Boys' Toys

[weeladdie18]

Christmas is coming ...a magical time for the young boy...The happy child has a new toy,
perhaps a construction Kit or a magicians box of tricks or a junior tool kit.
A pedal car or a new bicycle......

The major problem is that someone else has to teach the child how to use or play with his new toy.
The child sees strange shaped parcels entering the house and searches high and low for
their secret hiding place..... memories of a mis-spent youth.

I remember many new boys toys or hand me downs were not given to the young boy at Christmas.
Some times the boy was given a starting fund and had to save his money to purchase his toy..
Model yachts , real sailing dingies. ...I always shop using a credit card and pay the bill at the
end of the month ,before I run up any interest....I watched a youth buying a wind surfer or sailboard
he paid by credit card and called the card his " Plastic Santa "........" Live now and pay at Christmas "
were his words.
Getting back to the thread...We went to see Auntie on Boxing day. She gave me a model helicopter
with a launching handle and a " Flying Saucer Rotor " ..... this toy was originally sold as a flying saucer
The idea was to pull the string of the launching handle and make the rotor rise to the ceiling and
remain spinning on the ceiling of the room. ...To support the weight of the helicopter fuselage
the toy required a larger rotor.....This aircraft went for its test flight in aunty's sitting room.
The test flight did not go as planned .... the aircraft flew across the room and
landed on the Chrismas tree beside the Fairy ....Fortunately the lights on the Christmas tree
continued to flash their warning to the helicopter......

My Uncle had served in the R.A.F. ...when they neeed them.....There was a suggestion that the
Pilot of the helicopter had visited the Christmas Fairy for some flying lessons.............weeladdie

[moonshadow]

You'll shoot yer eye out kid...

[Fred in Skirts]

You'll shoot yer eye out kid...

I never did!! And I played with JARTS the lawn dart toy that was removed later from all of the stores because some kid caused great injury to his friend by throwing the dart high in the air and letting it come down where it may. Hit his friend in the head and had to be removed in the hospital, caused lasting damage to his friend.

[weeladdie18]

Never saw a lawn dart....I suppose if we carried out a modern risk assessment on many Boys Toys
they might be considered dangerous...A control line model aircraft with a diesel engine ...
One kid flew one at school ...the plane flew round in circles with the operator standing in the
middle of the circle....All the watchers stood in a circle outside the flying aircraft.
What could go wrong ?

Shoot The Crow..... small time cardboard replica of a fairground air rifle range,....plastic model crows
The boy fired at the crow with a boys double barrelled cork firing shotgun.....we fired road ballast
through the barrel of the gun'

I had a steel crossbow with an elastic " Bow String " which fired wooden bolts with rubber sucker tips.
Sharpen up the wooden bolt and fire it at any suitable target

One kid was in Cyprus while his father was on Military Service ...he showed us how to make
crude native weapons....

We played on the farms....Big storage tanks of petrol and Diesel with no locks...at the time
of the early troubles in Ireland we experimented with making our own Molatoff Cocktails....

For our explosives, we raided a fathers Farm 12 bore shot gun ammunition store and cut up the
live ammunition with our pen knives.

Some may suggest we were lucky to survive our youth.......I refuse to clarify exactly what my
experiences were when I was working in what is claimed to be
the most dangerous industry in the world. ..............weeladdie....

[weeladdie18]

I saw a large Boys Toy when I was driving home across Goonhilly ....To my right were the 1960's
satellite tracking stations, and what is believed to be a space station commanders training school.....

A friend of mine spoke of this site......A gentleman sat down at a computer keyboard and said to group
of us ..." ever seen this....A chart of the local shipping area " .... all the ships position indicators were
flashing on the screen.....a prompt indicated full information regarding each vessel in turn.

If one has access to a Single side band scanner and a restricted V.H.F. scanner the whole radio comms
system indicates the shipping movements.................

One office is connected by landline to thee masts and the position of the radio transmission
is indicated on the screen.......The main requirement is S.A.R. ......
This system operates Half way across the water to France....Local Civvy S.A.R. was third level tasking for
the Navy....This has now been transferred to R.A.F. on the North Cornish Coast......should be seeing
some yellow helos when the government can afford the paint.

