Skyaak Canadian Ring-Wing Glider » Skyaak R and D

Skyaak gets educated at local High School

admin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:39:34 +0000

Yesterday worked out really well. I bundled up five Skyaak units and made my way to our local High School Gymnasium for the entire morning. The gym teacher and I introduced Skyaak to Grades 9, 10 and 11 in three consecutive classes. It was a very educational experience for me to see the group dynamic in action and to watch the various reactions from the boys and girls as they worked it out.

First of all, I asked for a volunteer from the group to be my sparring partner. I showed the very basic throws, starting with a simple ‘like a dart’ with the two of us standing about 10 feet apart. Next, we moved a bit further apart and I demonstrated the ‘follow-through’ motion that is similar to any other throw.

Then we looked at the ‘finger-flicker’ technique where you use the two fingers (like a ‘peace sign’) BEHIND the foam hand-grip and then at the very last second…FLICK your fingers to beef up power without any extra exertion. The key here, and with all the throws, is to always keep the nose of the Skyaak slightly above horizontal.

I emphasized that you concentrate on throwing the front of the Skyaak and the rest will naturally follow. This tip was very well-received. (Nods of approval, lights going on.)

Next came the underhand throw where you allow the foam hand grip to roll off the fingertips, like a soft-ball pitch. The underhand throw has the potential to get the Skyaak spinning very fast on its axis, which increases power, loft and distance.
I think the kids found the analogies to other techniques/devices quite helpful.

Once we had worked our way through the basics, I encouraged everyone to experiment with their own techniques. We then split into groups and started tossing Skyaak units back and forth. I noticed that after two or three tries, the majority of the kids were making very satisfactory progress. Most important, there was a lot of excitement and laughter as they got into it. Cool!

After 10-15 minutes of ‘free-play’ we broke into groups with Hula hoops. The object was to start at a distance of about 10 feet and try to pass the Skyaak cleanly through the hoop, then gradually increase the distance. The kids seemed to really enjoy this. I saw one group actually tossing their hoop into the air and then aiming at a moving target with their Skyaak. A bit more challenging for sure, but I saw a few successful executions!

After this we reconvened in circular formations of about six kids each. Each group had a few Skyaak units that they passed around the circle. The sequence was: make eye contact with the person to the left, throw Skyaak. Pivot to make eye contact with the person on the right and then catch incoming, etc.

I asked the group what would be a good name for this and one guy immediately shouted “Around the World”. Works for me!

At that point everyone was warmed up and pretty familiar with the basic throwing and catching techniques. Rock it!

Time to get serious…we split the group in half, evenly dispersing boys and girls to make two fairly well-matched teams. One team donned colored bibs. Enter EXTREME SKYAAK! This is when the gym teacher stepped up to establish a few basic rules. The ’server’ starts behind the first white line with their Skyaak, to start the action. Three steps are allowed while in possession, the opposition is only allowed within four feet of a player with a Skyaak. Play was fast and furious, with lots of on-court heroics. Those kids are very competitive.

To summarize, once we covered the basics and established a familiarity with the Skyaak dynamic, the ensuing game of EXTREME SKYAAK was a total blast enjoyed by all. It was fantastic to work out the logistics of introducing Skyaak to all the kids (about 70 in all) bearing in mind the balance between demonstration and letting the participants experiment, have fun and try out their own unique twist on Skyaak. I would say that the whole thing was a complete success and well worth the effort. Thanks to the gym teacher, staff and of course the students for helping out with this. You guys rock!

Skyaak to debut at local High School

admin — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:56:02 +0000

A few days ago I called our local High School Gym teacher to ask about coming in to do a Skyaak demo with her kids. I was happy to hear that not only would I be welcome to come in to demonstrate Skyaak moves, techniques and drills with grade 9’s, but also grade 11’s and 10’s. We’ll demo the different types of throws and catches, then go into disciplines.
We’ll have hula hoops for ‘Accuracy Throws’. You just keep backing away further each time until you qualify the last clean throw through the hoop.

Object of ‘Accuracy Throw’ is to make a clean pass through hula hoop.

We’re going to split into groups of five to form circles. Then we’ll have 4 Skyaak units that go in sequence clockwise around the circle. Maybe call that ‘Snatch Throw’n'Catch’. The idea is to have one less Skyaak than number of participants to create that little lag so there’s time to pivot, in order to receive incoming.Another demo will be ‘Long Bomb’ (football term) where you throw a unit to a running partner- you have to aim ahead of the person who is running so they can snatch it without changing their stride.

