From wordy@qualcomm.com Tue Aug 25 08:30:48 1998 X-Sender: wordy@lorien.qualcomm.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 23:12:30 -0800 To: wordy@qualcomm.com From: wordy@qualcomm.com (Steve Roberts) Subject: Microship Status 8/24/98 (Issue #125) X-UIDL: c92a666a5e4da80e86739f146ca5c184 Microship Status 8/24/98 (Issue #125) by Steven K. Roberts Nomadic Research Labs IN THIS ISSUE: THE BUILDING IS DONE! NRL EXPANDING OPERATIONS ;-) CROSS-COUNTRY TOUR REPORT JAMMIN' ON THE DELTA NEWS UPDATES ------------------------------------- "Don't get mad; get nomadic!" -- Dan Burdick **************************************************************** This issue may also be found at http://www.microship.com -- click "Latest Update" for copy of this text with embedded links. These postings, distributed via email to about 2,500 subscribers, are archived there along with tech info and tales of earlier projects (BEHEMOTH and Winnebiko). Copyright (c) 1998 by Steven K. Roberts. All Rights Reserved. Personal forwarding and free online reposting are encouraged. Hardcopies by mail are $25 for a 10-issue subscription. **************************************************************** THE BUILDING IS DONE! I never believed we'd reach this point, actually. Eight months have passed since we rumbled out of Silicon Valley with three trucks and two trailers, bound for the mystical vision of an ideal Microship development lab near water somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Desperate to get back to the project, we came frighteningly close to everything from a falling-down old shipyard in Blaine to a musty barn with crashable loft and rentable doublewide, but instead fell into a 6-acre slice of sociobotanical nirvana on an island in the Olympic rainshadow. We moved into a well-insulated and stylish little house and built a 3,000 square foot pole building back in the woods, with a hushed 750-foot sylvan commute connecting the two. It still seems dreamlike and surreal... like visiting the home of someone whose lifestyle makes me ache with longing. I've delayed writing this update (over 100 days since #124) because I assume that most of you would tire of hearing about the endless details of planning, building, roofing, pouring, wiring, lighting, dehumidifying, schlepping, and unpacking... at least until it was all over. I've been dragged deeply into things I know little about, written far too many checks for lumber, and sweated over building and electrical inspections. I can now stand around with neighboring homeowners, passin' the time o' day while jawin' about soffit ventilation, pros and cons of concrete vapor barriers, and what grade of gravel is best for a driveway. It's all been very interesting, I suppose, but finally we are turning on computers, organizing parts inventory, and thinking more about what will get the first Microship on the water than how to get a recalcitrant hank of 12-2 Romex around the overhead door. Flattening hundreds of boxes for the recycling pile while distributing their contents around the lab has a Christmas-like feel, but getting here was a dance through the minefield of costly gotchas. Humidity, for example, is not something I had to think about in California... but when BEHEMOTH's handgrips started growing white mold and moving limp boxes revealed damp patches on the slab below, I knew we had a problem. Not only are we dealing with the mysterious concrete-curing process, but we are also perched in deep northwest woods atop a shallow island aquifer... with no gutters or French drains yet to divert rainwater from the 4" sponge that is our floor. Those are coming, but the first Band-aid was a 50 pint/day dehumidifier that's chugging away even as we speak, performing the ultimately hopeless task of wringing water out of the air in a forest clearing rich with mosses, ferns, nettles, and slugs. Another grand adventure in the critical path was wiring. Like most things, this follows my adage that there is an inverse relationship between the number of words required to specify a task and the amount of time required to complete it: "Wire the building" was one unassuming item on a 5-page TO-DO list. I should have given it its own page... We were fortunate to have consultation from a pro -- Bob Hansen, an electrician on the island, was kind enough to spend some time keeping us from doing anything that diverged too far from code. We added a new breaker at the shed, splitting incoming 200A service into two 100A branches (house and lab). 750 feet of buried cable later, power pops out of a PVC pipe through the concrete slab and into the lab's service panel. Here, ten 20A breakers feed GFI-protected chains of 4-plex outlet boxes; various 15A breakers handle some 20 fluorescent fixtures downstairs, local lighting in the offices, and a couple of 3-way circuits covering stairs and entry doors. All this is dead-simple in principle, but massive bundles of cable now adorn glue-lams, rafters, purlins, and girts... all stapled at code-specified intervals and painstakingly terminated via conduit below the 8' level into grounded boxes. Huge thanks go to Charlie Faddis for spending a productive weekend accelerating this process, shaking me out of my precise and aesthetically anal wiring style with the observation that our goal is to build boats, not line up all the cables perfectly. So we finished the outlets, installed IR security lights outdoors, added the ridiculously copper-inefficient 3-way circuits, passed the inspection with flying colors, and moved on. Meanwhile, other subsystems were coming online. Fred Laun of American Action Security Systems set us up with a Napco Gemini keypad in the lab, along with motion, door, heat, and smoke sensors... linked by buried cable to the system in the house. Now we sleep better, and on my TO-DO list is tying the security system's serial port to a server and hacking out some webbish front-end tools for graphic remote access. In the hand-me-down karma department, we passed along our old phone system to Fred (originally donated by our friends at Asepco)... and upgraded to a very whizzy Inter-tel GLX system donated by Joe Tyner from his old business. Now we have paging, NOAA weather as music-on-hold via a dedicated Motorola marine VHF, conferencing, and the other myriad communication features that present the illusion of brisk corporate efficiency. On the same cross-country jaunt that included the visit to Joe in St. Paul, we swung through Columbus and picked up a woodstove, courtesy of my old pal Frank Feczko. This unusually sunny summer has rendered us a bit complacent about the weather, although neighbors do shake their heads and chuckle when we casually mention that the stove is not yet installed and we haven't quite started cutting firewood with the wicked new 20" McCullough. I suspect there will be a mad scramble to do both, followed closely by all the auxiliary heating systems that will let epoxy set and fingers type in the extended chill of northwest winter. We have taken one step in that direction, though -- a 6x12' woodshed grafted onto the side of the building, using leftover roofing left on the jobsite. Thanks go to Lonnie Gamble for designing this and doing most of the framing during a productive and amusing visit that also included building the second Microship workstand, tossing together a compost cage (thanks, Syndi!), and doing most of the drywall in my office (thanks, Barbara and Shariel!). As you may recall, the building is a "monitor" style with a second, narrower floor as wide as the space between the two inner rows of poles. This gives us about 13x56' of office space separate from the gritty realities of the lab below, with a stairway along the back wall emerging first into the "gear room," for storage of packable goodies. A large central area comprising three bays has become known as the media lab -- the place for video production with our beloved Casablanca, publication and production of monographs, sewing the boats' bimini covers, and general office equipment. Lisa's world is in the middle of all this, so she's adopted the media lab as her space and taken on all the drywalling, painting, and floor sealing. Winding through this is the path to my little sanctum sanctorum, a carpeted escape when I need a quiet place to write, schmooze, or surf. But the real thrill is the lab. I went on a bench-fabrication frenzy last week, taking advantage of the 29" girt height to build 180 square feet of workbenches along the walls in the Zone of Hackage... a giant reverse 'F' shape in the southwest corner with an 8x6 projection providing a U-shaped software development lab that abuts the hub-node and console fab area (easy access to the *backs* of computers!). All this is adjacent to one of the boat bays, allowing a long in-utero packaging phase without driving everyone crazy with dangling umbilici. The other boat bay has roll-down dust-control curtains and a roll-up door, with a fiberglass shop off to the side as well as a wash-up area; remaining lab space is given over to machine shop and the huge wrap-around Hall of Inventory that segues from hundreds of small-parts drawers to a rank of shelving units and on into the tool crib and stand-up racks for sheet stock. Our latest acquisition is Big Red, a 1 HP floor-model 22-speed drill press to generate the obligatory sea of chips that quietly bespeaks "machine shop." All of this gave us the space to haul the goodies back from their entombment in rented storage units -- four backbreaking trips to Bellingham with truck and trailer. Lisa and I are indebted to Jerry Moa, Mike Nestor, Doug Scoggins, Dewayne Hendricks, Mike Setzer, and Mary Davis for their invaluable physical help during various phases of this seemingly endless process. And so, it's over. Other than occasional minor tweaks and additions, you've just read my final commentary about the epic lab quest and building adventure... we're now back into the Microship project full-time! --> Links for this section: Lab Photos: http://www.microship.com/Microship_Lab/index.html NRL EXPANDING OPERATIONS ;-) CAMANO ISLAND, WA (August 24, 1998) PR HOTLINE. Nomadic Research Labs announced today that it has acquired first-round funding from an unnamed offshore venture consortium to develop large-scale manufacturing capability for the company's line of Internet-connected recumbent bicycles, kayaks, and backpacks. Spurred by rising demand from the growing population of RACONTEURS (Restless Affluent Corporate Oldtimers Now Taking Extended Unpaid Recovery Sabbaticals), the market for technomadic systems and accessories has more than tripled in the past year. Steve Roberts, director of NRL's west coast R&D facility on Camano Island, is characteristically effusive about this new development in his company's operations. "We've set our sights on corporate America," he said. "After observing obvious wistful longing in the audience during hundreds of speaking engagements around the US, it dawned on me that we're sitting on a gold mine. Cubicle Denizens everywhere are crying out for release, and we have exactly what they need -- a way to reach escape velocity." Reflected in the company's slogan, "Don't get mad, get nomadic!" the Nomadic Research Labs solution to the stresses of the torporate lifestyle is deceptively simple: hit the road, but keep consulting. Few can afford to take early retirement for a life of full-time vagabonding, but if integrated computers and net connections are added to the hobo's toolkit, then any information worker can become productively homeless. Until now, NRL offered only "do it yourself" how-to guides for building BEHEMOTH and Microship clones. As these manuals run into the thousands of pages and