Pete J.

There are many instances in aviation of sonic boom causing unique sounds. The whop, whop, whop of the UH-1 "huey" is the same issue. interestingly it only occurs in forward flight because the retreating blade is subsonic. This retreating blade is also the reason that there is an ultimate speed limit on helo's. Eventually the retreating blade produces far less lift that it can compensate for or it stalls and produces no lift and the aircraft rolls.

Ok, think on this one a bit. Given the rotation of the earth at the equator any object on the equator is traveling at approximately 1,000 mile per hour. Well in excess of the speed of sound at sea level.

Harry, I think the issue you are struggling with is equating RPM's to velocity. RPM is not a measure of velocity. Velocity is distance divided by time. A revolution is not a measure of distance because it varies depending on the radius. In this case you have two different circumferences. The inner circumference is much less than the outer, Thus the velocity at the outer edge of the record equals the circumference times the revolutions divided by the time. In this case since we are using revolutions per minute if you multiply the circumference times the revolutions this will give you the velocity in distance per minute. You can forget the division portion since we are measuring velocity in "per minute" or 1 and division by one yields the same as ignoring it. As a machinist you are trained to think of rpm as the speed of the bit. In reality it is not. You wouldn't run a 3" mill end at the same RPM as a 1/4" end mill to get the same quality of cut because at the point the metal meets the cutting edge of the mill end. At that point the 3" is running much faster than at the edge of the 1/4". To put it in terms of cars if you had a 14" tire on one side of a fixed axle and a 17" on the other and both were going at a fixed RPM would you be able to go in a straight line?

If that is all you want, that is easy. The evolution is from low riders. The first step of a low rider was the addition of airbags to raise and lower your standard lowrider from a pavement scraping low chassis to a drivable car. That then became the separate controls for each corner which allowed the car to be tilted and set with one wheel off the ground or hopped. The next step was the evolution of different body panels that opened mechanically to show the work on chassis and drive train. These body panels were then opened hydro/pneumatically. This evolved into pickups and eventually into pickups that had cargo beds that spun and "danced". That is the evolution.

To put it bluntly...It is art! Nothing more or less. It is done as an expression of one persons creativity. It is not transportation, it was never intended to be. Trying to see it as transportation is not possible. It is not a daily driver, it is a show piece. Kinetic sculpture if you wish. Like mined people enjoy it. Do I like it? No, but then I never liked Salvador Dali's work either. I appreciate the fact that others do, I just don't want it in my house any more than I would want that in my driveway. Someone has obviously gotten the creative juices flowing and fired up the welding torch. Good for them. I am sure whoever it was, had great fun with it.

Every form of racing requires a very specialized set of skills. To be the best at it you need to hone those skills to a high degree. If best means driving in the most diverse set of driving conditions then WRC wins hands down. No other racing form requires driving in every weather condition from snow in the frozen mountains of Scandinavia to the deserts or north africa and on every type of road or non-road surface from smooth asphalt to the sands of the ocean . Very few other forms include driving in such hazardous conditions as up mountain roads on dirt with no guard rails and through crowds of idiots intent on moving out of the way of the on coming cars as a test of manhood. The only skilsl I can think of that they don't have to master is passing and dealing with traffic. Now does that make them the "best" drivers in the world. Well that is subjective but they certainly race in the most diverse race in the world. Heck when they were still running the Dakar from Paris to Dakar they even threw in thieves and warring tribesman shooting at them just to add interest to the whole thing. I can't think of any "sanctioned" race that included that. I have a great deal of respect for anyone who is the best at what they do and WRC drivers and teams certainly have earned my respect.

You really have to see the dash in person to appreciate it. The needles stand off the surface and are mounted on pins. This is a real tour de force of model building. It wouldn't surprise me if somewhere in Jones's garage he had a little lab with a 12" operating table that rises through the roof on dark and stormy nights to catch lighting! "It's alive! It's alive!"

Ok, now it our turn to duck! Weather reports indicate that the dry spell is over. They say we could get as much as 2 inches of rain tonight. I don't care where you are from, that is a lot of rain!!

Yes, I can explain it, but you would never understand!

First time I experience that was in Alaska. Flew into Eielson AFB in February and you want to talk about dry! This was dry cold! Any heated room had less that zero humidity, well not really but close. All the quarters had those humidifiers that were little tubs with a motor and blower on top. I was actually unable to fly the second day because my sinuses were so dry they were badly swollen. Went back to quarters and got a towel and put it over my head and the humidifier to get some relief.

Hmmmm.... never though of using it that way, but good point. I have screwed up a couple of red or yellow sports cars with gray primer. I will store this in the vault of potentially useful information.

Me and the dawg! We had to put her down a year and a half ago. I sure do miss her!

