TOM'S BLOG THREE

[Tom Goodrick]

Today, 1/10/11, we are shoveling out after getting 8" - 10" here in Madison, AL. I don't have to go anywhere but I did have to take my Sheltie dog out for his morning "walk". He had a good time once he found he would not sink too deeply into the snow. (His tummy was in the snow.) I had to shovel the stoop and four steps to get in and out of the house. That's enough of that! Our Pomeranian had a ball.

[Bill Von Sennet]

Hi Tom,

You had more snow than we did up in SW Pennsylvania.

We had about 1-2" this afternoon.

We are expecting 1-3" tonight.

[Tom Goodrick]

Saw a good show on "Flying the Alsaka Wilderness" yesterday on the Discovery HD channel. They featured flights from Unaleet (sp?) with one guy who manages the airport, his wife manages the cargo and charter schedules and his daughter helps on the line. He uses a mix of Caravans, Cessna 207/206 and Cessna 180. The panel of the 180 had a big Garmin 530 in map mode right in the center. I went to Avsim looking for a 180 and got a good 185. Neat plane.

[flaminghotsauce]

That came up yesterday while I was at K89/the big King Air visit. There's a guy that used to fly in Alaska that moved down here, and sold his plane locally. They were talking about the adventures they saw on the Discovery Channel show, and this guy knew every pilot mentioned! Too funny. He kept interrupting and saying "Was that guys name _____" and it always was.

[louross]

I'm probably going to get seriously flamed here, but...
I am going to assume you are not talking about a program called "Flying Wild Alaska".
lr.

[Tom Goodrick]

You're among friends here. That probably was the correct title. My memory is not great. I was just impressed by their tenacity in continuing to work in that area under tough conditions.

It turns out the snow storm ruined my heat pump. I did not check the unit visually until I heard funny noises a day after. The outer radiator panel was covered in ice from melting/freezing snow that had blown against it. I had to remove the ice with several kettles of boiling water. But the damage was done. Then a call to a repair company resulted in slow service. They are chasing parts. We have been scrambling to get enough space heaters to maintain a reasonable temp in the house of 60F. It will be another day or two.

[Bill Von Sennet]

Yikes! I never would have expected that trouble in Alabama.

Last winter we had to pay $25 three different times to have snow shoveled away from our heat pump.

I think we were advised to switch it from heat to air conditioning once to melt some ice. We also have an emergency setting which turns on electric heat panels out there if the heat pump isn't working. But it is a very
expensive way to heat.

I hope you get it fixed very soon.

[Tom Goodrick]

That problem took a while to fix. It was aggravated by the fact we have insurance on failed appliances. That is a bad idea and we will try to get to where we self-insure for that stuff.

The problem is: 1) You can't call a repair company; the insurance company does it. 2) This leads to a whole bunch of small companies that just work for certain insurance companies. Not all of them are competent. The first company took several days to get and install a new fan motor. Then they installed it incorrectly and burned it up. The second company, after we yelled and hollered at that insurance company, put a new motor in correctly during a few hours. It still works.

We have had two more snow storms since and now I lean a plywood board up against the radiator to keep the snow from covering it.

We have had some gang activity in the area including some home invasions where they beat people up and take any goodies they see. The cops get their fast enough to begin a murder investigation. I am resuming an old hobby from my college days - shooting. I am getting a .22 pistol for training and practice on a range and a large caliber pistol for home defense. I had some old guns left over from the college days that I am selling to finance this transition. Yesterday I sold two and bought one. That has not arrived yet but I went to a shooting range and rented the same kind.

After not shooting a thing in 46 years, I did all right. Indeed to get on the range without having to take a firearms course, I signed a statement that I had firearms training in the USNR. I did but that was 50 years ago and I forgot a lot. On the range today I fired the required minimum of 100 rounds at a 7"x8" target at 20 feet. 10 missed the paper. but 10 landed in the 1 inch bulls eye, 31 landed inside a 2.25 inch circle and the rest showed I have room for improvement. My main gun will probably be a S&W pistol firing a new (15 year-old) .40S&W round. The reason I need 2 guns is I can fire 100 rounds of .22 for 5$ while 100 rounds of .40S&W costs $28. Add 10$ for range time for the .22 and $20 for range time for the .40. 46 years ago we could just go out in the woods. But I admit a range is safer. The range price includes very good ear protection which we didn't bother with.