Incoming! A split second after this shot, a successful completion!

There’s really lots of variations, formations that can be worked out as we go. We’ll see how that works out.

The teacher has happily agreed to catch highlights on video and stills so I will have something tangible to take away from the event.

This is the kind of pro-active attitude we must have to take Skyaak to the next level.

Skyaak: Fun for kids of all ages!

Visually Stunning UFO Music Vid!

admin — Sat, 16 May 2009 14:14:08 +0000

I recently hooked up with a guy named Michael Wysmierski from Brazil who has created a thrill ride of a video called simply “UFO”.

“UFO” features not only an original musical treatment of the subject, but also some very cool visuals. I think you will enjoy this very creative project. I certainly am. Warrants a second and third watch!

You can follow Michael’s latest creative adventures on Twitter, and you may also want to check out his YouTube channel.

Skyaak Winging its Way to UK

admin — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:44:08 +0000

Skyaak winging its way to Coolest Gadgets HQ in UK

Several months ago a mutual friend introduced me to Al Carlton, owner of www.coolestgadgets.com . Skyaak was featured on the popular website and created quite a buzz. Several hundred visitors swarmed www.skyaak.com and a healthy percentage purchased a DIY deuce, which if you have been following along, you know is the download-able do-it-yourself model that you can (download), laminate, cut-out, customize, build and fly for the one-time cost of a mere $2.00. I always encourage folks to build as many as they want. I’ve pointed out that the somewhat elaborate construction process gets de-mystified after the first time. Believe me, you will find it a lot easier and quicker the second time around.

Just in the past few days, Al mentioned that he was interested in creating a Skyaak Contest and also maybe generating some publicity for what he calls “a cool product”.

The Universe Loves Speed and Decisiveness!

Not one to procrastinate, I immediately packaged up a Skyaak Model 3 sampler kit and fired it off to Coolest Gadgets HQ in the UK. The package is winging its way over the pond as we speak!

Here’s the photo that Al published on Coolest Gadgets a few months ago:

Lt: Skyaak DIY deuce units rest on templates, Rt: Inventor w. unit a split second after hand-launch

Based on the fantastic results we enjoyed the first time around with Coolest Gadgets, we’re pretty excited about the next CG adventure, so STAY POSTED!

Skyaak Over America: Flying to California

admin — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:49:46 +0000

Fast (Red, White and Blue) Skyaak

My grandfather, may he rest in peace, was a lobster fisherman on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. So was my great grandfather before him. So the instinct to cast a well-baited hook into the depths in hope of hauling in a good catch is hard-wired into my DNA.

No wonder I am so interested in social media like Twitter, Facebook and of course my faithful blog.
It’s a very similar head-space to bobbing on the surface of deep ocean waters with lobster pots just waiting to be hauled to the surface teeming with the catch of the day.

Now that I think about it, the analogy is a bit shaky. I’m not comparing my loyal customers and friends to crustaceans. Although some of you guys have a tough outer shell, laugh out loud!

Glancing up at the title of this post, I can see that I am getting way off topic so I guess I better reel it in, eh?
Just a few short weeks ago I met a very interesting person named Debbie Yates via Twitter…or was it Facebook? Doesn’t matter, the point is, we really connected, big time.

We have a lot of common interests, specifically we are both artists who are interested in green technology, multi-media and (big surprise) aeronautical design. By this time we have Tweeted back and forth many times, exchanged e-mails and chatted a bit on Skype. Turns out this gal is uber-connected. You might even call her a “Maven” based on the definition Malcolm Gladwell outlines in his fabulous best-seller “The Tipping Point”.

Every time I connect with her, Debbie reveals yet another amazing connection that she wants to share with me. She has explained to me that she has broad experience in aeronautical design…I won’t go into the details here -some of it is a bit sensitive- other than to say she talks the talk and walks the walk! Debbie went ahead and posted one of my videos “How to Cut out and Build your Skyaak DIY deuce” on her blog, as well as another video that shows the unit in flight.

I am so impressed with her credibility that I have gone ahead and shipped her a Skyaak Model 3 sample and the package is winging its way to San Francisco as we speak. This was a decision that I made about three days ago and the package went into the mail yesterday. The universe loves speed and decisiveness!

Over the past couple of years I’ve shared the Skyaak design with quite a few different people, with wildly swinging results ranging from admiration to derision. I must admit I have had some faltering moments when I bought into the negativity and then along comes someone like Debbie Yates who immediately recognized the aeronautical merits of this design. So much for the cynics!

