Folks,

TK:

Hi, Larry. It is great having you or any of the BDG boffins drop into our humble thread. Having had to deal with our son's own debilitating condition for 2 years myself I can sympathize somewhat with your own inability to exercise your passion to build and fly kites. Someone should write a computer program that designs flyable kites and then lets you test their aerodynamics in a virtual world. Perhaps there is one already?

I have done a little code work with model rocket construction many years ago. I'm no programmer. I did what I did in my best "gutter" Basic. Those programs are pretty much useless today with the demise of the brand of Basic I used. A few of them I compiled into .exe format using a cheap compiler that I downloaded from the Internet.

I have not dabbled in either Basic or model rockets in many, many years. Our son has 3 kids and is now in his thirties. Soon his boys will be interested in rockets and RC airplanes and the cycle will begin again.

The area around our place is quite wooded. Once upon a time I can remember there was a particularly
ravenous "kite eating tree" that lurked nearby the field we flew from. The tattered remains of one of my own kites or some other kid's was always dangling in the breeze from one limb or another. One summer a hurricane knocked that giant tree over and, to our dismay, after that we found that another tree was just as greedy.

A pal of mine and I built a huge box kite once and we rigged up some small lights run by batteries. We managed to get the big thing into the air one blustery night and were thrilled to read in the paper the next day that there had been the first confirmed sightings of a UFO ever in and around Lizard Lick. OK, we cannot be sure that it was our kite that caused the sightings. The line had parted and we never did track down the remains of that sturdy kite.

Dux: Here is what an impressed and incredulous C51 typed back after seeing your photo:

C51 wrote: "Dux's bass looks smashing, very impressive. I have not heard of this kit, it sounds like a great idea. Glad to hear he has straightened his rod."

Well, "It sounds like a good idea" seems to be a Canadian pun to me and everyone including Lady J and C51 is mighty pleased to hear that you have finally managed to straighten yer rod... truss rod that is.