Flashback: Pioneered Hot Tub

From the Ropes and Poles archives: In 2007, a the Senior Scouts of Scouting De Veste Hasselt built this fire-heated pioneered swimming pool.

KonTiki 2013 - Rafts by night

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 Gauteng Kontiki competitions featuring on two different nationally broadcast TV shows. If I can find any clips posted online I'll share them.

Pioneering drawings on iPad - Autodesk Formit

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. First released in November 2012, it is now onto version 3.0, and has some great features.

Formit uses Autodesk's 360 cloud platform, so you have the option of creating a 360 account when you first load the app. Drawing is by means of primitives ( basic shapes such as cubes, cylinders, prisms and domes) that can be scaled and altered, or by sketching and extruding 2d shapes. I have set up a basic set of pioneering poles, boards and barrels which I have shared on the 360 service, available here.

All of the images in this post are straight screenshots from the app, and it has a very clean interface that shows only what is needed for each drawing function. The help built into the app guides you through the basic functions, and there are a series of online tutorials and videos on using some if the more complex features.

The app has some features missing, notably the following:
- no annotation or dimension tools
- no image export (this can be solved by taking screenshots, holding down the home and power buttons together on an iPad)
- no Android support (Autodesk have hinted that this is coming at some point)

Judging by the speed at which features have been added, these might follow soon.

Kontiki 2013 featured in local newspaper

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 12 to 14. The five to six man raft crews from over 50 Scouting clubs set sail on Homestead Dam for 24 hours, competing in various mobility challenges. Benoni entered two scouting groups in the raft building and sailing competition. Benoni Ninth Scout group achieved 13th place out of 52 rafts in the raft pioneering and mobility challenge. The achievement qualifies the group for the Chairmans Challenge, where the top 15 placed raft crews in the Kon Tiki, will once again compete and build rafts to navigate the waters.Benoni Sixth Scout group were placed in 32nd position at the Kon Tiki. The event will be held at Homestead Dam next year, with the theme Going Green.

Kontiki 2013 Report

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 won the raft competition and the overall competition, and 1st Polokwane who won the supporter's competition.

The judges have already posted the full results spreadsheet, which can be downloaded here.

Joy from Akela's Cubs blog has a Kontiki and Beaver Challenge post here.

Finally, I chatted to Scouting Radio.com on Saturday night from Arrowe Park. You can listen to my report about Kontiki here.

Gauteng Kontiki 2013

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.

Flashback: Pioneered Geodesic Dome

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.