You know the old adage “There’s always an infinite number of reasons why you cannot do something, but only ONE why you can. Because you believe it!” OK, maybe I made that up, but you get the point. Let me tell you, it never hurts to JV with other people who share your conviction and are eager to help you with your Passion Project because they recognize a kindred spirit with an ingenious idea.

In fact, this happy meeting of the minds can be the critical lynch-pin that ignites your idea to propel it past the “Tipping Point”.

Twitter Tips from Joe Public

admin — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:14:53 +0000

Source: Inspired Magazine

Twitter is great for keeping up with what your friends are doing, thinking and sharing. It’s also a terrific tool for meeting new people who share your interests, due to the fact that you can launch specific searches for people in certain keyword groups. You can check in to wefollow.com to register your tags, or interests within a whole smorgasbord of choices. That way, anyone doing a search for people within a certain niche will find you, check out your profile and if it’s a good fit, expect a follow.

For example I just visited wefollow.com, chose the ‘inventor’ category and decided to follow about ten people based on a leisurely browse through their bios and Twitter pages.

How easy can it get?

I am pretty sure based on past experience that the majority of these folks will return my follow because I come across as such a nice guy, (this is not merely a clever ruse, I really AM a nice guy…) plus I have a decent ratio of follows (358) to followers (444) and have posted 1204 Tweets at last count. I’m no Power-Tweeter but the trajectory is forming a healthy ascending arc.

For me, the coolest thing about Twitter is that you get a pretty accurate reading of people based on the quality and quantity of their Tweets. Another key feature is the ‘responsiveness’ of your followers. It’s fairly obvious who your friends are when suddenly you find yourself in the Twitter spotlight with people tracking your Tweets and posting their own reciprocal remarks and re-Tweeting you.

It’s good manners to engage by responding to Tweets that catch your eye as well. Wall-flowers on Twitter do not usually tend to do that well. You may as well get out and mingle, because that’s when the Twitter magic starts to happen!

A cautionary note: please keep your blatantly self-promotional Tweets to a ratio of about one out of ten or so. There’s really nothing more annoying than people who are constantly nagging you to buy a product when there are so many other options to share in this medium.

Oh yeah, another tip from a regular Joe Public: do NOT contaminate my Twitter experience by posting a whole whack of Tweets at the same time. I’ve seen instances where someone has a bad case of the TwitteRuns and spews out a whole page of (usually boring) updates at once. Grounds for an immediate un-follow! Pace yourself and dole out your updates over the day so you don’t come across as a bit of a Twitterverse space hog.

Another weird thing that I’ve noticed is when one entity posts under a network of aliases. Maybe that should read “aliASSes”. Like, suddenly there will be a dozen or more posts that are all the same that appear with different avatars. Well, DOH! Isn’t that fairly obvious? Bad, bad boy.

Smells like another reason for an un-follow.

To end on a positive note, in my personal (somewhat limited) experience with Twitter-only been active for a couple of months now- I really have hooked up with some mighty fine people who are capable of carrying on meaningful conversations. Isn’t that what it’s all about? I for one would lose interest in a flash if this were not the case. Happily, the Twitterverse has attracted a lot of very high-quality people who are there to engage with other equally credible sorts. That’s the huge appeal for me.

Have you had a positive experience with Twitter?

Have you even tried it out yet?

Can you imagine the benefits?

Got any Twitter experience that you would like to share?

Fire me a comment…good or bad, I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are on this.

Skyaak Night Model over Berekley Campus

admin — Sat, 09 May 2009 18:20:10 +0000

What follows is a short but exquisitely sweet video clip that was shot by my good friend Fred at Berekley Campus. He used a Flip Camera for this project and you will see how nice the resolution is. A shout out to Fred for this, great job!

To quote Fred from his Youtube post, “Here’s a little bit of night flight with my new Skyaak Model 3 with the light kit. Flight is great, but more than that, this thing looks great at night and was surprisingly easy to catch (especially for people that had never thrown a Skyaak before.)”

Distributed by Tubemogul.

Skyaak.com Near Death Experience

admin — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:16:38 +0000

Yesterday was NOT the easiest!

Near Death Experience by Iona 2006

I simply wanted to include a snippet of code that would make my blog posts re-Tweet-able and that’s when the problem started.

Without going into too much detail (it is still painful to think about, even now) suffice to say it was a SNAFU.

