ByteMaster0's blog

At the moment, I am in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, staying at the downtown Holiday Inn. I am attending the 2009 Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing conference, and will be presenting a paper at the TrustCom 2009 International Symposium on Trusted Computing and Communications.

It's late, but check back later for more updates, and some PHLOG entries, if have the time to upload them. As a random fact, my laptop is picking up over 43 DIFFERENT wireless networks from my room! Thank goodness for DSSS, otherwise it'd be a nightmare - I'm betting it already is. DSSS or not, that's an awful lot of congestion on the spectrum, and something's gotta give, at least in terms of speed. This city is very lively late at night! More later.

From the 21st through the 25th, I was in Santa Fe, NM with my parents, attending the Santa Fe chamber music festival. My parents had invited me to go, and we stayed on the outskirts, within 20 minutes. Lynn Harrell, a world-renowned cellist who had given me a masterclass 9 years ago, was playing on the last two performance days. All the concerts were fantastic, and inbetween concerts, we visited national monuments such as the Bandelier National Monument, where cliff-dwelling Pueblo Native Americans lived. We also explored some scenic routes, as well as the South West Indian Art exhibition.

Pictures can be seen on the PHLOG, so click on over (the link is on the right) for some shots of animals and cliff dwellings. On a funny note, I had my sunglasses pickpocketed while at the art market/convention. A kid stole them right out of my pocket. I returned half an hour later to find them sitting on a cooler - the boy had placed them there with his snack and a drink. So, while he was distracted/away for a moment, I grabbed them back. I saw him later, looking under the chair, trying to find them.

There are many other pictures, I will be posting them later.

I'm currently writing this entry from Delta flight 1967 on the way to Albuquerque, on the way to Santa Fe. This is the first flight I've taken that is equipped with in-flight WiFi service, powered by Gogo. Representatives handed out complimentary access cards, so I decided to try it out. Even if the cards weren't available, the service charge is reasonable: $13 for a 24-hour pass. On a longer flight, I'd definitely consider paying for it.

As for the connection, it's a bit spotty - sometimes cuts out, but is fast enough - somewhere between 500-900kbit/s downstream, 200kbit/s upstream. Nothing over which I'd consider watching streaming HD video, but enough to ensure connectivity. I'm writing this post @34,000 ft. somewhere over Arkansas - maybe I'll blame connectivity issues on that - sorry Crystal. More later.

About three-and-a-half weeks ago, I purchased a new silver 2009 VW Jetta TDI. It is a 2.0-liter Turobocharged Commonrail direct-injected diesel engined-car, with a double-clutch automated manual transmission. I was presented with a loan opportunity too good to pass up, and after a few calculations, it made sense to purchase it. First off, my average fuel economy on the old 2.5 was about 26 MPG. I was driving the car at a rate of 35,000 miles per year (in 9 months of driving it, I had put over 25,000 miles on it). At 80k-miles, an expensive $700 service was awaiting me.

I purchased the new car, and immediately experienced the fuel economy differences. On my average commutes, I'm getting about 42 MPG, including both city and highway portions. On my trip to Dayton this weekend, I averaged 49.3 MPG (!) with cruise control (which is NOT the most efficient way to drive, by far). If I push it a bit, I can get an average of 52.3MPG average, but this requires almost no traffic and as little stopping as possible. The best mileage is obtained at about 42MPH in 6th gear, at which I can get about 64 MPG on a flat surface with no wind. Infact, this is the very year and model of car that was used to set a 50-state fuel economy record, at 58.82 MPG average over 9400 miles (approx.)

The fuel savings alone amount to a MINIMUM $1100 per year, and if gas/diesel climb towards the $3.50 mark, I will see a savings of over $2000/year. In addition, I qualify for a $1300 tax credit for an advanced lean-burn vehicle. Along with a 0% APR on the loan, it all adds up. The car is amazing to drive (it's the same body style as the older 2.5, but with some improvements), and is significantly faster than the old car, and of course more efficient. The transmission uses two sets of gearboxes (one for odd gears, one for even gears), and two clutches that automatically engage. Rather than using a fluid coupling, as found in an automatic, the clutches provide better fuel economy, and much faster shifting. The transmission can shift gears in 8ms, which is faster than any human could do the job. As a result, you get the economy of a manual, the performance of a manual, and the convenience of an automatic (though you can take full manual control if you wish.)

The engine is marvelous. It is quiet, and CLEAN. There is no appreciable smell, and it is very responsive. It generates 236 lb-ft of torque, which is comparable to that of many V8-powered gasoline-fueled SUVs. As a result of the emissions system and the reduced fuel consumption, the car also creates significantly-reduced hydrocarbon output. In any case, while I did wait to post about this, I'm very glad I got it. It's a wonderful car. More later.

