Park Flying 1-2-3D

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Summary

Park Flying 1-2-3D leads pilots from the basics of learning to fly through to advanced aerobatic and 3D maneuvers.

The Good

The author, David Scott, runs a popular RC flight school. He is also an experienced full-size airplane aerobatic pilot. He has what I call "been there, done that" in spades. His book is best when talking about flying, and every single page where he does that convinced me that this guy knows what he is talking about. The book is packed full of hints, tips, and observations that only come from years and years of experience.

The book is profusely illustrated. Nice diagrams of different model airplanes in flight are often combined with diagrams of the appropriate control stick positions. These combinations are very effective.

The writing style is good. It's all very legible and easy to read. I can easily imagine Mr. Scott standing next to me at the flying field talking me through each maneuver and giving me tips all along the way.

The Bad

The book is only about 100 pages long and costs over $20. On the surface, "bang for the buck" appears to be low. I hesitated to buy a copy in the first place because of the price. Having bought it, I'm happy with my purchase. You don't need hundreds of pages to cover the subject. The book is spiral bound, which I appreciated to be able to hold it in front of me while using an RC flight simulator. I'm sure the binding method added to the printing costs.

At the bottom of many pages he has the abbreviation "KPTR" followed some good advice. It was driving me nuts, because I had no idea what KPTR meant! I finally tracked the definition down to one of the introductory pages: key point to remember. Doh! Using just "Tip" or even better, some sort of graphic, would have been preferable.

The Ugly

The book states that many foam park flyers use flat-plate airfoils. That may have been the case years ago, but I cannot think of a single current commercial foam park flyer design that uses a flat-plate airfoil. Even most of the scratch-built designs use something else. The foamy designs have just gotten more sophisticated over time.

The book also states that flat-plate airfoils tend to be unstable when compared to other airfoils. Flat-plates have sharp stalls, but the overall stability on an airplane is mostly due to other factors besides the airfoil. Much later on in the book he clarifies that he was talking about abrupt stalls.

The page on balancing your airfoil just had me shaking my head. The comments made on that page are only valid if you are working with a very conventional airplane design. This fact needed to at least be mentioned. If you have an unusual airfoil or a canard, for example, then following the advice on that page will lead to very bad results.

It gets worse. On the page on control functions, the book states that ailerons are optional on under-cambered or flat-bottomed wings. That's like saying that a door has to be painted white if it opens to the outside. One thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other. This was not just an oversimplification, but a very misleading statement.

Conclusion

Despite my misgivings about the accuracy of the technical background pages, I strongly recommend this book. It is excellent at what it set out to do: helping you become a better park flyer pilot. The explanations of the more complex and trickier maneuvers are specially good. If there's an aerobatic maneuver (including 3D ones) that you have been trying to master and are having trouble, I can make no better recommendation that to buy and read this book.

http://www.rcadvisor.com/ founder - Home of the best model airplane calculator. Free!

Author of RCadvisor's Model Airplane Design Made Easy and other books.

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A History of the World In 100 Objects - Book Review

There was once a saying at the height of the British Raj in India (colonial occupation) that "Mad Dogs and Englishmen Go Out in the Noon Day Sun," however, something similar can be applied to Britain's historical establishment because nothing will stop them from looking at the history of man in some very different ways.

Take Neil MacGregor's work where he studies the History of the World in 100 Objects. That's right, the director of the British Museum out-minimalized the super-minimalists, who thinks nothing of finding the fewest arguments or gadgets available to prove a point. It's like motorcycle historians who neatly boil that particular branch of motoring into "petrol" and "non-petrol," with "real" motorcycles as having a four-stroke "petrol" engine and the rest of the world just pretenders.

That they have forgotten the seminal work of Roper and Copeland, as well as Michaud, the engineer who made the motorcycle possible when he realized that two wheels of the same size and a real steering fork are necessary for safe two-wheeling. Yet the contributions of these men are neatly glossed over.

However MacGregor's history works to an astonishing degree. If you look at the firm examples he uses to back up his thesis, it is not as bizarre an idea as one might think.