What was formerly normal suddenly wasn’t.

In fact, I ended up in so much trouble that I was locked out of my own admin area, couldn’t even log in!

At that point I must confess I was pretty miserable and stressed out.

Thing is, we have a couple of promotions coming up and having a defunct website was not a viable option!

In a moment of mental clarity, I went looking for help at the Wordpress.org Forum.

In under ten minutes I had a response to my dilemma. A very kind gentleman named John Nasta swung into action via the excellent forum and 20-odd posts later (over a period of almost six hours) we had everything sorted out.

Lesson learned: Do not mess with functions/php EVER again on the coding side. In the “Manhattan” theme template, this is one rather vulnerable spot that, when altered in the least, can lead to big bad problems.

On the bright side, I am here to tell you that I was more than impressed with the friendly, patient (above all, patient!) attitude that John showed throughout the process of nursing my website back to glowing health AKA full functionality. With mentors like John Nasta, I can clearly see why Wordpress.org is one of the fastest growing user-friendly interfaces on the planet.

There’s nothing like staring down a real-time meltdown with a live remote fixer-upper to reinforce one’s confidence in the Wordpress operating platform.

So kudos to my new friend John, for seeing me through the ‘episode’.

I have expressed my gratitude to this generous guy through e-mail and now want to reiterate in this space.

Anyone who is interested in hiring a Wordpress developer need look no further than John Nasta.

I visited his website @ johnnasta.com and was also very impressed with the high quality of his photographic work. I would invite you to pop in to see for yourself. Very high end images, with amazing resolution and exquisite composition.

It is a great relief to see the patient (Skyaak.com) restored to glowing health. Pulse and temperature are normal, all vitals looking good.

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Short ‘n’ Sweet Skyaak DIY deuce Work-Out!

mrgaudet — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:55:25 +0000

It’s pretty hard to imagine what a glider might look like gliding without seeing it airborne. So I invited a couple of buddies of mine over one afternoon to work it out with their DIY deuce units and took the opportunity to put together a few short video clips. The video shown here is typical of the many throws and catches between us (short and sweet.):

Click to see short 'n' sweet video of DIY deuce in action!

Charley also decided to build his own deuce today. It took him about 15 minutes from the word go and he was ready to launch his freshly-minted unit on its maiden voyage!

If you want to experience the sensation of Skyaak ring-wing flight before your very eyes, you can right now.

Grab the Skyaak DIY ‘deuce’ model that you can print on regular 8.5″ x 11″ paper, dope with clear tape, customize, cut-out, build and fly for the one-time cost of $2.00. Just remember to make a copy of your download before you cut it out so you can go on to build a whole fleet if you want!

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TRIBES by Seth Godin :I’m a fan.

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:28:36 +0000

A few months ago I received this book in the mail from a friend.

I devoured the slim but delicious morsel in three evenings.

‘Tribes’ by Seth Godin is one book you will never forget, if you are the type of person who secretly nurtures the belief that you have leadership qualities.

In ‘Tribes’, Godin goes into very persuasive arguments to convince the reader that there are readily available tools at our fingertips that we can fire up to test his thesis at any given moment.

The coolest thing about this book is that Godin has his finger pressed right on to the pulse of what is happening in today’s high-tech communication-driven world. Most notably, he details the advantages of tools like blogging, Twitter and the internet in general.

He disses the notion that bloggers blogging on their blogs are nothing more than self-absorbed navel-gazers. In clear, precise language Godin reveals the reason why millions (billions?) of people are feeling more tuned in, connected and personally empowered by the vast potential of this brave new IT world.

The title (Tribes) and the sub-title (We Need You to Lead Us) is in itself a revelation.

There is a certain humility and welcoming attitude there that appeals.

I guess it boils down to this: Would you rather be a leader or a follower? Or both? All three options are viable, one is no better than the other, but you have to make a choice. Or else you might get stuck living kind of a dull life.

It’s all about making that choice to excel at what you do so you feel some fire in your gut, some true-grit enthusiasm that fuels your efforts. In whatever you do.

Can you honestly say that you tried your best and took steps toward your goal(s) today?

In my own experience I have found that the world generally supports and encourages enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is a potent vaccination against discouragement.

Sure, there WILL be setbacks and screw-ups. That is a given.

Keep your held held high, keep that sparkle in your eye and a spring in your step. Your positive attitude is about the only thing that will ride you over the speed-bumps you encounter.

Because that’s all they are.

Temporary blips on your path to success.

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