Daughter and son in law moved from SoCal to Baltimore last fall. They were both in love with the idea of four seasons. They really liked the fall on the east coast and were ecstatic when the first snow hit the ground. They sent us pictures of each snow fall. Now Ben has fallen on icy steps twice. They have shoveled snow and driven on icy roads. Had the power go out a couple of times and dealt with subzero temps. I am now getting posts about how wonderful the spring is going to be! I can't wait to hear about how wonderful the summer heat and humidity is ?

Colored primer has a purpose. There are some colors of paints that are translucent and the color of the primer will most definitely effect the final look. Red and Yellow are the ones you want to be especially careful with. It is best to spray a test piece first. On the same subject but with a different slant, Ferrari used different primers for Ferrari Red. If they use an orange primer the red has more of a florescent cast. Most of their stuff has a pink primer. Never, ever use gray primer under either red or yellow. It absolutely kills the color. Blacks and very dark colors, not so much. So in a word, does the color of the primer matter? Yes!

This thing is not only fast but it looks good doing it!

Talk about dry heat, I remember shortly after we moved to SoCal. In September we had and elevated humidity and we though we were in for a rough patch. Temps in the 90's and 50% humidity. We decided to visit my wife's family in Baltimore. I recall stepping out of the terminal at BWI and I felt like someone hit me in the face with a wet dishrag. High 80's and 90% humidity. You would step out of the shower and just couldn't dry off. That is far worse than anything we ever have out here. You can keep it.

Yea, I know, I promise this will be my last post on the ugly cars of F1 for this year, but I had fun with photoshop and learned a lot!

The Phantom is a series of fixes and can not be called attractive. It is more like a beat up boxer. Aggressive? Yes Clean? Oh, heck no! We use to say that it was proof that if you put a large enough engine on a brick it would go supersonic. The drooping tails and the upturned wing tips were all after designs to fix aero problems with the basic design. This came from an era that transonic flight was not well understood and the flight test program was needed to develop fixes as problems came up. No, the F4 is anything but beautiful, but it is an iconic aircraft. Oh, and when the Tbirds and Angels flew them, they made an outstanding airshow aircraft. Big, noisy, smoky, impressive? Oh yea but never good looking.

All very true, but like Bill, I have a lot of exposure to things that fly and the common wisdom is that if it looks right, it flies right. There are exceptions such as the F-117 but those are generally done for a given purpose. These new F1 cars are meeting some really weird rules. The up and flying over a car in a rear end collision is to my eye the contact of two very sticky tires coming in contact with opposed rotational forces. I seriously doubt that the extended proboscises will do much to alleviate that. They just look like very inappropriate appendages. Like the aardvark they serve a very specific purpose and that is just weird.

Had some time to mess around on photoshop and created my own version of the new Mercedes McLaren.

I went back to take another look. That page is the wrong page. These have teeth in the tip. Not recommended. Same thing with smooth face is this one. 157.203 on this page http://www.ottofrei.com/Pattern-No.-1-Tweezers.html These are the hardened stainless one. The Titanium ones would be nice but stainless is just fine and cost less. Sorry for the mix up. Pete Oh, buy the way. Be careful with them. They have a sharp point and will stick you nicely if you let them!

"S" is for Santa Anna" It's blowing again. Temp is in the 80. God I hope no idiots get it in their heads to light a fire. Last time it darn near burnt all the way to the Pacific.

Diamond tweezers form a jewelry supply house. Needless to say when jewelers are handling diamonds they don't want them flying across the room because of poor quality tweezers. Grobet(swiss) are the best. I have a stainless and a brass set. Had them for probably 20 years now. You can actually pickup a piece of photoetched off a table top holding the edges. They cost good money but you get what you pay for. They will pry them from my cold dead hands. You can get them here: http://www.ottofrei.com/Stainless-Steel-Matte-Finish-Diamond-Tweezer.html

Actually the FAA owns the airspace from the surface to 10,000 within a 10 mile radius of a major airport and then at various altitudes outside of that area. There use to be a lot of uncontrolled airspace around but that just doesn't exist any more in populated areas where they are suggesting these might be used. There have already been a couple of reported near misses in the LA area. The FAA realizes that drones have a future in aviation and they are working on regulations to deal with it. I am certain that there will be some serious restrictions on commercial use. Frankly it scares the heck out of me to think of these things buzzing around in the same air space with private and commercial aircraft. A collision with even a smaller one could disable if not bring down an aircraft. After all aircraft are not like cars. Something goes wrong, you can just pull to the side of the road and call triple A. I think the other major issue is legal liability for one of these things crashing into something on the ground. They are a long way from being reliable, and sending hundreds of these things out with autonomous flight programs, something is quite likely to go wrong and you can buy a lot of trucks and drivers for the cost of a couple of law suits. No, I suspect that these things are really a very long way off. Nice thought but I think it was a publicity stunt.

Well, I guess that begs the question, "What is reasonably cold?"