Gamera and Hall

This week the Gamera Human Powered Helicopter team flew. They got a beautiful room in the Baltimore Civic Center Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I was there most of the day Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. With a working control system and a major improvement to the propeller mounting, they had high hopes of earning the Sikorsky prize, or at least of setting a new world record.

Propeller Gimbal

One of their challenges has been oscillation in the propellers. One side of the propeller would go up, and the other side down. Then the one side would go down and the other up. Last Monday, somebody on the team had the idea of mounting the propeller on a hinge or gimbal. With the gimbal, if the two blades aren’t perfectly balanced, the propeller simply spins as a slight angle. In just one week, they came up with a practical way to gimbal the propeller, fabricated one hinge and tested with one wing, and then fabricated three more hinges and re-built all four propeller mounts. These guys work hard!

Skinny Pilot

The team was quite pleased with the new gimbals. Not only did they eliminate the propeller oscillation, but it let them save weight. Because the side-forces were reduced, they could use thinner aluminum in the propeller mount. Weight is the thing they are always fighting. The control system added weight. The bicycle generator added weight. Support strings for the arm trusses added weight. They require their pilots to be strong and skinny. This picture of one of the pilots shows how skinny the pilots are. This pilot weighs 118 pounds with his cycling shoes on. The flights Tuesday and Wednesday were going OK but not great. Wednesday evening, the team decided to remove all non-essential weight. They ended up taking a little too much off. One of the arm trusses broke. They literally worked all night repairing it. They got about two hours of sleep early Thursday morning, sleeping on the floor of the flight room.

The Gamera air frame held up better than ever, thanks in large part to the propeller gimbals. They only had one minor incident Wednesday when a pulley broke loose, and another one Thursday when the chain for the hand crank slipped off. The flight controls worked very well. I have a video of a spectacular controlled flight with the helicopter moving left, right, forward, and backward. It might be the first ever controlled flight of a human powered helicopter. Unfortunately, there were no new world records. They already had the record for sustained flight (65 seconds) and altitude (a little over 9 feet). This time their longest flight was about 58 seconds. Their maximum altitude was 5 or 6 feet. You can see videos of Gamera flying at http://www.agrc.umd.edu/gamera/ .

My other projects progressed this week. I finished the clubhouse network. Of course, there’s always something to clean up, but the project is done. The other clubhouse project is new credentials for the front gate. We’ve made good progress on that. Donna stuffed 350 envelopes and recorded the new numbers. I merged this information into the resident database, changed all the reports and screens for the new credentials, and delivered the new residential database. Monday we’ll see if we can merge the list into the database used by the front gate system.

I actually issued a laptop to one person at CASA. The delay isn’t me this time. These people want to do things soon, but not today. I work there Thursday and Friday mornings. Most employees are there Thursday, so I can interact with the staff. Only a few employees are there Friday, so I can work on computers without bothering anybody. This Friday was an amazingly interesting day. I arrived first. One of the volunteer supervisors arrived about half an hour later. Because of our neighborhood, the front door is always locked. Because of our budget, the door bell doesn’t work. The supervisor sits in the back of the office and can’t hear people knocking on the door. She asked me to let Rebecca, a prospective volunteer, in when she arrived, which I did. It wasn’t long before Sue, another volunteer, arrived to go to court with the supervisor. The supervisor hadn’t told me about Sue because she did not expect Sue to arrive. We finally decided Sue could wait in the office. Then Cathy, a third volunteer, arrived and asked for the “Johnson” envelope which should be sitting on the desk. There was plenty of junk on the desk, but no Johnson envelope. I called the executive director on her cell phone, and she said “Oh, F***”. We finally found the Johnson envelope. Two other supervisors finally arrived. One of the supervisors called the court about the mystery court hearing for Sue’s case. She learned that they weren’t letting anybody into the court. It seems a deputy had accidentally discharged his weapon and shot himself. Another one of the supervisors works in my area. Before the day was out, she was talking about the steel plate and screws in her ankle. She was taking her shoe off so I could clearly see where the plate and screws were. All in all, it was one of the more unusual days I’ve ever had at work.

I met my neurologist. I like his approach. He recommends tests. No surprise there. When I had my heart stints, they gave me cardboard stint wallet cards with illegible scribbling on them. After a month or so in my wallet, they looked really crappy. I sat them aside in case I needed them. They didn’t survive the move to Columbia. Now I need an MRI and they won’t give it to me without more information about my stints. I had my heart work done at St. Joseph’s hospital. At the time, it had the reputation of the area’s premier heart hospital. But about a year ago, one of the cardiologists was charged with doing unnecessary procedures. This escalated into a really big deal. The hospital was on the front page of the newspaper a lot. They had so few patients they ended up shutting down half of the facility. At the last minute, a chain of hospitals bought them out and they barely stayed in business. It’s a good thing they are in business, because they are the ones that had that oh-so-necessary information about my stints. I guess I’ll ask for a copy of the report they sent my MRI lab.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.