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Over the weekend, the East Rand Scout District in South Africa ran a public awareness day, where every group ran a public event to show that Scouting is flourishing in the community. Some groups held parades, some met in parks, some met outside shopping centres.
(This chain reaction device was published on the 26th of June 1952 in The Scout, in John Sweet's column on page 761) Patrol Leader R. Graves, of the 15th Prestwich Woodpigeon Patrol. has designed an automatic gramophone record changer- overer (specification and blueprint herewith) and an automatic camp plate-washer-upper (not yet off the secret list).
(Many Scout rafting competitions were inspired by Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 Pacific raft expedition. This article, published in The Scout on 17 April 1952, reveals the link between the Kon-Tiki expedition and Scouting. Although Heyerdahl's theories of South American colonisation of the Pacific are generally discounted today, the expedition itself is still an inspiring story.)
In Scouting For Boys , B-P refers to the Imperial War Office's 1905 Manual of Military Engineering for more information on Pioneering. 106 years later, that same manual is freely available online, and while some chapters are not really relevant to pioneering (eg.
This weekend is a long weekend in South Africa, and the organizers of Western Cape Kontiki have taken advantage by extending the competition, giving the Scouts two nights on the water. I'll post photos if I come across any, but here are three resources that are likely to be posting photographs this weekend: South African…
Ploeg Technieken in Belgium originated the clover-leaf lashing . I've written before about using supporting jigs to hold the poles in place , but Ploeg Technieken have a YouTube channel that has this excellent video showing how it's done. The captions won't help if you don't speak Flemish (or Dutch, or Afrikaans) but the video is fairly…
The Rover Crew of 1st Benoni Sea Scouts , the Puddle Pirates, built this bridge/gateway for the East Rand District BP Sunday Parade at Arrowe Park . It is modelled after the chapel at Arrowe Park, which is also the emblem of the East Rand District .
All photos courtesy Terence Vrugtman Gilwell, Florida , is the home of Scout training in Johannesburg , and also home to the Orion Rover Crew, who led 160 Scouts from 8 troops in the West Rand District in building this raft spelling out ' Scouts SA ' at Florida Lake for BP Sunday this year.
All bridges can be classified into one of a few categories , based on how the structure supports the load. Pioneered bridges are the same, and most fall into four categories: Simple or beam bridge: this is the simplest case, a bridge where the deck itself carries the weight of the structure.
The biggest annual Scouting event in my province is Kon Tiki , a weekend rafting competition. The theme this year is ' Kon Tiki goes Green ' so I'm kicking the year off by looking at the various components of the raft and how you can reduce, re-use and recycle the various components.
Merry Christmas to all readers who celebrate next week. Here's a pioneered reindeer that might decorate your Scout hall grounds
This technique for measuring the height of an object is an old one- there is a very similar drawing in Scouting For Boys . In principle, it is very simple: by measuring the distance on the ground, we can calculate the height of the tree by comparing it to the height measured on a stave.
Nelson Mandela,first democratically elected president of South Africa and patron of Scouts South Africa died at his home in Johannesburg last night. " The international Scout movement is a world leader in youth education, and has particular relevance to the needs of youth in Africa and the emerging democracies around the globe.
drawn on iPad Mini using Paper app and Just-Mobile AluPen The Marshmallow Challenge is an indoor, patrol-based, teamwork and creativity challenge that can be run with minimal equipment and twenty minutes of time. Developed by Tom Wujec of AutoDesk (Producers of the FormIt app and AutoCAD amongst many,many others), this challenge has been used by…
51 years ago this week, this letter appeared in the ' Scout ' newspaper (24th November 1962)" "Dear Editor, during this years Summer Camp in North Devon our Troop held, as an item in the Patrol Competition, a Crazy Gadget Contest. The crazy gadget had to work as well as being as crazy as possible.
credits (clockwise from top left) Amazon , Scoutwiki , Scouts-Europe , Carton, Bricolage, Decoration Discussions around the setting out posts led me to something new: the French practice of building pioneered projects with carpentry joints instead of ropes. The construction is inspired by traditional rural furniture and farm equipment, built without nails.
