I should never have said, "Maybe it won't rain."

Springfield. It's a big deal, in Springfield (also the capital of Illinois, and home of Abe Lincoln, who is probably not the 'Abe' cited in the bottom image.)

It's been a hell of week for weather in the Midwest. Of course, there was the deadliest single tornado in decades in Joplin, and the following couple of days were seriously ominous in Kansas City, with tornado warning sirens going off for hours at a time.

Springfield's only a few hundred miles from KC, so it was with some trepidation that I checked the Springfield forecast last Wednesday, but it looked good for racing. As I packed my gear on Friday night I thought, Rain jacket? Nah...

Every kind of gear except rain gear.

That was mistake number one. You should always pack rain gear, so that it won't rain. At 0630 this morning, I collected photographer Phil Peterson and we headed east from Kansas City into unbroken heavy cloud cover. (Phil's never shot or even attended a flat track race but if you check out his portfolio, here, you'll understand why I'm eager to see the images he comes back with.) Phil mentioned that he'd checked the weather forecast just before going to bed and they'd changed the forecast to a 40% chance of rain. Still, we got all the way to the Illinois State Fairgrounds with just the finest smattering of droplets.

Then, as we were picking up credentials, I said, "Maybe it won't rain."

That was mistake number two. It started to rain. Then it started to pour. There was lightning. Toto, we're not in Hollywood any more. Oh, and then it hailed.

Nichole Cheza's team couldn't get their truck into the pits to remove their gear, so Nichole rode one of her bikes out to the road. Her dad(?) told her, "Try not to get it all muddy." Right.

Saturday's program - the Springfield TT - was canceled before it started, and rescheduled for Monday. With memories of recent tornados and flooding along the Mississippi in Illinois, the vibe wasn't, like, 'Let's go to the motel and watch TV,' as much as 'Let's get the heck out of here.'

The evacuation from the pit area of the multiuse stadium resembled the evacuation of Dunkirk (minus artillery and strafing runs, but you get the picture) with guys pulling trailers down from the parking lot to load all their gear creating gridlock for those trying to leave.

If anything it rained even harder later in the afternoon, and it remains to be seen what the Mile track will be like tomorrow.

So, I waited out the rain in a cafe downtown. To get online, I had to select a network. Judging from name of the top-listed network in this screen cap, there's at least one guy in Springfield who's less than enthused at the influx of Harleys...

The good news: Leno finally talks motorcycle racing on Tonight Show. The bad news: Leno's guest is Paris Hilton

Last summer, some friends at Yamaha asked me to pitch Jay Leno on the idea of Valentino Rossi as a guest for The Tonight Show. I've profiled Jay for a few magazines; I know he's a genuine gearhead, not some Hollywood twerp who bought a bike on his publicist's advice, because it would make him seem cool or macho. But, I also know that he's a bike guy, not really a racing guy.

Jay shut me down instantly when I suggested Rossi as a guest. He told me that The Tonight Show's producers knew from experience that racing doesn't hold the interest of mainstream American TV viewers. He cited one bad experience, which I think was Mario Andretti bombing on his show. And, he noted, "There's the accent thing." Apparently, Americans also don't like listening to guys with foreign accents. In fact, he'd learned over the decades that sports, period, didn't fly with Tonight Show viewers. "Maybe, if you can get the Superbowl-winning quarterback on the Monday after the game," Jay told me. "But even that..."

Leno mugs with Yamaha motorcycle division honcho Henio Arcangeli.

In the end, although Jay hosted the Yamaha MotoGP team at his garage, Rossi never showed. (He'd been injured by then, and had a great excuse.) After I'd told Jay it would be a small private party, Yamaha piled on about 150 guests. Jorge Lorenzo was a guest of the show, but not a guest on the show; he sat in the audience. If the camera panned across him during the broadcast, no special notice was taken of the MotoGP World Champion-in-waiting. Yamaha wanted to make Jay their guest at the Laguna Seca MotoGP round, but he had a scheduling conflict. (Jay and few garage employees later attended the Indy round.)

