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Cardboard Canoes

It has been 4 years since we last competed in the Cardboard Canoe races, and while we had a very sturdy boat, it was almost too sturdy. It tipped over too easy because if floated so well and was not easy for our students to control. Those freshmen who built the canoe are now seniors and are working on a new boat for this years races. Our shop has 2 entrants a senior team and a junior team. It’s exciting to see their work, and to see how far our shop has come in providing our students with the tools to make these incredible objects. A few photos below of the construction process. The event is June 12th, and I will post more info as we approach the date.

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Radio V2

Not sure why I have been so enamored with making bluetooth radios lately. My original Pi Radio still is not complete, but it’s a bit out of my hands at the moment. I purchased an old Rogers radio from England and converted it into a bluetooth radio, and it works very well. In addition to that I wanted to make my own radio using our lasercutter here in the shop and create everything in a CAD model. Today I was finalizing an updated version for my father, which includes a newly designed circuit board that is modeled in the CAD file. The new board adds a couple of diodes to help with interference from the battery pack, which was affecting the sound. I will post a more detailed writeup on the construction of the radio, but for now here are a few photos from today.

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PT

After school today I had Physical Therapy at MassGen Brigham. There is a building at 175 Cambridge Street, and the physical therapy office is on the 4th floor. During the session today, my therapist told me her husband was from Arizona. He also went to Brophy, but graduated in ’09, much after me. Small world.

I had to get home quickly after PT because of the OHNC meeting. There was a discussion regarding a proposed development on our street at 124 Leyden. I’ve already counted the voting, and it was 82% against. I will write the letter to no approve tomorrow.

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SSFC

Today we drove out to Scituate for the South Shore Flying Club annual meeting. I’d never been to a meeting before, so felt it was a good time to get involved. They had reserved the back patio at the Mill Wharf Pub, which was a pleasant place right on the water. The meeting lasted about an hour, and mainly went over the financials of the club, which appeared to be strong. Afterwards, Ash and I drove to Ikea to pick up some more items for our basement. I spent the rest of the afternoon assembling those items before relaxing on the couch.

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KIJD

Today I was back in the air in N724CA with Aaron from our club. I battled a bit of traffic on my way down to Marshfield, but was able to get there just about 8:30. We got the plane ready and departed straight out towards KIJD (Windham) in Connecticut. There were some low clouds as we got closer to KIJD, so we dropped down to about 2500′, which actually worked out since we flew the RNAV 27 from the Putnam VOR even though I did not have a hood on. We landed without incident and taxied back and took off back for Marshfield. Again we had to stay a bit low for clouds, and were eventually diverted around North Central due to some jumpers. All in all it was a comfortable and stress free flight. Aaron did a great job with the radios, and was an awesome copilot.

Afterwards, Ash and I went into the city and walked around a bit. We ended up at Mr. Dooley’s for a pint of Guinness and then stopped the the High Street Place to see what it was all about. We had a drink and a snack at The Dive Bar, which was enjoyable if not a bit expensive. The overall feeling in there was ok, I’d go back.

Landing at KGHG and Simon in Hangar 25
Ash and I taking the ferry from Eastie to Boston