After publishing last week's post on finding the midpoint of a pole , I had a few responses on the blog, and a good discussion over on 1st Facebook Scout Group , about alternate methods, and here are a few of the other methods suggested by various people.
Measuring and setting out are important in pioneering projects, but it's not always easy to use a tape measure and spirit level for measurements. Over the next few posts, I'll cover some good on-site methods for setting out a project.
Photographs courtesy Ninth Benoni Scout Group I had a chance to talk to Jacques Hulley from Ninth Benoni Scout Group on the weekend about KonTiki Chairman's Challenge . He had returned with his Scouts from the Vaal River the previous weekend, and they did well: in their first time rafting on a river , the team of…
Pioneering projects are great fun to build, and there is a good sense of accomplishment that can be achieved, but I'm always looking for a pioneering project to be a bit more useful in the long term. When I was a Troop Scouter, if a Scout proposed a project, I always looked for another angle…
Early this morning, the Scouts taking part in Chairman's Challenge started building their rafts, and recently launched them onto the Vaal River for a 17km race down the river. First Benoni's Puddle pirate Rover Crew are providing canoe escort for all the rafts on the water.
KonTiki Chairman's Challenge is an invitational competition, normally held in spring here in South Africa, open to the top 20 teams from Gauteng KonTiki . The challenge differs from year to year, but this year it consists of a raft race down the Vaal River .
photographs by Liesl de Weerd 1st Horison are a Scout group on the West Rand near Johannesburg in South Africa. This project was built as a Springbok Scout construction project. With a little inspiration from the amazing Israeli pioneering sculptures , Ruan designed and led a team of Scouts to build this structure to raise awareness…
The 'incident hike' is a pioneering exercise for the whole patrol. The general idea is that a patrol of Scouts will hike along a predetermined route, in the wilderness, in camp or in town, and solve a series of 'incidents' or 'obstacles' along the way,using pioneering equipment carried with them, or provided at the scene.
I wrote about Autodesk's Formit software a few months ago as a tool for pioneering cosntruction drawings . At the time, it was only available on iPad, but it has now launched for Android as well . Officially, it's only supported on tablets (7" or larger screen) but I was able to install it on my phone.
These photographs from Andrew Friedemann are of a run down the Umkomazi river by 1st Hillcrest Scouts in the 1980s. In the contruction photo on the left, you'll see that the rafts are made with bamboo poles. Andrew says: "On the Umkomaas we used to run the river from Hella-Hella Bridge to Riverside over 2…
Last year I blogged about a suspension bridge across a ravine in Kwa-Zulu Natal by 1st Hillcrest Scouts , built in 1984. At the time I only had the information from the Veld Lore newspaper to go on, but Andrew Friedemann , who was the Scouter who wrote the original article, got in touch with me and…
Engineering for Scouts 1 looked at the four different types of forces in a structure, and Engineering for Scouts 2 looked at bracing a structure for stability. This week we'll look at the forces in a structure, understanding where they go and what they're doing to the structure.
Engineering for Scouts 1 covered tension,compression,bending and torsion - the different types of force that a structure can experience. This post looks at how structures can be braced to make them stable. So, if we start with the simplest possible project, a flagpole, we will see there are three things we can do to brace it…
This series of posts looks at the basics of structural engineering, and how it is useful to you in designing pioneering projects. A structure needs to be built so that it can deal with the loads that are put on to it.
Freakin Sweet Knots ( http://knots.freakinsweetapps.com/ ) is a web app that generates Turkshead knots in real time, generating a 3D model on the screen with a few slider you can adjust to change the properties. I modeled a PLTU Lexden woggle , 3 leads with 5 bights, in a few seconds.
I found this drawing on a scrap of paper in amongst some notes from the founding Scouter of my old Scout Group , and I suspect this is from John Sweet's column in the Scouting magazine. "We are indebted to Mr.
