You may recall Gamera, the human powered helicopter project Joe Schmaus works on. They did some test flights in Carroll County this week. I went up for the last day of flight on Thursday. They were flying in the Ag building. It’s very large, but has a low ceiling, so they wouldn’t be able to win the Sikorsky Prize. Their purpose was to test a flight control system. The copter met the sustained 60-seconds of flight requirement and came close to the height requirement of 3 meters. But the craft kept on drifting to one side or the other, so adding a control system was their next step. You can see a video of a flight at the Gamera Web Site.

A control system needs power. Batteries are not allowed (it has to be completely human powered). The system starts with a generator designed for use with bicycles. This unit would normally have a rubber wheel riding against the front tire to power a headlight. It generates 6 or 7 watts.

Of course there has to be a computer. They selected an Arduino computer. They modified it so that it would “boot up” in 3 seconds. The control system becomes active while the pilot is warming up. You can also see the two motors, each controlling a pulley. The Gamera is a quad-copter. It has 4 propellers, each on the outside corner of a box. The pilot pedals, which pulls a string, which rotates the propellers. The pulley changes the length of the string path. A longer path means the blade rotates faster and generates a little more lift. A shorter path means the blade rotates slower and generates a little less lift. One pulley changes the amount of lift in the left / right direction. The other changes the front to back lift ratio. To save power, they don’t run both motors at the same time.

To control the craft, the pilot has switches mounted to his hand cranks. You can see the wires from the left hand switch and the aircraft wires. To connect the two sets of wires, the pilot wears a wiring harness under his shirt. Wires follow the pilot’s arms, go up his shoulders, and come out his back.

Unfortunately, the team only got one short flight on Thursday. One of the propellers broke off and landed upside down. Here’s a picture of the test crew sitting under the broken propeller, exactly as it landed. The failure happened early in the day, but there wasn’t time to repair the craft and try another flight. They have to have time for the epoxy glue to cure, and the cure time was very long because the building was a chilly 45 degrees. Fortunately, Joe warned me. I wore 3 layers of clothes.

They had difficulty getting the crew between College Park and Carroll County. It’s a 1-hour ride and most students don’t have cars. They had a skeleton crew for these tests. I was able to lend a hand by taking some of the team members back so they could attend class. I picked up a souvenir — a piece of truss and a carbon fiber strut that broke off the craft. I think of these as my own personal “Moon  Rock”. A piece of aviation history.

The rest of the week was busy. I went to the audiologist Monday. She said I had moderate loss in my right ear. My left ear is good enough that only one hearing aid would be recommended. The problem in my right ear is the three bones on the inside of the ear drum. I don’t plan to pursue the ear surgery. I decided that since only one ear had hearing loss and that was moderate, I will postpone hearing aids.

The rest of Monday and Tuesday I worked on the clubhouse network. I got everything hooked up except for the copy machine. Copy machines are amazing beasts these days. They can be used as printers, scanners, and fax machines. We had to order a long Ethernet cable before connecting the copy machine to the network. The association needs to mail out new credentials for the front gate. I used the residents data base to generate a list of who will receive the new credentials, then did a mail merge so they can print mailing labels for the 400 units.

I got the urgent clubhouse work done just in time. Habitat for Humanity contacted me because they need to replace a router. I advised them to hold on until next week. I’m going to propose a range of possible improvements. Based on their decisions, they might want to move up to a more advanced router.

Wednesday and Friday I was at CASA. I turned out to be a profit center for them. When I came, I told them their Windows XP computers were at the end of their life and need to be replaced. It’s one of those things that they knew was true, but had been ignoring. They’ve been in a panic looking for computer money. They have $3,000 in a joint account with the University of Maryland School of Social Work. CASA’s Executive Director went over there to see what the restrictions were on the money. She thought they would have to spend it on some kind of joint activity, such as a training session. You may remember I got this placement through an organization called ReServe. ReServe is sponsored by the School of Social Work. They’ve had a tough time getting up and running. When they heard that I was placed at CASA through ReServe, they were delighted. That went a long way towards their decision that the funds can be spent on CASA’s computer needs. I was surprised that CASA decided to buy 6 Dell laptops that run Windows 8 (Microsoft’s brand new and somewhat controversial new operating system). With four computers they had donated from T. Rowe Price that can run Windows 7, we’ll get them out of the hole.

I even found time for a couple of short bike rides. We had some decent weather, with temperature up around 50 and even sunshine one day. Don (who I met at dinner last week) came on one of the rides with me. We were daydreaming out loud about riding the Blue Ridge Parkway. It runs about 450 miles from Front Royal, VA to Ashland, NC. Some of the mountains are absolute killers, and there aren’t a lot of hotels or 7-11s.

Such is the exciting life of retirement these days. I hope everybody is doing well.