But now, World Championship motorcycle racing will place a guest on The Tonight Show - complete with a (mocked-up) bike appearance. The catch: Jay's guest will be Paris Hilton. Will she say anything intelligent about 'her' 125GP team? I desperately want Jay to ask her, "So Paris, tell us what you think about the upcoming transition from 125 two-strokes to Moto 3..."

Mission Motors: Motors yes, cycles no?

Last December, San Francisco's Mission Motors unveiled its striking, third-generation Mission R electric 'superbike' racing machine and told the world it would be contesting the U.S. TTXGP racing series. The company didn't mention the fact that the battery pack on the Mission R was, at that point, still a mock-up.

Two weeks before the first U.S. TTXGP race (May 15, at Infineon Raceway, just north of San Francisco) I heard that the bike had yet to turn a wheel on the track; Mission was cutting it fine. A week before the race, I was told that it might be displayed at the track, but that it certainly wouldn't be entered after problems were encountered on the dyno. Sure enough, last weekend the bike was displayed in the paddock, but it never left it's track-stand. (Lightning Motors was another prominent DNS at the event.)

You know you want one. There were a few commentators - me included - who felt that the Mission R was the bike that made electric sportbikes relevant. The question is: Will it ever see serial production? I think not.

This could be seen as business as usual for Mission which, like many startups, has a history of releasing impressive specs, then failing to deliver. In nearby Silicon Valley, where Mission recruits a lot of engineers, there's three main industries: companies produce computer software, hardware, and vaporware. But in Mission's case, the delay's not just a case of a company taking a little longer to fulfill promises. I believe it reflects a whole new, uh, corporate mission...

A history lesson

The company now known as Mission Motors was formed in 2007 as Hum Cycles. The founders were Forrest North (CEO), Edward West (President), and Mason Cabot (VP Engineering). Although most of the core group had worked on electric car projects in university, U.S. regulations make putting a new car on the road a lot more expensive than homologating a motocycle. (Crash testing a car costs several million dollars alone.)

Seeking a quick, easy, and affordable point of entry into the EV business, Hum Cycles' first project was to strip the motor and gas tank out of an old Ducati supersport bike, and pack it with batteries and an electric motor. That was shown at a Bay Area 'green technology' fair, to attract some initial investment.

In the winter of 2009, the company - by then renamed Mission Motors - released images of the Mission One, a sci-fi looking motorcycle designed by Yves Behar, best-known for styling personal computers. The company said that within the year, it would be selling bikes with a 150mph top speed and a 150-mile range. The rest of the fledgling electric motorcycle industry scoffed at those claims. No one laughed at the price, though. The Mission One was to sell for almost $70,000.

I didn't hate the Yves Behar-penned Mission 1 quite as much as some people, and I have to say that back when Mission still let me attend their tests, I got some pics of it that made it look as good as it could possibly look. Still, the rap on the second-gen Mission prototype was - lots of claims, no deliveries.

The Mission One put in an under-whelming appearance at the Isle of Man TT in 2009. Tom Montano finished fourth in the TTXGP 'Pro' class with an average speed of 74 mph. To make matters worse, the worst recession in memory had brought motorcycle sales to a screeching halt. It was the wrong time to be taking deposits on a motorcycle with strange styling, questionable performance, but the unmistakable price tag of a Desmosedici.

Mission went back to the drawing board in 2010, bringing in well known American motorcycle designer James Parker and stylist Tim Prentice to pen the all-new Mission R.

That was then, this is now...

As an outsider looking in, it seemed to me that the company was learning that investment capital buys seats on corporate boards, and that investors often take a far more sanguine view than engineers do, of passions like motorcycling in general, and racing in particular. Forrest North was moved out of the CEO's office in February, 2010. He remains on the company's Board of Directors, but isn't talking publicly about his change of status, or Mission's strategy going forward.

Development rider, and Bay Area TT stalwart Tom Montano poses with then-CEO Forrest North. The latter is still nominally on the Mission board, but with Mission's Silicon Valley-style secrecy cult, it's safe to say he won't be talking about the company's change in strategy.