Take the many shards of and clay pots found in the ancients city-states that were built on earlier cities as they rose from the plains of the Indus or Ganges rivers. The pot here or the tablet there that connects the dots to the pots in the holds of Phoenician traders who spread their culture across the ancient world. It shows that, while many in the historical establishment look down their rather long pince nez glasses at a "popular historian" like MacGregor, they cannot escape the fact that he's often right.

For example, the great statuary of the Greeks and their temples - one idea or two, the choice is yours; MacGregor would likely think they are linked as they define the period of Greek history in which they appeared, as well as for the millennium to follow, even through the rise of Persia and Syracuse and the Romans.

The Romans took the flower of Greek thinking and overlayed it on their "Republic," Aristotelian or Euclidean thought and objects to produce an empire that did last nearly 1,000 years and even survived a period of 100 Caesars in 100 years. The refinement of the Greek school of art and its advancement and morphing under Rome, along with the perfection of thought and the invention of the "sciences" of "history" and "sociology" and the strictures that they exposed are just two more examples of the direction of history.

The development and perfection of illumination by the Church and the many Holy Scribes and monks whose work each day was a page, if they were lucky, saved many of the great early works of man and our history. Illumination and the art of penmanship were two more objects along the way which strongly defined the direction of history and thought and all one has to do is look at them to know their means.

The real revolution comes with the introduction to the West of moveable type of the 15th Century invention of the printing press where, at once, thought could be made available to the masses, not just the nobility. What a concept, the masses learning to read and knowing as much as their "betters." That invention, in itself, and the revolution in though that spun off of it shows that MacGregor is quite right. If you look at the history of the west, it can be defined by 100 distinct objects, including such silly-looking objects as the king's throne made of hunting rifles.

Right there you have two engines of domination, the rifle with which the nobility could shoot their fill and still subjugate the local populace. In the wrong hands, though, history took another turn, didn't it? Imagine the combination of the cannon, rifle and printing press and you have all of the makings of even more revolution.

Then add in the "mechanical muscle" provided by the waterwheel and Canals which helped to speed the spread of thought. Of course, this led to experimentation in other areas such as those of Faraday and Morse and the invention of the telegram so that the world was instantly smaller.

That, in turn, led to more sophisticated printing plants and electronics, computers, the Internet and Worldwide Web.

Each, if you look closely at it, is merely an outgrowth of earlier work that was built on one or two elements of an earlier period. This is why the entertaining and witty MacGregor's work, an Amazon Best Book, works so well. It shows that, indeed, the history of western thought and man can be defined by just 100 objects.

It may look like a real stretch when you first crack the back of the book - yes real print and books - although sometimes you are limited to an eReader versions (there's just something missing) - but it's not as MacGregor shows why he is considered one of the wittiest and insightful historians of his generation. It's an interesting theory that he carries off.

Roberto Sedycias works as an IT consultant for ecommUS-Books

Life in America, By: Mike Proko - Book Review

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Most of the time, strong opinions about politics and religion aren't received well. People are easily turned off by other people who give their opinions and turn a deaf ear to those who try to convince them to believe what they believe. However, Michael L. Proko's collected columns titled "Life in America: Musings, Stories and Opinions about life in the U.S. of A" is both uplifting and entertaining.

In each of his columns, Proko meticulously dissects issues both about the USA and human life. He brings to light issues that we face daily and speaks about them encouragingly. He addresses topics such as human relationships, family, imagination, money, politics, God, children, striving to act like children as adults, making a difference in people's lives, showing kindness, and forgiveness. He shares experiences such as pool-hopping as an adolescent that gives the reader a sense of authenticity and a glimpse into the type of person Proko is, and the life-lessons he learned.

