Hobbies - What do you do/make? - Post Pics!

[niss]

Post your hobbies here! Other than the obvious aviation stuff. You don't have to be good at it, lets see what you do!

I just got back into doing leather-craft.





iPod holder for my Ipod touch. This time I gouged the leather so the stitching is straighter and recessed. I also stitched a belt loop on the back. I just have to make a run to Tandy's leather and buy a dome (snap) to close the top and she will be done!





Logbook cover.

I kind of half assed this one and didn't think it all the way though. I didn't gouge the leather to recess the stitching, and I didnt dye it before I stitched so part of it is undyed.

Next time I will not have seperate pieces to hold the inside, I will just extend it and fold the extension over and stitch.

[Lurch]

http://www.thelivercentre.com.au/develo ... Stages.jpg

[metal]

Good lookin leather work!



and another hobby that takes too much of my money

[Old Dog Flying]

Model aircraft many of which are scratch-built like this 1/32 scale version of my Grumman. It has full lighting and sound. For more go to http://www.barneysairforce.come under Models

[bmc]

Professional musician.

This is my main bass as shown on the luthier's website. Sorry for the image size:

[Siddley Hawker]

Nice one ODF.

Here's what I did with that snap together 1:24 Beaver from deHavilland Dreams. I scratched the interior and skis.

[Old Dog Flying]

SH: That is one beautiful looking Beaver ..knowing what you had to start with. I'm now working on a scratch-build 1/32 scale Fleet Canuck CF-EAO. I soloed it 8 July 1952 and at the rate that I am going I'll have it finished for the 60th anniversary

[tiggermoth]

R/C airplanes here! Here is a couple samples:

Extra 300:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV00ZeOw074

[iflyforpie]

Nice job niss, but it looks like you have a long way to go with those logbook tasks.

I tend to pursue numerous hobbies haphazardly. Been playing guitar and bass for years. I got my first real six-string at a pawn shop ten years ago with misappropriated student loan money; a mint Fender Jag-Stang (designed for Kurt Cobain).



I've also got an Ibanez 4 string bass guitar, a Harmony classical acoustic, a Martin backpack guitar, and an old banjo that was my grandfathers that I have yet to master a song on. I started with grunge (super easy to play), then punk, then classic rock, and now pretty much anything.

My wife got me an Blade MCX electric remote control helicopter for my birthday last year and I could see this being a hobby I could really enjoy.



Used to build tons of plastic model planes and ships, but I can't stand the chemicals anymore... There's a 1/48 Spitfire MK 1 collecting dust in my storage room.

I'm also getting back into creative photography after 35mm went by the wayside. I still have my old Minolta XG-1 SLR with a ton of lenses but I just purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D5000) and already looking for more glass. Mostly scenery/nature stuff from the plane or on hikes.

[niss]

..it looks like you have a long way to go with those logbook tasks.

It will be a while before I get my ticket by doing annuals on UBC alone....but lets not start that thread again!

[Hedley]

Since 2002, in my spare time, I've been compiling a paper copy of the internet.

[cdnpilot77]

Arts and crafts.





PS. no its not me

[185_guy]

Most free time that is not spent walking the dog or doing house chores (HA) is spent on R/C airplanes. Its a fun hobby, lots of avenues to explore. Scale, aerobatics, float planes, jets and turbo props, electric, small indoor planes, helis of all shapes and sizes......

This one is built from 'coroplast' aka election sign material. Airframe under $20 and almost crash proof.
I also have a 7' wing span Norseman on the go that needs to be covered.

[ETOPS]

I hardly ride as much as I used to, but id say its still my #1 "hobby".

(the latest and probably last configuration this frame will ever see)

[Old Dog Flying]

Here's something for Hedley to drool over....all 1:32 scale resin kits that I built in order to produce the construction manuals. The black S2b is George Kirbyson's Ray Ban 1.

[The Old Fogducker]

Good to see the model builders coming forward to show their creations.

My dad built models, and likely I was watching him build them as soon as I was able to sit up in a high chair. After going through a lifetime of hand-launch gliders, rubber power free flight, rubber powered indoor, 1/2A free flight, control line in all sizes shapes and forms, single-channel regen RC, "Full-house" proportional RC, RC sailplanes (Thermal and Slope) I'm still at it, and having fun watching something I created take flight. Of course, lots and lots of plastic display models, and I still have several large boxes of unbuilt specialty WW2 kits that I've been saving for semi-retirement and will likely never get to.

In addition to models, I'm quite into communications and have a soft spot in my head and heart for high quality equipment from the end of the vacuum tube era such as Collins, and Drake. While I do have a lot of state of the art solid state equipment not shown in the picture, I still like the sound of tube equipment, the smell of hot capacitor wax, seeing the tube plates glow red hot when transmitting, and watching dust particles rise in the thermals created by the heat of the (4) 811As.

Thanks for starting the thread Niss!

dah dah dit dit dit dit dit dit dah dah
de The Old Fogducker

[Hedley]

Nice eye candy! btw, I can't help that biplanes give me wood. Er, that they're made of wood.

I recognize most of those Pitts models and paint jobs!

From left to right:

Gene Soucy "diamond" red & white starburst. My favourite paint job for the Pitts. I have three minor variations on that paint schemes on our Pitts S-2B's.