require many years of well-funded dedicated effort, however, the number of successfully completed projects has been understandably low. The new manufacturing facility located in the sprawling woods near the company's research facility on Camano Island is expected to employ upwards of 150 technology workers, with product rollout commencing in second quarter, 1999. First off the line is a mass-market version of the CyberFanny, a small wearable system integrating basic technomadic tools in a handsome mauve cordura shell with fold-out solar panel and "rib tickler" antennas. By early 2000, NRL is predicting beta testing of a sealed modular console system suited for integration into recumbent bicycles, kayaks, snowmobiles, hang-gliders, and ultralight aircraft (the Supreme Court decision on the landmark "Chord Keyboard Killings" case prohibits attention-diverting technomadic systems in licensed on-road vehicles or General Aviation aircraft). Projections by the Gartner Group extrapolate current Corporate Refugee trends into a $100 million industry by the turn of the century, and Nomadic Research Labs is positioning itself to capture an estimated 85% market share. As noted yuppie hobo spokesman "Veep" Hawkins observed last year during a boxcar press conference in the Kansas City yards, "pretty soon everybody's going to be out here, and if I had a dime for every burned out engineer sticking out his thumb I'd turn in my stock options." Nomadic Research Labs (Nasdaq NRL) was founded in 1983, and is dedicated to providing technomadic solutions and support systems. It can be found on the Internet at . CROSS-COUNTRY TOUR REPORT Ahem. Anyway... We've done another Mothership jaunt since the last update -- a 7,500-mile cross-country drive to Virginia and back. The key event was a speaking gig for the Cabletron Government Users Conference in Williamsburg, with mostly-social stops enroute and lots of camping and hiking in the company of the latest addition to our family -- the Maine Coonish kitten known as Dr. Java C. Furberger. The diesel truck threw me an interesting curve... after a full week of hard driving including a night of careening through Appalachian Mountain back roads, we were on the home stretch... four hours until showtime, watching the street numbers counting down to the conference hotel. Suddenly the truck started pulling to the left, and when a quick peek at a stop light showed no impending flat tire I pressed on with the intent of dealing with it later. A block later we reached our objective and turned into the parking lot... whereupon the brake pedal, in a masterstroke of good timing, went smoothly to the floor and smoke poured out of the left front wheel. Ehhh? Turned out that the caliper pistons, made of PLASTIC, of all things, had overheated and initiated a catastrophic positive-feedback event in which the brakes dragged, heating even more, at last seizing up, boiling the brake fluid and destroying the whole assembly. The heroic mobile repair service guy handled it the next morning for a most reasonable cost, but I remain shocked that Ford would use plastic pistons in this critical area (but hey, what do *I* know about automotive engineering?). Actually, Biggus Truckus has been a wonderfully reliable workhorse, handling dozens of cross-country towing jobs with nary a belch. We had some apparent altitude problems in Colorado, belching and guttering, smoking and wheezing... but it turned out to be only the demise of my well-amortized fuel filter. Monarch Pass passed without incident. One of the highlights of this whirlwind tour (a bit rushed because what we REALLY wanted was to get back and finish the building) was a quick stop at the headwaters of the Missouri River near Three Forks, Montana -- a recon mission to the projected launch point for the Microships' Coastal/Inland Tour. Remote and wild, it seems a fitting site for a sendoff party... and all along, every time we crossed or paralleled the Missouri, Mississippi, or Ohio, we would crane our necks like gawking tourons, visualizing solar-encrusted microtrimarans, bristling with antennae, scudding briskly downriver. One o' these days... Like all road trips, it was rife with surprise moments and oddities: camping across from the Museum of Flywheels in Kansas, exposing the kitten to the huge world of other critters and Big Places, watching divers work a car wreck in a small pond beside an arrow-straight North Dakota freeway, camping at Hot Lake in Oregon, doing the campground laptop email dance at KOA's various, clambering in the Rockies and Arches National Park, and visiting lots of friends as well as some of our interesting present and future sponsors (Solarex, Qualcomm, Xybernaut). As always by motorcar, it was way too fast... missing more than we saw, regretting the visits not made, vowing to return by human-scale Microship as I did, long ago, on a machine so ponderously slow that every tactile and olfactory detail of the land could be observed, pondered, recorded, and later recounted. --> Links for this section: Lisa and Java: http://www.microship.com/Latest_Update/java.jpg JAMMIN' ON THE DELTA With that in mind, and with the building fading into the background, we're hard at it again. Bob Stuart has returned to weave his fiberglass magic and help with key fabrication projects, and we're on a mission: to sail around south Whidbey to Port Townsend, arriving in time for me to speak at the Sea Kayak Symposium on Sept 18-19. This is, of course, insane, given the number of basic components yet to be built and tested, but what the hell -- nothing like a deadline to kick things into high gear. The general plan is to take two boats, the second being a Fulmar-19 on loan from Cy Hernandez (the same tri that Faun used on our gonzo symposium mission exactly four years earlier, launched again today for a crossing of Saratoga Passage and circumnavigation of Baby Island -- our first time on water since arriving on the island). Getting from here to Port Townsend involves a huge number of projects, large and small. We have to bolt on the akas, mount the recumbent seat in a way that allows adjustability and retraction for sleeping, temporarily hang the rudder to allow fine-tuning of helm balance before attaching it permanently, fabricate rev-1 pedals and mount the deployable drive unit, acquire and install the full suite of mainsheet rigging components, paint or gelcoat the deck to protect the epoxy from UV, add basic deck fixtures, hack a temporary power system for VHF and lighting, install steering controls with hydraulic linkage or something temporary, finish the basics like hatch tie-downs and daggerboard handling, and so on. It would also be nice to get the landing gear working, so Bob has been doing suspension analysis and specifying parts for that as well. Madness, delicious madness. Meanwhile, I'm reassembling the control system (hub, crossbars, nodes, turret, and such) with the intent of starting the new on-board server project -- an embedded linux box that supports connections from various browsers for boat control and monitoring. This will allow a consistent front end from Delta and Wye local consoles, wireless backpack palmtops, and remote secure net connection. All this, of course, involves YALC (Yet Another Learning Curve), so we took an old AT&T 386 box donated by Joe Tyner, parked at Bdale Garbee's house in Colorado Springs for an evening, and installed the latest release of Debian linux. When the time comes to choose a tiny server for the boat, we'll drop in a teensy board with loads of flash memory... but for now, we have a desktop development system with connectors chunky enough to solder. This is probably a good time to mention that we could use help with this... there are a number of projects that would benefit from a distributed team of linux, PC, Mac, and Pilot programmers (as well as web designers and database gurus). Also, don't forget our ongoing "Geek's Vacation" program... now that we have a place, we're welcoming experienced volunteers who want to immerse themselves in some part of the project. Tim Nolan is arriving next week from Wisconsin to work on fabrication and thruster control... if you're interested in booking a slot, speak up! --> Links for this section: Sea Kayak Symposium: http://www.gopaddle.org/ Fulmar Adventure: http://www.microship.com/Adventures/Nomadness/nomadness-26 NEWS UPDATES We have, as usual, a number of random news bits... First, mea culpa on leaving out "http://" in the links in issue #124... and thanks to messrs. Feldman, Vodall, and Purcell for pointing out that web-savvy mail readers need that to display them as clickable links. We've had a few media appearances since the last update -- one page articles in Outside and Outpost, a piece in the Italian Forbes-like magazine Capital, and an interview with the wonderful Recumbent UK magazine (yes, recumbents are coming of age!). We also did an interview with the wandering Quest-4 guys, who are exploring the various meanings of success while making a grand loop around the US -- a sort of self-referential odyssey of exploration. Lisa and I are working on a few publishing projects, and just for kicks have started a cartoon series. Since I tend to spew unforgivable puns and she's an artist (see her Microship drawing referenced below), it's a natural alliance. We just made our first sale, to Multihulls Magazine: a picture of a trimaran whose center hull is a giant beer barrel with a tap... labeled "Shoal Draft." I'm also writing the long-overdue Microship technical overview to replace the ancient version that we recently deleted from the website... it should be up Real Soon Now. And we have about 75 planned monograph titles that should keep me busy during those spare moments that pop up once every few weeks. Upcoming events include a keynote at the TAPR Digital Communications Conference in Chicago (9/25) and, presumably, delivery of the bike to the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose sometime in October *IF* we can put together a Silicon Valley speaking tour in the short time remaining. I'd like to drive down in early October, make the rounds of high-tech companies to do on-site BEHEMOTH presentations, then leave it with the museum. If you work for a company in the Bay Area and want to make this happen, or want to put it all together for a piece of the action, please let me know ASAP... Finally, now that we're actually getting back to work, the obtainium quest is again in full swing... time to start assembling comm/nav systems and other key tools! Thanks go to our first new technology sponsor in quite a while: Rocky Mountain Antennas has donated a couple of beautifully crafted dual-band J-pole antennas that can handle the marine environment... all stainless, anodized aluminum, and Delrin. Damn, it feels good to be working on something that doesn't involve a Skilsaw... --> Links for this section: Lisa's Microship drawing: http://www.microship.com/Microship/index.html Outside story: http://outside.starwave.com:80/magazine/0698/9806displife.html Quest-4 Interview transcript: http://www.quest-4.com/insight/roberts.html Recumbent UK: http://www.btinternet.com/~recumbentuk Outpost Magazine: http://www.outpostmagazine.com/ The Tech Museum of Innovation: http://www.thetech.org Rocky Mountain Antennas: 1-888-277-4643 Back to it! Cheers, Steve ------------------------------------------------------------- Steven K. Roberts, N4RVE Nomadic Research Labs wordy@qualcomm.com http://www.microship.com Current physical location: Camano Island, WA Email wordy@qualcomm.com for list admin assistance (or your local list manager if you receive these indirectly) -------------------------------------------------------------