Last winter, the normally-secretive company let slip that it had provided systems for a Honda Civic hybrid car that was racing in California. At that time, I wondered if we were seeing a shift in emphasis from Mission Motors as a freestanding motorcycle manufacturer, to Mission Motors as a designer or supplier of powertrain components for the auto industry.

The appearance of the Mission R at Infineon Raceway last weekend seems to suggest that Mission Motors still has two-wheeled aspirations, but appearances can be deceiving. Stylist Tim Prentice told me that while he has ideas about what a 'street' version of the race bike would look like, there hadn't been much interest at Mission. Really? Most motorcycle companies design a street bike then give thought to the version they'll race.

One employee told me, "I'd be fired if they heard me say this, but there are two factions inside Mission. One faction still loves bikes, and the other doesn't care about them at all. The group that love bikes are not the ones who are in positions of influence."

A couple of months ago, I got an email with an interesting attachment. It was a PowerPoint presentation that Mission had obviously prepared for potential investors. No contractor or freelancer would have access to such material, so the leak must have some from inside Mission, although by the time I got it, I had no way of knowing who, at Mission, wanted the presentation leaked. What was noteworthy about it was that in the first ten pages of the 25-slide presentation, there were over 20 photos of cars before the first photo of a bike appeared, and that was under the heading, 'Concept Vehicle.'

On one slide, under the heading 'Leadership,' seven employees and board members are listed, including David Moll, of the venture capital firm Infield Capital, but none of the original founders are mentioned.

Although the PowerPoint deck I received was intended as visual support for a presentation that Mission's management would have made in person, and is as such not a comprehensive expose of the firm's strategy, it's clear that motorcycles represent a negligible part of the company's plans, and that in fact the largest 'motorcycle' role envisioned is as a powertrain supplier for an unnamed 'Major Powersports Manufacturer.' The implication is that some frustrated member of the 'bike-loving' faction inside Mission wanted to leak the news that the company was not really in the motorcycle business any more.

At the end of the presentation, there's a slide which explains the "Purpose of [the] Mission Motorcycle" that almost reads as an excuse, to potential investors, for a vehicle that could seem frivolous. Mission cites four reasons for continuing the Mission R progam: That it provides a platform for development, demonstrates performance, builds the Mission brand, and helps to recruit top engineering talent. On the same slide, the company almost sheepishly promises to finance racing efforts through sponsorship, and sell the motorcycle ("at high margin") at the end of the year.

Neither Mission Motors, the company, nor Mission R, the motorcycle, 'demonstrate performance' by failing to make an appearance on the grid at Infineon. Since they've got a cooling system for their motor, and because the battery part of the equation seems well-understood, my guess is that the problems were encountered in the controller and software that regulate the power to make the bike rideable and manage battery life. This is a common teething problem with electric vehicles; I'm sure it would have been solved if Mission's engineers had been able to test the bike on a dyno a few weeks earlier.

As I write this, I assume the Mission R will race at the combined FIM ePower/TTXGP event at Laguna Seca later this summer. But that racing effort is intended to prove Mission's technological prowess - mostly to car manufacturers. They won't be racing to create demand for a Mission road bike.

Did Mission lose its ambition to manufacture high-performance electric sports bikes because it does not foresee the U.S. motorcycle market rebounding strongly enough to create a viable market for high-priced sport bikes? Did investors tell the company, "OK, you've had your fun with motorcycles. Now it's time to grow up and do cars"? Or did Mission learn, while working on that Honda hybrid car project, that Honda's motorcycle division had a bike in development that would crush the aspirations of any of the upstart, electric-only motorcycle companies?

It's not obvious to me why the company hasn't clarified its long-term strategy in the motorcycle press. Perhaps it feels that it would be perceived as dithering, or that it's cried 'wolf!' once too often by releasing photos of bikes to fanfare in the press, which later prove to be a disappointment on the tarmac.

Either way, you read it here first: No matter how well the gorgeous Mission R performs when it's eventually raced, it's unlikely that you'll ever be able to buy a road-going version. Mission's getting out of the motorcycle business.