Next is the Jim Leroy "bulldog" with the Steve Wolf wings. Steve is one of those extremely rare individuals whom is not only a gifted pilot, but a superb (design) engineer and aircraft mechanic.

Next in the center is definitely a ray ban gold pitts - there is AMR in the National Aviation Museum, just on your right as you walk in the front doors. I like that.

Next on the right is the very first S-2C which Aviat built with the awesome 3-blade hartzell "claw" prop which was standard on all S-2C's. The flaming paint job is quite unique. I remember in 1998 when Aviat came out with the S-2C, they claimed it was really easy to land because of the squared wingtips. Uh huh. It lands like a Pitts.

The one on the extreme right I do not recognize. It is clear a "contest" paint job, designed to help the judges clearly see the lines at a distance, to try to get higher scores. I understand the optics behind the now no-longer-trendy contest paint job, but subjectively it never did much for me.

PS I occasionally fly an S-2C at airshow which is painted up very much like Jim Leroy's yellow and black bulldog. This is the front page of the sunday newspaper:



Those aren't RC models, they're full-sized Pitts. That's me inverted in the yellow and black S-2C, doing the mirror pass on Saturday at an airshow in Central America.

[Old Dog Flying]

Hedley you are correct on all counts! The centre front is a Christian Eagle !!. I build 5 of them for Frank Christiansen. I haven't done any aeros in a long time due to spinal stenosis which is destroying the spine from the tailbone to the base of the skull...a real pain in the ass.

Lots more photos of the biplanes on my website http://www.barneysairforce.com.

[Hedley]

ODF: sorry to hear about your spine. That well and truly sucks.

Yes of course the front & center is unmistakably a Christen Eagle, with it's very distintive rainbow scheme. The Christen Eagle was basically a homebuilt Pitts S-2A with a wide cockpit and no dihedral in the bottom wings.

It is quaintly nostalgic to remember when the kit came out, the FAA went bananas over a picture in a magazine, which showed all the bubble-wrapped parts - they thought it didn't meet the 51% rule, so Christen shipped the ribs unbuilt to keep the FAA happy. Fast-forward to today, when well-heeled customers fly to a homebuilt factory and watch for a week while pros build their "homebuilt". But, I digress.

I have flown a Christen Eagle precisely once. I was at an airshow, and the very gracious owner insisted that I fly his nearly-new Christen Eagle. Like a smile from a strange, beautiful woman, how could I turn that down?

So I jumped in, and checked myself out with a low-altitude sequence in it

Here's another hobby of mine: jumper dumping:



The photo was taken by the meat bomb in my front seat, who didn't have any belts on. Note the Soucy diamond starburst paint scheme. I am in right echelon. The yellow-and-black S-2C is flown by a friend of mine - Jimmy Buffett wrote songs about his adventures - in left echelon - same setup - and in the lead is a Guatemalan-registered 450hp Stearman.

How we dump the jumpers is drive over show center, smoke on, half roll inverted in a vic, and let gravity take the three meat bombs away. I really wish we could have had a 4th airplane with us, to take a picture of us inverted, with the meat bombs departing!

[tiggermoth]

Hedley, is that yellow and black Pitts Freddie Cabana's airplane?? I think I have seen pictures of him somewhere before.

[Hedley]

Yup!

Freddy is a hoot - he is a larger-than-life character. Here is his website:

http://cabanasaerobatics.com/index-h.html

In the Central America newpaper picture above, he is flying the red and white Pitts in mirror formation on me in 31TA. We like to do a head-on takeoff then a 1/2 cuban-8 at the end of the runway, then another head-on pass in knife edge to start the show.

Last airshow we did, I had Fred do continuous surface loops, and I flew behind the crowd and over their heads and flew through the center of Fred's loop, then pulled up and rolled. I am trying to work up the cajones to do inter-locking loops. Never seen anyone do that before, though Fred sorta does something like that with Gary Ward in an inverted spin.

I really love doing airshows in Central America.

[niss]

Neck sheath for my Opinel No 8. Soaked with beeswax to harden and take shape.




Picture frame I made for my Mom for Mothersday.

[Rowdy]

I like to peddle around on my cruiser bikes..

[Expat]

Good post idea:

10 years restoring olds Jags and BMWs,
10 years scuba diving the 7 seas,
10 years flying,
now 10 years travelling...oops..working overseas...no hobby...

[Siddley Hawker]

Hedley and ODF, here's a 1:20 manufacturers model of the Pitts S-2S. It was a gift from a friend a couple of years before he died. Lu had over 200 models, half of which were helicopters. He started in aviation as a F/E on the PBY for the US Coast Guard, and I built him a model of that aircraft. He gave me the Pitts in return.


I've built a couple of airlines - Northern Wings and Austin Airways - worth of the Modellcraft 1:48 Norsemen for various people. Right now I'm building four - JIN, KAO, BTC and OBO - for a friend in Whitehorse.



The kit for SAN, the black and yellow one, was given to me by Robert Noorduyn Jr. I'd met him online and mentioned I'd built a few of them. He had a kit he was intending to build, but as he told me "My fingers aren't as nimble as they used to be," so he sent me his kit. That one's a keeper.