From wordy@qualcomm.com Fri Nov 20 06:43:34 1998 X-Sender: wordy@lorien.qualcomm.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 21:26:00 -0800 To: wordy@qualcomm.com From: wordy@qualcomm.com (Steven K. Roberts) Subject: Microship Status 11/19/98 (Issue #127) X-UIDL: 3022a12a5ec81c51a1577a75d9805142 Microship Status 11/19/98 (Issue #127) by Steven K. Roberts Nomadic Research Labs IN THIS ISSUE: POWER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM CONSOLE MOCKUP LANDING GEAR AND RUDDER UPDATE MIMSY AND THE LINUX BOX RANDOM NEWS AND AN INVITATION ------------------------------------- "It takes a village to build a boat." -- Tim Nolan, referring to the ever-growing volunteer population on the Microship project. **************************************************************** This issue may also be found at -- click "Latest Update" to see this text with embedded links; see the "Microship" section for a new overview of the entire project. These postings, distributed via email to about 2,500 subscribers, are archived there along with tech info and tales of earlier projects (BEHEMOTH and Winnebiko). Copyright (c) 1998 by Steven K. Roberts. All Rights Reserved. Personal forwarding and free online reposting are encouraged. **************************************************************** Hello from the Microship lab! Lots of progress on many fronts... with two test sails now behind us, there is a unfamiliar sense of reality that is speeding the project forward as never before. I look at the boatlet perched on her workstand amidst the fiberglass dust and strewn tools, and see something graceful and alive, poised for launch. Miss Piggy crackles heartily as she gobbles firelogs; the stereo pumps ancient familiar road tunes into this hastily-erected structure in the Camano Island woods. Pools of project detritus abound wherever you look: the zone of linux hackage in the corner, the FORTH hub and its nodes blinking away, the power management system sitting amidst bench clutter and a lineup of Fluke meters, Bob's desk awash in landing gear drawings and mechanical gizmology specsheets, a half-finished console frame model perched in the boatlab, Glass 'n Goo World a mess of 10-ounce scraps and encrusted epoxy cups, metal bits a-glitter in the machine shop, the latest fill curing in the Region of Dust, bins overflowing with parts in the Hall of Inventory, and paper scraps all over the floor of the Media Lab from a recent publication project. My office is a mess; my desk, just like every time before, has entropically degenerated into a loosely coupled 3-D information space of overlapping piles despite my constant vows to get organized. Oh well. The anal-retentive in me sees it all as a mess to be cleaned up; the adventurer shivers with anticipation... POWER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM In our last report, Tim Nolan (from Madison) had just spent a week building the controller that will spend its life surveying the on-board power scene to determine how much free solar energy is available for the thruster at any moment (assuming no emergency override). He returned last week, fresh from the Embedded Systems Conference, and dove back in... As before, he made astounding progress, nearly finishing the whole Microship power management system (Node P). Five power-cycled Microswitch Hall-effect sensors allow current measurement of both halves of the solar array (about 16 amps each), the battery, the thruster, and the console-full of system loads. In addition, it measures array voltage on the input side of the battery and thruster controllers, allowing a simple peak-power tracking algorithm to continuously "twiddle the knob" to maximize the product of voltage and current. All this system data is inhaled through a 12-bit A-D converter on the New Micros 68HC11 board... which actively babysits the battery via an interrupt-driven PWM algorithm, rations thruster power via a hack to the Minn-Kota controller, and reports all the gory details to our front-end server. After whipping all this out and getting it working, Tim had a couple of spare days... so he took on the next project: H-bridge control of the Minn-Kota steering motor. The thruster is deployed via this pivoting black box, into which indexes the heavy fiberglass tube that supports the motor itself and carries its power cables. The goal here was to allow manual or automatic control of thruster angle, calling, of course, for position feedback. Tim solved this neatly by gluing a couple of magnets into the nylon gear train of the steering assembly, using Hall-effect sensors to let the processor keep track of position and re-center the thrust angle if a crash ever knocks them out of synch. We're now shipping all the power components to him in Wisconsin for final refinement, transfer of circuits from proto-boards to perfboard, and algorithm-tweakage... whereupon it will all be ready to nail down in the console to establish the critical power infrastructure of the Microship. --> Minn-Kota thrusters: --> Hall-effect sensors: CONSOLE MOCKUP Yes, the console is getting close. Bob finished the cowling -- a remarkably complex foam-core fiberglass part that is gasketed onto the boat's gunwales, carries a Nicro powered vent and a slew of small antennas including GPS, loosely hinges for console access, provides a tiny nonskid step platform for going forward while underway, passes furling control and mainsheet lines, and withstands body weight at any point. Given real dimensional data, we were finally able to extract maximum console profile, then made a 2-D template by horizontally projecting shin and toe interference points while pedaling. Then came the fun part. On a full-size masonite substrate, I began precisely hot-gluing dozens of 3/4" masonite strips into a network of intersecting struts. Every frame member is the moral equivalent of aluminum angle, but not necessarily at 90 degrees... since all surfaces, inside and out, form gasketable frames for flat hinged panels. The dominant feature is a large opening, 29" wide and 8.5" tall, for the Lexan window that covers all the LCDs: linux server, Macintosh, nav PC, hub status LCD, the LED matrix, and a few tiny displays extracted from dedicated hardware. The display panel is tilted slightly back to optimize visibility and height without allowing low-angle sun reflection into my eyes. On either side of the pedaling envelope, steeply-angled subconsoles carry standalone instruments, power and thruster controls, an unhacked GPS (do *you* trust a multilayered network of computers for basic navigation?), a compass (for that matter, do you even trust power?), and so on. Mechanically, this is something of a nightmare, and we're still trying to decide whether the final unit will be TIG-welded aluminum bar stock slathered with low-viscosity epoxy to fill the cracks, or built entirely of fiberglass and goo. It has to hold pressure, conform to a nastily complex shape, hinge around the leading edge to maximize access past the gunwale bellies, carry a massive sealed connector subpanel, allow EMI suppression, and be roomy enough inside to allow access to all mounted hardware. Should be amusing... LANDING GEAR AND RUDDER UPDATE Speaking of amusing, Bob Stuart has been working on another underestimated project: the landing gear. Some time ago, we accepted the fact that full-time adventure on canoe-scale trimarans absolutely requires self-trailering capability -- without a chase vehicle lumbering around the US, we'd be limited to dragging our 650-pound boats only partially up a beach like frustrated coelacanths or leaving them in the water at all times while trundling off to camp. None of those are particularly appealing, which explains the dearth of options between the portagable world of canoes/kayaks and the marina-centric world of yachts. In between, you find daysailers, which, by definition, depend on a trailer waiting in a parking lot next to the launch ramp... hardly suited to open-ended wandering. Seitech Launching Dollies got us started in the right direction with the perfect wheels: readily replaceable tires on plastic hubs with Delrin needle bearings... the whole affair light and impervious to saltwater corrosion. But turning those into deployable landing gear is a HUGE project. Bob has spent over a month engineering this -- analyzing endless variations in suspension design, tuckaway retractability under the solar panels, deployed footprint, steering geometry, transient impact loads, bearings, materials choices, and uphaul/downhaul methods. He's played with bungees, gas springs, and stacks of elastomer doughnuts; titanium, aluminum, and stainless struts; and countless variations in angular positioning to beat the wicked trade-offs of waterline interference, strength, suspension range, lateral stability, and nestling into the mothership for major cross-country jaunts. We sit and brainstorm methods of extending and retracting the damn things, ranging from hydraulic cylinders to a complex system of eight lines threaded through countless blocks and cleats... lately diverging into capstans and gearmotors with worm drive to automatically set up a triangulated tension-compression structure for each wheel upon demand. It's all quite mad, but it will happen somehow. Stay tuned for the final details; in the meantime, we continue our quest for the unbeatable lightness of bearings... The temporary rudder lashup used for the Port Townsend sail has been discarded and replaced by another of Bob's works of art -- a rudderhead that pivots on integrated pintles, supports uphaul and downhaul of the sleek carbon-fiber blade from Moore Sailboats, and allows control via two amazingly light hydraulic cylinders, each a closed loop to a sliding control grip in the cockpit that will ride on a Ronstan traveler car. A lot went into this. The Fulmar-19 has simple and effective pivoting steering levers for each hand connected via the rudder and a cable looped around the forward bulkhead, but an even more natural motion is linear... which also gives us the chance to improve resolution by giving each hand a 6-inch travel. The use of two closed hydraulic systems, with the hands linked via the rudderhead, gives the system built-in redundancy and eliminates messy taut wire runs with rattling turnbuckles. We'll put the traveler track and hydraulics under the deck with a stiff linkage to the grip itself, keeping the deck free for arm clearance and allowing lots of space for chord keyboard, pointing controls, system target buttons, push-to-talk, and