Lee.org

You know, the more I stare at speed 400 brushless motors, the less I think I want one. It basically comes down to:brushed vs. brushless speed 400 motor

• Brushless is 20% more efficient (making for potentially 20% longer flights)
• Brushless is $200 ($100 motor, $100 ESC), brushed is $40 ($10 motor, $30 ESC)
• Brushless provides 2x the thrust per lb of motor (drawing about 1.6x the amperage…) (average 400 brushed motor is about 3 oz) giving me the opportunity to push the throttle such that I’ll use up the battery really darn quick.
• top level flight speed goes from about 50 mph to about 70 mph
• Brushless improves powered handling considerably

I’m not into electrics for super vertical performance. I’d switch to .90cc glow engines for that. So I’ve been looking around and I’ve got a lot of other options besides plunking down $200…   I could switch to a high performance speed 480 motor, an 8″ x 4.5″ prop and get 3/4 of the way toward a brushless for under $20. Hobby Lobby reference. Or a Rocket 400… or the new Zagi Speed 400 for $10. I’ve got a lot of options that cost a heck of a lot less than $200. Hey, $200 would get me a lot of Estes model rocket engines….

I’ve started ripping the old covering off the plane.

Here’s another weapon in the war against spam. In the last year I’ve started receiving a lot of spam that Spamkiller hasn’t been able to filter. These spams look like garbage when viewed in Spamkiller. I’ll see garbage like this in the body of the message: DQoNCjxNRVRBIEhUVFAtRVFVSVY9IkNvbnRlbnQtVHlwZSIgQ09OVEV…

Well, what the spammers are doing is encoding the messages in Base 64. Outlook knows how to decode Base 64 but Spamkiller doesn’t.

Here’s how I set up filters to stop this type of spam. I used this very helpful site to encode a couple bits of text into Base 64 and then I stuck those encoded bits into Spamkiller’s killfile.

More specifically, I encoded some very popular strings, like “a href=http://” and made those into Spamkiller filters. So, in this example, if the email isn’t in my don’t-kill file, it’s HTML based, encoded in Base 64, and has a hyperlink, Spamkiller will kill the message. This system is case-sensitive so I had to add a bunch more filters to cover other combinations of cases…

Regular Expression for a href=”http://
a href=”http:// converts to YSBocmVmPSJodHRwOi8v
href=”http: converts to IGhyZWY9Imh0dHA6L
href=”http:/ converts to aHJlZj0iaHR0cDovL

Regular Expression for A HREF=”http://
A HREF=”http:// converts to QSBIUkVGPSJodHRwOi8v
HREF=”http: converts to IEhSRUY9Imh0dHA6L
HREF=”http:/ converts to SFJFRj0iaHR0cDovL

Regular Expression for a href=http://
a href=http: converts to YSBocmVmPWh0dHA6L
href=http:/ converts to IGhyZWY9aHR0cDovL
href=http:// converts to aHJlZj1odHRwOi8v

Regular Expression for A HREF=http://
A HREF=http: converts to QSBIUkVGPWh0dHA6L
HREF=http:/ converts to IEhSRUY9aHR0cDovL
HREF=http:// converts to SFJFRj1odHRwOi8v

So, in case it’s not clear, I went into Spamkiller and, using the Advanced… button I created 12 Message Text Filters that look like this the photo on the right.

Of course, the war will continue to escalate. There are other obfuscation techniques that this technique doesn’t prevent.

I still believe that the best way to stop spam is to legislate it away. This worked with spam faxes and it can work with spam email.

Joy.

Trying to set up an scp server on my Windows 2000 machine is reminding me why I got out of using linux. People are ecstatic about writing supercharged, amazing tools that can help you conquer the world, but they don’t ever bother to tell you where the frigging “start” button is!!

