The Bright Sword. Grossman. A story of Camelot following shortly after the death of Arthur. Grossman embraces the popular and modernized side of Arthurian fiction. Characters speak in a more or less modern tone, though without going so far with cliches and phrasings as to break the suspension of disbelief. History is jumbled around as necessary or desired, but again in discrete and traditional ways. For example, Sir Palomides is one of the main characters. He’s somehow a Muslim from Baghdad… before Muhammad was born and some centuries before Baghdad was founded. Yet this ahistoricity is well in line with Arthurian fiction—Palomides is traditionally labeled a Saracen, which in the time period would roughly mean a pagan from the Middle East but later came to be synonymous with Muslim—and definitely would not have bothered classic Arthurian authors. In any event, the modern tone and lack of fuss about strict historical accuracy facilitates a quick reading adventure story. Notably for this day and age, The Bright Sword is not intended to be the start of a series or anything like that. There’s a coherent story arc that comes to a definite conclusion with the important matters all wrapped up. Major themes include the basic Arthurian conflict between paganism and Christianity; what it means to believe you are fighting for (a) God and to credit your victories to them, only to then suffer catastrophic and final defeat; the migration of peoples and evolution of cultures and lands, in this case from the Old Ones to the Picts and Celts to the Romans to the Britons to the Saxons.
Estes Prowler
Finished this rocket in May but hadn’t flown it until Sunday for a variety of reasons. An Estes Prowler, an OOP kit very similar to the Majestic, a mid-power E2X kit.
Estes Prowler on the launch pad at CENJARS.
I did some minor tweaks on this to improve the recovery line, add a rail guide in addition to the 3/16in lugs, etc.. It came with a nice looking pink body tube. Sadly one of the launch lugs slipped while setting and I didn’t notice. So I had to heat gun it off, sand paper the tube, etc etc, and wound up having to repaint the whole thing to deal with the blemish.
The big thing with the Majestic, and I assume this as well, is that you have to do something to keep the parachute, recovery line, etc. from falling lower in the rocket at ignition. It happens easily and the rocket becomes completely unstable. At the moment it’s one of my biggest criticisms of Estes kits: They’re selling the Majestic (and similar) as E2X kits for relative beginners, but they have a serious design flaw that’s actually kind of subtle to diagnose.
In any event, here’s a flight on a windy day on an E16-6, to an estimated 750–800ft, with the chute held to 200ft.
And video of takeoff from Brett’s action cam by the launchpad.
Central Park Model Yachting
Recently we made a quick trip to New York City and among other activities walked through Central Park, yielding a clear highlight of the trip: RC sailboat racing!
International One-Meter (IOM) class boats racing (the hulls are one meter long).
I’ve read about this scene before, in particular I believe EB White’s Stuart Little features it. and stumbling upon some action was really cool. Central Park itself has long maintained Kerb’s Boathouse for model sailboating in the adjacent large pond. No powered remote control vehicles are allowed in the park, so it’s all wind power all the time. The public can rent space to store their models in the boathouse and several organizations use it as home base.
One corner inside the boathouse.
One such organization is Rocking the Boat, which runs youth programs building & sailing full size boats out of the Bronx. They recently branched out and took on the running of an RC sailboat rental concession at Kerb’s Boathouse and have started youth programs hosted there. Another is the Central Park Model Yacht Club, which coordinates events including the low key races every Saturday which we happened to see. As you’d expect, the racing amounts to a gaggle of middle age and elderly gentlemen hurriedly walking up and down the length of the pond while half-seriously cursing their boats, the wind, and each other in NYC accents. It was amazing.
Examining the sail controls on a misbehaving boat.
Automated countdown and buzzer for starting races.
Sadly, although club members had several boats for sale in the boathouse, we were going from there to a showing of The Lion King and I thought the people seated behind me might object if I sat there holding a ~5.5ft tall sailboat…
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me!