Alioth's Journal: Flying, more grey goo, and a bit of bike

I've not written in a while, but here's a quick catch-up.

I've worked a bit more on my ethernet card for the Sinclair Spectrum, specifically, in the hardware department - trying to figure out how much solder paste is just the right amount (and I've still not got it right, and I've also run out of solder wick). It's not far off though and it beats hand soldering fine pitch surface mount components by a mile. The grey goo itself seems to hold up well - I've heard that it has a really short shelf life, but the solder paste I have seems to dispense as easily as the day I received it. The small blob of it I left out on the bench still seems pliable after 2 or 3 weeks! (It probably wouldn't go through the syringe nozzle any more though). I think this paste must be formulated specifically for prototyping/rework, optimised for shelf life rather than holding shape as it heats.

I've worked on the software, too. I'm currently writing the C socket library, with the usual functions you'd expect, as close to the BSD socket library as I can make it. It's basically just a wrapper around the board's ROM functions, though (since arguments are passed on the stack in C - so the functions basically load CPU registers from the stack, then call the ROM routine). The Z88DK is a little bit different than something big like gcc, though, when it comes to writing libraries. Well, especially since I'm writing them in assembly language. But last night I successfully got a Spectrum to load a web page (that's different from *rendering* a web page - I've not written a web browser!)

We've had really nice weather recently, hardly any wind, lots of sunshine - so of course, the main motor on my RC helicopter is more or less dead (basically, it won't get the heli out of ground effect), and the delivery of a new motor just hasn't happened, so I've missed lots of good days to fly it outdoors. However, I did find a brushless motor and ESC on ebay (some soldering required to fit it to a CP2, which is desigend for a brushed motor). The heli is now way overpowered :-) The motor itself which has the same mounting holes to fit the frame as the standard brushed motor, is designed for a 450 sized heli, and mine's a 300 size! So the collective is very much more responsive, and I think it'll soon be time to re-fit the much heavier alloy rotor head since I now have a motor that'll do it justice. I'm glad I got the dual tail motor modification, since it copes with the extra power very happily (I've not dared punching the collective up to full yet...) It's also quieter, and runs a hell of a lot cooler. Unfortunately because I've not flown it for a couple of weeks as a consequence of not having an adequate main motor, I had to take it easy tonight in case I ended up crashing. But I managed to fly a battery and a half without incident.

With the weather being good I've also got out on the bike (which with today's fuel costs, saves GBP4.50 per day or so). It's a pity that so many people seem intent on knocking me off though - last week, a teenager wandered backwards into the road without looking and I had to take swift evasive action (fortunately, his friends yelled at him to stop before he went too far, so I only ended up on the centre stripe of the road trying to avoid the dozy sod). Then two days ago some idiot waved a Land Rover out of a farm entrance without actually looking to see if the road was clear. Fortunately, there was no oncoming traffic so I could swerve out onto the other side of the road, and the driver did eventually see me and stop. Had I been on something faster like a motorbike at the same spot, it would have been a pretty nasty crash - it was fortunate that I was not pedalling all that hard in any case because it was a really close call. Sigh.

Anyhow...off to Aboyne, Scotland tomorrow to try and get some wave soaring in, in a glider. It's not unknown to soar a glider up to around 30K feet there. Hope it doesn't rain!