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Hi; My name is Ed Falk, and this my audition tape for the Discovery Channel.
I guess I should tell you a little bit about myself. I've always loved makings things
ever since I was a little kid. I used to go scrounge things out of my father's closet.
I'd take cardboard, coat-hangar wire, anything I could get out of the basement.
And I'd make stuff: control panels for space ships, time machines,
or whatever else that a six-year-old makes.
I'll show you a couple of my favorite tools from those days.
This is a flat-head screwdriver.
This is a phillips-head screwdriver.
My mom wasn't really happy about this.
Of course, I've moved on a bit since then.
I'll say a little bit more about myself. Everybody has their hobbies.
My hobby is collecting skills. I like to learn new things.
So I am a scuba diver, I have a commercial pilot's license.
I learned enough about aerodynamics to write my own flight simulator software.
Woodworking, metal-working, arc-welding, you name it, I've learned it.
One of the things I like to do is carry a notebook with me and put my ideas down in it.
Most of the drawings in these pages are things I actually built.
Now the best part, of course is seeing something you designed
actually turn out the way you designed it.
These are photographs of a 32-foot geodesic dome I built for the Burning Man art festival.
The idea was to create an oasis in the middle of the desert.
And as you can see, it turned out pretty much exactly the way I envsioned it.
So what we're looking at here is another one of my projects. This is a ten-inch reflector telescope
which I designed myself. It's mostly made out of plywood and aluminum.
There's a ten-inch mirror which I ground and polished myself. The thing is almost entirely made from scratch.
Another thing is sort of my philosophy about making things: The making of the thing
is what's important to me, and not the having of the thing.
Here is the upper tube assembly. It's made out of plywood and holds the secondary mirror.
There's aluminum struts that hold it away from the mirror box.
The mirror box is all made out of plywood, with teflon bearings.
And the mirror is a ten-inch mirror which I ground and polished myself.
I also made this box to hold all the accessories.
On top of all that, a store-bought telescope could never do this:
(music)
It's the first ten-inch telescope that can fit in the trunk of a Mazda Miata
So, if you're interested in it, I call it the "Miatascope", and you can Google for "Miata Telescope"
and you'll find the plans on-line.
I posted them for anybody who's interested.
And other people have built telescopes based on these plans, and that's nice to hear.
I built it because I like the small car, and if you're into astronomy
and you have a big telescope, you have a problem.
Most of the astronomers who are serious about it have really big cars.
I set it out as my goal to make a reasonably-sized telescope and have it fit in the trunk of the Mazda Miata.
It's great, because whenever anything's going on that I want to go point a telescope at, I just throw it the car and drive off.
Mostly I use it for educational sessions. I take it local area schools
and show the kids what they can do with a telescope they built themselves.
So the latest new skill I decided to learn was welding
and of course there's no point in having a new skill if you don't have something new to do with it.
Which brings me to this.
This is what I'm working on now. You're looking at a sixteen-foot steel trailer
I welded it up myself. This is all scratch-built. This trailer
started life as a bunch of angle-iron in the back of my car.
We're looking at four days of welding right here, another day to wire it up
and I've only just begun. I'll now show you what I've got planned for it.
Here are some cad drawing I did of the project, along with my notes.
And here are some photographs of the project as it just gets under way.
My ultimate plans for the project are to build a modern-day gypsy wagon.
Except this one folds up for travel.