What you need
Two garden canes, dowels or wooden spoons
Two tea towels, or the printed flags on card
Sticky tape
A friend far enough away to need it
How to build it
Make the flagsTape a cloth to each stick along one edge. Different colours if you can, so the arms are easy to tell apart.
Stand where they can see youAcross a garden, a hall or a street. Far enough that shouting is annoying.
Hold each arm in one of eight placesStraight down, low, straight out, high, straight up, and the same on the other side.
Rest between lettersBoth arms straight down means a gap. Without it, letters run together.
Send slowly and waitHold each letter still for two seconds. Semaphore is read when the flags stop, not while they move.
Keep the sticks away from faces and windows, and give yourself an arm’s length of space in every direction before you start.
The template
Print this at 100 per cent, not fit to page, or the sizes will be wrong. The ruler line below tells you whether it printed correctly.
The bar above should measure exactly 10 centimetres. If it does not, your printer has shrunk the page.
Now send something
Send your friend’s name. Then try it from opposite ends of a park, where nothing else would carry.
The alphabet, arm by armBack to Make