Besides distance, Brian really likes to play Aerobie golf. He started playing Frisbee golf when Dr. Stancil E. D. Johnson's Frisbee--a practitioner's manual and definitive treatise arrived at Christmastime 1975. This was a couple of years before prepared courses came to his neighborhood park, and a large part of the enjoyment was blazing a trail and improvising routes around the park in various seasons.
Frisbees were okay, but they sort of stuck to earth too much. Those who thrive on team sports grew to enjoy freestyle, guts, or ultimate. Brian fractured his wrists playing ultimate in 1983 when an opponent sprinted under him while he was airborne trying to make a catch. It still pains him to watch ultimate games.
When the Aerobie A-13 arrived in his local bookstore in 1984, Brian realized this was a very special thing--with no great effort it could overfly two side-by-side ultimate games. With a few days practice, it could overfly two end-to-end ultimate games. Suddenly, the joy of improvising routes across thousands of campus acres had an enabling technology.
Unfortunately, a student budget quickly slowed progress toward an evolved Aerobie golf game. The A-13 was a bit like a ballistic missile, long on range and not much in the way of agility. Too many A-13's were lost to trees and points beyond line of sight to afford much more skill-building.
The next year, the good folks at Superflight released the A-10, fifty grams of aerodynamic passion. It didn't go as far as the A-13, but it could be made to turn like an fighter jet. It could also be skimmed out of reach of an entire ultimate game end-to-end. Suddenly the campus opened up and every throw that ever made sense in Frisbee golf made twice as much sense with an A-10. Designed by a Stanford University engineering lecturer, these Aerobies were programmable.
Huh? Unlike static polyethylene Frisbees that mainly change shape when melting or scuffed up, Aerobies are composite products of a hard core inside (like polycarbonate) and something soft and aerodynamically shaped outside (like dense polyurethane foam.) The core can be flexed and retains enough memory of the flexing to change the way the ring flies. Based on Alan Adler's Skyro patent, the Skyro and Aerobie rings are conic sections, and the flexing of the Aerobie core changes the height of the cone it conforms to (the circumference doesn't change unless you melt the Aerobie or shatter its core.)
Change the height of the cone, and you have changed the angle of attack for the Aerobie's airfoil in flight. Flex hard to make the cone taller, and it's a bit like lowering the flaps on a fixed wing: more lift and more drag.
Brian will try and to develop the story of Aerobie golf in these pages during the winter months when it's too dark outside after work to play Aerobie.