I have upgraded the site to WordPress 2.0, mainly because of the much improved 'Write Post' interface, now a WYSIWYG editor called tinymce.
The upgrade has broken my theme and some of my plugins so it will take a few days before everything is working again...
Update: The theme is now somehow working again and I have installed a cool flash plugin (flashfader) that cycles banner images at the top.
There's been discussion on the IOMICA Forum about simulating radiosailing races in order to study the effects of different heat racing systems. Specifically, it has been suggested that a bigger number of boats should be promoted/relegated from each heat (currently 4, using HMS).
In order for the simulation to be realistic each in-silico skipper's performance should be varied randomly around some mean performance index. To anchor the simulation in reality, I've here taken the results from the last three international events (2003 Vancouver, 2004 Arcos, 2005 Mooloolaba) and calculated the standard deviation of each skippers score during the series.
There's a clear correlation between standard deviation and final placing indicating that the top skippers perform more consistently than others. I also find it interesting that the datasets from different events are broadly speaking identical.
Update: Along these lines, Lester Gilber has worked on an Event Simulator, with perhaps the aim of figuring out the most optimal heat management system.
Better late than never - some of my own pictures and comments from the event.
Continue reading 2005 IOM Worlds, Mooloolaba, Austalia
Had these macros of small animals on my homepage for a while during 2003, but then took them away for some reason. Here they are again:
Finally decided to make some proper rudder moulds for the Noux. This design, based on the rudder a number of Noux boats have been using for 1-2 season, was chosen. It's a simple(based on a Marblehead rudder by Bob Sterne actually) moderately deep rudder with a fairly thin section (just enough to accomodate a 4 mm rudder stock).
Below some pictures from the CNC milling of aluminium moulds.
Continue reading Rudder design for Noux IOM
Spent today milling a new motor mount for the ABB motor we are planning on putting on the Opti.
Here's the raw material, a 120x20 mm aluminium bar. The 6-flute 6 mm endmill we used is visible in the left upper corner.
Continue reading Motor mount for new Opti motor
The four man strong IOM-Team Finland who competed at the nordics in Denmark and in Saltsjöbaden a couple of weeks ago took the trip over the gulf to sail at the last Swedish ranking event of the year.
Continue reading Swedish IOM Ranking 8
The stock 600 W DC motor on the CNC-converted Opti BF 20 burned out and had to be replaced.
Jari got a 750 W ABB AC induction motor to replace it and found this used VFD for driving it. Here we are testing the VFD for the first time and it seems to work OK. Acceleration and braking speed is great compared to the old DC-drive.
There's a normally-open start switch (black), a normally closed stop switch (red), an SPDT direction switch (blue), and a linear 10k pot (black) for adjusting the speed. Next step is to build a proper front panel for the switches. The VFD also has a 0-5 V load output which would be nice to monitor while machining.
I've started a new category, CNC, for everything related to CNC control and machines. Hopefully I'll have more to post about these things in the future...
For a while now I have had the stattraq and mostwanted plugins installed. The idea is that stattraq logs statistics of how many users are visiting, which pages are popular etc. into a database. Then mostwanted picks out the most popular posts and lists them in the sidebar on the left.
Up until now I have only got the text "no results available" from mostwanted due to a problem with handling permalinks in stattraq. But today with some help from nice people on the #wordpress IRC channel I got it fixed. There are two things that need to be done.
Continue reading Fixed problems with permalinks and stattraq/mostwanted