possibly the throttle pot and direction/override switches. Clippard Instrument Laboratory graciously donated the cylinders -- actually designed as corrosion-resistant pneumatic units (stainless steel bodies and rods, with Delrin end caps). They added special seals for us, and we'll use a light mineral oil as the working fluid. We did a second test sail recently, with much less fanfare than the first one. This gave us a chance to test the new rudder (no hydraulics yet -- I controlled it with a sort of homemade tiller extension, still a major improvement over the kluge bridle!). We launched at Camano Island State Park along with Cy's Fulmar-19, with Lisa and Bob in the latter to tag along and snap some photos... The 93 square foot WindRider sail -- battened, roachy, and pulled taut with a boom -- coupled with the slippery Wenonah canoe hull form that leaves almost no wake, blew the socks off the other boat! Lisa kept shouting for me to slow down so she could get some pictures, but I couldn't seem to find the brake lever . We also did a quick pedal-only race, and the Microship pulled ahead easily. We'll have to do a performance comparison under balanced load and pilot conditions next time to be sure... but it was most encouraging to see this machine work so well! By the way, in the photos you might notice she's a bit down at the stern -- this is before mounting the battery at the forward bulkhead and bolting on an electronics-laden console. We're reasonably confident of good balance, and are using a custom weight-study database in FileMaker Pro to keep track of longitudinal and lateral centers of gravity (I'm trying to get it together to market this as a boatbuilder's and cruising provisioner's tool: anybody wanna get in the software-peddling loop? I'm useless at this sort of thing...) --> Seitech Launching Dollies & Wheels: --> Clippard Instrument Laboratory: --> Test sail photos: MIMSY AND THE LINUX BOX In parallel with all this, some exciting things are happening in the front-end design. As you may know, we've gone through a couple of major revisions already -- first writing our graphic tools in HyperCard, then undertaking a huge project to build a server on the resident Mac with user control panels implemented as NewtonScript views. When Apple pulled the plug on Newton, we moaned in despair... but buried in there was a strong lesson in platform independence and the value of a large developer population. It was but a short hop from that realization to the new system: a dedicated linux box atop the FORTH control network, serving pages to any browser that chooses to connect through the on-board ethernet (including remote connections via the Internet). Suddenly, but for a few details, things get very simple... most of the hard work is already done and available off the shelf as continuously-upgraded web servers, browsers, PERL, Java, and other whizzy tools. This is not to say that it's trivial. Brian Willoughby has been working on the Microship daemon (with the characteristically unpronounceable unixish name, "ushipd"), whose job is to handle multiple threads of yakking between the FORTH system and whatever telnet session or web server happens to have business with it. So far, it's just doing basic serial communications via a 4-port serial card donated by Joe Tyner -- letting us Telnet from the Mac in my office to a New Micros FORTH 68HC11 board (which is pretty perverse, now that I think about it). But coming up Real Soon Now is added intelligence in the daemon that will maintain an image of all current system variables, keep an eye on watchdogs, restart crashed nodes, hand off telemetry snapshots to a scheduled mailer and database update daemon, and so on. On top of that is Mimsy -- the Microship Information Management SYstem. I'm having a ball with this: it's the Microship's on-board home page, the thing I'll see from any local or wireless browser when I surf to the server's IP address. (I suppose we'll be doing a lot of pier-to-pier networking, and maybe even making a few slip connections.) Anyway, Mimsy's welcome screen is just a basic tool selection, which, in the current incarnation, looks like this: o Interactive Microship Control o Documentation o Project Management o Databases o www.microship.com clone o Linux filesystem o Net gateway o Video monitors o Navigation tools o Toys The first one is the most exciting, consisting of a layered set of windows into Microship operation. Power, for example, will appear as a "live" block diagram of the system, with active display of current parameters along with clickable switches and other controls, pop-up solar history windows, battery fuel gauge, and so on. Raw turret control, as with Chris Burmester's inspired Newton design, will be a top view of the boat with a circle around it; click anywhere to aim the camera in that direction. And so on for macros, security setup, remote control, sideband control panel, raw crossbar setups, and the countless other widgets that map human desires onto a textual interface. Most of my work on Mimsy so far has been in the Documentation section, which breaks down into the two domains of Microship details and general reference material. FORTH listings, schematics, text narratives, frequency lists, crossbar channel assignments, drill sizes, NAVTEX beacons, galvanic series... hundreds of individual files appear here in an easily browsable hierarchy. And so on with the rest... a front-end to a database of time-stamped telemetry records, browsable mirrors of my personal databases, a complete copy of our public website including archives of stories, a symlink to the linux root filesystem, and even a passel of javascript calculators snagged off the Net... the whole point is to bring the vast bulk of my information and control needs into a single familiar window. In the present design the linux box (maybe a hacked Libretto... or something from the embedded world such as ZF Micros' teensy machine... or perhaps the amazing Xybernaut Mobile Assistant wearable we saw a few months ago) will have its own local small LCD, even though it could technically run headless. My preferred personal workspace is the Macintosh, where I'll run Mimsy, write, do email, and so on. And I'm being dragged kicking and screaming into the Windows world for the third machine... read the excellent Captn Jack's catalog of nautical software products (almost all for PCs), and you'll find that the best central display for a ship full of integrated electronics is not an LCD radar with chartplotter option, but a PC laptop. In addition to a wide range of charting and navigation software, there is a radar display interface, the stunning PC/View scanning sonar from Interphase , a TV receiver, weatherfax from various manufacturers, Icom's stunning PCR1000 receiver, live satellite weather image receivers, tide/current displays, and much more. So we're up to three high-level systems, each optimized for one major applications area, all networked via ethernet and usable simultaneously via the BAT chord keyboard and Interlink pointing device on the rudder control (with the aid of "target" buttons to specify which machine is being controlled). It's not just a canoe anymore... and canoe's not unix! One final note... we're seeking a hand-me-down Pentium desktop PC with a gig or so of disk and a CDROM drive to serve as our linux development system... anyone have yesteryear's slow machine to donate or loan to the project? We also need a router... at the moment, we have to reconfigure the TCP/IP settings to switch between PPP connections via local modems and the lab ethernet by which we talk to the linux box. Seems all that should be integrated somehow... But hey, look at all these motivating toys... --> Captn Jack's Software Source: --> Interphase Sonar: --> Nogatech Notebook TV: --> Icom PCR1000 receiver: --> Ocens SeaStation 98 weathersat receiver: --> Coretex weather fax: --> ZF Micros embedded 486: --> Datalux high-brightness LCDs: --> Linux on Libretto: --> Xybernaut Mobile Assistant: --> New Micros FORTH boards: RANDOM NEWS AND AN INVITATION Well, as you can see, a lot has been going on! In other news... If you're in the Puget Sound area, are a confirmed technogeek, happen to be free this weekend (Nov 21-22), and haven't already heard from me, please email me immediately! There's a Northwest Geekfest and labwarming afoot... Many thanks go to a few volunteers: Rich Muttkowski has been a true hero here, dropping by most weekends to work on various building projects. Paul Elkins, who has built a number of amusing tiny boats of his own and knows a lot about bending tubing, has given us a hand with sanding and chainsaw sharpening. And a technomad named Casey, passing through on a recumbent, stayed a few days and did a bit of abrasives engineering himself. Bill Vodall WA7NWP, whose name appears frequently in these updates, got the lab APRS station running (Thanks to Bob Bruninga WB4APR for the APRSdos program, and to Keith Sproul WU2Z for MacAPRS). We dedicated my HP Omnibook 430 along with a Yaesu 290 and a PacComm Micropower-2 TNC to the DOS version, and it's sitting over there now displaying a vector map of the Seattle area with a couple hundred ham stations overlaid on the screen. Interesting stuff... In the media department, we just did a local interview with the Stanwood/Camano News, and I found an online video clip (as well as story with pictures) of our New Media News interview. See it at: --> New Media News: And finally, believe it or not, we actually have current information about the Microship project on our website! Lisa worked hard on this (once I finally delivered some text) and did some lovely graphics, though she's still shy about putting her own cute mug online. Nevertheless, if you want a cogent summary of the whole project, complete with a map of the projected route, sexy graphic timeline, work-in-progress photos, an annotated drawing of the boat by my sweetie, and a block diagram of the control network, get thee to: --> Microship Project: I'm off to work on a Dr. Dobbs Journal story about the crossbar networks... then back to hot-gluing masonite! Cheers from the lab, Steve ------------------------------------------------------------- Steven K. Roberts, N4RVE Nomadic Research Labs wordy@qualcomm.com http://www.microship.com Current physical location: Camano Island, WA Email wordy@qualcomm.com for list admin assistance (or your local list manager if you receive these indirectly) -------------------------------------------------------------

