The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for August 2003
From Kathyphrog:
This is strange…..
While sitting in a chair, make clockwise circles with your right foot.
While doing this, draw the number “6” in the air with your right hand.
Keep it up and read the end…..
…
Your foot will change direction… and be rotating counter clockwise. . .
Configuring it so it works just the way I want it. I spent almost 4 hours fiddling with UI-ish crap. But it’s important so…
The Zagi Trick RC manual says, “SANYO RECOMMENDS CHARGING THE KR 1700AE CELL AT A RATE UP TO 1
AMP….SOME MODELERS REGULARLY CHARGE THEM FOR 40 MINUTES AT 2 AMPS.” This is simply not true. Sanyo’s recommendation is a fast charge of 2.6 amps. That is the exact same recommendation they give for their “fast charging” (4 mega-ohm) N-1700SCR battery, and their “high capacity” (16 mega-ohm) KR-1500AUL. The KR-1700AU has 17 mega-ohms of resistance. I now feel completely safe charging at a maximum of 2.5C… 4.2 amps… a 25 minute charge. I’m staying shy of the often recommended 3C charge because of the fairly high internal resistance in the battery. When I don’t need a speedy charge, I’ll keep it at 1C. I’ll do this for a while and then gauge (mostly by heat build-up patterns in the battery) how to modify this strategy.
See Sanyo.com or my flying homepage for references.
I went out flying today with the spinner held on tightly with silicon glue. It didn’t work. I went through one battery, brought it in, tossed it with a second battery and it only went 50 feet before it started making the spinner’s-gonna-fall-off-any-second noise. FYI: the prop gets quieter and the motor spins faster, making a very quiet high pitched whir as it starts to slip. That’s the sign for you to prepare for a landing and start watching for the prop because then there’s this almost imperceptible clicky-poppy noise when the prop pops off. Now your electric wing is now a glider.
So I took the motor off and tried the Promaxx 7.2 volt motor. I bought this a while ago but never got to try it out. Actually, I’m glad I waited because swapping motors with my new motor mount was a snap… or rather a ‘zip’, pulling the velcro stays off and resoldering (with my snazzy-and-quick soldering gun). The new motor has a bit less power but it flew a LOT longer than the old motor, maybe 20 minutes per battery WOT the whole time! That’s pretty much in keeping with my style so I’m very happy with the new motor. I checked the temperature of the motor after 2 batteries and it was quite a bit cooler than the old motor. My temperature measurement is very scientific: After flying one battery on the old motor, the top of the motor (nearest the prop) was “Ow! I burned myself! [insert finger in mouth]” hot. After flying two batteries on the new motor, the top of the new motor was “Eww. I wouldn’t want to leave my finger on there too long!” hot. Using my handy-dandy temper-lee conversion calculator, those temperatures are 400 and 250 Fahrenheit, respectfully.
Now I have a motor I can rip apart for mad experimentation!
I find myself going out between 5 and 7pm most of the time. The mosquitoes can me AWFUL at this time of the day! Today, I tried dousing myself in DEET bug repellent. Even with the repellent, I had to keep constantly walking around or I’d be chewed on by the bugs! I’ve got marks all over from where those little buggers got me!
Julian gave this to me. It’s from several few weeks ago. I suppose I’m a tall fellow by some standards, yes?
So I keep hearing that the USDA’s food pyramid thingy and vitamin recommendations are “outdated”. Everybody who knows anything about vitamins knows that the USDA is behind on the times… So being a person with some desire to do the right thing, I tried to find out what vitamins I SHOULD take.
Nobody friggin knows.