My mom isn’t the best pilot. How do I know this? This is how I know:

Don’t let it be said that the Zagi flying wing is indestructible. I brought my mom, dad and niece out to the airfield yesterday. After a couple minutes of flight (they oo-ed and ahh-ed in all the right places), my mom wanted to try her hand at it. So I gave her a quick lesson, brought the plane up to 200 feet (what I thought to be “2 mistakes high”) and handed her the controls. She promptly pointed the nose down and gave it full throttle. Three seconds later, there was a 5″ deep hole in the ground. It was astounding. RIP Lee’s Zagi version 1.0

Dad and I have been having a good time joking about it. We’re saying that we should get her a purple heart. Or maybe she should have watched more of my dad’s war TV shows before taking to the air. She just keeps repeating how she’s so sorry and will never fly it again.. never ever ever. But I struck a deal with her. I’ll feel better about it if she learns how to fly and takes the controls just one more time. After all, we can’t have her grieving about some silly little plane forever. It also doesn’t hurt that she volunteered to pay for the damage. That last bit means I’ll be rebuilding the plane to version 1.1 :-). I was never happy with my Monocote job. So I’ll send away for new trays, maybe a new motor (brushless?? hmm? hmm?) and we’ll be back in the air in a month or two. Actually, speaking of indestructibility….. The only things I lost in the crash were the motor tray and canopy. The entire rest of the plane is still intact! wing, winglets, elevons… The motor, receiver, and servos are still good too. It’s the loss of the motor tray that “killed” the plane. That’s because I have to rip out a lot to fix it the motor tray. And if I’m going to rip out so much, then I want to do a total overhaul.

The Cosel K150A 12 volt, 13 amp power supply came in the mail today. I hooked up wires, plugged it in and it worked right out of the box. :-) I’m very happy to be rid of my Rube Goldberg battery charging contraption. It used to go:Car battery charger set on 2 amp manual charge
–> block of UPS batteries
–> Astro charger
–> nicads

The UPS batteries were there as a power sink/capacitor because they say that a car charger doesn’t have an even enough output to be trusted going straight into an electronics device (I believe them)

I’d have to watch the state of charge on the UPS batteries or badness would ensue. And when done, unplug the whole thing. To boot, the lead-acids were on their way out. I charged them individually last night and today 2 are at 6.39 volts, 2 at 6.29 volts. Maybe I’ll keep 2 of the lead-acids as field-chargers.

But now, when I’m home, I can “Set it, and forget it!”

————————

I -was- going to wish for An Astro 020 brushless motor with controller from Atlanta Hobby for Christmas but after looking into motor and prop efficiencies (see my Flying Tips page) I’m not exactly sure which motor I want. I’ll have to research it some more.

I’m a fan of funny/scary/weird/real-world stories. And if you throw in deviant sexual-social behavior, well I really enjoyed True Porn Clerk Stories. Here’s a local archive of those pages: one, two, three, four.

Update 6-23-11: At the request of the author, Ali Davis, I removed the text above. Ali has put the material in a new book, titled, curiously enough “True Porn Clerk Stories” available on Amazon. It’s terrific stuff, get the book!

I put a nice journal entry in my flying page today.

I’m quite happy with my recent post to the ARL list. To preface, there’s an upcoming override tax vote coming in a few days. They’re considering raising property taxes by about 5% for this year instead of the normal 2.5% or so. The repercussions of the rate increase are being hotly debated. Just about every line below is a happy perversion of something that someone’s said in the last two weeks on the list. Read on.

To:
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 02:31:14 -0400
Subject: [arlington] Override summary

So, to summarize from some of the recent posts…

If the override fails

I will leave Arlington out of disgust
The good teachers will be fired and the bad ones retained
The idea of “community” will be banished from Arlington forever
Arlington will burn to the ground
The tradition of educating our young will cease
Gangs will troll the streets
Potholes will swallow our vehicles whole
Our children will become fat and stupid
Books will cease to function
Art and music will be eliminated
The MCAS will kill our children
My grandfather will die of a heart attack before the EMTs arrive

Wow.