Greetings All Well, thought Id post to this topic and see if I can stir up some activity.... Any Spring folk who have been thinking about going nomadic? Or, perhaps, just adapting some mobile tech to their life styles - i.e. wearables, back pack portable OSCAR stations, high speed spread spectrum FHSS linking, etc.... Although not quite to the point going for autonomous mobile computing with on demand net access, I have been toying with some ideas for portable communications (possibly packet or satellite via the digital birds but I have to get the modems and a lap top for this...). Other crazy ideas include a suitcase dat with mixing board and two diskmans - mix my own radio shows while in transit or even do a rave thingy should the right environ and crowd converge at the proper moment. (Of course, that calls for a not-very-suitcase- portable PA system....) So any other experimenters out there trying this stuff out? Mike aka Cosmo AA9IL Riff Raff #39

not at the moment, no as for the future, who knows...

i just got a cool 2-way pager that does email. terry, OTOH, is a majorly wired geek. he has two cell phones, one of which allows for some fairly impressive internet connectivity.

Paul let me play with his email cell phone once... ooh la la! I am happily pagerless, cellphoneless, tvless... We do however have a cordless phone now (a friend lent it to us and I've taken quite the liking) --- makes me kinda mobile. I'm really to hep to the technological pissing contest... I like being "out of range" most of the time

huh-huh...I got to watch her play with it, too...huh-huh

Yow! Techno-voyeurism! ;-) Now, thats one of the minor debates I wage with myself regarding the whole connectivity bit. At one time, I had to wear a pager for work and I just it. There are times when I dont want anyone to be in touch with me, or be able to find me, or suss me out. Thats what 'off' buttons are for. OTOH, when Im in Austin on holiday, I usually carry 2 to 3 levels of ham gear with me to stay in touch with the local repeater. 1) A really cool little pico-walkie talkie (Icom Q7) for close in work. 2) A bit hefty-er 440 HT for those repeater fringe areas. 3) A portable Yaesu all mode 430/440 rig for mobile use - this is also my platform for satellite work once the satellite antennas get built.... As far as the wired geek thing goes... I would love to get a PCS phone with email and other net capability. That would be cool. I guess the uber-hack would be to have a wearable system with wireless connect and some kind of conformal micro keyboard or better yet a speech to text conversion routine to dictate mail. Throw in a digital camera to do those frame grabs during lunch at Shady Grove (burger and a 'Shady Thing') and zip off a few 'wish you were here' emails to fellow wage slaves stuck up in the frozen north and I would be set. Of course, once I have achieved true geek out status, then I have to do something 'nomadic'. Traipsing anound the northern IL burbs is not quite up there in the adventure category. The cool thing would be to go down to the Baja or look for the mysterious Marfa lights or do an expose at Burning Man. As stated B4, there will be times where I will want to be connected and other times I will not so all the above listed gear will include the 'off' button. Mike aka cosmo

amen

I guess the intermediate toy in all this is the new 2.4 gig cordless phone which supposedly has about a mile range. One of my ham friends, Bob Nagy, likes to mod these things with increased power and a better antenna. With a rooftop antenna attached to the base up about 50', you could have almost cellular capability with one of these new phones. Stacey was talking about my AT&T PocketNet phone, which, for $30 a month flat rate is very cool. You can surf info sites and get phone numbers and stock quotes and more, and you can send and receive any size email. I haven't "worn" a computer yet like the geeks at MIT, but that day can't be too far off and I'm kind of an early adopter. I geek toy of the year has to be the PalmPilot, I have a coupla dozen computers that I use 50% of the time and I have this Pilot that I use the other 50% of the time. I can't wait for the Palm VII even though I understand it will have lame Internet access and it will be limited. Someone needs to provide unlimited wireless access to the PalmPilot! Or a PalmPilot Cellphone/Pager/GPS! One of these days, we'll fire up http://www.cooltoys.net and start ecommercing some of the coolest toys we know about. By the way, Bob and I are co-hosting capzeyez on channel 10 in austin at midnight on Saturday Night. Right after Saturday Night Live, take in this Austin version of Wayne's World. He's Garth, I'm Wayne, ex cellllent, excelllent, shweeee . . .

2.4 gig PHONE?!?!??! damn, my computer isn't that loaded...

mine either...*sniff*

Thats funny that most computers are running at a higher frequency than my uhf ham gear. Ah, I pine for the good ol daze where memory ended at 64K, programs were loaded from teletype tape or cassette tape (after you loaded the bootloader from the front panel switches) and BASIC was TINY. .... NOT..... Anyway, there are also some TV wireless thingies that are up in the 2.4ghz range. These can be modded to yield nifty amateur ATV transmitters and receivers. Speaking of microwave, I cant wait for TAPR to finish up those microwave spread spectrum FHSS sets. mike_aka_cosmo

Those 2.4 gigahertz units are *too* directional. I had hoped to hook one up to a video cam for relay to the webcam but they're not really suitable for this because they have little directional dish antennas. Hey, did you catch us on on Capzeyez last night?

i did not (sorry) how'd it go???

