Lee.org

I think that one big reason people buy from repeat advertising is that they (consciously or unconsciously) hope that by buying the product, they’ll stop being inundated with ads.

After seeing an ad for the Paypal credit card EVERY FRIGGING TIME I logged in to Paypal, I relented for the above reason. Of course, now I get ads for some other Paypal service instead.

So if I bought from all of those enis-pay enlarging spammers, do you think they’d go away?

Lately, I’ve been burning up a lot of props. The black plastic press-on spinner has gone loose a couple times. Each time, I have to get out a new Gunther prop-spinner combination. I think what’s happening is that my home-made EPP motor mount and motor strap are trapping extra heat in the motor. This heat goes down the axel and melts the spinner. I think this is the case because I noticed a couple spinners where the black plastic looked like it has been deformed by heat. To fix the problem, I’m changing how the strapping sits on the motor to increase airflow a bit and following a recommendation by Kenvil Hobbies and using clear silicon sealant to glue the spinner on. I also scraped up the axel with tin snips to improve it’s bite and adhesion. The silicon takes 24 hours to dry so I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs while it dries. Maybe I’ll also scrape out some ridges on the motor mount so more air gets to it.

Jaybyrds can’t fly

I took the plane down to my cousin Jason’s house and we flew a little on Tuesday. Before the spinner (held in place with CA) melted off, I let him try the controls. Ha. Jaybyrds are a flightless species! But that’s ok, we had fun.

MIT Open Courseware

Electric Motors

Very nice.

from The Sussex Air ShowSimba F5B electric hotliner. This thing is so frigging fast! And maneuverable too! 10 2400 mah zapped cells power a brushless motor. The motor draws around 100 amps, leaving the batteries too hot to touch for several minutes. The pilot says he only gets around 50 flights on a battery pack before they’re toast.

To launch: Hold upright. Turn motor on. Let go…. straight up as high as you like. It went about 100-120 after a dive on the flats and loops like…. It’s hard to describe… It goes into the loops so fast and barely loses any speed even though the motor is off when in the loop.

SIModels biplane. There were larger planes out there but this one had the most stability and commanded the most attention of any plane in the air. That thing is at home in the air like a Lazy-Boy! The engine purred wonderfully. The plane costs what you think it does, in the $5,000 range. Powerful, smooth, commanding, beautiful.

This Lazy Ace is for sale by Chuck Howarth (I’ve saved his phone number). I’m very tempted! I think it was $750 complete minus receiver and transmitter.

I replaced one battery in my transmitter battery pack. For as long as I’ve had it, the transmitter was only good for just barely 1 1/2 hrs of flying time per charge. I finally tested it and found that one cell was completely shorted out, 0 volts. I think that it’s always been like this but I never looked into it. The new battery is a Radio Shack 700mah AA cell. The other batteries are 600mah cells. I hope it works alright.

I saw this story on power-assist@yahoogroups

I commute daily (only a few miles)from my home to my job with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in Olympia Washington. I got into an Ebike (2000 Currie USPD) mainly because I sweat even thinking about exercise and didn’t want to get to work sweaty. At the headquarters building where I work on the State Capitol Campus, there are many dedicated bike commuters, some of whom are lycra types, and many of whom are certainly “purists.”

We have these nice bike cages at work inside which you can securely store your bike. These cages hold about 15-20 bikes and are located in different areas across the campus. You access them through an electronic keypad. One day, while locking-up the bike and going through my shutdown routine in the bike cage, a couple of dedicated purists came in to lock-up their bikes. While doing so, they started glancing at my bike, snickering, and generally making fun of my nerdy bike (and its owner). Although a little embarrassed, I took it in stride.

A few days later, while pulling the not-so-steep but long hill home, I spotted one of the offenders up ahead in my sights. I can’t tell you the pleasure I experienced when I passed him while I was sitting and he standing. I came-up on him and said (without panting, of course) “passing on the left” while simultaneously ringing my little dainty and nerdy bell. He looked back over his shoulder but I was already pretty much past him which made him do a double-take of sorts. He looked shocked.

