Over at Filthie’s Thunderbox an adventure is taking place. Dude’s building an old school RC airplane. He’s making a classic “balsa wood and glue that fries braincells” design. I’ve been enjoying the story as it unfolds (lurking?).
Filtihe knows the score. Every endeavor is an opportunity to soar and also an opportunity to crash and burn… in the case of an airplane, literally. Victory and defeat are two sides of the same coin. The harder you try the further you skate on thin ice. He begins with a second hand story:
“When my ship was in Tokyo a bunch of years back, I was watching Nip TV. There was a guy who had built a HUGE R/C plane. I’m an aircraft illiterate, but this thing had four engines on it. The guy started all the engines, taxied onto the runway, and commenced his roll. As soon as he rotated the plane did a huge wing-over and AUGERED into the ground. The camera panned back to the pilot. He stood there for a few seconds, and then just began to bawl. The plane had apparently taken YEARS for him to build… Yeah; keep it simple this time, Glen…”
It is true. Build a thing that can fly and you have built a thing that may break your heart. Filthie knows that it would be wise to have a certain amount of emotional reserve… and also knows it’s impossible:
It’s too late. My heart is lost. I’ve glued up the wing of the Filthiebird, And … it is a thing of sheer beauty.
This is what the world is all about! Build and do, try and learn, soar and (sometimes) crash. Good for him!
Filthie’s braver than me. This is the cruel world of the internet, where some pajama clad toadstool with literally no accomplishments can (and will) gloat at your downfall should things go belly up. They’ll phrase this as “advice” but it’s not as constructive as one might hope. Much is preening by the otherwise inert. “You used the wrong glue, everyone knows you need XYZ Style Adhesive or the thing will crash. Ya’ dummy.” No, everyone doesn’t fucking know that XYZ Adhesive was necessary. Nobody’s born with that knowledge! Never gloat when a person who tries what you have not, struggles to accomplish it!
Which brings me to one of my favorite accomplishments. I built a sailboat. Yes, it’s a small odd little contraption but the fucker sails like a beast. It carries me wherever I’m brave enough to point it. I haven’t yet drowned.
Did I post about the construction process? Not until after the thing floated. I’d worked too long and too hard; too many late nights pondering laminate strength, lofting measurements, and yes… XYZ Epoxies. It would have been a hell of a blow to mind, soul, and ego if it had sunk on it’s maiden voyage. If I’d posted about my progress in advance and then it sunk? Some fucknut on the internet would almost certainly have mocked me and I’d have been crushed!
I only posted a photo after I had succeeded. Even then it took me a whole lot of hemming and hawing to explain my motives; Check out the “Walkabout” menu on this blog. It was spring of 2019 when I finally let the cat out of the bag.
I added some Curmudgeonly advice about building a boat:
If you’re considering it, do it. Start immediately.
Don’t wait another day. You will have the time of your life.
However, if you just want to own a boat and not build one…
…run away from the workshop like your hair’s on fire.
So as much as building a boat was a wonderful thing for me, I faced the prospect of disaster quietly and in obscurity. Like I said, I’m not as brave as Filthie.
You might think I’m done, but I’m not. Folks of a certain mind (or addled mind) are always seeking the next adventure and Filthie’s struggles with balsa and aerodynamics has me thinking about adventure. There’s more! Stay tuned for the next post.
For the classic example along the boating lines, go to Wikipedia and look up the Swedish warship “Vasa”.
Ha ha ha. This line just made me laugh sooooooo hard: “An inquiry was organised by the Swedish Privy Council to find those responsible for the disaster, but in the end no one was punished.“ Such a parallel between politics then and now; shit goes wrong in a clear, ugly, expensive project involving the intersection of government bureaucracy and reality. Upon investigation they conclude nobody did anything incorrect… even though the damn boat sank! No matter how huge the disaster it’s just “mistakes were made” and then done.
I wonder if people of the time said “vasa didn’t sink itself” like her say “Epstein didn’t kill himself”. Or maybe the same bemused cynical shrug I get when I say “Biden won so well he had more votes than any other candidate in history”.
Fuckin boat was at the bottom of the sea… someone (likely a whole bunch of someones) really did fuck up.
The Filthiebird (The “Ugly Stick”, as it’s designers dubbed it) came out in 1965 or so. Back then the RC guys were rock stars to us kids. Today they are geriatrics in a dying hobby. The kids nowadays fly F16s and have pitched dogfights against each other on the computer.
They will never know the heart stopping thrill of sitting on the shore, wondering if the hours, money, time and effort you put into the project will end in comical, humiliating failure. Nor will they experience the exhilaration when the wind picks up, fills your sail, and your skiff begins to move, and track according to your tiller. They will never learn to compromise with the boat and the wind and the water. They will never smell the sawdust or glue or even the wind and water as we do. They will never cut themselves, or accidentally glue their eyes and noses shut and trip over the dawg in the shop either, I suppose… HAR HAR HAR!!!
We are secret rockstars AC, invisible in a world where people worship fallen gods. Your little skiff moves on the same winds as those that propelled Jason and the argonauts. I face the same ridicule and scorn as the Wright Brothers at their first flight at Kittyhawk. (I read somewhere that their historic bicycle shop is about to be torn down. The people responsible know not what they do… but I cannot forgive them for it). While they beg for people to like and subscribe and share… we fail or succeed by the quality of our work, and the fickle will of old gods and nature that nobody knows or worships anymore.
You need a bigger boat, AC. Maybe a 40 footer? And I need a bigger plane, maybe an Aircamper or a Flybaby…
Maybe in the next life…?
😉