Time lapse video of sailing

I had mentioned buying a small sailboat in one of my previous posts, and this summer I had several opportunities to try it out with my girlfriend, as well a few trips with friends and family. Admittedly our first attempt didn't go so well with the boat ending up washed up on a rocky dam and us wet, cold, and miserable. But after a couple of fiberglass patches for the hull and some recuperation time we were ready to try again, and I think we are starting to get the hang of it.

On one of our outings I decided to attach a GoPro camera to the top of the mast, and took this video:

Youtube Link

That ended up being a good trip, although not particularly long. We sailed around the north end of Lake Newell, near Brooks, AB. It started off as a very windy day and we were wondering at first whether we should go out at all, but as we were our on the water it calmed right down to the point where we were drifting from time to time.

Hopefully I'll be able to get one more sail in before the season is completely over. After that I might just start playing around with some land and ice sailing!

Some time lapse videos of flying

I borrowed a GoPro camera recently and decided to try to attach it to an airplane to see how that would turn out. Because flights tend to be fairly long and the GoPro camera has a wide angle lens which makes everything at a distance look like it's going by really slowly I made the videos into time-laps movies. This was done by setting the camera to take a photo every two seconds, and then combining the photos on my computer into a video. One problem with this method is that the photos are 2560 x 1920, which means that a 8 Gb memory card fills up within an hour or so. Processing large files into a video on an older computer is also problematic, so I had to down-sample all the photos to a much smaller size using 'mogrify' before doing anything else. The video was created using mencoder, and then compressed using ffmpeg.

Anyway, here are the results:  Youtube Link

 The first flight was intended to scope out some local lakes to check their sailing potential. As you can see, most of them were still iced over in early April.

The second flight was with my father at the controls when he came down for a visit. We attempted to fly out to Cypress Hills, but low clouds kept us from reaching it.

Hope you enjoy these.

DIY Car part 2 - my progress so far

Although I haven't mentioned it since my first post, I have actually been doing a fair amount of work on the Locost, a sports car which I'm building. Although it's still very far from being finished it is now starting to slightly resemble a car, so I thought I would put up a progress update.

Building the Frame

The first major component to be built on the car was the frame. I should say, rather, that it was the first to be started as there are always a few more brackets and things to add to it as the build continues, but the major structure of the frame came together fairly quickly.

Start of frame build

Here is how it all started: four lengths of 1" 16ga rectangular section steel tubing clamped to a build table. Seems very simple, right? It's hard to imagine at this stage that this will eventually be where your butt will sit as you travel down the highway.

Bought a sailboat!

Although I wrote a post about land sailing a short while ago, I haven't had a chance yet to build and test a land yacht. However, since my interest in wind powered propulsion has continued to grow for several years, I decided to finally splurge and buy a sailing dinghy on which I could learn to sail in the spring (once the ice melts).

My criteria for boat selection were fairly straightforward:
1. It had to be small enough for me to be able to sail single-handed at times, including launching and recovering on my own. I also wanted it to be responsive enough to make a good learning boat. This limited my selection to dinghies, as opposed to larger cabin cruisers.
2. It had to be large enough to sail two-up with my significant other, and take along a passenger or two once we got a little more proficient. This eliminated the smallest and lightest dinghies such as Lasers, and slightly larger boats such as the popular Enterprise.
3. I wanted this boat to be relatively cheap since it was to be a learning tool so that necessitated a used purchase or probably an older boat.

What I settled on in the end was a CL-16, made by C&L Boatworks in Ontario, which is a copy of a Wayfarer MkII (more or less). The boat is 16 feet (4.8m) long, has a 6 foot (1.8m) beam, and weighs about 375 lbs. It's a bermudan rigged sloop with a 95 sq ft main sail, and a 29 sq ft roller furling jib. The boat came with a road trailer and all the rigging was in good condition, so it should be ready to sail first thing in the spring. Now the wait begins...

How to buy winter tires economically

Every year fall rolls around and people in Canada, the northern States, and Nordic countries start thinking about buying winter tires for their cars. Although you can drive around on "all-season" tires year round, their performance in snowy and icy conditions is dismal. In Canada, "all-season" really means three season (or May-August, depending on where you live).

Fuel your car with moving air!

Wind has been a source of energy used by mankind for centuries. In fact, one of the oldest ways to get around is sailing. Before the modern network of roads and railways sprawled out all over the globe the easiest and quickest way to move people and cargo from one place to another was by water, and sailboats were the primary vehicle of choice before steam power took over. Open seas and oceans were ideal since they provided lots of room to maneuver and didn't have any obstacles to slow the air, buy skilled sailors were able to navigate various channels and rivers as well. Wind powered vehicles do not, however, have to be confined to water.

Choosing your weapon (er, vehicle)

Many simple living enthusiasts promote pairing down the amount of stuff you own. After all, any item you possess will require some attention from you in the form of maintenance or other upkeep, some space to store, and will cost you some money. I agree with them in principal, however I think there is a case to be made for having a few different vehicle types available to you for different kinds of trips.*

Trikes aren't just for kids anymore

Most people in North America learn to ride a bicycle when they're a child. Before they finally discover the thrill of balancing on two wheels without skidding down the pavement on their knees, many go through a phase of riding a tricycle and/or a bicycle with training wheels. The appeal of trikes dies out fairly quickly once bikes are discovered, simply because they are slow and cumbersome in comparison. However, they don't have to be.

Recumbent bicycles have been around since the early 20th century. They were quite quickly found to be faster than conventional upright bikes, and just as quickly they were banned from the racing scene as a result. The conventional upright bicycle took over in popularity because everyone wants something like what the racers have (hence the popularity of 600cc and 1000cc sport bikes for cruising around town). Recumbent bikes never did die out though, and may different configurations of pedal powered vehicles were created over the decades, many of which perform much better than what you see in the Tour de France (most Human Powered Vehicle records are set with fully faired recumbents).

On being a fuel nerd

The wind in your hair, the sun glistening off of the metallic paint, the rumble of the exhaust as the pistons reciprocate inside their cylinders and control the repeated explosions of atomized flammable liquids to propel you across the country. These things are the essence of being a gear head. Unfortunately they are not at all what this post is about... Instead what I'm going to do is transition to the nerdy world of tracking your fuel consumption. As much fun as it is being out on the open road without a care in the world, when your Low Fuel light comes on you may pause and think for a moment what actually goes into making you move.

Roll Your Own: a DIY... car?

Whenever you start talking to people about General Aviation airplanes, or start reading about them somewhere, the conversation always seems to lead to Homebuilt airplanes (a.k.a. amateur built or kit planes). Homebuilt aircraft have been popular since the early days of aviation and, although they don't appear to be as prominent today because they are dwarfed by the number of commercially produced aircraft in the air, they are still a very significant share of the aircraft market.

Building your own aircraft makes a lot of sense, if you have the capability to do so. Often you are able to get much better performance for a lower price than you would with a factory built certified aircraft, such as your typical offering from Cessna or Piper. Homebuilts have to go through rigorous safety inspections before they are put to the sky, so the safety concerns that many people have about them are often moot.

So, if building airplanes is so popular, who don't people build their own cars? After all, you could reap the same benefits of lower cost, better performance, and a sense of pride that you get from driving around in something you made with your own hands. The answer is: people do. There are in fact many kit cars and scratch built cars both on public roads, and on race tracks around the world. They don't stand out very much, again due to the sheer number of factory build cars on the roads making them a fairly small percentage of the overall figures, but they are there.