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.
What an amazing and entertaining speech delivery by George will at the 2010 CPAC conference. The ideal of liberty offends many and most do not understand the term at all. A very funny speech for which you’ll laugh and realize all at the same time sense the underlying sadness.
Speaking to the choir resembles 1/2 time locker room enthusiasm building. I hope by introducing you to some of the worlds greatest minds, greatest proponents of freedom and liberty that we’ll together be able to reduce the fires that burn against freedom to mere smoldering embers. It is impossible to put out this fire, but it is possible to care that it does not spread and that people learn to move their belongings far from the source of ignition.
I encourage you to have the courage to speak outside your choir. It’s easy once you’ve tried, just do it.
My name is Dave Thacker and I’m doing something about it.
You might wonder why a couple of proud capitalists would purchase a plug in hybrid car? The vast majority of media outlets never pass a chance to describe lovers of liberty and free markets as people who want dirty air and water. We reject their racist analysis. Racist? Ok, I’m taking lingual liberty. They certainly are drawing a circle around a huge group of people and saying “They are all bad like thus and thus….”. And, the statement is completely untrue. Perhaps racist isn’t the right word, however is it “news” if it’s delivered with a slant? No, it’s propaganda or opinion, not news. 😉
Anyway, we are to one degree or another technology nerds. Also, I’ve always had an interest in electric transportation. I’ve built some hot rod electric scooters that I use at shows. At the moment, I have some projects underway to electrify a classic mini bike. So, as a family, we have operational 3 forms of electric transportation.
A few reasons. I don’t like giving money to people that hate us. As an American, I consider it a matter of patriotic pride to limit my consumption of products imported from the Middle East. I like electric powered transportation and have always dreamed of building electric bikes, scooters, motorcycles and cars. My wife and I are technology nerds. It’s a cool car and technology is just fun to play with.
Not a reason: Man Caused Global Warming Hoax. This is a huge scam religion perpetrated by those wishing to weaken America (anti-capitalists), those wishing to take American pride down a few notches (can you name a few American Apologist Politicians?) and those in academia (scientists) who survive on money for government studies that seems to pour into any public panic. If you hate me for stating these things, don’t look up any data on rise of CO2 following global temperature rise, it will disappoint you in the so called scientists that signed the original report and Al Gore. CO2 does not drive global temps, it follows it. What warms the earth is (do you remember grade school?) is that gigantic ball of intense fire we call the sun.
I don’t need to make up lies or silly make-believe theory’s to justify being clean, thrifty or patriotic (my personal expression of one aspect of patriotism). Others may need a Santa Claus, I’ll stick to facts and logic. Hokey religions and Three-card Monte are no match for a good logic at your side, kid.*
I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.
I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America. I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.
I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.
We, the people, deserve better than you.
Respectfully Submitted,
Joshua Boston
Cpl, United States Marine Corps
2004-2012
——————————————————————————–
“Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”
-Thomas Jefferson-
I Salute Joshua Boston for defending Liberty, all our Liberty!!! Even though a former Marine, Joshua recognizes his duty to defend Liberty from tyranny at home. A patriot never retires, never quits, never gives up, never leaves room in America for the enemy’s of Liberty. We must all do our duty to our troops who are away and defend Liberty at home against outside and inside attackers. Let not Liberty die to thunderous applause!* The tyrannt Senator from California go hide her head for her confession as a trator to American Liberty. What part of “Shale not be infringed.” do you not understand? Hell, any 3rd grader could spell and understand every word in the second amendment. Don’t like self defense? It’s a short flight to Mexico where it is just the way you want it, or perhaps Chicago (death tolls in state wide gun-free-zone higher than our troops in Afganistan).
Dianne Feinstein: CONFESSES SHE IS ARMED! Yet recently she questions your right to defend yourself while she is armed to the teeth. Throw this 3rd world tyrannt out California!
Here she says she will reintroduce assult weapons ban for all us underlings. Most rifles sold and handguns are semi-automatic. This means when you pull the trigger, it fires a round. So, if the gun fires every time you pull the trigger in her estimation it only belongs on a battle field. If you own it and need to defend yourself, you need to remove a lock first.
Wait a minute you raping mass-murdering madman, before I try to kill you first, let me get this lock off my rifle. PLEASE!
These are the choices madmen, dictators, tyrannts and evil doers want to leave thier peasants with. That is a real example of love and care for your fellow man. Should we be surprised?
“The natural tendency of things, it seems, is for government to grow and for liberty to retreat.”
-Thomas Jefferson-
Make no mistake, anybody that wants you to be weaker can’t possibly be looking out for your interests. Particularly a politicion who at home and work is armed to the teeth at work paid for by your tax dollars. You’ve been providing her armed security (do you feel like a sucker yet?). But, it’s not OK for you, you pathetic servent grade trash subject of the federal governement. It’s not OK for you to provide for your own defense at the same time your providing for hers.
