the transit stoppages stoically as if it were just another change in the weather.

I plan to celebrate May Day by sleeping off what is left of my jet lag quietly in my room. My appetite for taking in civil unrest from close range has never developed to the point where I have felt like I need to take in civil unrest from close range. I wonder what the soccer score is?

Here is another video of German lit geekiness. Werner Herzog is a well-known German filmmaker since the 60's that,--well, if you know him I don't need to explain this, and if you don't know him or his works, this won't be funny to you anyway.

some videos of the plane below

Did I mention it was fast?

Reallyfast

But at least it is still in one piece



By the way, that is my dad breathing hard into the camera. I, of course, was completely calm and in control. . .

Noch ein Flugzeug!

Here is the latest attempt to put together a pylon racer that will be able to compete this year. The last two I built have glow-powered engines. I have had a little trouble keeping those engines running This one will compete in the speed 200 class. The pictures are from its maiden flight Saturday morning. The plane feels fast and the first flight was really hairy until I was able to trim it out for level flight. Even at 1/4 throttle, it was almost all I could handle. I landed and adjusted the elevator to move only half as much as it did on the first flight. The reduced twitchiness was very welcome.
The motor is a 1900Kv Turnigy brushless outrunner motor. I am using 1350 mAh 3-cell lithium-polymer batteries--the same type as is used in cell phones, except with a higher discharge rate. the propeller is 6.5" Graupner propeller (made in Germany!). As you can see, I have decorated it with the German colors. The speed controller (a computer chip that controls the battery-motor interface and acts as a throttle) can be programmed to play various songs when it is powered up and ready to fly. In keeping with the German theme, I set it to play Beethoven's Ode to Joy. I don't think many of the people I fly with will get the joke.
The design is my own, although I took a lot of cues from others that are also flying. The plane has a V-tail and a slightly forward-swept main wing. It feels really fast, although I am not sure exactly how fast. Others who have similar designs have clocked their planes at between 100-110 miles per hour. I need to get used to flying at this speed at about 20 feet off the ground. This last picture is my favorite.

You may not get it, but to me this is really funny