One of Proko's primary words of advice is to not give up and make the changes necessary to improve character. This Proko can attest to in a very special and specific way. At the prime of his life, he suffered two strokes and was told his life would never be the same again. He was told to expect permanent paralysis and for a while, gave in to this new way of life; feeling useless and defeated. However, he soon decided to make a critical change, which was to work hard to improve himself physically and emotionally. Through endless hours of physical therapy and working out, he was able to overcome his physical limitations and prove to himself and those around him that if you work hard enough to change your life for the better, it is possible to jump over hurdles that seem impossible to overcome. He uses this life experience to encourage his readers to make the changes necessary to better their lives, and to never give up. As a reader, hearing this advice from someone who lost all hope and then worked hard to gain his life back, written with gentleness and without shoving it in the reader's face, I gladly took this advice.

The most enjoyable aspect of Proko's book is his memories of being raised under the guidance and love of his grandparents interwoven throughout the work. He refers to simple life lessons taught to him when he was young; giving the same advice to his readers because he believes he is who he is because of their influence in his life. "They taught us how to swim, how to behave like ladies and gentlemen, how to look at life. but most importantly, how to keep your sense of humor when life comes at you. They, too, had made their fair share of mistakes but they had a goal and they just kept on striving to that end. Simple folks. Simple lessons." This passage sums up his tone of voice throughout the piece. Again, he emphasizes the importance of not giving up. He mentions his grandparents and their influence on his life throughout the book, which gives the reader further evidence the advice he gives is based on experience and wisdom.

This is a refreshing read for anyone who is tired of negativity and prideful political opinions about America and its people. Without stuffing it down the reader's throat, Proko delivers his advice and opinions carefully and with humor, ending almost every column with, "At least, that's the way I see it." Whether or not the reader agrees with what he discusses in each column, that line is a reminder these are merely his opinions based on his life experiences. Life in America is surprisingly cheerful and encouraging, even when it comes to America and its politics.

Reviewed by: Tamar Mekredijian, Pacific Book Review

http://www.pacificbookreview.com/

The Imperial Cruise By James Bradley

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World War II holds a certain interest for me. I have to wonder if it is because I would be speaking a completely different language and my country would be a little red blip on the world map if events had turned out otherwise. Anyway whatever the reason I do read the occasional book on that era. This book is about the previous 100 years and the reasons why Japan bombed Pearl Harbour on that fateful morning of December 7th, 1941. Now after saying that you won't necessarily like the answers that this book holds.

Bradley is also the author of Flags of Our Fathers - the book about his father's role in raising the flag at Iwo Jima and how no one knew about his level of his involvement until after he had died. The humility of that generation coined the Greatest by Tom Brokaw is exemplified by his behaviour in the Pacific. Bradley probably was intrigued by the attack of the Japanese as that changed his family's history dramatically. He researches the presidencies of McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt and also the involvement of Taft and his work with Roosevelt out in Asia specifically with this subject in mind.

Just about everything I knew about Teddy Roosevelt was a fallacy. As a heads-up, this book was incredibly hard to read with respect to the way that many people were treated. Roosevelt wanted the world to view him in a certain way and never was photographed in some situations and always in others. He was the original media and public relations junkie. He often would have one conversation with a world leader but then relay a completely different notion to the American press.

In the summer of 1905 Roosevelt sent then Secretary of War William Howard Taft and his oldest daughter, Alice on a diplomatic mission across the Pacific. Alice was hugely popular as she lived a relatively wild life and the press and people of the US loved her. Alice was to keep the reporters and photographers busy while Taft met secretly with several leaders. Civilizing the Asian people was the idea of the trip for Roosevelt. These meetings would set up the groundwork for America's Pacific engagement but would come back to bite the people of the US less than 40 years later.

Bradley never gives his opinion throughout the book which is admirable. He just writes how history went down and who met with whom and why America was so interested in Asia and the Pacific. Personally I found the chapter on the opium wars very interesting with Queen Victoria being the most notorious 'dealer' along with some pretty heavy hitting names from American history. Worth your time especially if you are at all interested in world politics.