*
Hard to tell if Emperor Palpatine is really Dianne Feinstein?
“Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”
-Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi-
(1869-1948)
Source: An Autobiography, pg 446
My name is Dave Thacker and I’m doing something about it.
This is one of my favorite podcasts. If you visit the site, you’ll find a whole range of differents casts and RSS feeds for various science and engineering disaplines. These podcasts are actually live radio shows played on BBC Radio. They seem to be posted as podcasts a week or two after airing.
I sent them a question and they invited me on-air live to ask it. They phoned me from the UK this Sunday about 1pm est.. I listened to the show live on the phone for about 10 minutes until my spot came up. My question can be heard on the Christmas 2012 episode of The Naked Scientists.
What was the question? Having seen images of galaxy’s taken though telescopes, they all seem to have a bright center that is a significant portion of the galaxy. Do some planets in the bright center bathe in perpetual light independent of that planets own sun rise/set cycle?
The answer? You’ll just have to listen as I did. 😉
A full week on the ticker. Remember the very important point presented in part 1. That point was Ford says to wait at least 1000miles before making any mileage calculations. This implies there may be some break in mixture settings that prevent it from reaching it’s potential for a while. That being said, here are my shots of the data thus far.
Life Time Summary 01/06/13
Over 20 miles of driving on engergy generated from braking. 200 miles exactly in pure electric driving. The brakes are interesting. When you lightly press on the peddle, you get a braking action, however it’s really the generator robbing your inertia for energy to charge the battery. As you move down on the peddle you can feel there are about 3 steps in this level of braking (or level of power generation) which each step increasing in rate of power generation and braking force. If you don’t move your foot at all, you’ll come to a complete stop. Obviously, when you are barely moving (moment before you stop) there can be no electronic braking (or little) yet it feels just like the brake pads are stopping you. Some super-brain programming must be managing this and it works perfectly!
Ford C-Max Energi MPG & Miles 01/06/13
Shown here are total miles, state of battery charge and what remains of our first tank of fuel given to us by the dealer. Not bad, close to 500 miles and we have about a 1/4 tank left. Notice, I have changed the mileage calculation. It was at first combined with with electric power. I wasn’t interested in that figure. I wanted to know what we were getting per gallon of gasoline. So, that is now represented. It’s continued to climb all week and as you can see, it’s over 40mpg at this time.
Overall my impression of this car is a “fine ride”. Really enjoying the gizmo factor of playing around with an electric car. It’s as fine a ride as any luxury automobile I’ve ever driven. Comfortable, handles nice, great on the highway. Can’t wait for an excuse to take a long trip in it.
I did run into a couple of irritations this past week. When it comes to any kind of product manual or help file, it seems not to include “my” answer. While switching it from MPGe to MPG I encountered a wrench icon. A retangular yellow light with a wrench in it. Going to the bible like (thin pages and thick!) manual to look over the two pages full of warning icons, I could not find a wrench. Going to the glossary and looking up words like “icon”, “wrench” and “symbol” produced a big fat zero. I’ve come to expect that when I look into any kind of help file or manual. Is a black cloud following me? Probably not. Once I got the setting to what I wanted, the wrench never appeared again. Not sure what it was trying to communicate to me.
The second item is the foot actuated lift gate. It seemed to work iratically, opening partially then stopping at times. I discovered we were using it wrong, wiggling your foot back and forth under the bumper can start it opening and also toggle it to stop. Just sticking your foot under the bumper and pulling it out gets a reliable full open every time.
More to learn: You’ll notice in one photo, a full battery stating it has 12 miles range. We had read this car has about 20-22 miles on battery alone. I’ve still to figure out if this is part of a break in or what the reality is on final full electric range.
Hear and see two classics flying together. Great demonstration and audio of radial throttle by ignition. I think I could find a better way to remove the wheel chocks, how about you? 😉
Last two. Attempt to show Orville “flying”. Last photo is from pre-detailing to show rib and spar details. Done with a light brown Prismacolor marker available from craft stores like Michael’s. Put on the bare foam before over-painting with the High-Heat Almond paint. Gives a nice muted look as if real ribs and spars are underneath fabric covering. Looks great in the air.
…………
Also thought I took a few shots of the launch dolly, but I guess not. It works well, both flights off the dolly. Will be sure to take some shots if the weather holds this weekend.
Dave, this has been a fun project to do, it let me do a lot of “adaptive” engineering that I so enjoy.
Thanks!
Keith
Rear quartering view of 1905 Wright Flyer
Love the Faux ribs and spars idea. It adds an extra dimension of scale detail and sounds really simple. I am thinking the next one I do will use your method. I might do the carbon rods and trailing edge as well??? Might be too much of a good thing if I did.