National Lifejacket Day, 2011

National Lifejacket Day came and went & I missed it again (it was on May 19th). This is something I would help to promote if only I was reminded about it beforehand. To see my comments from last year's day, which I missed then too, see my post from almost exactly 1 year ago: http://pawistik.blogspot.com/2010/05/national-life-jacket-day.html. You can also see the CBC interview I did on the subject of PFDs (I checked and the link to the video still works).

I've entered the date into my calendar for next year, maybe I'll remember?

RTC 2011– The master or the apprentice?

You now only have 26 days to go; so you need to hurry if you want become the master.

http://www.revitconference.com.au/rtc2011us/index.htm

Digital Workflows - Vasari to 123D

 

 

If you haven’t had a chance to download & have a play with the Beta of Autodesk 123D yet, you should! It can be downloaded from here http://www.123dapp.com/.

Now one of the very cool features about 123D is that it can open up various file formats including SAT, Sketchup, Step & DWG files.

So with this in mind, I thought I’d take a look at creating a form in Vasari & export this as a SAT file, then see what happened when I brought it into 123D. I started by creating a very simple form in Vasari.

This was then exported as a SAT file directly. Application Menu > Exports> CAD Formats> SAT

Next I fired up 123D. I am still relatively new to the product, but if you know a bit of Inventor you will easily get up to speed. So in 123D I opened my exported Vasari SAT file.

This is what the imported SAT looked like.

Next I set too & started to use the fillet tool to round off the edges of the form; I have to say that this type of real time editing is very simple compared with Vasari or Revit.

You will find you can make also sorts of edits to the form using the various tools included.

For fun, I then saved the 123D file as a SAT & passed it back to Vasari.

Harley-Davidson's XRllent Adventure: Jared Mees

In Michigan, 'Buy American' is part patriotism and part a recognition that U.S. manufacturing is still vitally important to the state's economic survival. Admittedly, Harley-Davidson is a Wisconsin - not a Michigan - company, but the core group of AMA Pro flat trackers that hail from the wolverine state all grew up dreaming of racing all-American motorcycles on America's iconic dirt tracks.

One of those guys is Jared Mees. The 2009 GNC champion started racing XR-750s in the twins championship in the days of the 'twingles' and has stuck with them right through the current 32mm-restrictor-plate period. So he's been one of the fastest flat trackers through a period in which the venerable XR has adapted to tighter and tighter rules, all the while facing stiffer and stiffer competition from the likes of Ducati and Kawasaki. Last season was the first time in decades that Harley-Davidson's dominance at GNC twins races was even challenged, but Mees' faith in the Harley is not shaken. Of the XR riders I've chatted with over the last few weeks, he's been the most unabashed defender of Harley-Davidson's bike motor and the company's larger role in the sport of flat track.

As far as the bike's concerned, "The motor configuration for dirt rack is the key," he told me. "The torque and big, heavy flywheel that allow it to hook up 90 horsepower. There are motorcycles out there that make a boatload of horsepower but getting them hooked up is another story."

Traction is what it's all about. For a few years, the search for traction caused teams to 'twingle' their XRs. A twingled XR-750 fired both cylinders at almost the same time, so that it rode like a massive single. The widely-spaced power pulses allowed the rear tire maximum time to find traction. (Twingling was, from a traction point of view, exactly the same thing Grand Prix roadracing teams did when they adopted 'big bang' motors.)

"They sounded terrible," Mees told me. "But they were a lot easier to ride on the slipperier half-miles. They were banned because people said the twingles were wearing parts out too fast, but it depends on who you talk to." When they were banned, Mees' tuner, Johnny Goad, quickly came up with a permutation of crank weight, compression, cam timing, exhaust tuning - the usual mix of XR science, art, and alchemy - that gave Mees a pretty good edge. It helped that Mees had good throttle control even as an up-and-comer; he chased Kenny Coolbeth to second place in the GNC in the first post-Twingle season (which, if memory serves, was '07) and between the two of them they won almost all the half-mile events.