It was funny. We'll be rerunning on the webcam this week. Check it out.

Hey Terry Regarding 2.4ghz antennas and beamwidth, one solution is to use an omni-directional 2.4ghz antenna - radiates equally poor in all directions ;-) I should research what the FHSS 2.4ghz link in San Francisco was using for an antenna. When I visited Steve at Nomadic Research Labs near San Jose, he demo'ed web access using the link. Now, I would suspect that there had to be an omni on a mountain top and all the subscribers were using gain dishes. On to another topic - there was mention of a future Palm Pilot that would include a built in wireless modem and a capability to do text (?) web access via RF. Now, that would be pretty cool. I still would like to have something like the 'Private Eye' for my video - or even better, use the LCD view screen like the ones used in video cameras. This would at least allow graphics. One thing I need to do is hit the MIT web site for wearables and see what some of the current designs look like. I guess the biggest thing will be the RF coverage. To go back to a previous post, there would have to be extensive coverage even to places that are not highly populated - this might not seem too economical to the companies providing access. i.e. I should have perfect coverage around any big city and populated areas but Im not too sure what the coverage would be in, say, Black Rock desert or the southern tip of the Baja. (It would be interesting to see how folks at Burning Man stay in touch). For the really remote areas, it will have to be Inmarsat or Iridium to provide coverage. Anyway, blah blah blah..... mike aka cosmo

Our Spring partners, DDC and Mel Riser, have done an impressive wireless T-1 for the Dripping Springs area. And I'm looking to do something similar out in Bastrop. We need to kick this effort in to gear. Main stumbling block: the (necessary) day job!

same here. do you know that i am now working in corpus christi, TX?? YUK!!!

Sounds like a good plan to add the wireless T1 link's to the surrounding areas. Speaking of which, I picked up at a recent ham fest some Digital Microwave Corporation 23ghz tranceivers and their associated modems (T1). I have had thoughts of building up a 10ghz head to mate to the modems since the 23ghz components fall out of the ham bands. The modem IF is 70mhz. Most likely, there are way more modern components to build up a T1 link. I will probably gut the 23ghz components for 24ghz work and use the modem cases to house transverters. I am curious to see what will come of the FHSS project TAPR is working on. This would be a really big boost for high speed packet and net access. Up here near the Wisconsin border, I can see the Hancock building from 45 miles away at the lakefront. Line of sight is one of the basic requirements for microwave so you can imagine what kind of coverage that would be possible from the top of that building... Oh, yea, the day job is a necessary evil but it does pay the bills and finances my real engineering research. :) Mike aka Cosmo

...day job...

What's the FHSS project?

FHSS = Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (at least thats what I think it means....) Have not been too geeky as of late. Probably due to work burnout. What I have been doing is reading up on the micropower radio movement - picked up 'Seizing The Airwaves' when I was at Fringeware. Probably one of the better social studies on micropower radio. The next would be RadioText(e) put out by the Semiotext(e) folks (Autonomedia). Also, getting way overboard by reading 'Gone to Croatan' which appears to be this mega discussion of all the early nomadic tribes/groups in North America. And, if thats not enuf, also re-reading 'The Dharma Bums' which i find to be a nice Beat-Slacker kinda book. Its nice to do the total techno geekout with all the techie talk but its also nice to read up on the social side as well. (Perhaps someday to put to practice....) Have a groovy SXSW weekend mike_aka_cosmo

FYI The most recent Wired has an article about palm computers with a photo spread of all the latest geek toyz. Party On! -M-

I met a woman at Bruce Sterling's party who is putting up a micropower radio station in East Austin. Any suggestions to her as far as equipment. She plans on doing it legal, with the new regs going in to effect soon. If she does it, maybe I'll do one for my neighborhood in N Austin. I notice that the high school already has one that covers a few blocks. Lanier High.

i used to run a low power pirate station (FM), terry, and i really just wired my equipment from scratch. i am guessing that if there is still a heathkit or edmund scientific still around then you could just buy a transmitter there. i would then go to radio shack for a mixer, mike, cassette player, and CD player. keep us posted here. i would like to get back into that game and maybe set up a low power station myself. legal this time!

Look-out for The Spring's World Domination Tour!!!

Check out the Free Radio Berkley page (gonna have to do a search since I dont have the URL...). Also search for key words like LPFM and micropower. There was a magazine out called Hobby Broadcasting which was dedicated to LPFM. That should be a good place to start. As far as gear goes, FRB sells kits as well as Panaxis and Ramsey. Go for it! Radio_Free_Cosmo

Well, this thread has been tooo quiet. Anyway, hope the microbroadcasting effort worked out. If it did, have to listen next time Im in Austin. BTW, interesting flame war on the technomads list as to just what constitutes a 'technomad'. Seems that homeless folks are getting wired and are accessing Yahoo and other services from libraries to keep up on email and such. Does anyone remember the SS Homer that was parked in town lake across from the Hyatt back in the late 80's? I guess the techno update to that story would be the same raft but with full net access on board.... Finally, just read the most recent 'Wallpaper*' rag which is published in the UK and caters to the jet setting trust fund weenies and other beautiful people. Anyway, good ol' Austin was covered in this with a short expose about where to hang and be hip. Of course, the warehouse district made the list as well as the Continental Club. I was pleased to see the GM Steak House and Ruby's as well but no mention of FringeWare. They missed The Crown and Anchor Pub as well. Oh well.... mike aka cosmo

ack!

I gave away my Dad's boat anchors to dedicated old time Hams who would know how to maintain them and would be inspired by the smell of burning Bakelite, the orange glow of the tubes, the hum of the rectifier, the charm of a butterfly condenser which had (for the smallest of them - the AVR) 110 turns from peg to peg...*sigh* My own Drake was stolen and replaced by nothing because the other person besetting me most sorely took the money and ran. When does the Spring World Domination Tour leave? His relatives arrive this afternoon. Is there time for me to get on board?! Pleeeeeeeease!!!

StenSat Released But Possibly Malfunctioning Little to nothing has been heard from the StenSat Amateur Radio picosat, raising fears that the tiny picosat has malfunctioned. Stensat was released February 10 by the OPAL ''mother ship,'' according to James Cutler of Stanford University. StenSat was one of two picosats released by OPAL--Stanford University's Orbiting Picosat Automatic Launcher. The other was the JAK payload. Since the deployment, stations monitoring StenSat's 436.625 MHz downlink have heard only very weak signals, or nothing at all. According to StenSat coordinator Hank Heidt, N4AFL, StenSat may be operating in an ''abnormal mode.'' The picosat was supposed to transmit a CW identifier and packet telemetry after deployment, but neither have been heard. Heidt speculated that it might be operating in FM transponder mode. Clifford Buttschardt, K7RR, reported hearing his transmissions repeated through StenSat on February 12 and 13, but signals were weak and the audio distorted. Weak StenSat signals also were reported by Johann Lochner, ZR1CBC, at the SunSat ground station in South Africa. The StenSat group asks amateurs to monitor the downlink and send reports to hheidt@erols.com. StenSat has a crossband repeater aboard that is designed to operate much like the popular AO-27 satellite. Hank Heidt, N4AFL, of the StenSat team has more information on the StenSat Web site at http://users.erols.com/hheidt/.

Well, has anyone did anything nomadic lately? After another start of cleaning up large quantities of magazines and electronic junk (none of which is very portable...), thoughts of travel pop back up again. Still have not decided on what kind of travel - maybe just a bunch of short, intense, bike rides or maybe a jaunt up and down Lake Michigan - weather has to get a bit warmer for that tho... Regarding satellites, still waiting for P3D to go up which will then give me the chance to build up some neat portable uplink/downlink ham equipment to take on these proposed trips. Anything else going on out there? Mike aka _cosmo_

Mike, go out onto an island and you will be busier than the proverbial one-armed paperhanger. That's what they do in the Pacific and they are swamped every time they go. Check the DX information topic for the latest from AARL. I post it every week. The uplink/downlink equipment is to die for. Let us know how you are progressing while we salivate at the very notion!

