The Professor

Prof Scratcher in his normal habitat

Let’s begin with a proper introduction of Professor Scratcher and how he morphed from a normal Whidbey Islander to this shell of a man consumed with the vision of flight much in line with that phoenix from the ashes yarn. (BTW, there is no such animal as a ‘normal Whidbey’)

Prof Scratcher:

First you need to understand me a little bit so you know what background I come from.

I’m from a family of tinkerers and crafters with creative genes. I personally have an engineering background having worked most of my adult life as a process/manufacturing engineer in aerospace electronics manufacturing. By nature that job requires fixing processes, inventing new processes and a whole bunch of problem solving.

Apparently that’s his story and he’s sticking to it. Back to the good Professor defining a scratch built quadcopter

PROF- “Scratch Built” is exactly that, a quad built from purchased or home manufactured parts and pieces. Scratching like a barnyard chicken.

How is it different from Ready to Fly?

PROF- A “Ready to Fly” (RTF) comes complete or nearly complete and ready to fly out of the box. In many cases there is more to buy, which seems to be the nature of this hobby, things such as more batteries, battery chargers, first person view (FPV) goggles [more on that late] and the list goes on.

Once unboxed the flight battery is charged, the transmitter is charged and you’re ready for your first crash! Did I mention that crashing, buying more parts and fixing these things are all part of the hobby?

How and when did you get into this briar patch that we will call a “hobby”?

PROF- UMH! My first quad and how I got into it? Try to keep up Grasshopper.

I had purchased a 3D printer kit and built that device basically from scratch. (I will be using the word ‘scratch’ a lot, so get used to it.) While looking for something to print, I ran across a design for a “V-Tail” quadcopter! Oh boy I can use this hobby to start another hobby, cool. I love serial hobbies.

A few months later I had printed and built my first quadcopter frame.