OUR CHILDREN

[BilletHead]

       Oh we all did some pretty funny stuff maybe teetering on  the stupid side,

  Again I am talking Southern California in the early seventies. In town . A friend and I would fly model airplanes on cables. We both build our own versions and free fly them. Gas them up, hook to battery heating the glow plug then flipped the prop with our fingers until they would fire up. Send them skyward to fly and crash when they may. Cars, streets and houses we would follow them and recover.  Then there was our model rocket days doing the same thing except removing the parachute and filling the tube with flour or talcum powder. When the load went off to deploy the non existent parachute we would scream as the white could would appear. Make payloads too for kites and shake them loose as bombs and see where they would land. Guess I was kind of a delinquent ,

BilletHead

[jdmidwest]

Those old Cox planes would whack the piss out of a finger starting up.  I had several of those too.  Probably too dangerous now.

[BilletHead]

15 minutes ago, jdmidwest said:

Those old Cox planes would whack the piss out of a finger starting up.  I had several of those too.  Probably too dangerous now.

           Yes they would and had it happen more than once. The first ones were .049 and then I graduated to bigger planes and bigger engines. The last plane I built was a shoestring stunter. Three foot wingspan with a .35 engine. All balsa and tissue paper covering the wings. After putting on paper you would use a spray bottle and wet the paper. It would dry drum tight. There was a paint  called dope. You would paint for color and then add clear coats. I am thinking it was a varnish. Hardened enough you could bounce a marble off of it. I could loop it and then finish upside down which would reverse your spin or turn. I gave that plane to my friend and neighbor when we migrated back to Missouri.  Oh and JD about the time I left they came out with a power starter. It was shaped like a two cell flashlight with a rubber tipped motor you could push on the prop nosecone to engage and spin prop. Bet they now have an adaptor for a cordless drill for starting. Did you ever have one start in reverse? Yep that engine would do that. When I moved back here I found hunting and fishing and girls so that hobby went by the wayside. Man this has been a trip down memory lane ,

   BilletHead

[fishinwrench]

The grandest thing we did to worry our parents when we were 8-10 years old was being Evil Knievel.   We'd go around the neighborhood stealing (borrowing) everyone's trash cans, line them up, build a ramp at the bottom of a hill, and launch ourselves over them on bicycles.   We got extremely good at it and really wanted to be famous, so we built a giant ramp and hauled it piece by piece to the IGA grocery store parking lot and reassembled it....We were gonna put on a show   

We started off by jumping 4 grocery carts and had worked our way up to 7 before my buddy landed hard, broke the front fork on his bike and ate the asphalt HARD, broke his wrist and tore his face and shoulder up real good. 

Thinking back I am blown away that they just sat back and allowed us to do that.  If a bunch of kids started building a ramp and rounding up grocery carts in a grocery store parking lot now, the managers and every lawman on duty would attack them like they were a group of terrorists.  And the parents of the kids would be arrested for child neglect.

 

[Old plug]

On 2/18/2018 at 6:15 PM, BilletHead said:

           Yes they would and had it happen more than once. The first ones were .049 and then I graduated to bigger planes and bigger engines. The last plane I built was a shoestring stunter. Three foot wingspan with a .35 engine. All balsa and tissue paper covering the wings. After putting on paper you would use a spray bottle and wet the paper. It would dry drum tight. There was a paint  called dope. You would paint for color and then add clear coats. I am thinking it was a varnish. Hardened enough you could bounce a marble off of it. I could loop it and then finish upside down which would reverse your spin or turn. I gave that plane to my friend and neighbor when we migrated back to Missouri.  Oh and JD about the time I left they came out with a power starter. It was shaped like a two cell flashlight with a rubber tipped motor you could push on the prop nosecone to engage and spin prop. Bet they now have an adaptor for a cordless drill for starting. Did you ever have one start in reverse? Yep that engine would do that. When I moved back here I found hunting and fishing and girls so that hobby went by the wayside. Man this has been a trip down memory lane ,

   BilletHead

I had a Olsen and Rice 60 attached to a board in a vice to run it after it got water in it from a model boat crash.  That thing ripped out of that vice and hit me in the fore head and onece more going over the top of my head. I took 17 stitches to sew me up 

[ColdWaterFshr]

3 hours ago, fishinwrench said:

The grandest thing we did to worry our parents when we were 8-10 years old was being Evil Knievel.   We'd go around the neighborhood stealing (borrowing) everyone's trash cans, line them up, build a ramp at the bottom of a hill, and launch ourselves over them on bicycles.   We got extremely good at it and really wanted to be famous, so we built a giant ramp and hauled it piece by piece to the IGA grocery store parking lot and reassembled it....We were gonna put on a show   

We started off by jumping 4 grocery carts and had worked our way up to 7 before my buddy landed hard, broke the front fork on his bike and ate the asphalt HARD, broke his wrist and tore his face and shoulder up real good. 

Thinking back I am blown away that they just sat back and allowed us to do that.  If a bunch of kids started building a ramp and rounding up grocery carts in a grocery store parking lot now, the managers and every lawman on duty would attack them like they were a group of terrorists.  And the parents of the kids would be arrested for child neglect.

 

Evil Knievel was my hero.

 

[ColdWaterFshr]

With all due respect and apologies to Phil for the foul language, this pretty much encapsulates my view on the matter.

https://agingmillennialengineer.com/2018/02/15/-you-i-like-guns-2/

[rps]

Gentlemen: My generation, with good reason, was so opposed to rules, requirements, and expectations that we taught our children to ignore what society expected. We now reap the two or three generations that  come from that. The cycle repeats and repeats.The irony lies in the fact some of us teach or train or supervise those who were raised to pay no attention to us. Penance is a bi****.

[fishinwrench]

10 minutes ago, rps said:

Gentlemen: My generation, with good reason, was so opposed to rules, requirements, and expectations that we taught our children to ignore what society expected. We now reap the two or three generations that  come from that.

Hmm, I need to chew on that for a bit.    Not sure if it's fit to swallow. 

[slothman]

16 minutes ago, rps said:

Gentlemen: My generation, with good reason, was so opposed to rules, requirements, and expectations that we taught our children to ignore what society expected. We now reap the two or three generations that  come from that. The cycle repeats and repeats.The irony lies in the fact some of us teach or train or supervise those who were raised to pay no attention to us. Penance is a bi****.

There could be some truth to that. Interesting perspective that I’ve not thought of or heard from anyone else.