I know that there is a group called IOTA (Islands on the Air) which activates islands for DXing. No real islands where Im at although it would be interesting to set up a station on one of the water intake stations in Lake Michigan near Chicago. The closest islands that would probably draw attention would be way up north near the Canadian/US border in the Great Lakes. Need to get back into DXing on the 'low bands' - most of my interest are up above 1GHz where working into the next grid square would be one step closer to VUCC (hence all the interest in a microwave P3D setup...) I do think it would be neat to visit some island and activate as part of a DXpedition. Guess I'll have to fire up the old HF station again..... 73 de Mike aka cosmo

If it has an IOTA number, you'll have them stacked so thick you cannot hear yourself respond. Out here (Hawaii) everything above sea-level has a separate IOTA number, and the annual field day for the local Hams involves setting up a remote on a little island in Hilo Bay. They are up all night and it is fun to keep track of the calls coming in. I think they works all bands except the EME ones. Looking at the freqs you work, you are into exotic areas. Fascinating! Good to see you posting, Mike!

Well, back again.... While taking a long lunch and goofing around downtown Chicago, I picked up a couple of 'zines that covered some aspect of nomadic travel - the first was the latest Utne reader which had a collection of articles dealing with the concept of how mobile/nomadic society has become. The other was 'blue' which was geared more towards the backpack/hostel/traveller/adventure bunch. Kinda did another quarterly evaluations (ugh - sounds like a blarmy performance appraisal...) of existance (mine) in regards to change in location. Well, the address is still the same so I guess I dont move around too much.... Anyway, back to the travel bit - started thinking about the concept of travel and where would I go under the circumstances. Senegal would probably be interesting - also the Seychelles in the Indian ocean. Figure Australia as well since that seems to be the direction at the moment. What to take? Ham rig, of course, bike, guess the laptop, nothing that resembles work, and whatever else fits in the Alice Pack. Ok, much better now.... Mike aka cosmo

Sounds fascinating, Mike. What an adventure. The Pacific is awash with little island ripe for IOTA pileups. Be aware that there are pirates in some waters, others just murder yachties (knew the Grahams who were murdered on Palmyra Island) and leave their bodies behind. I would suggest you either arrange for some sort of weapon to be at your disposal upon arrival, or stay in populated and friendly areas. Homework ahead of time can mean survival in the vast Pacific.

The Grahams, was that the novel called "The Sea Will Tell" or something, I read that a few years ago. And it was a tv movie as well. Is this stuff pretty common out on these little islands, I mean piracy?

Yes, Mac and Muff Graham were the subject of both the book and the tv movie you mention. The guy and girl who did it are doing double life sentences somewhere on the mainland. It is not all that common. I listen to the Yachtie's net every evening on 14.313 MHz from 6pm till all yachts check in. Things happen. In the Indian Ocean it is even more prevalent and less reported than the Pacific. That the unthinkable happened even once is too many times. Several people have disappeared overboard. All of the situations went unprosecuted because in each case it was considered accidental. Who can tell about these thing. The piracy is very real and very active around Indonesia and west of there. I would recommend staying well away from there.

Not sure where to pu this: Special Bulletin 10 - June 29, 2000 Antenna Designer Louis Varney, G5RV, SK Louis Varney, G5RV, who invented the world-famous G5RV antenna, died June 28. He was 89. The G5RV multiband wire antenna for HF is among the most popular of all antenna designs. Varney first described the G5RV in the November 1966 issue of the RSGB Bulletin. He employed a full-size and a double-size G5RV, both fed with open-wire feeders, at his own station. Varney remained an active radio amateur until very recently and kept regular on-the-air schedules. He was an RSGB member for 74 years and served as life president of the Mid-Sussex Amateur Radio Society. His wife Nelida is among his survivors. Services are set for July 4 in Brighton, England.

No plans yet for the Pacific - have to make it through the Great Lakes first. Might have to look out for Wisconsin beer pirates tho.... I did hear the maritime mobile net on 20 meters this weekend. 14.313 seems to have a rep for a bunch of idiots that get on and cause QRM for the rest of the good boat folk. When I listened though, the net ran well. You would think that an important traffic frequency would be respected but there are some goofs out there. If I was out in the middle of the ocean, I would sure want to be able to check into the net without having to slog through past the cretins. Hope the net keeps going strong - its for a good cause. ok, off the soap box de AA9IL

That Maritime frequence is the target of more and more disruption. However, the closer to the Pacific you are, the better it is. People make contacts and move up or down 5 to talk. It is a good system and works splendidly most of the time. I am really sorry to hear of the intereference from clods and louts on the air. Years ago one guy was so obnoxions he had his radios and licence confiscated and put out of business...which probably did not deter him for long. He just found another net to harrass. It is the only net I know of which has actually saved lives. It is most important that it continue! Staying on the soapbox - it is a worthy enterprise!

Wisconsin Beer Pirates??! Your boat or your beer??? The mind reels with possibilities...

Actually, the Wisconsin Beer Pirates would be a good name for a sailing group. Have to figure how to work that in....

Yup!! Used to crew on racing dinghys in Hilo Bay, then ran the races to let some others win. Great name for a fun way to spend Sunday afternoon!

There are more lurkers out there than I knew. and I am delighted to correct anything I amy have posted incorrectly.Here is correction to the Graham saga: Concerning your coments about the Grahams.......who were murdered at Palmyra Atoll.........the "guy".....Buck Walker......was found guilty of murder and is serving a life sentence. The "girl"......Jennifer Jenkins......was found not guilty and is serving a life sentence nowhere. Just a correction........:o) Thanks Kaysman64

This email comment superceded the one above. I am grateful to Nickie for her tact and interest in making all of the facts known in this sordid chapter of Yachting in the Pacific: I noted in your "Nomadic Research Labs" correspondence (Response 40 of 46, dated June 29, 2000), that you believe Buck Walker and Stephanie Terns are both serving life sentences for the murder of Muff Graham (re: Palmyra Atol). In fact, Stephanie Terns was, through the efforts of her attorney, Vincent Bugliosi, absolved of any criminal collusion in Buck Walker's actions. Thanks, Nickie

Ham Radios in Space NASA Science News for August 21, 2000 Ham radio operators are notorious for their love of long-distance radio chats. Now, thanks to NASA's SAREX program, hams and students on Earth can enjoy the ultimate long-distance radio experience by contacting astronauts in orbit. FULL STORY at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast21aug_1.htm?list

Although not very nomadic as of late, I want to mention that I did get to drive on a couple of sections of the old 'Route 66' last week. Didnt see any weird sculptures or eating places tho. Just lots of corn fields.... _cosmo_

Not even any exterrestrials?? The only place I have been on Rt 66 was between Flagstaff, AZ and Meteor Crater. The Crater was amazing. Rt 66 was just another back top road. I guess the romance is gone, moved it elsewhere or only lives in fantasies. I missed out on the 'scuptures' too!

Im pretty sure I mentioned this in another thread but one of the places most likely to run into ET's or other strange things was in the West Texas desert near Marfa. (didnt get to see the Marfa Lights tho...) de Mike radio cosmo international

Interesting. I wonder why they don't hover over tehCapitol building in Washington DC... or is it that they are looking for intelligent life in the universe.?! Any geologic anomolies in the Marfa area? Curious! Have you seen anything you could not explain away that you would care to share? I must be too stupid or boring, Nuthin hovers over me except mosquitoes!

I have read that the Marfa lights could be caused by plasma formed from rocks fracturing under high stress. Intelligent life in Washington DC? Yea, but they were only visitng.... :) No strange objects I could not explain - have seen the aurora, iridium flares, a comet, satellites, and even heard the sonic boom from the shuttle flying over head during re-entry. I wish I could see something unidentified but no luck as of yet. I should have driven out to Area 51 when I had the chance during a Vegas visit.... Mike radio cosmo international

*laugh* yup about Washington DC... just could not resist. If Iwere them I'd handgout over Cheyenne Mountain. Colorado Springs is very pretty now... I understand Area 51 is now vacated and relocated elsewhere. I've seen zodiacal light and Gegenshein and loads of green flashes and one turquoise flash along with abut 20 comets and innumerable satellites. Sonic booms but not from the Shuttle. Have seen the shuttle fly over and watched the first burnout ofEarth's orbit on the first moon trip. The last was just after having had dinner with astronauts on either side of me and across the table. Fascinating guys!!! Sunset rays are also frequent here. Oh, and the southern cross. The magellanic clouds are visible from here but just a little while per year.

Piezo-electric rocks??? What is squeezing them???

or is it like the wintergreen candy my father used to snap in half for me in a dark closet and we would would see the spark made thereby. Inever figured out what caused it and I am sure he never told me. Anyone know??? (I had forgotten about it till just now!) Of course, I have seen earthquake lights caused by the earth fracturing. That is more than I need to see again...! It took a 7.2 magintude one in the middle of a very dark night to cause that!