The best I could find is listed below.
http://www4.nas.edu/iom/iomhome.nsf/WFiles/webtablevitamins/$file/webtablevitamins.pdf
biotin 30 mcg ND
Choline 550 mg 3500
Folic Acid 400 mcg 1000
niacin 16 mg 35
Pantothenic Acid 5 mg ND
Riboflavin/B2 1.3 mg ND
Thiamin/B1 1.2 mg ND
A 900 mcg 3000
B6 1.3 mg 100
B12 2.4 mcg ND
C 90 mg 2000
D 5 mcg 50
E 15 mg 1000
K 120 mcg NDhttp://www4.nas.edu/iom/iomhome.nsf/WFiles/Webtableminerals/$file/Webtableminerals.pdf
calcium 1000 mg 2500
chromium 35 mcg ND
copper 900 mcg 10,000
iodine 150 mcg 1,100
iron 8 mg 45
magnesium 400 mg 400
manganese 2.3 mg 11
molybdenum 45 mcg 2000
phosphorus 700 mg 4000
selenium 55 mcg 400
zinc 11 mg 40http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/vitamins.html
vitamin A is 5,000 IU. no more than 10,000
vitamin C is 90 mg
folic acid, at least 400 micrograms (women only?)
vitamin B6 1.3 to 1.7 milligrams of
B12 is 6 micrograms
vitamin D is 5 micrograms
vitamin E 22-400 IUvitamin K is 80 micrograms
I’m just going to keep taking Centrum. And when I start to feel sick, I’ll take extra Vitamin C like my dad demands I do; At least it makes him feel better.
After months of working with committees , we’re just about ready to launch the PVPOA’s announcement-only mailing list. My real goal is to get a discussion mailing list going. We’ll get there… baby-steps. Baby-steps.
from an exchange between TJIC and me.
>Mail is going wonky. Web page load times are way up. There may be
>some sort of huge worm/virus attack going on as well, according to
>some reports.I’ve gone to maybe 15 people’s homes in the last 2 months to help them with computers. NONE of these people had any idea what a firewall was or what Windows Update was. Heck, I tried to make the analogy to my cousins that updating Windows was like changing the oil in your car… getting it done is really easy and you have to do it or you won’t have a car for long. I got what amounted to a blank stare from all of them, including the 17 and 15 year olds. I decided to set their computers to automatically go to Windows Update and not even tell them about it.
But then if I can convince these people to have their “oil changed” by me, I can do well…
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?
Today we have a poem in two parts. These emails were sent to me a few hours apart by the nice folks at VP-RX. Please pause between the two parts for maximum effect.
I
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II
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Your penís will grow up to 3 ínches
Your erectíons will be rock hard
Your sex drive will be supercharged
Your orgasms will be more intense
Your partner will be astounded
Clíck here to get VP-RXnow!No more please
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.
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.
Went flying at Great Meadows today. It was pretty crazy… I was trying to get inverted and… well, the battery was a little far forward, which gives better penetration and stability but decreased vertical turning performance… So I flew out away from me, did an inside 1/2 turn back toward me… and then realized that I couldn’t pull up. I went right into the roof of the little stand that holds the radio pins. It skidded up and off the peak of the roof and flopped down onto the ground. I’m very happy that no one was over there at the time, but it made me very uncomfortable. I keep telling myself that there never really was any danger in the first place; Heck, I’ve hit myself in the head with the plane while trying to catch it and neither the plane or my head were damaged in the slightest.The motor had fallen out of it’s home-made mount, the prop had gone missing, and an elevon had broken AGAIN. After calming down and getting around to laughing at the incident, I glued her back together and gave her a toss! She was aerodynamically sound but the motor didn’t have nearly as much umph as before. I was worried that the motor was internally damaged. I flew out the battery as Jason, his girlfriend, father and another flyer (sorry I forget your name!) left. I stuck another battery in and the plane was totally fine, with plenty of power. Apparently (and strangely) the battery I had been using (#3) was near empty after only 4 minutes and 1 crash of flying time. Weird.
Hey Jason, if you’re reading this…. (and even if you’re not, nya) the plane is -totally- fine! The motor wasn’t damaged as I thought. Wee!
My last flight of the night ROCKED. I’m sad that everyone else missed it! It was full of zooping and zipping, cartwheeling turns, powerful leaps, graceful slooping, connectedness, and a gorgeous sunset! I love to fly!
Oh and one last thing… It was a bit windy today. I flew 1 battery at the Allamuchy field and was having a pretty sucky time. The wind was rolling off the trees and tossing the plane around a bit. I could hold on without too much trouble but it wasn’t very fun. At Great Meadows, the distant trees smoothed out the wind and flying in the 10mph winds was fun. What a difference!