Microship
Status 3/26/96 (Issue #100)
by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
In This Issue:
Lab Hf Station Alive
Trailer And Rigging Progress
Introducing "notes From Faun"
WEB UPDATES (by Faun)
CARDBOARD GALLEY (by Faun)
Media/sponsor/speaking Updates
Lab Hf Station Alive
N4RVE, bicycle-immobile, is back on the air! The great pasta
monopole arcing into the Santa Clara sky still needs a few more tuned
radials to optimize radiation angle per Dave Wright's suggestion, but
hey, it works. Perched precariously on the ladder atop the boat, I
drywall-screwed the automatic tuner (the AT-11 kit from Dwayne Kincaid,
WD8OYG, as described in the January issue of QST) crookedly to the
ceiling, draped coax and power cables over the fluorescents, and fired
up the Icom 725 HF rig in BEHEMOTH's trailer.
First contacts on 40 meters were Portland and Las Vegas, then a
local mobile on 20 followed by a relaxed chat with a guy on the banks
of the Mississippi in New Boston, Illinois. Haven't chased any DX yet,
receive performance is rather weak, and I can't tune 80... but it's a
good first pass and satisfies that primal need to have an independent,
battery-powered communications link from the lab. I'm also open to the
occasional sked, if you're out there hobnobbing about the airwaves. The
tuner is a good deal, at $150 for the kit plus a few hours of enjoyable
assembly work... anytime it sees a carrier of a few watts, it gets busy
scanning the L-network components to create a match as determined by a
little bifilar-wound toroidal SWR sensor on the 68HC11's analog ports.
A few seconds later, a green LED indicates a match of 1.5:1 or better,
if'n yer lucky...
By the way, speaking of launching RF magically through the
atmosphere, I just fired up the boat's Qualcomm OmniTRACS terminal and
sent a test message. I'll be working with Nathan Parker (of video
turret controller fame, now at Qualcomm), on the new version of our
email code -- this will be one of the data paths we'll be using for the
Microship telemetry blocks (the other is HF PACTOR).
Trailer And Rigging Progress
You may recall recent postings in which we have begun looking
into carrying our own trailer on-board... the plot is thickening. It
appears that 500 pounds (or less, if at all possible!) might squeeze
into our 5,500 pound all-up weight budget... I just finished a first
pass at the weight study database with a mix of actual items and
estimates of groups, though I probably forgot something major like
distributed cabling load. Information is flowing in from Trailex
(aluminum take-apart trailers), Dexter Axle (Torflex suspensions), an
aluminum racing wheel company, trailer parts vendors, and even a source
of air springs. Mechanical guru David Berkstresser is working on this
with us, of course, and a talk yesterday with our marine architect,
John Marples, suggests that we're not being completely irrational about
this idea. The key is keeping it LIGHT, and using the boat to provide
structural rigidity once it's attached.
Rigging has been on hold pending the solution to the deck structure
problem (finding someone to do the critical fixturing to support mast,
stays, shrouds, and traveler... as well as the new pivoting
centerboard). This evening we're meeting with Kim Desenberg and Gary
Helms, and if all goes well we might send the ship off to Kim's
boatyard in Alameda for a bit of surgery followed by much-needed
painting at Gary's. Doubtless, I'll be pacing in the waiting room,
looking up anxiously as every white-jacketed glass-doc strolls by with
fresh epoxy on his hands...
This just in: Ballenger has delivered the real quote on the spars,
which will be added after all the deck work is complete. $3,104 for the
mast, $700 for the boom, $1,264 for standing rigging, $395 for running
rigging, $225 for mast tapering, $925 transport and installation, and
$60/hour for anything else that might come up. <shudder> The rig
is pretty much identical to the stock F-31 rig, but with a few
exceptions: the mast has an added flatside conversion track for added
stiffness and easier short-handed mainsail handling, there's a
spinnaker halyard and sheave box, and there's a custom flange-type mast
step. Other than that, it's a basic fractional sloop rig with roller
furling headstay, masthead crane, aft swept tapered airfoil spreaders,
all kept aloft and in column by two cap shrouds, two intermediates, two
diamonds, two after lowers, and two forward lowers. This does not
include sails and the deck fixtures necessary to hold it all -- the
acquisition cost of the boat itself is about to disappear into the
noise!
