Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello.

My sister's boyfriend is an R/C aeroplane enthusiast. I don't understand them, but she showed me a picture of the 7ft long box wrapped up in the hallway - his Christmasmas gift, and I know he has 4 or five other planes.

She said he asked her to get some mittens along with his gift, to keep his hands warm whilst flying. He wants the standard kind of mitten:


I said that as I had made him a hat for christmas, I'd make him a pair of mittens for his birthday, which is the 19th December. I said I'd make some flip top mittens as this way his fingers would be free if he needed them to be, but covered with the mitten at most time.

She said he wanted mittens as it is mostly thumbs you use to fly planes.

So, what I want to know is, if you use your thumbs, might it be better to just knit half a thumb, leaving the thumb tip 'free' so it doesn't slip from the controls?

I asked her, she doesn't know as she doesn't go to his plane flying jaunts, and she doesn't want to ask him as it would spoil the surprise. I thought I'd ask here on the off chance anyone has any experience/views, long shot as that might be.

I can't speak about planes, but.....

In winter it's not unknown for me to find myself freezing my (hands - Ed) off in some stupid exposed location while using my camera.

Mittens would be useless. Easy to drop stuff*, no control and no fingertip control.

Gloves might be OK but I can't wear them as they still offer too much chance of dropping something expensive and no fine control.

This winter I'll probably go for some fingerless gloves like I have for my bike. I can then have fine control but the fingers stay warm up to the knuckle.

Just my 2p. But get him to reconsider mittens. He'll regret having them the second he drops something expensive.





* I haven't worn mittens since i dropped a bottle of lucozade+ in Boots when I was about 3 years old. The horror!

+ For the youngsters, they were glass in those days. OK?

I agree Chinny, that's why I thought to go for flip-top mittens. Maybe I didn't explain teh flip-top mittens acurately, here's a picture:

See, they are essntially fingerless gloves but have a flap to bring down and cover the fingers - i use these a lot as I suffer from cold hands. This way he still gets the mittens he wants but also fingerless gloves allow him to keep most of his hands warm even when he has to perform fiddly tasks.

I'm mostly wondering whether to knit a full thhumb or a half thmb, like you'd see on teh fingerless mittens, as it is teh thumbs that are used to control the plane.

Edit: I ask because most flip-top mittens have a full thumb:

Ah, they'd be better. You said mittens and I was suddenly having flashbacks to being in Boots and dropping that bottle. THE HORROR!

They look excellent meems! I can't help with the thumb quandry though. I think Mr Chris might be able to.

Yeah, I meantioned the flip-top mittens in teh first post but then it occurred that maybe not everyone spends 70% of their waking life in Accessorise and perhaps hadn't seen them before, I wasn't sure how popular they were.

Thanks GJ, I shall try and draw MrChris to this thread with the power of my mind. failing that I'll drop him a PM tomorrow if he hasn't seen teh thread by then

Last time Craig came to London we went to get some milk from the local shop, which is Iceland. Craig also likes jam on toast for breakfast and as I am allergic to berries I don't ever buy the stuff. So, we were in Iceland, I have a basket with milk in it and Craig gets a giant 1lb jar of strawberry jam, which he sets down on the big, curved top of the glass freezer.

S l l l l i i i i i i i i d d d e e e e e e . . . JAM EXPLOSION!

You're right about leaving the top of the thumbs free, otherwise as you say they would slip around on the sticks. Make sure that he has actually asked for mittens though, if he has a bunch of planes by now then some of them might be slightly more complex and have functions that need to be operated by switches on the top of the transmitter. Also many people myself included favour the "pinch method" which is to use the thumb and first finger to hold the sticks rather than just the thumb as it feels more precise.

I have some mittens with full thumbs and they're useless for any kind of dextrous work. I used to have some with half thumbs and they were excellentness inglovecate.

I had an r/c glider and I used to fly that with knitted gloves on - the thumb grip on the stick wasn't really the issue because it's a small pointy thing which catches securely on the material. The bigger problem was gripping the sides of the transmitter, it would be slidey against the gloves and you end up with hand cramp making sure it doesn't slip. That would depend on the transmitter though, perhaps they are more ergonomic now.

Thanks, everyone.

Well he definitely asked for fully fledged mittens, because he picked up my sister's and went 'like these, but not white, and MAN sized' (he is kinda large, with shovel hands...) But I think it will be best if I make a flip-top pair so that he has both fingerless and full on mitten in one glove. I will knit a half thumb and include a note to say if he tries them and decideds he'd still like a full thumb to return them and I will pull back the knitting a little way and continue with a full thumb.

My sister was also going on about some strange 'things' which I guess were fuel cells of some kind, that you have to keep in a special case. He kept saying to her 'well, you'll be thankful when the house doesn't blow up...'. Are these planes very dangerous, then?

I think you should knit a little design of an aeroplane into them as well. He'd like that.

Just had a text - he'd like fingerless gloves wth flap, no thumb - Lucie must have given in and just asked him in the end, which is fair enough.

I will put a litle plane on them Mr Chris, that's a great idea, and yes, I think he'd love that!

Cheers for the advide guys, I'm going to go and gather my materials now.

Thanks again!

They're just batteries but yes they can go wrong and set fire to the house if you aren't careful.

LiPo fun, eh?

I've got a grenade case for mine that I bought for a fiver.

Ha!

