Eyelashes

Eyelashes are supposed to keep things from falling into your eyes. Why do I have to keep fishing them out of my eyes?

Random Thought

What if the wolf was an innocent land owner, and the three little pigs were illegal squatters, who made themselves out to be the victims, to anyone who listen?

Creature Fight!

Hey! A new post, and it’s not about RC cars. What’s going on, here?

 

So, I backed that Vitruvian H.A.C.K.S. Kickstarter, and I finally got my Medusa. I’d always hoped to set up a fight scene, with her and my custom “Greyryder” werewolf. Her tail construction is inspired, and I had to see if I could have her wrapped around him. Not only can she hold herself on him, but he can support their combined weight, and do it stably. So, I took a bunch of pictures of them, that pose. B) I edited glowing eyes into all the pictures.

 

This was set up for a “technical difficulties” picture, so there’s a knocked over TV camera, in the foreground.

Updateness

A burst of activity, and then I go silent again, huh? I really need to work on that.

Anyway, remember those brake shoes I made? The old ones weren’t the problem. Aw well, I still figured a better way to cut the new ones, doing that. The problem was the aluminum collars that the brake disks ride on. Each collar has two flat sides. The flats being how force from the disks is transferred to the collars and axles. As I said, the collars are aluminum. The disks are stainless steel, and it’s their edges that press on the collars.

Anybody seeing a problem here?

Yeah, so the collars had V-shaped grooves worn in them. The left side was bad enough, that the disk was getting stuck in it. I filed the sides of the grooves to shallower angles, so the disks could ride out of the valleys easier. Then, I swapped the collars between the left and right sides of the truck, since they wear on opposite sides of the flats. This has cured the problem, until I can get new ones ordered. Probably gonna do that, in a week or two. (parts for this thing are cheap, but those aren’t the only ones I’ve worn out.) This week, I just ordered a dual motor driver for a model tank I converted to RC years ago. I’m looking forward to driving that again, with a better control setup, than its current kludged together conversion.

Me and tracked vehicles….

I’m still happy with my new radio. I know it’s only been a couple of weeks so far, but there’s been no sign of the controls going south. And, I’m still driving it nearly every night. Braking in a set of new brake shoes means I’m adjusting the dual rate every two or three days. All the buttons being programmable means I can keep the dual rate control conveniently located. I’ve settled on the largest grip on it. I’ve never been a big dude, but most pistol grip RC transmitter handles have always felt a little small, to me. The largest grip just feels best, to my hand.

Wear and Tear

I feel like I should apologize, for turning this in to an RC car blog.

I was having some trouble with the Truck cat’s brakes binding on one side. Low speed crawling resulted in the left side track repeatedly locking up. I tracked it down to the brakes, that it uses to steer. My homemade Formica brake shoes had worn more than I thought they had. It’s hard to get a good look at the shoes, when they’re in place, but I noticed a notch worn into one of them. Once I had them out of the truck, I could see the full extent of the damage.

The New Hotness

Okay, the last couple of posts have been a little negative. I finally got my new radio system on Wednesday, It’s a DX4C from Spektrum. I’ve had a couple of days to play around with it, but the “new shine” hasn’t worn off yet. So, this should be a little more positive.

Tom Petty was Right

The waiting really is the hardest part.

 

My radio has been trying to leave Grove City, since Saturday morning. No kidding. The tracking shows it leaving the “FedEx location” in Grove City at a quarter after four in the morning. The next update isn’t until nearly a quarter till three on Monday.

Old Hotness, New Busted Junk

Oh, where do I begin? So, at Christmas I received an RC4WD 4 channel radio, for use with the truck-cat. I was immediately unimpressed with the build quality. The hand grip area would creak in my hand, if I squeezed it a little. Alright, whatever. This particular radio is meant to be a budget option. It’s a four channel pistol grip radio for less than a hundred dollars. It meets the budget, and both auxiliary channels are three position. Good for running winches and multi-circuit light controllers. Everything seems to work, it does what I want it to, so I installed it, and didn’t look back. I was always careful with how I handled the unit. I managed to make it through the age of AM radios, without ever breaking one of their fragile telescoping antennas. I didn’t want to break this new radio.

 

Skip to a few months later; The steering is going nuts in a left turn. Hey, I’m not a fan of stock car racing either, but…. Plug in a spare servo, and get the same result. Problem is the radio. I went so far as to pull the potentiometer that controls steering  apart, just to make work right again. I actually had it working okay. For a month or two.

Greetings, from the Swamp

So, that post I made, about all that water coming down in such a short period time? Apparently, there’s a price to paid, for finding fascination in such things.

 

The One Day Flood

This all happened from a single cloud burst, that lasted maybe an hour, if that. It’s that short period of time that it happened in, that makes it interesting, not its severity. We’ve had worse, and it’s pretty mild, by most people’s standards for a flood, I think. So, when I “flood” I basically mean “the low part of the back yard turned into a swamp, again.”