New Adventure

I don’t know how many of you know about the next adventure Chooch has arranged for the Potato Mashers. As the one he has designated as documentarian of the event, I will begin here and hopefully end up with extensive photos and some videos for everyone interested.

Chooch has reconnected with an old friend, “Potato Masher 754”; it was the UH1-H assigned to him in Vietnam and it was christened “Choo Choo’s Train”. The new owner of “754” has invited some of us that were part of 754’s history to come to South Carolina for a reunion honoring the 54 year history of our relationship.

I see this as a very rare event indeed. Not that many of the Hueys that survived Vietnam are flying today and fewer still are the pilots that flew her ( yes I still think of our Hueys as feminine ). I expect that the feeling of sitting at the controls of 754 in flight after all these years will be beyond my abilities to express. But I hope to have the chance to try. And no, I have not flown more than two hours in any helicopter since 1970. What could possibly go wrong?

As event documentarian I decided that I will need some new tools for the process. Like a camera gun to provide some stability to the hand held videos I am planning. After shopping online and greatly disappointed at the options and delivery times, I decided (as usual) that I could easily make one. So, here we go.

Day one:

After a deep dive through my scrap wood piles, I assembled the necessary pieces and dove in. When the smoke cleared this was what my shop looked like.

Amongst the chaos is, R to L: My new work bench. The glue up of the butt section on the main beam. The glue up of  one of the pistol grips. And finally, the other pistol grip mostly carved.  Time to clean up!

Day two:

From this point on it was just a matter of removing material from the various pieces until it looked done. The plan was to permanently attach only the front pistol grip. Then drill out most of it to accept the table top tripod I use for my time lapse sequences. I shrink wrapped the folded tripod and poured epoxy in the hole. 

Luckily, I was able to remove the tripod after it all cured. Now all I had to do was hack off all unnecessary wood.

Day three:

Here’s the resulting pieces in their approximate locations.

Then it was just a matter of drilling holes for knockdown bolts & nuts. I also added some velcro to keep the tripod in place during those times requiring inverted recording. Then I decided that I should provide the ability to move the middle grip, so I drilled multiple connecting holes. The tripod came with a blue tooth camera trigger so I put a piece of velcro on the beam for that too.

Day four:

Here’s the final result.

It is way too bulky but I figure it will work for this trip. It will be easy to hack down to fit my body and using it will show me where I need to trim. The beam is Wenge donated by Rock at Colin’s shop and the rest is baltic birch.

That is the last thing I need for the trip. Time to pack and clean house.

Melody and Eli are flying in this Friday and we are meeting in Anchorage. She’ll drive my car back down and I’ll leave for Greenville, SC the next day. And…………..

The weather is perfect for it!