I was going to get one of those fireproof LiPo bags. A grenade case is waaaay cooler, so I may go along to the Army Surplus store in Gloucester (called "M*A*S*H", excellently) and see what they have. Also an opportinuty for me to try and buy a Russian army greatcoat I've been after for years. And some funny hats.

I love army surplus stores. My local one in Southampton is called M*A*S*H too - I wonder if it's a chain.

Indeed it is.

It's also the most obviuos name for an army surplus.

Right - I feel a fun November Challenge coming on.

If you do use a grenade case you should drill some holes in it apparently, but then you'll need to do that anyway if you want to charge the batteries in it. There's some clips on YouTube somewhere of people trying different containers by shorting out LiPos.

You might like this chris, I got this lot rigged up the other week to mess around with :



It's showing current draw, mAH used, pack voltage, airspeed and altitude, although the altimeter is borked on the LCD display for some reason, though on the downloaded data from the logger it's fine.

It's great though, it increases the nerdiness at least tenfold, not only can you fly model planes but when you get home you can review graphs of the flight

Wow! That's nerd-tastic!

Re the batteries, yes, be careful. I have an extreme case of nervousness about the 20kWh pack in my garage on a manually controlled charger..

Bah, not nerdy enough. Put a GPS on it too so you can review the exact path of the flight. Then buy a £10 cheapy digital camera, gut it, mount it on the plane looking down, solder a 555 switch bridging the shutter switch set to go off every ten seconds or so. Then write a piece of software to tie up the timestamps on the pictures with the GPS co-ordinates so you can plot the photos on the flight path too.

You can get a GPS unit, as well as a video sender that transmits a picture from the plane to video goggles with all the data overlayed onto the video display. You can even put the camera on a pan and tilt mount that moves according to the motion senors on the goggles.

All this sounds awesome.

That's all I have to add - I like the idea of RC planes but am too afraid of breaking them

That's part of the fun though. Imagine if when you died or crashed in a videogame your console smashed itself to pieces, it would be so much better.

I'll pop round next time your on your 360.

Uh-oh, did I spawn a nerd thread

That was what she said 'lipo'. I didn't know it was a hobby so fraught with danger

You can end up in a world of hurt if you don't trim your flaps correctly.

My, those mittens are very standard.

Standard shape, I meant!

I know! I was complimenting you on drawing a completely standard mitten. I don't think I could draw anything more standard, even if I had ISO 5969 (Mittens and other gloves) set down in front of me, open at page 3, figure ii (the standard measurements of a very, very standard mitten).

Oh, I didn't draw that.

it's one of the first results for 'mitten clipart' on google image search

When I'm involved, every thread is a nerd thread.

Gaywood, why is your MiiSixty a picture of Craster?

That has much too much hair to be me. Also, what is this obsession with goatees that don't have the middle filled in? Hello Microsoft?! Hair grows in the middle too, thanks!

Snigger.

Make sure you sew some armour plating or kevlar into the bit by his wrists - I know a bloke who had his wrists slashed by the propellor of one of those RC (or should I say ARSEY? No... no I shouldn't) planes and now has no feeling in his hand.

But on the plus side, he can now give himself a "stranger".

Top Tips from Viz:

'Sit on your cock until it goes numb. Hey Presto! It's just like wanking off someone else.'
'Sit on your hand until it goes numb. Hey Presto! It's just like being wanked off by someone else.'
'Sit on your cock and your hand until they go numb. Hey Presto! It's just like watching someone else wank someone else off.'

My favourite:

"Fool people into thinking you've just eaten an apple by rubbing your tummy and loudly saying "Mmmmm! What a lovely apple!""

"Terrify ants into believing they've been invaded by Tripod-style aliens by standing 3-pronged plugs around the entrance to their nests."

Oh the Tripods:



Chinny Trufax: Tripods needed very advanced video effects and the only unit capable of such effects was a Quantel unit owned by the BBC Weather department (the only other unit in the country was at ITV). So all the effects for Tripods had to be done at night when the weather studio wasn't needed.

"Save money on toilet paper by using a cloth flannel. This can easily be reused once your wife or girlfriend has washed it."

"Save time wiping your arse in the morning by eating a bog roll the night before."

Huh! Jeff Minter has one of them: http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=60698

Fascinating. Quantel revolutionised the way TV was made, although there were lots of different revisions that did different jobs. I suspect Jeff has a mid 90's revision of Paintbox. Far more advanced than what would have been used on Tripods.

Interestingly 80's kids gameshow Knightmare wasn't done on Paintbox but rather a Spaceward (I think) and an 8 bit box (possibly a C64).

First Doctor Who to use Quantel was The Leisure Hive in 1980 (and they really went to town as it was a new toy). Wasn't Paintbox then, just a video effects box. You hit 1980 and you suddenly see shows like Top Of The Pops and Who doing proper digital effects. All done in realtime of course, you played the live footage or tape in one end and recorded the output. No computer editing!

By the time of Survival (the last Doctor Who story in 1989) they had Paintbox and made stunning use of it to composite in an alien environment in Who's meagre budget thanks to the genius of Dave Chapman. Still not edited on computer. Survival suffers in places from too many analogue tape generations. The scenes with Ace and the Doctor by the lake near the end of part 2 take a noticeable hit and it almost looks like SVHS tape rather than 1 inch.

In fact both the first and the last Who of the 80's probably made the most use of Quantel technology in the entire decade!