 | Because it's important to have a place to ride. | |
|  I wanted to post a quick public service announcement. I'm not going to ramble on about this, but they want to put a commuter rail system in on the old rail bed that currently hosts the rail-trail system that I ride on frequently. While it sounds like a good idea, a commuter rail system between Clarksville and Nashville simply won't work. Additionally the rail-trail is potentially of much greater benefit to all the communities that would be directly affected by the change. For more information about it, head over to Stop The Train and read up.
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| Summer Fest Fireworks | |
|  Every year Ashland City holds Summer Fest, a week of carnival rides, games, live music, and local crafts and awareness. It's a celebration of all things local. Summer Fest is capped off on Saturday night by the fireworks display. This year, I decided to get some pictures. They aren't too bad, but clearly next year I'll take a tripod - yes, I shot all of these off hand, and it's obvious in some of them. Enjoy.
http://cotharyus.net/pictures/thumbnails.php?album=11
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| Overrun with Turkey. | |
| I walked out the front door this morning and found more turkey in the field next door. Check out the pics.
http://cotharyus.net/pictures/thumbnails.php?album=10
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| Paintball Saturday May 30th | |
| We're playing paintball May 30th whether you like it or not, whether the weather likes it or not, or pretty much anything else.
The game starts at 11 am, you might want to get there earlier. You probably want to bring some food or drinks - bbq can be had at the usual place, chips, buns, etc - you may want to communicate with your fellow paintballers.
If you need directions, ask me, and I'll get them to you.
As always, we can talk about it on the forums here: http://cotharyus.net
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| Nature grants a shoot. | |
| Tonight, the weather system that has been dumping rain on us for the past two days moved off east right at sunset. The frontal boundary showed well, with some textured clouds behind it, and the sunset reflected off the back side of the weather that was moving off. The clear sky to the west, allowing the setting sun to shine through, is confirmation of tonights forecast for cold weather. At least we got to see something pretty out of the whole deal.The Gallery.
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| Rebuilding | |
|  Clearly something has changed here. Sorry if what you're looking for isn't here, but I had to pick up and move the site quickly to the new server from the old one. I'll try to get some of the old content back up, but no promises. If you're looking for something specific here, ask me in the forums (once they're set up) and I'll see what I can do about getting the content back up here.
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| E-MGT or RC8MT. Either way, it lives. Are you paying attention Associated? | |
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Although some of you have heard rumors, others have seen pictures here on the site, and participated in discussions here and other places, others may be completely clueless, because I never officially posted this project. I\'m know as a fan of electric R/C cars, it\'s what I started with, and there\'s something special about them. Unfortunately, electric is viewed as expensive - motor maintenance, batteries with short run times, chargers. You get the point. Nitro gained a lot of popularity, and with 1/8 scale monster trucks, it hit a sweet spot. They work for racing, bashing, fantastic feats of R/C flight - they\'re big, tough and impressive. Unfortunately, they\'re also loud, messy, and there\'s a lot to take into consideration when you transport one. Lets face it, electric is simpler, but until very recently, there was nothing to match the scale and go anywhere capability of a nitro monster truck.
Recently, we got the E-Savage, and the E-Revo. I won\'t get into these here, but suffice to say the E-Savage isn\'t brushless, and the E-Revo, is not, in my opinion, a monster truck, it is something different. It\'s cool, but it\'s different. Plus, I already have radios, servos - I really wanted something I could bend to my own needs, something big, four wheel drive, and fast. I\'ve been racing a Monster GT for some years. I like it, and would never get rid of it, or do away with it. So when I heard about the Mamba Monster Max ESC, something that would finally stand the current it would take to really sling around a big heavy monster truck, I started looking around. A local racer was retiring all of his nitro gear, and selling a Monster GT rolling chassis. I bought that, worked it over, and eagerly waited for the MMM to become available, while planning out how it would work, and go together. Finally, everything was on the market.