"The engine's been around for so long that you'd think everyone would know all the tricks," he told me. A small handful of guys - Mike Stauffer, Phil Darcy, Ron Hamp - do almost all the headwork, for example. "But," Mees added, "There are always a few tricks people keep on the down low."

Although he doesn't sugar-coat the issue of parts costs, or the life-expectancy of a built XR-750, Jared sees another side to those high costs, and that's Harley-Davidson't consistent investment in pro flat track. "Sure, you could build a Kawasaki like Bill Werner's for a lot less than a Harley," he told me, and I could hear the frustration in his voice as he added, "But Kawasaki won't give you any help. I'm not knocking Kawasaki, it's a great company and they make great bikes, but they post contingency for WERA and CCS road races that are just club races, and they still won't put up money in our Singles championship - a national championship that Kawasaki riders have won for the last two years. I mean, what do we have to do?"

"So on paper, the 650 Kawasaki is cheaper to run. But you can't walk into a Kawasaki or Ducati dealership and get any support. Meanwhile, the top ten [GNC] guys all seem to be supported by a Harley-Davidson dealership. So the parts are expensive, but if you're getting some for free or at a discount through a sponsor - I get great support from Blue Springs Harley-Davidson - and if I finish in the top 10, I get contingency money from Harley," he told me. "For me, it's a no-brainer."

Nuformer & Kinects

You have got to check this out…..

NuFormer – 3D video mapping interactivity test, April 2011 from NuFormer Projection on Vimeo.

Wood Carving By CNC with Artcam Pro

About Art CAM Pro....
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The advanced 3D modeling tools and flexible machining strategies in ArtCAM pro provide the complete solution for all your CNC needs, Artcam pro is a proven solution for many industries including, sign making, wood working, 3D engravung and mold making, mold tool engraving, coinage, packaging...

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Our aim is always to product extremely powerful, yet easy to use software, Art CAM will give you the tools to produce highly intricate artistic designs quickly and effectively. Del-cam is also committed to maintaining Art CAM as a leading edge software solution to keep you competitive.

Art CAM pro is used by companies worldwide, to produce an enormous range of different products, successfully enhancing their product ranges and their profits.

Free Upgrade to progeCAD 2011 Windows. CAD for MAC Released.

25 May 2011 Sydney time - CADDIT has announced the upcoming release of progeCAD 2011 for June-July timeframe. As of 25 May 2011 Sydney timezone, all new licenses and upgrades purchased of progeCAD 2010 Professional for Microsoft Windows, including progeCAD USB, Network NLM and Office license options, will receive a free upgrade to the new version of progeCAD 2011 for Windows upon its release, at no additional charge. This offer also includes all users who upgrade progeCAD now from an older version or from another older CAD package. This promotion does not include progeCAD Standard, and will conclude at the announcement of progeCAD 2011 release.

Over four years in development and planning, progeCAD 2011 for Windows is a largely re-written product from the ground up. progeCAD 2011 is a milestone release as regards compatibility to AutoCAD and other design products. progeCAD 2011 longer stores DWG/DXF using the old internal ITC database, rather is built directly on Teigha® DRX. This dramatically improves file performance (read/write speeds, etc). Although ITC SDS modules will still be supported for some time, progeCAD 2011 is the first generation offering developer access to a genuine DRX C++ API.

progeCAD is a trusted name for many companies looking for reasonably-priced CAD software for working with AutoCAD DWG files, plan view drawing, fixture plumbing and electrical layout and other design work. A free download of progeCAD is available at this LINK.

- - -

No AutoCAD LT for MAC? Try iCADMac from CADDIT.

