With nothing better to do on the plane, I charged, discharged and charged the LiPoly battery to see how much capacity it really had. I got some strange results:The battery is a Thunderpower 2100, with a manufacturing stamp on the label of 6-4-04
- 6-28-04: I set the Triton charger to charge at 2.1 AH, 11.1 volts. It ran for 69 minutes. Final charge was 12.56 volts, 1.796 AH put into the battery
- 6-29-04: I set the Triton to discharge at 2.1 AH down to 9 volts. After 56 min, the Triton stopped at 10.5 volts, having discharged 1.635 AH.
- 6-29-04: I set the Triton to charge at 1 AH. It started charging at 10.69 volts and finished at 12.56 volts, having put 1.654 AH into the battery after 110 minutes.
So, what’s up with the Triton only drawing down to 10.5 volts? And why did it only pull about 1.7 AH instead of 2.1 AH? I called Sal at NESail and he had a lot to say.
First, he warned me very sternly (!) that I shouldn’t ever ever ever discharge a LiPoly on a charger. There’s no need to and it could damage the battery by drawing the battery down too much. Discharging in a charger is bad because, if a LiPoly is brought down too flat, it’s capacity will be permanently significantly diminished; a charger discharges the battery too slowly to hit the obvious 3 volt/cell wall. If you are flying, the high drain on the pack lets the drain work correctly. In addition, a good speed control will tell you when it’s time to come in for a charge. You shouldn’t drain the battery more than 75% or they’ll go bad on you. That’s 1.575 AH on a 2.1 AH battery.
It sounds like the Triton company is aware of this 75% rule. That’s why they the charger only draws down to 10.5v on a 3 cell 11.1 v pack. The Triton charger seems to have a user interface problem. On the discharge cycle, the options it gives are “3v”, “6v”, and “9v”. The obvious implication is that it will draw the cell down to the specified amount but it doesn’t. It draws the pack down to what is considered “safe” flat… on the “9v” setting, it draws to 10.5v. Instead, it should give options like the following: “1 cell”, “2 cell”, “3 cell”. Or “3.7v”, “7.4v”, “11.1v”. Or “3.5v”, “7v”, “10.5v” because that’s what it draws down to.
I’ve been talking about lighting the Projeti for Burning Man in my regular journal. I found a bunch of sources for wire. Well, I found the source I’m going to use: http://www.coolneon.com. This from the Coolneon gallery:
Sean at Castle Creations talked me through 2 diagnostics:
– Set the Soft Start option to “fast start”.
– Resolder the connections to the motor
Neither helped so he’s sending me another speed controller. It’ll be here in a couple days. I’ll be in Vermont for the 4th so no flying ’til after I get back. :-( And I don’t want to bring the Zagi. The Zagi is tired. It needs to rest.
Run potential spams through a grammar checker…. like MS Word’s grammar checker. That will surely differentiate the gibberish spammers insert into their emails from legitimate emails that use real sentences. It might be computationally expensive but not THAT expensive…
Cool snippet of the day:
Rail guns require a pulse power system to convert prime electrical power to the instantaneous current pulse necessary for electromechanical launch. The most advanced pulsed power systems use rotating alternating current machines, called pulsed alternators, to supply electromagnetic current pulses to the rails
“I’d like a phased plasma rifle in the forty watt range”
Escape velocity from earth is about 11 km/sec. This doc says 2.5 km/sec is being done right now experimentally and could be in the field, firing on targets 250 miles away. 6 km/sec is doable, not enough to break orbit but still pretty darn cool. To power one of these rail guns and fire it at 6 rounds/minute, you need something like 40-80 megawatts. Just the dissipated kinetic energy of the impact of one of these mach 7 projectiles is enough to….. it’s enough; no explosives needed.
It’s together. :-) Last night, I reved it up to full power, pointing the nose up toward the ceiling. I could feel it pushing up against my hand. If I had let go, it would have shot straight through the ceiling. Well, not really… it would have hit the ceiling and then shattered into maybe five or ten pieces… but you get the idea; vertical performance :-)And now the bad news: I was getting ready for my outing today and the prop wouldn’t turn. When I gave it throttle, the prop would do this unhappy buzzing thing. The prop doesn’t turn, it just vibrates! Waah! But today was the day! Wahhh!
I called NESail at 5pm and Carolyn said I’ll get a call back by the end of their work day… which is at 6pm… in 5 minutes. :-( I don’t think I’m going to get that call. :-(
Maybe I changed an important setting on the ESC when I tried to program it. It’s a Phoenix 25 brushless ESC. It took me a while to figure out an important aspect of programming: go slow. If you try to program it too fast, it drops out of programming mode unexpectedly. I’ll go try to program it AGAIN…
——————-
NESail called me back at about 6:05 6 :-) The guy at NESail, Sal talked me though some diagnostics but couldn’t help. He thought it was most likely a busted ESC, though such problems are rare. He motioned me toward Castle Creations. He says that if it’s busted, I could exchange it though either NESail or Castle Creations. Of course I’m unhappy that I’m having trouble with it but NESail has been pretty sand-up-ish. I left a message at Castle Creations after hours. Hopefully they’ll call me back shortly!