Scouting has spread around the world (at last count, every country in the world except for 6 had active Scouts), and pioneering has spread with it, from forests to jungles to polar regions to open grasslands. This map summarises the timber Scouts use for pioneering around the world.
Fire Writing ' is an Israeli Scouting tradition for special occasions. Details, with instructions and drawings, are available in this post .
Disclaimer: work at heights is dangerous. This activity was supervised by an IWH certified professional from SA Rope Access . All relevant safety procedures including fall protection plans should be followed for activities involving high structures Last week I wrote about the tensegrity structures we built at Pop Bolton 2013 in Benoni.
This structure is based on the 6 strut tensegrity icosahedron , and is a relative of the tensegrity gateway I posted here before. A few tips: - All ropes should be anchored as close to the end of the struts as possible.
photo by G.W Sutcliffe, from the cover of the April 3, 1952 edition of The Scout . Note the broken stave in front of the last Scout
Building sculptural gateways with pioneered frames is an Israeli Scout tradition. Here are a few posts about it: Pioneered Animal Sculptures More Pioneered Animals Step by Step Dove Sculpture
SketchUp 2013 was released last week. Most of the drawings on this blog were produced using SketchUp, and many of them are available for download here . In 2013, there have been many tweaks to usability and appearance of the basic tools in SketchUp, as well as a new Extension Warehouse , a place for extensions and…
The theme at KonTiki this year was the Wild West, and my troop, Ninth Benoni, decided to lean towards Indians rather than Cowboys. One of our Assistant Troop Scouters, Greg Gardiner, designed this gateway, and led the Scouts in harvesting the materials and building it over the course of a few weekends.
From the Ropes and Poles archives : In 2007, a the Senior Scouts of Scouting De Veste Hasselt built this fire-heated pioneered swimming pool .
Arrowe Park hosted approximately 3,500 people over the Kontiki weekend, but the highlight, and the purpose, of the weekend was the raft flotilla. Here are some of my photographs of the rafts assembled in the bay at night. Yesterday was a good day for KonTiki on South African TV, with both the Western Cape and…
Most of the drawings on this blog have been created using SketchUp, a great, cheap 3d modeling program for Windows and Mac. There have been a few attempts to make an equally intuitive modeling app for tablets, and I think Autodesk have something very capable in their new app, Formit .
Benoni is the city which hosts Gauteng KonTiki , and the front page of the local newspaper this week featured KonTiki, along with a full page of writeup and pictures . From the article : Scouting groups from across Gauteng assembled at Arrowe Park , in Alphen Park, for a spectacle of raft-building, Scouting and Cub challenges, from April…
Gauteng Kontiki is over for another year, the rafts have all been packed away and now tents and ropes are being aired out to dry at Scout halls all over the province. I'll be posting more in the coming weeks, but the first thing is to congratulate the winners: 1st Robin Hills Silver Stallions who…
Gauteng Kontiki, the biggest annual event in South African Scouting, starts tomorrow. I'll be posting pics throughout the weekend. You can keep up with the official Kontiki website , the official Facebook page , the @ropesandpoles twitter account , and the @arrowepark instagram feed . Posts and info on previous events are under the RAFT tag on this blog.
This bamboo dome project was originally published on Ropes and Poles in 2006. Photographs and a full report on this dome built by Israeli Scouts are in the blog post .
The Skylon was a suspended tower erected at the 1951 Festival Of Britain in London. To this day, Scouting literature refers to suspended flagpoles as 'Skylons' in reference to this tower. Here is an article from the November 8, 1951 edition of THE SCOUT that shows two of the first Skylon Scout towers, built during…
Western Cape Kontiki is being held this weekend. Like last year , I'll be posting any photos and news I come across, and I recommend following @SAScout on Twitter to get the latest news.
Larry Green's Scoutpioneering.com is a new pioneering website, and is laready full of great resources, with extensive information on BSA Pioneering badge requirements , new projects , and technical advice . Larry is constantly adding new information, but my favourite part of the site is set of projects suitable for a troop night meeting .