Today, I took the Alpha 40 out with a twist. Rather than capturing video, I modified the side-mounted camera rig that I had built. After adding some foam padding to reduce vibration, and boosting the camera's ISO setting to maximum, I was ready to retry interval still captures. I had already attempted this once, with less-than-ideal results. The camera selected low ISO numbers for less graininess, but almost all the photos were blurred due to the vibration from the engine.
The foam padding was designed to reduce the amount of shaking and vibrations passed on to the camera. As you can see from the resized stills, this worked perfectly. Boosting ISO equivalency also enabled the camera to take pictures at 1/2000th of a second, which made all the images nice and crisp. Unfortunately, there is a good deal of graininess to the images. I will see if I can find a happy medium.
Today is also the first time I ran out of fuel in a flight. I had timed the flight carefully - I can normally get about 20-25 minutes on a tank, no problem. However, the air was much calmer today, and I needed significantly more throttle in order to gain altitude. Everything was fine right until touchdown. I decided to go for a go-around, because I felt that I was going to overshoot the runway. Right as I pushed the throttle up, the engine died, and I had to make a hard landing. I ended up in the grass, but there was no damage. Despite this, there was still about 5 minutes-worth of fuel left in the tank (not in any flyable capacity - any tilt to any side would have drawn in air) which I then burned off by running the engine until it went dry. All in all, the flight was good - minus the wasp sting to my left hand as I was getting out the door... I saw it out of the corner of my eye. The wing must have bugged it (heh), and in within half a second, the lil' f*cker had landed and stung me. Three extra photos from the flight after the break.

This weekend my long time friend Kristen and her friend Matt came to visit me on the way through Nashville. I took the plane out again, and attached the camera once more. This time, I had fixed the broken servo tray, added more rubber bands, and picked a nice flying day. There was a good deal of turbulence, but it was very manageable.

I took the plane up to a peak altitude of about 1000 ft to get a nicer panorama - this happens at around 3:29 in the clip. It's high up - was barely able to see the plane with any detail - I could tell that it was there, but determining much more than that was more of a challenge. It looked like it was brushing some clouds, but as you can see, those were probably another 500-1000 feet higher, corresponding to the reported 2000 ft ceiling reports.

I also tried out a few barrel rolls in addition to loops. All in all, a couple great flights. On this one, I porpoised a bit at the end, but all in all, it went well. No broken props, though in an engine demo the day before, I split open my left index finger on the prop - minutes after cautioning to stay away from the prop. However, the injury isn't too bad and should heal up in a couple weeks. More later!

View bigger clips here!

Today, I took the Alpha 40 out to the R/C field again. The previous night, I had made a small camera mount attachment that would clip over the lip of the fuselage and hold a camera in place for side camera photography. I made three flights, with the camera mounted on the first flight. At the R/C field, a few other people from the local club had gathered, and one member was flying a very well-done R/C nitro helicopter. He was quite skilled at inverted flying, rolls, and other aerobatics - with a chopper. After 10 minutes on the first flight, I came in for a nice three-point landing and removed the camera.

During the course of the flight, some thermals had established themselves - and made for some very rough air. To worsen the problem, the rubber bands that hold the wing assembly on had started to stretch and were no longer taut. The caused unpredictable handling, and the flight characteristics were skewed due to the drag and weight of the camera, though it didn't seem to bother the plane much. Most of the problems arose from the turbulence, the wing movement, and the camera sliding back and forth on the fuselage. Regardless, I made three nice flights, didn't lose any props (though I shaved it ever so slightly on the last landing), and had an all around great experience. Enjoy the clip!

Extras: Bird flyby at 5:44! Also, the video ends at 7:45. I accidentally undid the music cutoff in Premiere.

UPDATE: Another reason for flight instability was found: During one of the prop failures at high engine RPM, the servo tray had become unglued. This allowed it to slide back and forth, up and down, which naturally affected inputs to the rudder, elevator, and throttle. The ailerons have their own independent servo, so this was not affected. So, in summary: high turbulence + weak rubber bands + loose servo tray = poor handling. The tray has now been reattached.

Today I ran a number of test flights, with a video camera! Two flights were recorded, but the first one was of considerably higher quality. I have inserted a clip from a few aerobatic loops captured in the second film. Enjoy!

P.S. I found the real reason for why the second clip didn't work out well - I had accidentally zoomed in the camera - WAY in. This caused tracking problems for the autofocus, and also made the clip look like it had been taken from a much lower altitude, when infact I had taken it from a much higher altitude. I will retry on Friday.

Click here for larger video size!

On Sunday, Api and I went out to fly the plane for its first flight! After fueling up, getting everything ready, and a trip back to get a forgotten glow driver, the plane was ready to go. After having spent 2.5 hours in the simulator, I felt that I was ready to give the plane a shot. Not helping the stress level was the large crowd that had gathered in the field to play soccer. (Flying is technically supposed to be done on weekdays between 8AM and 3PM, but I decided that the weather was simply too good to pass up.)

After a flawless engine start (and some gathering around by kids waiting for their siblings to finish soccer practice), I took off. It worked perfectly! Api took up videography duties (for which I thank her) and filmed as much as she could. The HD cam was poor in its focusing abilities, so much had to be cut out. Then it came time for a test landing. I took three go-arounds before I was comfortable landing. The landing was smooth, though I nearly hit my girlfriend in the process! She was busy filming, but fortunately escaped injury. The second flight also went equally well, though the landing killed the prop - the winds had shifted, and I had to land on a much shorter stretch. I had to choose between running the plane down a hill and steering it to stay on the runway - which tilted the plane severely enough to catch the prop on the asphalt.

However, all things considered, it was a great pair of first flights! The simulator was remarkably accurate, with the only exception of the layering of the winds - it was a bit more pronounced than in simulation. However, the plane is a joy to fly, and I can't wait until replacement props come in!