CADDIT has announce the availability of iCADMac in Australia and New Zealand. iCADMac is the low cost 2D/ 3D DWG and DXF CAD alternative for MAC users. Concurrent with AutoCAD commands, iCADMac opens, saves and edits direct AutoCAD® native DWG files. It is a user friendly 2D/3D CAD software using a conventional-style OS/X interface. Due to iCADMac's high level of compatibility with AutoCAD it is ideal for design professionals like architects, commercial draftsmen, land and planning surveyors, structural detailing and building designers, kitchen and bath modelers, engineers and others who use Apple computers for their work.



iCADmac offers features to make it a complete primary CAD package with hundreds of commands for 2D design and 3D modeling. These features include full geometry set of lines, arcs, splines, text, dimensions, hatches and other entities. PDF import and export makes data exchange with graphic artists easier. Tables and cells can be used for bills of materials, component lists, revisions and text to organize and manage information within your drawings. iCADMac can insert, edit and clip Raster images (scanned images, photos, images from the Internet, etc.). in a drawing; iCADMac supports jpeg, bmp, gif, and png image formats with added support for polygonal image cropping. ACIS 3D solids support allows for the direct construction of complex 3D models in your CAD drawing. The newly updated iCADMac 26 April release now includes iCADlib (the new CAD block library with 20,000 blocks), Traceparts access, and several fixes related to printing and file access.

MAC users can sign up for a free 30 day full-function iCADMac demo at this LINK. Micrsoft Windows users should consider downloading progeCAD instead. iCADMac pricing is available from CADDIT.net.

Pikes Peak winner, stunt star Greg Tracy stars as self in Hot Wheels promo

One of my favorite people, Hollywood stunt star Greg Tracy, appears as himself in this brilliant Hot Wheels promo directed by Mouse McCoy, of 'Dust to Glory' fame. Yeah, baby!

Project Vasari 2 released

So Autodesk have released Vasari 2.0, an updated version of their Autodesk labs preview technology. I joked last year with Matt Jezyk, the Product Manager for Vasari, saying that this could easily become one of Autodesk’s most popular preview technologies! I don’t know the exact number so far, but it’s more than a few hundred. :-)

So what goodies have the Vasari team served up for us with this update. The code base for Vasari 2.0 is now based on Revit 2012, meaning that Vasari 2.0 is compatible with Revit 2012. You will be able to import models from Revit 2012 & Vasari 2.0 files can be passed to Revit 2012. From this, other enhancements include:-

Import Image to 3D Views – You can now import raster images into a 3D orthographic views to use as background images or as visual aids during model creation. This is achieved by going to the Application menu, click Import > Image. Once you image is within the working canvas, you can scale the image up or down using the grips or alternatively control the size from the properties palette.

The resulting image resized with the modelling environment, although it should be noted that you will need to enable realistic view for the bitmap to appear as a full image.

Import Scaled Satellite Image into 3D View – Now you can import a scaled Google Map satellite image into a 3D view using the Import Site Image dialog. On the Analyze tab, click Project Location panel >Location. In the Location dialog, select Import Site Image. This is a really neat feature & provides you with a rapid way to kick start a sketch design with ease.

Location Control on the View Cube – The current project location is now displayed in the drawing area underneath the ViewCube. Now you can access the Location dialog by clicking Location value>Set Location.

3Dconnexion 3D Mouse – Now you can reorient and navigate a model's view using a 3Dconnexion 3D mouse. 3Dconnexion support in Revit 2012 was highlighted in one of my recent blog articles. A 3D mouse lends itself to the conceptual massing environment, where you want to be able to rapidly navigate your 3D environment.

Enhanced Visualization Capabilities – Enhancements to graphics include new Display styles for Conceptual Analysis, improved grips, improved tessellation of small objects, more flexible visual style combinations, added categories to Graphic Display Options, the ability to control edges in visual styles, and new ghost elements to facilitate the display of obstructed elements.

Formula Driven Component Types – You can now have Formula Driven Components. What this means is that you can use conditional formula parameters and apply this to a divided surface. A new parameter called “Family Type:Divide Surface” allows you to drive the display and type of a pattern or a component.

Split Face for Custom Glazing – Now you can use the conceptual design split face tool to add surface sub-regions. These sub-regions can be used for custom glazing or other conceptual constructions.