The ESC:
The Mamba Monster Max is one bad animal. Capable of handling 200 amps constant load with up to 6s LiPo, equipped with a fan and 10 gauge wires, there\'s nothing that compares to it. And since it\'s a Mamba, from Castle Creations, it is, of course, programmable via your computer. I would like to say it\'s everything I expected, but Castle slipped in one place. This ESC has a 4.8 volt (or something less than 6 volts) BEC which is non adjustable. It would have been better for something designed for large vehicles to have more voltage available to servos, in my opinion. That said, this ESC has dealt with three runs, of increasing punishment, and never gotten over 115 degrees F, even though one run the ambient temperature was at least 97 degrees F. I have to plug my vendor, Holmes Hobbies, owned by John Rob Holmes. He told me he\'d get these in, and he did. I ordered mine from him, and had it in my hands, like always, more quickly than I had expected. There are people out there dedicated to excellent service, and John is one of them, I make it a point to do business with these people every time I get a chance. Additionally, John will supply you with information above and beyond what you can find elsewhere - believe me when I tell you, he tests this stuff, and probably abuses it worse than many of his customers.
The Motor:
The Medusa V2 motor powering this rig is a 4 pole brushless design. Rated at 2000kv, with a constant current draw rating of 89 amps, it\'s not going to stress the ESC. In fact, I wondered if it would be motor enough to heave this heavy truck around. It is. It\'s gotten the truck to over 30 MPH in (fairly tall) grass, up hill in my yard, it pulls massive wheelies, and it\'s super responsive on the track, the motor ESC combo allows power to come on hard enough to break the tires loose in a turn and provides enough control to allow a smooth slide through turns, continuing to roll on the power coming on to the straight - it\'s just plain fast. These motors are also relatively inexpensive compared to a lot of motors in this class, but I have to admit, the motor is certainly the weak link in this rig at the moment. It reached 180 degrees F on the same run the ESC hit 115F. On the same runs, the batteries came under the temp gun and showed ....97F - the ambient temperature. Eventually, this motor is going to be upgraded, although based on the mounting I\'m currently using, I may have to rebuild my mount when I replace it.
The Batteries:
The key to brushless performance, as anyone who has used brushless gear will tell you, is good batteries. That means batteries that can supply the current that a system needs to start up, the more current, the more explosive the acceleration, the more impressive the wheelies...you get the point. So how much current is enough? If you\'re shooting for a big rig, get as much as you can. My MaxAmps 8000 Mah 11.1 cell LiPos are capable of deliving 160 amps of continuous power. Wired up to throw both of them in at 22.2 volts, they\'ll spin the 2000kv motor up to 44k rpms, and with that much current on tap, it gets there fast. Now another word about a vendor. These guys at MaxAmps are top notch. I use their batteries in just about everything I own. Their service is fantastic, support is responsive, and they will discuss requirements for a project like this with you. Add to that reasonable prices (heck, fantastic prices if you consider the quality of the product you\'re buying) and I have to say it again - projects like mine would go no where without some of the fantastic independent vendors in this market.
With all the major components together, I built the motor mount from a steel shelf plate. A single thickness bolts to the chassis where the nitro mount fit to allow for gearing adjustment. A double thick upright to mount the motor to which is first welded together, then welded to the base with an overlap joint (one peice welded to the top flat of the plate the bolts to the chassis, the other welded to the outside edge) gives the motor mount enough beef to stand up to the torque this rig is making. I have not yet seen any sign of the mount flexing.
One major consideration was brakes. The MGT tranny is tough as nails, but there\'s no way to set it up to use the motor braking. You can also drop a half a pound out of the tranny by using the Associated Forward Only Kit. So I dropped in the FOC, and kept the mechanical brakes that are stock. They\'re good enough to stand the truck on it\'s nose anyhow. Downside - no reverse - upside, I might be good enough to not need it.
End results? It works. It\'s a sight to behold. it\'s nowhere near finished, I still have to sort out the suspension for a 13.5 lb truck, but there\'s no lack of power to tap here, and the future is wide open. Keep an eye out for updates, as this is sure to be a work in progress for some time. I also plan to have one of my photographers take some action pictures at some point. In the meantime, there are pictures in the image gallery here.