Interesting stuff, Marci. Speaking of Nomadic Research Labs type stuff, Jay Leno is going to have the "battlebots" on his show next week, they're really awesome, I saw a preview last night.

Oooh, also seen noctilucent clouds, and was reminded of the eclipses lunar which I have also seen. Alas, I missed the total solar eclipse HERE and the annular eclipse in California while I was there. Heavy clouds obsured even the darkening of the skies at totality in both cases. Do not come near me if you want to see things eclipse solar. The gods to not want me to see that. I did see the 3/4 eslipse many years ago in West Virginia and it was spectacular. Also another partial here for which I put up a pinhole porjector for public inspection in front of the college library. It worked splendidly. How do eclipses affect transmissions? I imagine solar totality could make for a lot of trouble on EME transmissions. Is that so?

Hi Marcia and gang Marcia - I have heard about the green flashes that occur when the sun goes down on the horizion - at what time did you exactly see it? That is sooo cool. Re Eclipse, Im sure there is some affect but not exactly what. I have witnessed several partials and there was a full eclipse many years ago but was too young to remember. During the partials, I would play 'Dark Side of the Moon' rather loudly on the tape deck and watch the eclipse though a SRONG IR filter combined with a welding goggle lens. I can still see so I guess it was sufficient but now I sort of know better.... I have hit my eyes with reflected HeNe laser beams and that really gets my attention - the ol' eyes survived that one too.... The one thing I do remember about the eclipse was that the light passing through the gaps between leaves in a tree caused many 'pinhole camera' images of the occulted sun to appear on the ground. The temperature dropped, birds stopped chriping, and the sky became magnificent blue. No wonder the ancient people freaked when eclipses happened. Regarding the flashes with rocks fracturing - I would suspect that the intense pressure when the fracture takes place would generate enough energy to cause plasma to form - especially if quartz is present - this is kinda getting out of my field so grasping at straws here - best to bring up on GEO. Terry - have to find out when the battle bots are on. Is that the robot battles that take place in the UK. I have a big interest in robotics and autonoma with several good publications on the subject from MIT but I can not pick up a new hobby or else I will never finish the microwave stuff. Its tempting tho.... Anyway, Marcia, have to describe your sightings regarding the flashes - plus seeing the Southern Cross is pretty cool. There was an old Crosby Stills and Nash song about the Southern Cross that I really liked. Its getting cold up north and the sky is clear now. Time for good stargazing. 73 de Mike radio cosmo international p.s. a nomadic journey to Austin is in the works and am I looking forward to that!

When are you coming to Austin? The battlebots will be on Leno next week. I'm not sure which night though. I'll let you know if I find out. There are three battlebots going against one they had custom built for leno, with a big image of his face and chin being used as kind of a front end scoop. There was one that looked very destructive. I also have heard about the green light, Marci. Is it more common out where you live and since you have those ocean sunsets?

I just reread this topic for the past year and it is one of the most interesting on the Spring! Everything from pirates to eclipses to battlebots! Maybe we should start a topic pirates of the South Pacific? Battlebots?

I just domup those things for which I have no other topic in to Geo 1... all things Earth. Found an interesting website about plasma last night recommended to be by one of 4 new conversats I met yesterday. I love a fascinating life online!!! http://members.nbci.com/hameltech/ scroll down for the discussion of plasma. Tlak about nomad..!!! Yes, you need a flat unobstructed horizon for the green flash and no obsucing dust particles in the air to aborb those blue and green wavelenghts. It is not an every day occurrance here but on the Kona side, fairly frequent.

Checked out the hameltech page - now thats interesting stuff - kind of the thing you would see in the old Tesla Journals when they were being published. Re the battlebots - might have to stay up long enough to watch them in action. Kind of like Survival Research Laboratories with out the explosives. Next time Im near the gulf, have to watch for the green flashes. I have seen where the sun's rays hit mountain tops many miles away and cause a unique sunset. In the UFO news, I did see a high speed jet today at an incredible altitude - I saw the reflection against the sky. Moving fast and no vapor trail. And lastly, bolted the traveling wave tube power supply to the 19 inch rack in the basement - get this thing running and I'll have 10 watts at 10ghz - no birds better fly in front of the dish antenna during key down. 73 de Mike radio cosmo international

Yup, that Hameltech site is something else. I just joined a message board of people who had the oddest ideas. I will pass the best of them on to you here. I have a fresh lava flow to sell those guys. Get it while it's hot!!! Got seagulls??? If you do, one will manage to get in the way one time or another - hopefully not during keydown! Have seen plenty of intercontinental jets so far up there that not enough humidity exists to make contrails!!! The overfly Hilo regularly! Truly UFO's, but most assuredly airplanes

What's a traveling wave tube power supply?

Yeah, Mike... What IS a traveling wave tube power supply?! I thought I was the only clueless one here.

Hi Yall A TWT (called 'twit"...) is a type of microwave amplifier. Electrons pass as a beam through a coil (helix) under vacuum and at very high voltages. These amps have tremendous gain (1mw in and 10 - 15 watts out) At microwave frequencies, thats alot of gain. TWTA's comprise of the tube and a power supply which make up a travelling wave tube amplifier. The amp I have is telco surplus and was used for point to point stations working in the 10.7 ghz range. The plan is to use this amp for serious tropo scatter contacts at 10ghz but also, 10-15 watts is the lower limit for EME given a good sized dish. In other exciting news, one of the recent IEEE Spectrum magazines had a cover story on wearable computers - it is now possible to have a heads up display and a pentium class computer that can be worn on a belt. Only one more class in the semester then Im freeeeeeeeee! (until next semester.....) 73 de Mike radio cosmo international

Impressive! Thanks for the education. I wish I understood half what I know about these things... Anyway, it will not be wher I can eavesdrop on you if it is EME unless the prop is amazing when I do hear you. Have only been able to catch local guys once in a while, and that was with my Drake and an antenna switch for the unusual freqs. Notch filters help too, and alas, none inhouse have them. Next life all are on antenna switches and all have notch filters! Let us know how you fare. Ace those finals!!!

I posted this in Geo 35 for you, Mike, but there are some hams (one of who =m shall remain anonymons) who avoids Geo every chance he gets (*grin*) Leonid Meteor Balloon Rises Again NASA Science News for November 9, 2000 A team of NASA scientists and ham radio amateurs will loft a weather balloon toward the stratosphere on Nov. 18th to record the sights and sounds of the 2000 Leonid meteor shower. Readers can follow the balloon flight thanks to a live webcast at LeonidsLive.com. FULL STORY at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast09nov_1.htm?list89800

Nomadic TV Just finished watching a goofy show on access TV tonite which made me think about nomadic radio but since I rant about radio all the time, thought I'd blab TV for a bit. I would suspect that the closest I could figure to ideal pirate TV would be fashioned after the TV crew on the old Max Headroom series. Underground and punk - existing in a video autonomous zone (read TAZ - The Temporary Autonomous Zone by Hakim Bey for the full scoop on that subject). What would it be? Found video, optical collage, subliminal mind control? Not quite sure.... Although pirate radio stories abound, I have not heard too much about pirate video springing up. The closest would be some of the stuff on access which leads back to my original opening comment. I guess webcams come kind of close but then again both originators and viewers must be on the net. Until all this does come about, I will be somewhat content to surf access to see what interesting video thoughts are zipping about. 73 de cosmo radio cosmo international

Can you get skip on TV under the right conditions? You have one huge ground plane in Lake Michigan!

I have received across the lake transmissions on VHF radio frequencies - cant say for TV since I have cable :) Now, I have received TV channels from across the Gulf of Mexico during a band opening - a Spanish speaking TV station on chan 3. Channel 2 was completely wiped out which is a good indicator of low VHF activity. (6 meters in the ham bands) - BTW, this happened when I lived near the Gulf many years ago in South Tx. After I posted the previous message I remember reading about pirate TV taking place in the old 'Eastern Bloc' - both in Russia and and East Germany. These were instances where individuals hooked up video recorders to master TV cable systems or regular transmitters. Now, Im sure there is some pirate activity in this country but only in the big cities. Now, Im sure there is some interesting programming (?) taking place in some of the remote parts of the country - Alaska and possibly the far north of Canada and the U.S. Also, there is probably some neat stuff that comes on after 2am aside from reruns of Happy Days and Three's Company. Thats one of the things about the alterna programming is that like any other unique programming is that one has to sift through the mundane to find those nuggets. mike radio cosmo international