I was thinking of this whole boys toys story when I looked to the left and saw another boys toy.
I turned the car round and went back and stopped on a track. I could not believe my eyes .
Beside me was a 6 LX

[Happy-N-Skirts]

We made weapons: A piece of 1/2" SCH 40 PVC pipe about four feet long with a paper cone the diameter of the inside of the pipe taped to a short piece of sharpened wire. Bicycle spokes cut about 2" each. It makes a ferocious blow gun and you can get accurate with it with a little practice. We would make a "quiver" from a can with a string tied around our waists and hold a lot of darts. We shot birds and lizards with them.

We made guns by drilling a small hole in a 1/2" pipe cap and screwing on a short length of galvanized pipe. We would insert a firecracker fuse through the hole with the firecracker in the "chamber", followed by a wad of tissue paper and a marble small enough to fit inside the pipe. Stuff another piece of tissue in the end to prevent the marble from rolling out. They were a deadly combination, especially on toads.

Mix up a quart glass bottle half full of water and add drain cleaner or lye and some aluminum foil. Place a balloon over the end and watch it swell up, then tie it off. I think the gas inside is hydrogen which is lighter than air and explosive (Hindenburg). Put it in a paper bag, light it, and release it. In a short time it will blow up in a big fireball. We were lucky not to spill the very hot caustic liquid on us or have a premature explosion that could immolate us.

We made many sharp objects, had BB and pellet guns we used against birds and lizards. We also had bows and arrows and shot .22's into the swimming pool and dove in to retrieve the bullets.

It was a fun childhood and we survived it somehow.

[Kirbstone]

At my boarding school we had a lake in the grounds and in Summer term we boated on it. In Arts & Crafts I fashioned a balsa Catamaran with a brasso tin slung between the hulls. This was charged with a mixture of Sodium chlorate and sugar, used by the 'explosives committee' for blowing a hole in the orchard wall, but for me it functioned as rocket fuel.
A taper was hastily inserted into the rearward-facing mouth of the brasso tin and the little catamaran whooshed across the lake at warp speed for a few seconds. Impressive!

Tom

[Sinned]

Whilst at Grammar School one or two friends and I manufactured a small amount ( a few ccs ) of nitroglycerine liquid in our spare time. The Chemistry teacher freaked out. Of course, unbeknownst to him we had already figured out how to neutralise it.. I believe we added a small amount of liquid clay from the art department and some sawdust and alkali. The resultant mix was then burnt IIRC. But then we were the cream of the science students and as is usual for teenagers convinced of our immortality. Not sure now if we were smart or just lacking common sense. It's a wonder we survived our teens!

[weeladdie18]

Dennis , you could have become a rocket scientist.....We got into experiments with liquid fertiliser at the time of the troubles.
We had a plan to blow up a wall which had a few stones missing....

We considered it was possible to stuff dead fish with calcium carbide and feed the fishes to sea birds , so that they would blow up
in the sky........

A more advanced project was to offer seals vast quantities of this type of food , so that they inflated themselves to a very large
size and rose out of the sea and disappeared over the horizon like barrage balloons......

[weeladdie18]

We made weapons: A piece of 1/2" SCH 40 PVC pipe about four feet long with a paper cone the diameter of the inside of the pipe taped to a short piece of sharpened wire. Bicycle spokes cut about 2" each. It makes a ferocious blow gun and you can get accurate with it with a little practice. We would make a "quiver" from a can with a string tied around our waists and hold a lot of darts. We shot birds and lizards with them.

We made guns by drilling a small hole in a 1/2" pipe cap and screwing on a short length of galvanized pipe. We would insert a firecracker fuse through the hole with the firecracker in the "chamber", followed by a wad of tissue paper and a marble small enough to fit inside the pipe. Stuff another piece of tissue in the end to prevent the marble from rolling out. They were a deadly combination, especially on toads.