Hosted points on lines & arcs - The other minor improvement is the control of parameter values for points hosted on line or curves. Now you can still express the normalised segmented length between 0 and 1, but you also have additional parameters for segmented length, normalized segment length, chord length, angle, non-normalized curve parameter and normalized curve parameter.

Material – As with Vasari 1.1, if you have Revit 2012, AutoCAD 2012 or 3dsMax 2012 installed on your workstation or laptop you will get access to the updated materials dialogue, as Vasari will share the same pro-materials library as these products.

Vasari WikiHelp – WikiHelp provides access to the full Autodesk-provided Help content, and lets you rate, comment on, and contribute content (articles, images, videos) to share with your peers

Ariel Warfare

When I interviewed Homer Knapp last winter, he mentioned a friend of his, Chuck Walton. Chuck, who is 81, is still the go-to guy when it comes to Ariel Square Fours here in the 'States. Homer casually told me that back when Chuck flew cargo planes for the U.S. Air Force, he frequently brought Square Fours back from the U.K. on military flights.

At that point in our chat, what I was thinking was, "Are you serious?!? If he'd been caught he'd've been court-martialed!" But I didn't blurt that out because I didn't want Homer to clam up, or call his friend and warn him that he'd been outed.

So instead I casually asked, "How many did he bring over?"

"Oh, hundreds." said Homer. Again, I played it cool, because I wanted to call and catch his friend unawares. I loved the idea of an avid motorcyclist bootlegging motorcycles in military aircraft; it was right out of Catch-22. I made a point of looking Chuck up; he was easy to reach through the Ariel Motorcycle Club of North America, where they've known him since the 1960s.

He grew up on a farm in Illinois, so being handy with equipment came with the territory. He was too young to serve in WWII, but his older brother was selected for pilot training. After the war, his brother (stationed at March Field in Riverside) invited Chuck out to California.

"That was it," he told me. "Mom and Dad lost the boys off the farm."

How ya' gonna' keep 'em on the farm when they've moved to California and taken up motorsickles?

Chuck got a job working for an oil company, and joined the Air National Guard because they promised to train him as an aircraft mechanic. So on weekends, he trained and worked on P-51s, which is pretty much starting at the top of the heap as far as being a mechanic goes. When the Korean War broke out, they needed him full-time; from then until he retired, he worked as a technician, then flight engineer on Boeing C97 Stratofreighters and Lockheed C-130s.

"The first time I ever heard a Square Four was in 1949. I was on the bus in L.A.," he told me, "and a guy rode past on a motorcycle that sounded like nothing I'd ever heard. It sounded like an Offenhauser-engined sprint car. I saw the bike turn a corner a couple of blocks ahead, and I jumped off the bus. That was when I found Johnson Motors; they were the Ariel distributor on the west coast."

He finally bought a new Mk II - a four-piper - in '57. Before he'd put 3,000 miles on it, he realized it was going to take a bit of work to make it reliable. The alloy castings were crap; studs pulled out, valve seats and guides came loose, they had oiling problems, and cooling was marginal at best in that warm climate. Incidentally, he still owns his Mk II, along with one of each Ariel model.

Yes, that is an Ariel Square-4 with a sidecar carrying... an Ariel Square-4. Or should I say, 'Spare-4'?

Not long afterwards Ariel ceased production of the fours. The bikes had never been too common in the U.S., and parts got scarce - especially for guys like Chuck, who looked at every traffic light as an opportunity for a drag race. In the early '60s, a couple of Southern California guys started the Ariel club, and Chuck showed up for the second meeting.

"At first, they told me I would have to start out as an 'associate member'," he recalled. "But as soon as they realized I was flying to England every few weeks, they made me a full member."

As we talked, he got around to telling me that from 1960 to 1990, he made hundreds of flights back and forth between the U.S. and the U.K.

"Oh," I asked coyly, "did you bring any of your bikes back from England?"

"Some of 'em, yeah."

When I pressed him for details, he got a little cagey, claiming "I only brought parts. The customs guys gave you a lot of grief if they saw an entire motorcycle; you had to have the log book and there was a ton of paperwork."

