Thoughts from the workbench of Radical RC. The online retailer of electronics and kits for radio control aircraft. Dave Thacker shares his thoughts and knowledge of electronics, batteries, kit design and overall enjoyment of the hobby.
Site is titled “S. A. C.” (Strategic Air Command).
Actual page with many photo’s and information about various Wright props and Engine is called The Wright Brothers Engine & Propellers. Great photo’s including engine internals and factory images.
Posted in my Facebook feed in response to using children from Sandy Hook to legitimize extra constitutional executive order anouncements today.
“Are we to be surprised? A prefix image to warm our hearts to action without results. Smaller magazines wouldn’t have had any impact at all on Sandy Hook. How long did the madman Lanza lay on the floor dead before anybody entered the room to see him dead? If he had to use a 6 round magazine, he could have merely changed it 4 times and accomplished the same result. 4-12 seconds. Are we to suppose this is effective change? This has nothing to do with children and everything to do with striking a blow against Liberty, against the Liberty of teachers and administrators to be free full citizens, armed if they choose. It’s about the reduction of choice, the reduction of Liberty, the preservation of criminal preference, the sacred “gun free zone” at any cost, even the cost of more children’s lives. How many more people must die while we placate this insane philosophy? It is pure madness to suppose that defenseless peoples are more safe. While I respect ones individual right to choose, it is pure evil to impose defenselessness upon another. In our day to day activities, it’s important to never allow this immoral position to assume the high moral ground. Do not stand for it. A working definition of religion is devotion and adherence to an ideal regardless of any evidence or lack thereof. So defined, we are clearly dealing with religious zealots. Do not allow them to force upon you their doctrine. There is no defense for opposing a teacher or any other citizen stopping the madman Lanza in a pool of his own blood. And I assert these opponents to Liberty are defending the capability of future madmen like Lanza to do exactly as they please. If the status quo cannot be maintained, then future incidents requiring immediate government action will be fewer.
We must not forget Rom Emanuel (D) confession of strategy:
My name is Dave Thacker and I’m doing something about it.
Any time you think what you seen in your world experience is new, you should probably sit back and think again. Few things are new. Most things are just repeated visits to old idea’s. Sometimes the technology has changed making something simpler or better.
The VZ-7 flew from 1958 to 1960, however it failed to meet with Army standards and was returned to the the company. Apparently you can see this machine at the the Fort Rucker United States Army Aviation Museum.
I wonder when the description “Quad-Copter” was coined?
Wiki page on: Curtiss-Wright VZ-7
Another blog artical with more information on this subject: Strange Vehicles: Curtiss-Wright VZ-7
Hi Dave
Hope u are having a good weekend. I called your store Sat. morning with a question
about charging.
Thanks for the help and for taking your time to help me. Service of anykind is rare these
Days. I am & will be a repeat customer and will recomend to my friends.
Thanks again,
Tony W. (doorgunner) 1st Air Cav.BenWa
Clearly the electric powered functionality of this car is a most appealing gizmo factor for me. I like driving it in pure EV mode whenever possible. It has 3 modes, EV Now, EV-Later and Auto. We made a short drive to our regular Sunday morning breakfast stop from there to Menards then back home. All on electric. Puts a twinkle in my eye not to have purchased any fuel (or it’s embedded taxes) for that trip.
Speaking of taxes, I looked up my tax on fuel in Ohio on OhioGasPrices.com which seems to be part of a site called GasBuddy.com. This site provides fuel prices, tax and other related information for every state. Look up your own state. Ohio fuel tax is 28 cents per gallon. The lowest states are Georgia at 7.5 cents and Alaska at 8 cents. The big tax offenders are Washington and Pennsylvania at 37.5 cents. So, I ask, how is it that Alaska and Georgia build and maintain roads for less than 1/5th of Washington and Pennsylvania? Are the roads in WA and PA 5x better? I’m not going to dig, but my suspicions are there is probably a strong relationship to how much of that money gets vacuumed off by non-free market road maintenance contractors. Oh, lets don’t forget, the federal government adds 18.4 cents to the price of every gallon of fuel which should be added to the numbers you find at the links above.
So, where do we stand this week?