Great animation telling the history of Monday and threats to our freedom and independence. It’s inescapable, we’ve slid way down the hill. I am unsure if it can be turned around or perhaps the best we can do is stick our feet through the floorboards and slow it down.
2012 C-Max EnergiC-Max Energi[/caption]It was time to purchase a new car. My wife and I are fans of Top Gear, a european auto show. On that show they don’t like many cars, however, they all love the Fiat 500 Abarth. We also liked the Ford C-Max. These cars do not have too much in common, however it was the two we were picking from. We finally decided on the C-Max Energi. (my Abarth dreams are still alive) Her previous car is a 2004 Honda Civic Hybrid. The Civic is 9 years old with a little over 100k on it. I currently drive a 2006 Dodge Mega Cab Cummins Diesel pickup. We have decided to keep the Honda as I have been averaging about $254 a month in fuel expense commuting to work each day. However, I need the truck to travel to trade shows and fly-ins so we’ll be keeping that. I just don’t need to be driving it so much. I am planning that by driving the Civic will save us about $127 a month in deisel fuel.
The C-Max comes in several varieties, we choose the “Energi” version. The Energi is a plug in Hybrid It has an EPA rating of 100 miles per gallon. The car contains a lithium ion battery and can go 10-20 miles on battery alone.
I plan to write in this forum about the C-Max and out experience with it.
When we picked up the car, the avergage fuel economy guage was reading 13.5mpg and it had 59 miles on it. (YIKES!)
One of the things that concerned us was the lack of people reporting fuel economy for the C-Max, both Hybrid and the Energi Plug In. The few that did report all reported less than EPA sticker mileage. Typical for the C-Max Hybrid (sticker 47mpg city, 47mpg highway and 47mph combined) was from 32 to 36mpg. That is alarming. However, these reports all seem to come from reviewers who have cars on loan for a day to film and make reports. Also, for photogenic reasons the driving almost always was in the hills and canyons of California or similar. Test speeds always seem to be 70mph plus. We don’t drive like that. Also, what does any reviewer or test driver do? They stand on that throttle to feel the power, they film passing, they film jack-rabbit starts, the test the handling. All things your likely to get tired of doing after owning a car for a 1000miles or so. What am I saying? You can’t trust the media here (like you can’t trust them anywhere). In this case, they don’t have an axe to grind, they have a report to finish. There is no axe to grind, just human nature. So, I’m anxious to see if I am correct or in error. Will the car do much better than previously reported?
Also, not reported by any report is the Ford’s manual which warns not to measure fuel economy during the first 1000 miles. The most accurate time will be between 2000-3000 miles. Having mechanical and racing experience (and a dose of healthy logic), I can assure you with todays computer controlled ignition and fuel delivery systems could easily be programmed to run a little richer for a better break in. The manual does not state it in that way and no research indicates they’ve done that. However, there is no research that indicates they did not either. So, we’ll follow the directions and give it the miles before we get too critical.
I wonder if any of the online reviewers of the C-Max Hybrid bothered to read the manual? Remember, these are humans.
Engergi Lifetime Summary 01/01/13We have the Energi version which is perported to get 108mpg in the city and 92 highway. Of course with an electric range limit of about 20 miles, I would presume most of your trips need to be very short with charging before each trip to acheive this mileage. My wife’s commute is 60 miles a day and most of that is Highway. I’ll be quite happy if she averages 60mpg. We are starting with the car in the winter which creates heating loads.
Mileage Data Shot 01-01-13Here is our first set of guage photos. I’ll try to add these from time to time so you can see how the Energi is doing.
Clark Aposhian, President of the Utah Shooting Sport Council, demonstrates with a plastic gun during concealed-weapons training for 200 Utah teachers Dec. 27, 2012, in West Valley City, Utah. (Rick Bowmer/AP Photo)The perception of schools as sanctuaries from violence has been “blown up” by recent events and some believe it’s time for educators to literally take the situation into their own hands and carry guns.
……handful of states, including Oregon, Hawaii and New Hampshire, that allow people to carry licensed concealed weapons into public schools.
The report describes Utah’s long running choice to resist evil law breaking wackos with force, to protect our children with deadly force if nesasary. Certainly it would not be complete without an objector to liberty, self-defense and teacher defense of children. As reported by ABC NEWS – Carol Lear, the board’s director of school law and legislation, who stated “It’s a terrible idea…It’s a horrible, no-good, rotten idea.”
Should you choose to contact this objector to liberty, her contact information is published on a public web page: USOE Law – Contact Us
Published there on this day is:
Carol Lear
Director
Phone: (801) 538-7835 | E-mail: carol.lear@schools.utah.gov