The next morning, while locking-up my bike in the bike cage, the guy I passed came in with his bike. I didn’t say a thing about the afternoon before. After he locked-up his bike and was heading-out of the cage, he came over and said very seriously and respectfully, “so…what kind of bike is that anyway?”
…
Cheers
Eric

Every year around this time I become sad and wistful that I am, again, not going to Burning Man. I should go. I must go before I die. It is one of the shapes of perfection. I was going to put a Burning Man picture here, but there is no way that a single photo can do it justice. The BurningMan.com site does it up with over 4,000 photos.

I fixed the motor mount and flew on Saturday :-)I created an EPP foam motor mount. You can’t see in the image but where the front of the motor touches the foam (in the photo, very close to where the blue wire is soldered to the motor) I buried a quarter in the foam to distribute the force of the motor sliding forward during a sudden stop.

I found a coroplast sign on the street that no one was using [grin]… (one of those awful “Lose 50 lbs in 10 days, Guaranteed!!!” signs). I cut a long rectangle of it and put it on the bottom of the plane as a reinforcing plate. I then sliced holes down through the wing to insert “GB Grip Strip” velcro strapping from Home Depot. This strapping now holds the motor in place! As well, I put strapping in front because, cool as it looks, I want to stop the battery from it’s habit of flying loose and cutting into the ground like a throwing dagger tossed high in the air during my inverted stints.

A couple times now, the battery has come loose! Just this weekend it happened too… before we put the battery strapping on. Julian and I had finished putting the motor mount on, and I wanted to FLY immediately. So I gave it a toss. I was showing off my new inverted skills over the strip when…. the engine cut out suddenly, the battery flipped 200 feet with a thud (Julian was looking away at the time but he tells me that he felt the thud!) and the plane wafted down like a giant sheet of construction paper let go from a building-top. Yea, time for better velcro on the battery!

Die Hard Fliers

I am now officially a die-hard. It drizzled on us a couple times when we were out flying. We kept watching the sky, wondering when we’d get the brunt of it. I went up and was having a blast when… It felt almost like I was getting tunnel vision. I was losing my peripheral vision due to a sinister darkness that was sneaking up on me from behind! The air suddenly smelled different. The leaves on the trees flipped over. It was time! The rain hadn’t started but I called out, “That’s it! Here comes the rain!” As I was landing and packing up, the rain started…. and then in earnest! It poured! Four of us hid in the RAMAC shack. Julian luckily had the combination to the lock, there was also a Russian man named Gen and …. oh dear, I forget the last guy’s name. We sat around talking about Gen’s diesel powered control line plane. He last flied a control line when he was 15… an old diesel :-). His new plane had a new engine on it… but it was the exact same model engine :-). Diesel engines are more efficient but they can be a REAL pain to start. While it rained, he worked on getting it started for an hour or so. The smell of the fuel was wild! It’s 1/3 ether, 1/3 kerosene, 1/3 mineral oil. The ether gives it this cool, fruity, clean smell… maybe like a doctor’s office… After a few minutes in the shack with him starting the engine, (the door and windows were open, but still…) we were all permeated with the smell. I didn’t mind.

The rain finally stopped after 1 1/2 hrs or so. We went out and Gen really wanted to get his control line flying. I wanted to see it. I only have 1 vague memory of ever seeing CL and my dad talks a lot about how he flew CL when he was a kid. He finally got it started, I held it, he gave the signal and I let it fly! It went up. And it went down. Smoosh. 5 seconds in the air. The damage wasn’t too too bad… the wing was crushed from the “Art” decal outward. :-(.

After we all moped about the smooshed plane, I whipped out the Zagi to cheer everyone up. I have Gen the controls… he asked if we were ready for a low flyby; he almost hit the shack! It was a gas! I landed on my own once in the parking lot (RE: the mud on the plane in the pix) and Julian caught it once.

On the way out, Julian’s brother finally showed up (only like 3 hrs late) with Angelina, a friend. We had a very nice time talking there.

I thought I got a lot of spam. I’m around 40 a day… A discussion on the ARL list about spam brought out one person that gets about 400 spams a day! Another found that their Earthlink Spaminator filters 1,800 messages a day! I’m not worthy!