You can find more of my book and movie reviews at: http://ukchica.com/

How I Killed Pluto by Mike Brown Book Review

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If you are older than 15, you probably learned at school that the solar system includes 9 planets. This was not always the case. In ancient times there were only seven. Seven is a good number. It is a meaningful number as there are seven days in a week. Earth was the center of the world and did not count while the Sun and the Moon did. During and after the Copernican revolution the number changed quite often. Earth become a planet but the sun and moon were deleted from the list. Then came William Herschel and discovered Uranus, then came Adams, Leverrier and Galle predicting and finding Neptune. Meanwhile more large objects were found in what's now called "The Asteroids' belt" (Ceres, Palas, Juno, Vesta) and for some time they were also counted as planets and finally Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto in 1930 making a nice (but meaningless) number of 9 Planets. Then come Mike Brown and on his pursuit to find the tenth planet actually killed the ninth.

Mike Brown's story is detailed in his book "How I killed Pluto and why it had it coming". Well Pluto is not to blame for anything. It is just there, but Mike managed to write a story which is a great mix of: history, biography, science, philosophy and even a thriller. A thriller you might ask? Yes, chapter nine is written as a thriller and describes how private observational data was exposed on the Internet and might have been used by other researchers to get first credit for Mike's discovery (I can't resist to compare this case to James Watson and Francis Crick who used Rosalind Franklin's data without her knowing about it to get the breakthrough they needed in their DNA research). In this chapter you will also read Mike's philosophical thoughts about science, why and when some observations must be kept secret, and why others must not.

The story reaches its climax when the International Astronomical Union (IAU), in 2006, decided what is a planet (and thus deciding if Mike discovered new planets or the opposite, reduced the number of planets by removing Pluto), and although Mike had much more to gain as a planet discoverer, he strongly felt that Pluto should not be a planet. If you need someone to blame for Pluto's fate, Mike is a good choice, and occasionally he gets a number of complaints on this issue. However, even though Pluto is not a planet, it is still important, as the rest of the distant objects out there, since their existence requires new theories about the creation of the solar system itself and Mike relates to this subject throughout the book.

As you read, you will enjoy the story, as it goes from Mike's early childhood to that of his daughter, Lilah. You do not have to be an astronomer to enjoy the book (although it helps). However, as an amateur astronomer I liked the fact that Mike is also an observer. Mike isn't just a researcher, looking through telescopes (and the biggest ones - Keck and Hubble) and at thousands of pictures of the sky to find new planets (sorry, not planets but "dwarf planets"!). Throughout the book Mike shows us what it is to observe, he describes how much he loves to watch the moon and the planets. The book ends with Mike describing the conjunction of Venus Jupiter and the moon. It happens from time to time and I remember hosting a star party to share this experience with people from my community. Also, Mike gives a good explanation about naming the new objects he finds, and although the meaning of Haumea, Makemake, Eris and Sedna is known and written in many places, the reasoning behind giving these names is detailed in the book.

Read more astronomical articles at The Venus Transit site.

Book Review of "The Age of American Unreason" by Susan Jacoby

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The Age of American Unreason. [Soft cover]

by Susan Jacoby

384 pages, $26.00

ISBN-13: 978-1616877170

Nonfiction

Review by Steven King, MBA, MEd

Susan Jacoby starts with good intentions since her desire is to survey why America is branded as anti-intellectual. A cursory investigation of many segments of our culture indicates that a quest for reason is far from the minds of most people. America's ranking concerning education in the world would seem to indicate that introspective reasoning was truly a thing of the past.

Jacoby's mission is admirable even if her thesis is not.

When a secular atheist attempts to write a book about the unreasonableness of anything, it begs the question almost immediately: What is the source of reason? People ascribing to various faith beliefs will answer that question very differently than she did. Should one purporting to write from a totally secular stance be given greater latitude than one who would attempt the same premise but from religious grounds?

Instead of agreeing to disagree, which always seems to be a stretch for anyone purporting to be secular, Jacoby wastes no time earmarking religious fundamentalism as one of the main causes of anti-rationalism in America. In just the first 20 or so pages, she indicates that those who believe in a coming Messiah only have beliefs that are "...dangerous fallacies." Yet, in the same paragraph, she contends for the Constitutional rights that allow the religiously misguided to have their particular faith - a kind of intellectual snobbery, since in Jacoby's opinion, atheism is the only intelligent stance on faith.