So in a few weeks, my wife and I will be safe.

[flaminghotsauce]

Wow. Stay safe Tom. A shotgun is a good home defense weapon also and you don't bother with target practice.

[Tom Goodrick]

I intend to stay safe. It is a funny thing but in the years I have been away from shooting. Now, safeties on guns have become unpopular. The Smith&Wesson M&P 40 that I will order soon is normally sold without any safeties. It is carried by many modern police departments. It can have three safeties but most models available have none. I am getting two - a magazine safety and an internal lock. It does not have a thumb safety as they can get you in trouble by being bumped on during recoil. The magazine safety means if I am firing on the range and want to stop before emptying the clip, I can just remove the magazine and the gun is safe. The internal lock means when storing it under some conditions as when the granddaughter is wandering about, I can insert a key into the side and lock it. It cannot be fired.

Last night I was dealing with an antique gun collector about my antique 45 Colt. He wanted some pictures so I used the only digital camera I have - the one in this lap top. It was barely adequate. Here's one of the photos I took. Thought you guys might enjoy laughing at it.

knology.net/~tomgoodrick/Colt_45_and Me.jpg[/img]

I bought this in 1965 back in the wild, wild west of Minnesota. This year the gun turned 120 years old. I fired a few factory rounds through it back in '65 but mostly fed it cartridges I handloaded to about 2/3 power. Otherwise the recoil tended to knock the gun out of my hand once I put those fancy pearl handled grips on it.

Today I got a good enough price on two other old guns that I can buy my defense gun and use the proceeds from this Colt to buy a new digital camera. Better photos in the future.

Now to get back to flying.

[flaminghotsauce]

Doh! You should have taken the pic with a cowboy hat on! That would have been hilarious.

[Tom Goodrick]

Just be sure you're smilin' when you talk like that! I don't have a cowboy hat although an amazing number of people here in Alabama wear cowboy hats and cowboy boots.

Yesterday I sold that gun for more than enough to order my new camera - a Panasonic FZ-40, similar to what Bill used on his trip last year but with a longer zoom and a little more internal memory. It's amazing how fast things change in the consumer electronics field. I also ordered my new defense gun so keep smilin', partner. It's more reminiscent of NCIS than Gunsmoke.

[Tom Goodrick]

It's funny how your past can catch up to you in this day and age. There is very little consistency. I am awaiting an evaluation by my county Sheriff's department to determine if I should be granted a Pistol Permit. I need one to carry my guns back and forth between my home and the gun range. Obviously they mainly look at my criminal history which is very slim. (I believe I have paid all traffic fines years ago.) I was wondering what they would find if they Googled my name. I found a weird assortment of stuff. First, there is a Tom Goodrick in England and in Australia and also in the State of Washington. The one in Australia is a musician. There are my many Internet publications on this Forum and on several others including music and photography. (Including one I became a member of and then never used.)

It was my history of technical publications that was interesting. I have published about 15 reports and papers dealing with aerospace engineering problems ranging from Mach 0.1 gliding parachutes to Mach 25 aerobrakes for entry to Mars' atmosphere. They appear in no particular order. The one shocked me because it was an interesting activity in my undergraduate days that I had forgotten about.

The project dealt with finding the crosswind effect on parachute trajectories. This actually was a matter of wind shear during a vertical descent. I was an engineering student and my job was to do whatever older people told me to do. I learned a lot about carpentry and building skills. I had worked for two years in the drafting department of this research group, headed by Professor Helmut G Heinrich, a former German scientist during WWII. This was my first change to do some REAL ENGINEERING. I learned how to drill holes in 1/2 inch steel, to paint Rustoleum on steel beams and pipes, how to build wooden boxes 8'x8'x8' that were very sturdy (wind tunnel sections), How to design a smooth "S" curve to change a wind tunnel section from 8x8 to 2 x 8', how to build that curve in wood, how to cut and thread 80 feet of 1" iron pipe, how to install that pipe from a compressor on the ground floor to a position in the middle of a 2.5 story hangar just under the ceiling, and how to design a pneumatic catapult to accelerate a 10 lb weight to 100 fps in 2 ft. And numerous other things that stood me in good stead for a 30-year career. The pipe was interesting because I learned to measure, cut and thread sections and then hang them from a wall going straight up, over and out 60 feet to a point 25 feet above a concrete floor, walking and working on 18"inch girders that supported the ceiling (and an upper floor above the hangar). Walking on high girders is easy but you have to pass outboard of the vertical supports reaching and moving your body across 4 ft intervals where only your grip keeps you alive. (You get used to it.)

