The Whirly Bird Story - Part I

When we were kids growing up, my brother Gregg and I used to go to the Devonshire Little Store in San Carlos on our bikes and buy candy and balsa wood airplanes.  At that time, balsa planes were $0.29 to $0.59 depending on the features.  We would play with them for hours, and invariably we would get them stuck in a tree or crash them into something. 

Many times the tail would get lost, as they were held in with a friction fit.  Mom and dad were not smokers, but they always had matchbooks around, so we would cut the cover off a matchbook, and use it as a replacement tail.  Our little plane was now a flying advertisement for Bimbo’s 365 club or some other restaurant that had the class to give away matchbooks.  Who does that now?

Insert a jump cut here to the recent present (like Stanley Kubrick’s famous bone to spaceship jump cut in Space Odyssey 2001)

Recently I was out near the 7th green at Glen Annie Golf Course  in Santa Barbara, California late in the afternoon and I was by myself hitting practice balls.  There was a light wind, and I was not sure what direction it was coming from exactly.  I had a eureka moment when I realized it would be really cool to have a small wind vane on the cart that would show me which direction the wind was blowing from.  I knew that the rules of golf prohibit something like this, but I also knew that recreational golfers don’t really care about those pesky details.  Amateurs play with range finders that include slope readings, and a wind vane provides a visual that everyone can enjoy.

My son Anthony had recently acquired a 3D printer, and I thought I had found the perfect thing to print with it.

We had a family trip planned to Hawaii, and I knew we would be golfing.  Once there, we went to the local Ace Hardware in Waimea on the big island, and I invested in several small balsa wood airplanes that were now priced at $7.00!  I fashioned a wind vane from one of the fuselages that I modified heavily, and installed only the tail.  I was reminded of how we used the matchbooks as tails when we were young and thought what a great promotional item this would be.  The tail could be used as the canvas to put logos and advertising!  This would make  for a great giveaway at golf tournaments.

I used some landing gear wire to craft a rough mount that went up through the fuselage at just the right spot so that the fuselage and tail could spin around with the wind.

My son Anthony and son-in-law Ben Massey headed for the Mauna Kea resort to try out the crude prototype.  The beverage cart driver saw it at the turn and said, "That's a really cool idea".  That was all the verification we needed.

The prototype worked flawlessly and really helped us understand the tricky winds blowing there on the coast.  Anthony managed to shoot a blistering 76, which was amazing.  Anthony is a great player, but some of the credit is due to the Whirly Bird prototype telling him where the wind was coming from.

To be continued…