Mix up a quart glass bottle half full of water and add drain cleaner or lye and some aluminum foil. Place a balloon over the end and watch it swell up, then tie it off. I think the gas inside is hydrogen which is lighter than air and explosive (Hindenburg). Put it in a paper bag, light it, and release it. In a short time it will blow up in a big fireball. We were lucky not to spill the very hot caustic liquid on us or have a premature explosion that could immolate us.

We made many sharp objects, had BB and pellet guns we used against birds and lizards. We also had bows and arrows and shot .22's into the swimming pool and dove in to retrieve the bullets.

It was a fun childhood and we survived it somehow.

As far as can remember the Hindenburg Disaster was a helium filled balloon which was tied to a mast....There was a problem
with static electricity which caused a spark and an explosion......

If I remember correctly, when a helo is in flight, and unwinds the winch wire, there is a heavy charge of static electricity in the wire.
There is a whip wire on the hook which must be used to discharge the wire before the divers feet touch the ground or the sea
or the deck of a boat.

[weeladdie18]

One of the interesting toys was a model rocket filled with water and pressurised with a bicycle pump. A trail of water vapour
was passed from the rocket as it flew towards the stars.....

[beachlion]

..... As far as can remember the Hindenburg Disaster was a helium filled balloon which was tied to a mast....There was a problem
with static electricity which caused a spark and an explosion......

I suggest you do a little research on this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster

[weeladdie18]

..... As far as can remember the Hindenburg Disaster was a helium filled balloon which was tied to a mast....There was a problem
with static electricity which caused a spark and an explosion......

I suggest you do a little research on this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster

Than you for your reference Beach Lion ...The report and photo does show that the balloon was trying to dock onto the mast
A possible way of generating the transfer of a static charge....

There is plenty of information in the reference file. ........
Scientists suggest that the winch wire cenario would generate 30,000 volts......

[crfriend]

As far as can remember the Hindenburg Disaster was a helium filled balloon which was tied to a mast....There was a problem with static electricity which caused a spark and an explosion.

There are two problems here. One, the lifting gas used in Hindenburg was hydrogen, not helium, and two, it wasn't an explosion it was rapid burning.

Hydrogen is actually a superior lifting gas in that it's 1/4 the weight of helium. It's also fairly cheap to manufacture compared to helium which is in very short supply, seemingly from a single well in the US. Hindenburg was originally specified to fly with helium, but the gas could not be procured from the sole source, so hydrogen was the natural backup gas.

In proper operation, there is precisely zero free hydrogen floating around in an airship. None. The only source for any is a leak from either a lifting sac or from plumbing. (Note that in a zeppelin gas must be occasionally valved off into the atmosphere to correct for pressure differences due to altitude, so at higher altitudes some is intentionally released, but that's to outside the outer envelope and from there it rises harmlessly into the atmosphere.

Precisely what happened to Hindenburg in her last moments is still murky, but what's certain is that something sparked a flame at the upper aft end of the airship and a fire started. The outer metallised coating of the exterior fabric was aluminised and aluminium burns readily if there's enough surface area. These are actually the flames that are visible in the film of the incident. Hydrogen and oxygen burn with a temperature that's in the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum and are mostly invisible to the human eye. Modern conjecture is that an internal bracing stay snapped from the Captain's rough handling in the mooring attempt, and the snapping stay ruptured one of the gas cels which would have resulted in a hydrogen-rich environment near the outer skin. The night of the accident was electrically active from the atmosphere, and it's likely that when one of the mooring lines was dropped to the ground (both of which were wet) it discharged the ship and a spark at the aft dorsal spine ignited both the free hydrogen and the outer skin. The demise at that point was inevitable, and quick.

More people survived than perished -- and this is something usually not mentioned. The burn injuries were all from the outer skin of the ship and not from the hydrogen fire topside. One of the ground-crew was nearly drowned when a ballast tank of water emptied onto him from the dying ship.

[weeladdie18]

I saw an old tock tock the other day .... a water jet drive boat.....Basically an inlet and outlet pipe in the water at the stern of the model boat....fastened to a diaphragm which is heated by a tablet or meths reservoir......This produces sucking and blowing in the jet pipes..
The tock tock is the noise of the heated double diaphram expansion and contraction........