Above is the display we like to keep up while driving. You can see we are sitting at 859.7 miles, 52.1 Ave MPG. It’s a warmer day here so the total available miles for EV power is 15 miles. We are told the warmer it is, the bigger this number will be, possibly as high as 21 miles this summer. It increases with temperature and also considers your heat/ac settings impact on range. You’ll notice she still has a bit over 1/2 a tank of fuel. This is our second tank since purchase and the first tank we’ve paid for. Note fuel mileage is calculated at 52.1 mpg. I am certainly hoping to do better than this but waiting patiently for the minimum 1000 miles Ford says to wait before judging the fuel economy. The little yellow plug symbol on the bottom line is indicating the car is plugged in. It won’t allow you to drive away while it’s plugged in. I am wondering where the engineer sits whom presumes I don’t have a cord long enough for my trip?
Above we see the Lifetime Summary. This screen comes up every time you power the car down. 373.1 EV miles, 35.7 miles powered by reclaimed braking energy. It’s scoring us at 41.9mpg in equivalent MPG on electric. Not exactly sure how that last number of calculated. I can think of a few different ways.
Notice that even though the range of this car on pure electric in the cold of winter has been about 14 miles most of the time. Yet, 373.1 EV miles of the total of 859.7 miles traveled. That means even though the electric only range is comparably short, it accounts for 43.4% of all miles traveled.
Also note, the fuel powered miles would be 486.6. Subtract the 59 miles the card had when we got it, this leaves 437.6 miles. To this point, we’ve consumed approximately 18 gallons (12.45 first fill up, about 5.5 thus far in this tank). This would imply the ICE (internal combustion engine) is delivering 24.31mpg. YIKES! I do hope this begins to improve as we cross 1000-3000 miles range where Ford says you should wait to collect MPG info.
That’s all till next Sunday.
A few thoughts come to mind:
1. The car says 230 miles have been driven on electricity, the balance of 344 miles driven on fuel. I’m a little confused here. Did we only go 344 miles on our 12.45 gallons of fuel. Yikes, that would be terrible mileage?? I need to dig in to the displays to see make sure the 574 is overall mileage as I am presuming and not just the fuel driven miles. Is my presumption wrong here?
2. Remember, midway through the tank, I changed the calculation from MPGe to MPG. It would be interesting to know if that effected anything or if there was a recalculation of the entire fuel/electric consumption so it reflected accurately at the time of the change.
3. I have not reset anything as of yet. I will perhaps do that when we get to 1, 2 or 3k so as not to have the break in miles figured into our average. Many cars don’t really give you a “since reset” average but rather a rolling average of only the last 300 miles or so. I’ll be interested to see how this car calculates that.
4. It’s notable the MPG calculator @ 40.7mpg is very close to my calculation of 41.36.
5. I hope I am not boring any readers. Writing along as I learn about the car. I’ll try to keep it down to 1 post a week on this subject. Expect them on Sunday’s. From here up was written on Jan 7th.
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01/08/13 Notes: Bev actually reset the mileage computer when we filled it up, her habit with the Civic Hybrid. I discovered this when she returned from work today and I noticed the reading slightly over 50mpg.
The following photo and description is from Frank Beafore of Select Tech GeoSpatial. Frank has become a modeling enthusiast and UAV manufacturer as well. It appears to be an example of the first ever electric powered RC helicopter that was manufactured for general sale to the public. It’s an interesting unit. If you know more about it or the history of hobbiest early electric helicopters, please stick in a comment.
Dave/Lisa
Attached is a photo of the first electric RC helicopter offered to model builders back in 1981. It was manufactured by Ishimasa Co, LTD, Tokyo. It used NiCad batteries with less than a 2 min. flight time. To train on it, you needed a 25 foot umbilical to supply current to keep it going. The tail rotor was coupled to the main drive via a fragile rubber belt that broke in mid flight. I do not think that it was 3-D capable.
I was lucky to get all the spare parts and the original instructions.
Cheers – FB
Below is a link to a website dedicated to Vintage RC Helicopters with lot’s of photo’s of this kit.
Vintage Radio Control Helicopter: VHRC Website
Video:
Whew, could you make the barnfind below a flyer???
Holly Dust-mites Batman!
Yes, Yes, I have seen one of our Wright Sticks on two different occasions being flown on electric ducted fans. We see out intrepid modeler tying the past to the future each year at the NEAT Fair.
Hello Radical RC,
Have been perusing your web site. Whatta great place! I find the site to be well laid out, very thorough and informative.
I’m a geezer and been building and flying for over 60 years. Embracing most technology available from early stick and tissue to free flight, gliders, glow , electric and gas.
Currently interested in A123 technology and on board glow drivers.
I know … you say ” if you like it so much BUY SOMETHIN” !!
