Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

A Lick and a Promise

If you go to the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News Virginia, you’ll see a collection of plank on frame ship models built by a craftsman named, Crabtree. I haven’t seen the display in years but it knocked my socks off. It made such an impression that I bought a set of plans and started scratch building my own frigate. For a year, while stationed in Washington DC, I'd retreat every evening to work on my model. Perhaps this is why, to this day, when I see a beautifully rendered model, a passion inside me ignites and if within my means I buy it.

Yesterday I went to an RC Model Swap-meet in Wausau. I found two old models from the early fifties and sixties that were in need of repair or completion. I picked them both up for $40 and it was a steal. I felt the same way walking away with them as I did purchasing a Meissen Figurine once for "chump-change." In the first case I was told that the builder died before being able to complete it.(Too bad so sad) In the second the owner said “Get it out of my sight!”

If this wasn’t enough a fellow club member bought two sixty-sized models with crash damage, salvaged the engines and servos and gave me the two fuselages, one still having the wings. Repairing a model with minor damage is a much easier task than building one from a kit or plan. I should have both flyable in about twenty hours. My fellow flyers criticize me for restoring “Old Junk” but here is the rationale for why I do.

I find it enjoyable; it’s relatively inexpensive and my skill as an RC Aviator makes the service life of my models, short. So, I reason, don’t waste hours making models look good until acquiring the flying skill to make them last. Those are my guiding principles and they don't sit well with my fellow aviators. It has reached the point where they have resurrected this arcane rule, long in disuse, that all new models have to be inspected before being allowed to fly at the club field. I don’t mind the rule because I want my model to be airworthy, even though I don’t particularly care what it looks like at this stage of my developing piloting skills. As a consequence, when I show up, well meaning members come over, while the safety officer is doing his inspection, to throw in their two cents worth. At first I found this irritating but now I find it fascinating to watch as the process unfolds. It is a veritable tutorial on an aspect of human behavior known as the "Feeding Frenzy."

So what does this have to do with what I promised to touch on yesterday? Well it reminded me of the words of one of my instructors in graduate school who once said, “All things worth doing are not worth doing “well.” The second has to do with a statistical technique known as Standard Deviation. Sorry to keep kicking the can down the road but these are both ideas that deserve more than a “Lick and a Promise” and I'll try expanding on them more tomorrow.