Introducing "notes From Faun"
In this, the 100th issue of the Microship Status Report (Yikes!
We're not sailing YET?), I'd like to start giving my partner a direct
voice. You've heard me rhapsodize about her a number of times, but from
now on every other issue or so will carry an item or two with her
byline.
WEB UPDATES (by Faun)
Taxes are done, and it's time to be creative! I've put up some
new graphics on the site and finally added some much needed text to the
Microship page.
Mark Moorcroft and John Crump have been extremely helpful in getting
the site updated. Mark searched the web for our sponsors' URLs and came
back with about 15 new links; John is scanning sponsor logos to go on
the site. We want to put up individual sponsor pages with contact info
for those without a web presence.
CARDBOARD GALLEY (by Faun)
There are 12 more days 'til my West Marine employee discount
kicks in -- and what better activity than to think about how to spend
it? My wish list has expanded into a FileMaker Pro database, with
weight and associate price being the key fields. The only problem is
that it's hard to visualize. As many of you know, there's only one
solution: CAD (cardboard aided design).
Dumpster diving was a score -- three big sheets of beautiful
cardboard. I loaded up the truck and wondered what would be my first
creation. I thumbed the glossy West Marine catalog. Ahh... page 437...
the Force 10 Cooktop with Broiler. I took her measurements, laid the
cardboard across the floor, and within a half hour she began to take
shape. I lifted her gently and took her to the galley. She fit snugly
against the bulkhead. It's amazing what you can do with a square, some
cardboard, and a hot glue gun! I think Steve's created a monster. :)
(Faun jokes that every two weeks, West Marine will send her an
invoice instead of a paycheck. --Steve)
Media/sponsor/speaking Updates
Speaking of new toys, my old friend Steve Orr, a digital signal
processing wizard in Cincinnati, has always been one of the true
diehard electronics hobbyists. In our teens, we regularly swapped notes
about our various inventions and techie dreams, and in 1974, when the
Intel 8008 changed the world and Faun was 3-going-on-4, we both built
homebrew wirewrapped systems and started obsessive hacking. He got his
MSEE and became an engineer; I became an entrepreneurial ungineer; he
went into industry; I became a technomad; he settled down with family;
I wandered and frolicked. Periodically we swap tales and chuckle over
the contrasts of our lives, looking back over the last quarter century
with oddly parallel perspectives.
Anyway, Steve has always enjoyed building clocks, starting with the
venerable 7490/7442 combo driving 7-segment LEDs. His latest, now
perched atop my Mac, is destined for the Microship console: a 68HC05
running a matrix of 210 green LEDs. There are about 50 display classes
that invoke the time graphically, then after a few seconds, the time
digits are used as the seed for the old Conway "Life" algorithm. It's a
clock that's actually fun to watch, and it even dims itself to match
ambient lighting. I'm trying to convince him to sell it as a kit...
Speaking of rocking-on-the-porch reminiscing about the good ole
days, I had a startling stab from the past the other night. John
Bumgarner recently donated a few boxes of old electronics stuff (the
smell alone recalling deeply buried memories of octal-socketed tubes,
open-frame relays, wax paper capacitors, roller inductors, big honkin'
transformers, and laced cables... sigh). Anyway, in there was a type
200B Variac, the classic variable autotransformer, and I was feeling
that odd blend of laziness and creativity, so... what the hell, I
packaged it. In a SLO coffee can. With a big nasty toggle switch for
bypass and a hacked-off, knotted TV cheater cord (remember those?). It
was wonderful. I felt like a kid again. Now we have a true sinewave
light dimmer... none of that newfangled noisy SCR stuff!
In other news, the current issue of Cruising World has a small
article about the Microship, complete with photos of boat and BEHEMOTH.
This is a great door-opener in the nautical world, though I cringe at
one error in the text -- the boat is identified as an Ian Farrier
design. It isn't... it was built by John Walton and Mike Michie back in
1983, using the Farrier 4-bar crossbeam folding scheme. Since it
predated the F-boats, I'm sure Ian wouldn't want to claim it!
Finally, we're off tomorrow to San Diego for 3 days, mostly to
attend (oh yeah, and speak at) the SAE Electric Vehicle conference. I
hope to return with much more than my present skimpy knowledge of peak
power tracking, motor selection, efficient speed controls, new battery
technology, and so on.
More to come!
Steve