Regards and best wishes fot the success of your business,
Jules Hebert
Listed on Drudge, an article from The Weekly Standard reports:
“Vice President Joe Biden revealed that President Barack Obama might use an executive order to deal with guns.
“The president is going to act,” said Biden, giving some comments to the press before a meeting with victims of gun violence. “There are executives orders, there’s executive action…..”
Obama Might Use Executive Order to Deal With Guns
After 4 minutes and 20 seconds of excuses and other low information voter mindless jibberish, Joe Biden gets around to confessing: “the president is going to act, there are executive orders that can be taken..”
What is next? Liberty does not die all at once, it’s step by step. One small step at a time. And those that suffer it’s loss often participate voluntarily.
Below quoted from: History.com “this day in history” segment.
“…January 30th….. In 1933, president Paul von Hindenburg names Adolf Hitler, leader or fÜhrer of the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party), as chancellor of Germany.
The year 1932 had seen Hitler’s meteoric rise to prominence in Germany, spurred largely by the German people’s frustration with dismal economic conditions and the still-festering wounds inflicted by defeat in the Great War and the harsh peace terms of the Versailles treaty. A charismatic speaker, Hitler channeled popular discontent with the post-war Weimar government into support for his fledgling Nazi party. In an election held in July 1932, the Nazis won 230 governmental seats; together with the Communists, the next largest party, they made up over half of the Reichstag.”
Socialists and Communists working hand in hand in 1932 Germany? No, say it ain’t so! Could it happen here? Has socialism run a-muck again? In the 30’s it was deep hatred of Jews, today we are not too friendly to Israel and we hear much similar hateful speeches describing employers and the rich. Hate is hate no mater the target, it’s ugly. And, Germany is a good example of how easily Liberty can be uprooted and replaced by Tyranny while people cheer.
From the wiki page: Gun polotics in Germany we quote the following:
“The 1938 German Weapons Act… the law restricted ownership of firearms to “…persons whose trustworthiness is not in question and who can show a need for a (gun) permit.”
Additionally “Jews were forbidden from the manufacturing or dealing of firearms and ammunition”
Yes, under Hitlers socialist Germany, law was enacted stating you must “show a need”. Sounds just like the enemy’s of Liberty today doesn’t it! The old battle to enslave or execute peoples by first disarming them has never ended. While it’s true the Germans were racist-socialists and the current leadership is anti-capitalist socialist, to gain power the methods are the same, a scapegoat is manufactured to blame all of societies woes (Even though mostly caused by government). It’s not long before there are Purges & reeducation camps. Have they successfully convinced you that employers and entrepreneurs are to blame? We hear about it on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC and CNN on an almost nightly basis.
Another important point on “need”. No where in our US constitution is the word “need” used to describe our rights or privileges. Use CNTL-F to search the US Constitution: here Sadly, this campaign to judge maters and make law in the USA according to need started a long time ago. It was written by Karl Marx “to each according to his needs.” Read Karl Marx in context on the wiki page: Here It’s part of a fascinating paragraph where he describes the highest goals of his society as “after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want;”. You might notice (if you take time to read it) that “Pursuit of happiness” is never suggested as an important value. I think Karl is describing the perfect slave, his highest want is labor. The same wiki page linked above also describes Karl Marx’s Communism as “scientific socialism”. Not my words mind you. These people and the views they espouse and promote are dangerous. Can you reject the path they suggest?
Directly dictating our constitutional rights by executive pen, that’s a dictatorship. Perhaps we are a socialist dictatorship now? Have you un-wittingly supported the end of America? Have you hid your head from all the warnings? Are you sick for not doing enough to stop it? Do you even care?
It’s the normal condition of man around the world to be on average – dirt poor and subject to tyranny. It has remained that way throughout the ages with only rare exception. America is a great experiment to see if Liberty can triumph over tyranny on a long term basis. That experiment tests the idea of short circuiting the natural movement towards tyranny by establishing a non-centralized form of government. A non-concentrated management of the country were “We the people” can have meaning. Yet, we drift willingly to concentration of more and more power in fewer and fewer hands. And where are we? We are so soft now that the President can have his VP float trial balloons about possible dictatorial orders without fear of significant reprisal or political penalty. Our lives depend on fighting for Liberty day and night with our every breath and stroke of pen. When Honey Boo Boo gets higher TV ratings than either political convention, there is no question, apathy has become completely entrenched. It’s almost over America, what channel was Honey Boo Boo on anyway sweetheart?
When will they come for you? When will they come for me?
My name is Dave Thacker and I’m doing something about it.
What will you do about it today?