Flight of the ‘Rangs

We needed a wide open space to test the boomerangs we designed and built. Perhaps we were a bit optimistic about the flight capabilities, but nevertheless we chose the park and took my dog with us for a walk.

The spot we chose for flight test was in the center where we figured we could throw in two different directions, one into the slight breeze and the other one in the same direction as the wind current.

My three-winged piñata, as I christened the milk jug, yogurt container, paper-mâché boomerang, performed as I expected. It sailed great, didn’t return and hurt if it hit anyone. If I’d filled it with treats my dog would have had a good reason to sink her teeth into it. It made for a great game for as long as she wanted to fetch.

My honey’s more traditional style boomerang had wider wings, a longer wing span and the cardboard made it more rigid. On his first throw, the ‘ran soared out, made a turn and then flopped to the ground.

“That was probably a fluke, the wind caught it.” He obviously wanted a no-arguments win.

He threw in the same direction as the wind and had the same result except this time the ‘rang soared out, made the turn and came back part way before landing gracefully.

I hugged him. Yes I’m a good sport. “Your design is the clear winner for boomerang qualities.”

We took turns throwing our designs and the dog played along too. We had to call an end to the sport when my boomerang stuck up in a tree and his bent. My honey thought of design modifications. I’m betting we’ll repeat this date many times. My honey caught the design and boomerang throwing bug.

THE END

Building a Boomerang

Our design date was a challenge to make a boomerang that will fly from scrap and trash. Having fund and environmental awareness can happily coexist especially when we can use items that often become trash for our projects.

My honey remarked, “This project would be easier if I could carve mine out of wood.” He made a good point and echoed some of the arguments against cleaning up our collective industrial act. Rethinking how we do things when old ways work efficiently takes time, effort and often money.

We vowed our project would only require our time and effort to have fun. We spread our materials across the living room floor: milk jugs, newspapers, pie tins, twigs and other assorted junk. Even though we were pretending this wasn’t a competition, we both knew we wanted to create a boomerang that would fly and return to us. Yes we want to win and therefore didn’t work together just observed and made occasional comments.

He worked on a design with layers of cardboard and plastic that looked like a traditional boomerang. My design is based on three blades that I hope will fly like a helicopter. We agreed I excelled at creative use of materials including a milk jug, yogurt cups, shiny-paper advertisements and a flour-water paste.

However I’m not sure my contraption will even fly; it ended up looking like a piñata, perhaps because I painted it purple with left-over paint. I expect extra kudos for using the paint because theoretically we should use up paint rather than discarding. I do have hope. I’ve watched videos of people playing with piñatas. They usually fly well and make a great weapon just like the boomerang was originally used.

What I like best about this type of date is that it happens in segments with extra time spent together. Tomorrow - the test flight.

THE END