—————————————————
And If the override succeeds

I will leave Arlington because I can’t afford it anymore
Arlington school administrators will grow fat
The socialist party will have gained a significant strategic advantage
Short on funds, my summer block party will be cancelled
Arlington will still burn to the ground
Families with no children won’t be able to afford birth control, driving them into a vicious cycle
Gangs trolling the streets will be swallowed whole by potholes
The potholes will remain. I’ve seen the DPW try to fill a pothole, they’re friggin retarded.
Our children will grow and flourish, basking in the titanium-white bright light of art, wisdom and knowledge, they will respect and revere their elders, caring for them through to their old age with ceremony and ritual.
Every student will pass the MCAS
My car’s brakes will unexpectedly fail, killing a local pedestrian and injuring 3 others

All this is hinging on your vote and $60/year.
…
…

It’s a joke.
Laugh.

lee

No, I should correct myself, EVERY line is a take-off of something said on the list recently! :-)

Very nice day at the field. I played with doing a kind of Immelman. Fun! My maneuver was a bit different. I did my 1/2 roll while in the vertical. That seemed like more fun at the moment.Today I felt much more connected to the plane than previously. This gave me a lot more control and smoothness than I’ve had in the past. I’m rolling better, managing power better, managing the exchange of altitude and speed better.

Favorite moves:

• Launching, giving it full throttle and watching it climb directly away from me in a straight line, ascending at 20 degrees. It just gets smaller and smaller.
• I was flying 45 degrees away from being into the wind and straight toward me. I noticed that in order to track correctly, the plane was actually side-slipping a lot. We don’t need no stinking rudder!
• Standing in the middle of the field and having the plane zip around me like a loyal dog darting around in the grass.
• Getting up to 250 feet, pointing the plane directly at me, building up speed and then bringing the plane straight up, right over my head. As it ascends, I roll. My view sees a dark line in the sky rotating around an axis. I then pull out and dart away.
• Flying by low and slow, low and fast, low and really really fast out of a steep decent, low and really slo[crash!] oop! When it flies by, engine off, silent except for a “shhhoo” of air, I grin ear to ear.

Oh, I forgot to mention what I did on Sunday! I went to the Poconos field.   I watched just one Stick 40 combat. Zowie! They had to cancel the rest of the combat because moisture was tearing the streamers after just a few seconds in the air. I saw a plane on the ground rev into a fence, shooting 1/3 of a prop 50 feet over peoples’ heads and into the side of the truck. The fuselage of the plane was broken   in-two. Lastly, back at Great Meadows, I saw a 7′ wingspan pattern plane (?) do looping, rolling, flipping 3-D tricks that blew my mind. My jaw was literally agape! It looked like a sprite fluttering about, only this sprite was larger than me and weighed like 50 pounds. Earlier in the day, I was impressed with a biplane doing what looked like shoulder rolls. But this new stuff was in a class 3 times removed.

Oh, I also tried flying at a local unused baseball field. I can now tell you that I can just barely keep the Zagi flying in a little league baseball field. I can also tell you that it sucks to have to fetch a plane in chest-high grass. Personal note: That’s about the smallest field I think I could ever fly at.

I get around 40 spams a day, every day… some 13 thousand per year. Happily the vast majority get filtered out. But occasionally one makes it through the gauntlet… making it to the right email address, not stopped by Spamkiller, and not deleted by my unconscious brain. Today I got…. it’s just…. so….

Here, you look at it and tell me what you think:

From: “Clara”
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 11:33:25 -0000
Subject: Letter@5CHBSVDfFy3uqHBs

Hi Lee.
Possibly you are waiting for this inventive mail, is it precise?
Expect yes!
My Sugar buddy I have Nice news for you.
Now you can Look at this page and do your prurient things.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
< < http://dreamsonrealms.org[the rest of the url removed by Lee] >>
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

With love, Clara Young.

Now, I’m sure it’s probably just another porn site, but is this email unintentional poetry? Read it again, with feeling.

In other news, I went over for a visit to slashdot and was befuddled by the dizzyingly low signal-to-noise ratio of the comments that people post there. Though there is no lack of volume! What a weird sub-culture. Their headlines are top-notch though. Thinking back to my previous excursions to the site over the years, I recall that they’ve never had any useful commenters there.