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| Something you should know | |
| For years now, likely since the first time I rode a bike down my father's drive way, I have loved riding bikes. Even though that first trip down the drive ended up in an ill fated turn that it would take me several tries to master, something about riding was enchanting. As I got older the bikes and the hills got bigger, and making the turn became more and more important. My first mountain bike was a beach cruiser with a 10 speed conversion kit on it. After that, everything got a little more high tech. One thing that stayed low tech was my body, and I can tell you, you can only break so much of your body up and get away with it. After a while, it starts to catch up to you. A few years ago, my joy in riding all but ceased when I hurt my lower back. From that point on, I experienced some level of discomfort after more than a few miles on my trusty mountain bike, which had by that time evolved from the beach cruiser, through several other bikes, into a GT Zascar Race. What to do? This discomfort dampened my enthusiasm for riding. I was at a cross roads, with biking and pain one way, and not biking and the misery of that the other way. As I was standing at this cross roads, I saw a funny bike go by, down a road I hadn't seen before.
The funny bike, was a recumbent bike. One that lets you ride in a more relaxed, supported position. I had to look long and hard to find out more, but in the end, I was able to locate one locally that I could ride. Then another I was able to sit on, but not ride, due to the adjustments necessary on these bikes to change the bike for the size of the rider. I knew I needed one of these. There was no way it could hurt my back to ride one. So I picked one up, and over 400 miles later, I can tell you, I was right, this doesn't hurt a bit. And I've still got a smile on my face. I get to keep riding, and do it without hurting. Interested? There are some pictures of my Scorpion fx in the gallery, and if you're looking for information there are forums at recumbentriders.org where you'll find nice people who can answer questions and get you pointed in the right direction. That's feet first, in case you were wondering.
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| So, how about that helicoptor? | |
| Knowing the CX was an outmoded breed, I picked one up at a minor discount. The newer (CX 2) uses a different controller, and has some minor upgrades, all of which are compatible with the older CX. Already I am certain I can pick up the receiver for new model and use my DX7 to control it. It will happen eventually, but I'm waiting for the current unit to burn out, which happens, apparently.
Worthy of note is the battery situation here. The CX comes with an 800mah LiPo, of the two cell variety. A new one costs about $30 bucks, and it's handy to have two of them, since flight times are, lets face it, short, at about 6-10 minutes. Of course, until you can fly the heli, there's no getting that much flight time around repairs. But in case you pick it up fast, pick up a commonsenserc.com pack instead of the E-Flight one - it costs all of $11, and it's a quality pack.
Speaking of repairs, blades for the CX are easy. They come in four packs, for $4, and all you have to do is screw them on. Except that you really should balance them. I use two cans of green beans to balance them on, and put packing tape on the underside of the light blade to get things evened up. Trust me, it makes a lot of difference.
Out of the box, these helicopters aren't much good out doors, but flying them indoors may prove to be too much of a challenge, especially if you have pets, small children, or a wife that likes lots of knick knacks. That said, if you want to fly it out side there are two things you should do. First, drop the stock tail assembly, and build or buy a slim shaft style tail. You can use an arrow shaft to get a good start. The other thing you need to do, is shorten the fly bar, otherwise you'll get blade clash, or the bottom blade and the fly bar will strike, and this will bring your bird down. Trust me. Do both of these things, and these helis may be able to fly in winds as high as 5 mph.
Fun? You bet. What do I like so much about it? You have to think to fly it. Just like when you're bashing with cars, you can relax a little, but you have to think every second of a race if you want to win, you have to think every second this thing is in the air if you want to keep it in the air. It's a challenge. And it's fun.
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| Witty Monk? You bet, and it's something to smile about. | |
| The Witty Monk has been un-capped, and it's everything is pretended to be. It's a crisp wheat beer, with a great citrus overtone. I've talked about this beer for a long time, I've wanted to make it, but I didn't know where to find it. Turns out, you can get it out of a kit. And it's great stuff. Honestly, this is going into my summer-stock list. There are a few beers I like to keep around and this is going to be one of them.
What's in the future for beers? I started two more batches this weekend, to be bottled in a few weeks. I'm turning my second batch of Sticky Wicket (it's an oatmeal stout - look through past news, and you can find it) and yet another batch of St. Patrick's Irish stout. If you like a good dark beer, this is the stuff. For my next trick, I'll be working on some witches brew - a light wheat beer with boysen berries in it. It will be my first venture into beer with actually adding fruit to the fermentation cycle. Should be intersting, and perhaps another great summer brew.
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