The rest of the book weaves a strange amalgamation of blame. Jacoby gleefully wanders through a minefield to determine what is to blame for America's lack of reason. The reader will get the impression that she is pro-communism, pro-evolution, anti-technology, but pro-reading. Where she can, she'll conflate, a word she's particularly fond of, her current topic with an anti-religious sentiment.

The book is not completely without merit. Her chapter about infotainment hits the proverbial nail on the head about "why" America lacks reason. Collectively, we desire instant gratification without the cerebral task of working to understand something. Perhaps if our culture encouraged reading with the same enthusiasm it does of the latest technological release more rational thought would break forth.

Jacoby would have produced a masterpiece if she had not used her book to bash religiosity. Individuals do, and will continue to have, religious difference. A more poignant thesis might have been to have focused on "how" to encourage Americans to read.

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood - Book Review

Award-winning author James Glieck, who wrote "Chaos" and "Genius," has the depressingly encouraging answer to this waterfall of information that overtakes us by the hours as gigaflops and teraflops literally pour fourth from the disk farms of the world and onto the Internet burying us ever more deeply in even more information - the Genie is out of the bottle and it won't go away.

Was it ever thus or did information just magically appear one day and need some sort of handling, rearranging, reinterpreting or reinventing? The answer is simple: information has been with us since the beginning, at first passed from shaman to son, who learned not only the "tribe's" story, but any new experiences that were picked up along the way that were bound to the story for the next generation. This went on for thousands of years and it was easy because things seldom strayed from the "truths" known. With the invention of illumination, the West was able to store its information as it was written - never changing as the keeper of information was happy with it remaining as it was. The invention of moveable type - actually a product of Chinese innovation 4,000 years ago - followed quickly surrounded us with more information and opinion. There was not more "keeper of the flame," as it were.

That invention alone let the Genie out of the bottle, never to return, although the flood of information turned from a trickle into a torrent nearly overnight (in historical terms) as the printing press churned out information that was once restricted to an elite. Soon, as they saying goes, the "elite was us" as information became more and more a director of our lives.

Soon information for its own sake was the norm as the information of the ages was worked on by the new masters to define everything from apples falling on our head (magnetism) to the ending of the "flat earth" theory to the ending of the earth-centric view of things. While Glieck doesn't specifically mention studies the contributions of Galileo, Copernicus, Humanism and others, they are there tacitly in the background as we run into the age of the machine and the literal deluge of information that it brought.

Yet, while never mentioning the "scribes" or tinkerers of the information age, directly, he does mention the greats who were successful in beginning to organize some of this information such as Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first "computer," a large textile machine that changed manufacturing with punched brass cards that told the machine how to reconfigure itself.

There's the Lady Ada Byron, by some accounts the first computer programmer, for whom Ada is named and its spreads rapidly from there as our historical narrative turns to the thinkers of the Information Age, Turing, Hawking and others as the Information Age begins to cascade toward the first real computer ENIAC by RCA in 1948 (where coveys of white-smocked technicians raced up and down aisles that housed rack-after-rack of heat-sensitive triode tubes to replace tubes that constantly failed so that computations could continue - at the time, the world's estimate for computers was eight or 10 maximum).

Now, a new meaning could be ascribed the old saw: "Apres moi le deluge" as the floodgates of the information age open, constantly surrounding us with information and changing information and new additions to information to the Internet and Web and the world of "Social Computing" with its "Facebook," nameless "Tweeting," Instant Messaging, Texting and more and more.

At one time it literally took eons for information to change to now when eons worth of information changes in seconds, constantly surrounding us with a reality that has changed the way we think and act. We are as much prisoners of this onrush of information as its participants and creators. Glieck's seminal work points this out.

Roberto Sedycias works as an IT consultant for ecommUS-Books