The old lead-acid batteries in my workshop aren’t cutting it. I think one cell is shot. The other three are probably good, but they aren’t large enough anyway. With these 4 6-volt sealed cells, I’ve only got 8 amp/hours at 12 volts. And I’m trying to charge a 1.1 and a 1.7 amp/hr pack… At their best, they’d be good for 2 chargings. And it’s just a big pain to keep monitoring my car battery charger –> 12v lead-acid batteries –> peak charger setup. It’s too easy to mess up.Since it’s just 15 minutes to the field, I want to charge my batteries at home. (a reasonable slow charge is 1 hour per battery or longer… times 2 batteries). If the field was 2 hours away, I wouldn’t have this issue, I could just charge in the car… but then I wouldn’t go, would I? I’ve been looking around and the best advice I can find on fast charging vs. slow charging (i.e. 3C charging (20 minutes) vs. C/10 charging (10 hours) is that “fast charging can put more of a strain on your batteries so they’ll wear out faster”. Well, if I’m in no rush, I’m happy to slow charge. But I feel uncomfortable leaving a charger pulling my car battery dry for 10 hours. One day that’ll leave my car battery dead and sulphated. I looked around for a good 12 volt power supply. I could rip one out of a computer… I hear that computer repair stores are a good cheap source. But I lucked out and found a 12 volt, 13 amp supply on eBay for $30, shipping included. That’s way better than the $30 -3- amp supply at Radio Shack. Well, it hasn’t arrived yet, so I’ll tell you how well it works when I get it.

I flew today. Well, not really. I had the Zagi up high at a distance and the prop fell off. I should have remembered that I had knocked the prop off the last time I flew on a rough landing… I had reved the engine -after- I was sliding along the ground and justifiably bumped the prop off. I had just stuck it on and flew again, but I should have fixed it with CA glue or something when I got home.

So, I coasted in, landed the Zagi and looked for the prop. No luck. I really really hate those little canals on the flying field (it’s on a sod farm)!! So I broke out the Firebird. No luck there either. Both control horn-holder-downer-thingies had broken, leaving me with no tail controls. I considered cranking it up and throwing it into the wind anyway. But refrained.

The old lead-acid batteries in my workshop aren’t cutting it. I think one cell is shot. The other three are probably good, but they aren’t large enough anyway. With these 4 6-volt sealed cells, I’ve only got 8 amp/hours at 12 volts. And I’m trying to charge a 1.1 and a 1.7 amp/hr pack… At their best, they’d be good for 2 chargings. And it’s just a big pain to keep monitoring my car battery charger –> 12v lead-acid batteries –> peak charger setup. It’s too easy to mess up.Since it’s just 15 minutes to the field, I want to charge my batteries at home. (a reasonable slow charge is 1 hour per battery or longer… times 2 batteries). If the field was 2 hours away, I wouldn’t have this issue, I could just charge in the car… but then I wouldn’t go, would I? I’ve been looking around and the best advice I can find on fast charging vs. slow charging (i.e. 3C charging (20 minutes) vs. C/10 charging (10 hours) is that “fast charging can put more of a strain on your batteries so they’ll wear out faster”. Well, if I’m in no rush, I’m happy to slow charge. But I feel uncomfortable leaving a charger pulling my car battery dry for 10 hours. One day that’ll leave my car battery dead and sulphated. I looked around for a good 12 volt power supply. I could rip one out of a computer… I hear that computer repair stores are a good cheap source. But I lucked out and found a 12 volt, 13 amp supply on eBay for $30, shipping included. That’s way better than the $30 -3- amp supply at Radio Shack. Well, it hasn’t arrived yet, so I’ll tell you how well it works when I get it.

I flew today. Well, not really. I had the Zagi up high at a distance and the prop fell off. I should have remembered that I had knocked the prop off the last time I flew on a rough landing… I had reved the engine -after- I was sliding along the ground and justifiably bumped the prop off. I had just stuck it on and flew again, but I should have fixed it with CA glue or something when I got home.

So, I coasted in, landed the Zagi and looked for the prop. No luck. I really really hate those little canals on the flying field (it’s on a sod farm)!! So I broke out the Firebird. No luck there either. Both control horn-holder-downer-thingies had broken, leaving me with no tail controls. I considered cranking it up and throwing it into the wind anyway. But refrained.