I’m about 3/4 finished putting it together. I’ve had two problems…. first, nesail.com sent me 14″ servo extensions when I only needed 4″ extensions. The extra 10″ is a pain to stow away on such a small plane so I went to Kenvil Hobbies and bought 6″ extensions. They fit great. Second thing: I couldn’t figure out how to use the (very pretty) colleted prop adapter. In the process of trying to figure it out, I broke it. So I bought a new Master Airscrew prop adapter at Kenvil Hobbies. It works great except I needed an extra washer as a spacer; 15 minutes of swearing to myself in the nuts and bolts aisle and I found what I was looking for, a single 6mm washer.Most of the decals are on. I wasn’t going to put the decals on because I want to do it de’art for Burning Man, but I realized that they are an important structural element of the plane. They offer protection for the underbelly and most especially, the decal is 3/4 of the hinge for the elevons. Before I cut out the decals, I traced them on a sheet of clear plastic, so I might make another set of decals out of a material and appearance more of my choosing.
I ran the motor. Wooeee, it’s windy! I had trouble holding it in my hand, it pushed so hard! I think it might offer more thrust than the weight of the plane! Woo hoo, hangin’ on the prop is a possibility…. well, except that it’s a pusher plane, but I’m sure you still share my enthusiasm.
While putting the Deans Ultra connectors on the LiPoly battery, I accidentally shorted it for about 2 seconds! Yipe! It didn’t just spark, it fully arced, slightly pitting my Radio Shack holder thingie. Now, all I can think about is how HForo69 (an AIM flying buddy) told me how damaged LiPolys can burn out cars and burn down homes! Before I went to bed, I put the battery on the cement floor of the garage and put a big ceramic jar on top of it. (Thanks for the jar, Melis ;-)
I did some math on http://brantuas.com/ezcalc/dma1.asp and ass-u-ming that my batteries can do 10C… this isn’t for sure, the previous generation could do 6C and the new ones are supposed to do 10C… but I don’t even know for sure that I have a “new” one. It says “6/4/04” on it which I suppose is the manufacture date, but that could be the assembly date or….
So, assuming the battery can do 10C, this plane will totally rock:
- 3S TP2100 battery
- Mega AC 16/15/4 motor
- 6×4 APC prop
- 20.2 amp draw
- 19,400 RPM prop
- 196 watts in
- 167 watts out
- 85% efficiency
- prop static thrust: 32 oz
- prop pitchspeed 74 mph
- full throttle duration: 6:14 minutes
The plane has a flying weight of about 20 oz :-)
The email I sent Chansonette Connolly on the 22nd bounced. I’m going to send a paper letter shortly…. and start pirating Symantec software as prolifically as I can.
They let me use my username of choice :-)
At the request of a client, I contacted Symantec about some suspected pirated software I bought on Amazon zShops. I sent the Symantec legal department a juicy info packet on my purchase.
From: Chansonette Connolly [mailto:ccon.don’t spam her.nolly@symantec.com]
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 4:03 PM
To: [Lee]
Subject: Re: Report of Suspected Piracy of Norton AntiVirus 2003 from a Third Party on Amazon.com 4/21/04 – [removed] (zShop)
Dear Mr. Sonko,
Thank you for submitting to us the CD you purchased from [removed] (zShop) marked “Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2003” for evaluation, together with your documentation. We have examined the CD you submitted and believe it to be counterfeit. Therefore, and as I am sure you can understand, we will not be returning the CD to you. Our records show that this entity is not an affiliate or authorized partner of Symantec.
You may wish to contact your credit card / financial organization and find out what options you may have in a situation like this. We appreciate your taking the time to send us documentation relating to your purchase, which will assist us in continuing to investigate this matter further.
We appreciate the faith you have shown in Symantec’s products by purchasing legitimate software to replace any counterfeit software you might have had. Please be assured, you have made the right decision given the risks associated with counterfeit software, be it faulty operation, leaving your computer open to cyber attack or possible damage to your computer. Furthermore, legitimate software gives you the right to obtain updates generated by Symantec for that software. Updates are necessary to help protect your system from cyber attacks, which evolve on a daily basis.
We look forward to serving you as one of our valued customers and hope to make your cyber experience as safe and enjoyable as possible.
Sincerely,
——————————————————————————–
Chansonette Connolly
Manager, Worldwide Brand Protection
Legal Department
Symantec Corporation
Office: (408) 517-8045
Interoffice: 6 [408] 8045
Fax: (408) 517-8121
Email:
chanso.don’t spam poor Chansonette.nette_connolly@symantec.com
www.symantec.com
Any my response
When I wrote to Drakes (the company that makes Devil Dogs, Ring Dings and Yodels supermarket pastries) telling them about some bad Yodels I bought last year, they at least gave me a coupon for some free Yodels. When I wrote to them, all I included was a photo of some sorry-looking Yodels and a short explanation. When I wrote to you, I included a lengthy description that puts me on the spot vs. Amazon and vs. an Amazon seller, packaging material, and the actual product. You now have all the incriminating evidence you need to stop a major American pirate of your software.
For my trouble, all I got was a pat on the back. You can be sure that I won’t ever be bringing potentially pirated software to your attention again. You could learn a lot from a Yodel.