Journal Alioth's Journal: Stuff 3
Well, an action packed JE for today, I think:
The glider club - now the winch is back in action (on our third engine this year!) we were flying today. A lot of people are away at the moment so there wasn't many of us, so we didn't fly long. Of course, as soon as we pack up, the high overcast that had kept soaring extremely marginal disappeared, and fair weather cumulus (i.e. great markers that there's lots of lift around) appeared! Oh well. At least I did get a short soaring flight thanks to a sea breeze convergence. I also drove the winch for about 9 launches or so. The new winch engine (a 4.2 litre Jaguar engine) was running nicely, and we were getting good launch heights - one of my launches yielded a 1550 foot release. (I think if we had the Ka-8 out we'd have seen an 1800+ ft launch since that's a much lighter glider than the club's Blanik).
I got some new main shafts for my RC heli, so that's back flying again, and I'm still trying to get the tail set up right. Despite the high RPMs, it doesn't seem very effective, the rate of yaw when turning clockwise isn't all that great (but of course, the yaw rate achievable the other way, i.e. not going against the main rotor's torque is fast). I might try modifying a set of cambered CP2 tail blades to see if it helps things. I did have a tail servo fail in flight as well, it went intermittent. This lead to a hard (but damage free) landing. I took its gear set out and repaired another servo I have that had stripped gears as a replacement.
I also made a start on working on the motorcycle. First, I took the front brake caliper off, and took the old pads out (backings were rusted, and there was nearly no friction material left, anyway). I think I might replace the front disc too - because the bike has sat, there's some corrosion on the bits that allow the disc to 'float' - and in any case, they aren't all that expensive, and if there's anything I want to be perfect it's the brakes. The calipers themselves look fine and none of the pistons are stuck. I also took most of the fairings off, a job I thought would take five minutes, but because the hardware fastening the fairings together lives in dirty places, some bolts had seized. The main fairings themselves weren't bad, but the front wheel mudguard was a real pain in the arse - probably the dirtiest place for the ends of the bolts which had all rusted. They are held on by plastic clips and bolted together, and of course the plastic can't hold the nut against a rusty bolt being turned, and there's almost no room to get a set of mole grips in to hold the nut still. It made it very slow work. I think I'll also replace a lot of the nuts and bolts -- and when I reassemble, it will be with anti-seize compound liberally applied!
But most of the fairings are off, and the stuff under the fairings looks in pretty good shape, it just needs cleaning.
Oh. You can also tell I'm not married. If I was married, do you think I would be allowed to park a motorcycle in the dining room?
(It's only a temporary condition, I don't have a garage, and I'd like to work on it somewhere reliably warm and dry and free of wind, with electricity and good lighting. Once I've done most of the work I'll buy some covers so I can park outside).
I also plucked up the courage to try my newbie Spanish in a Spanish Sinclair Spectrum forum. It was just to ask where some guy got hold of a TEA2114 (composite video switch) IC since he'd used one and I can't find a source for the chip (if it's even still made, hardly anyone uses composite video these days). I seemed to have formed something approaching syntactically correct Spanish since I got a reasonable answer!
Garage... (Score:2)
It is tough not having a garage or workplace outside of the house.... wish I had such a place from time to time.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is endemic here - most of the housing stock was built before people generally had private transport except for their feet, let alone motor vehicles! My house when it was built was two tiny one up-one down houses. It was extended about 100 years ago, and knocked into one house. As built, neither house would have so much as an indoor toilet, with just one room downstairs and one upstairs.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes indeed. Our 100 year old bungalow technically *does* have a garage, but a tiny structure intended for a Model T serves now as shelter for bikes and a lawnmower.