Take Flight for Kids

Today Tom and I brought some of our unique vehicles to the annual Take Flight for Kids festival held at the Reid Hillview Airport.  Also exhibiting with us were tons of custom hotrod builders, model airplane enthusiasts, several FIRST Robotics team (including my high school team 604!), and many others. They were even offering free airplane rides for kids!

Speaking of which, today was a good reminder to me that at festivals like this, I have to only let people ride things that are super robust. Sadly, treescooter‘s neck was broken after a jump off a curb.

Fatigue also broke, but everyone saw that coming. I feel pretty good that it lasted so long and was named so aptly – and that I stopped kids from riding it before it really broke.

SAM was a huge hit. I didn’t get too many pictures since I was too busy making sure kids didn’t run into something/someone while driving it. At some point there was a pretty consistent line of kids waiting to ride. Then I went to charge the batteries, and after that I managed to short one of the battery packs (SAM is powered by two 4S6P packs) into itself…….. –___–‘……….. Turns out that is a very efficient way to desolder battery terminals. So that quickly put an end to SAM rides for the day, probably for the better…

All of Tom’s bike creations were a huge crowd pleaser. Early in the morning, it was clear that our booth by the food trucks was way too crowded given the steady swarm of children moving and exchanging vehicles. As soon as we moved into this open lane behind some parked cars, this is basically what it looked like for the rest of the day.

Triangle wedge bike is another one of my favorites. A strip of carpet screwed to the slope provides enough friction as a seat.