The pipe was to supply air to the catapult that was to push small free-flying parachutes into the open jet air stream from the wind tunnel. The wind would then blow the parachutes as they fell and the motion would be recorded on high-speed film against a background grid. An older student and an adult engineer had done some rough calculations on how the catapult would work. I studied them and determined they were wrong. I was told to PROVE IT. I did. I was right. My calculations determined how large a reservoir we needed and how the pressure and speed would vary during the acceleration stroke of the catapult's 6-inch piston. I also started thinking about the problem of stopping this piston and its 6-ft steel shaft moving at 100 fps before it blew away the bottom of the catapult.

This was all in support of the Master's Thesis of a student, Thomas C Neitz. He did a lot of planning and a lot of the math supporting this progress. He missed on the equations of motion for the catapult but so did the two adult engineers who were effectively in charge of the project. They pointed me toward custom molding foam to cushion the piston in the bottom of the catapult. I learned how to make foam with the help of people at Archer Daniels Midland. I made mold and mixed chemicals to make the semi-rigid foam in various densities. I tested the foam on crunch machines getting force versus stroke from which calculations showed what we needed to stop the piston at a reasonable G Level.

I also worked on the set of vanes we put in the mouth of the windtunnel just upstream of the open jet. The purpose was to create a shear profile in the jet, fast on top, or fast on the bottom. I made a model of the tunnel powered by a fan in a box to work out the relations between vane positions and the velocity gradient.

We hung the catapult and its reservoir from the ceiling and built a platform for its operator (guess who) for the preliminary tests. Later we would rig a remote control for firing the catapult. This entire structure was a huge construction in our hangar. (Back in early days it really was a hangar for WWII aircraft used in testing.) During a test the hangar doors were open so the air stream from the tunnel could pass outside. We had to locate the camera in the machine shop just to the side of the hangar.

My foam testing was deficient in one respect. It failed to account for the effect of crush rate on the foam. It turned the foam to a powder and spayed it all over. We had to re-design the exhaust ports to direct the foam spray away from the area being filmed.

It also shook the entire aero engineering building each time it was fired. We could only do our testing at night after classes. But the aero building was connected to the mechanical engineering building which connected to the electrical engineering building which connected to the architecture building. It took a while to complete the testing.

At the time we did this work, computers were used mainly for payroll and for scheduling students in classes. The computer was seldom used for engineering problems. In just a few years that changed completely. In my new job I worked on a similar but more complicated problem - wind effect on gliding parachutes. But I did all those studies on computers - no hardware!

[Tom Goodrick]

Finally the period of changing guns and getting set up in the modern system is complete. I started in the hobby of guns, target shooting, reloading, etc in what seems like the frontier days. Now I have a piece of plastic that says I can carry a handgun concealed in most states either in my car or on my "person." I have two semi auto pistols that work fine, one for practice and one for home defense. The plastic card allows me to carry both a gun and its ammo in my car from the house to a shooting range for practice.

I am pretty accurate with the S&W 22 pistol. I can't hit the broad side of a barn with the S&W M&P .40SW cal. But it will be fun learning. Yesterday I beat the guy shooting in the stall to my left firing the same caliber. So that's a start. He was missing a man target while I was beginning to get most shots on an 8x11 letter-size target I decorated myself using Paint. Both of use were shooting at 20 feet.

[Bill Von Sennet]

Hi Tom,

Could you modify the Digital_TQ1 Gauge to be Foot Lbs of Torque instead of Torque % ? If you can, I would like it formated in Integer numbers.

I want to use it in the Pilatus PC-12 panel. The check list refers to ft/lb and doesn't make much sense with the % gauge.


Re: guns the Alliquippa PA police are having a buy back program on Saturday. Turn in a rifle or shotgun and you get a $25.00 Wal*Mart certificate at the local store. Turn in a handgun and you get a $50.00 certificate. No ID required and no questions asked.

They will check serial numbers and return any stolen guns to the owner, all the other ones will be melted down.

Best Regards