Chuck claims it was all above board; everything was scrupulously listed on the manifest as 'motorcycle parts.' Of course, if you can rebuild a P-51, you can break down an Ariel Square Four and reassemble it in your sleep. Not that he was sleeping much. "I'd be awake for three days straight, running around buying stuff," he recalled. "In the '60s, in England, nobody wanted Ariel stuff. I'd see an ad, and go to find bikes rusting under the eaves."

By the 1980s, it was getting harder to bring disassembled motorcycles back in military cargo planes. This would be a better story if Homer's guess that his friend brought 'hundreds' of bikes back was true, but I'm sure that he didn't bring nearly that many. Still, by Chuck's own count he's rebuilt nearly a hundred Square Fours for club members, and it's safe to say that many of them are running thanks to parts airlifted in, courtesy of the unwitting United States Air Force.

Then, Chuck dropped an intriguing bombshell of his own. You see, while customs officials inspected returning cargo flights, they lacked the security clearance needed to inspect the bomb bays of the Strategic Air Command's B-52 nuclear bombers.

"It got to be more trouble than it was worth for me to bring stuff in," Chuck told me. "But the SAC guys used to tie stuff up in their bomb bays."

At the thought, I imagined war breaking out and a routine SAC flight being diverted to bomb Moscow. I pictured the Russkies being pelted with motorcycles.

"Vott iss ziss?" Ivan would wonder. "Iss itt aerial vorrfare, or Ariel vorrfare?"

Notes from the Blue Groove: Historical background to Harley-Davidson's XRllent adventure...

The origins of the current Harley-Davidson XR-750 date back to the Great Depression. Until the early 1930s, the fastest, factory-backed motorcycles ridden by pro riders were single-cylinder 30.50 cu. in. Class A machines. Those bikes were too expensive to race in the Depression, however. Even the big factories like Harley-Davidson and Indian dramatically cut back support for Class A.

Faced with the need to either introduce new rules to control costs, or watch fields wither and die, the AMA Competition Committee published new Class C rules in 1933. Those rules allowed production-based 45 cu. in. side-valve twins to race against 30.50 cu. in. overhead-valve bikes, provided those machines had compression ratios of less than 7.5:1.

For the next 30 years, the governing body of American motorcycle racing pretty much unabashedly maintained rules that favored American-made motorcycles, or at least allowed U.S. manufacturers to field competitive machines with minimal research and development costs. By the 1960s, however, America's motorcycle landscape was changing while the rules stayed the same. Class C competition was by then a straight us-versus-all-the-rest-of-them fight in which 750cc, V-twin side-valve Harley-Davidson KRs raced against 500cc or smaller overhead-valve singles and twins imported from Britain, Europe and, increasingly, Japan.

This minimalist KR from the late '50s betrays some creative drillwork. Every ounce counts!

By 1967 (a boom year for U.S. motorcycle sales) Honda commanded a 50% market share, but there was still no Japanese representation on the MS&ATA (by then the 'Motorcycle and Allied Trades Association had somehow become the 'Motor Scooter and Allied Trades Association'. No matter what name it went by, it was the industry's main voice in the AMA.

The major Japanese importers formed their own trade association, the Southern California Motorcycle Safety Council. The name was innocuous, but when it attracted the interest of the British importers, too, the AMA realized that if it didn't level the playing field by changing the eligibility rules for Class C, the SCMSC would probably start sanctioning its own races.

The AMA Competition Congress met in the fall of 1968, to propose new Class C rules for the upcoming season. The 'import' bloc initially proposed raising the displacement limit for OHV motors to 650cc. Walter Davidson then countered with a motion proposing a limit of 750cc. This would seem to have been against Harley-Davidson's interests, but his thinking was that it would be easier for Harley-Davidson to develop a 750cc OHV race motor based on the existing KR design than create a new 650cc twin from scratch. That was put to a vote, and I can picture the 'import' delegates scratching their heads as they agreed to it. Then, Davidson immediately moved to delay the implementation of the rules until 1970 in order to give The Motor Company time to field a new bike. That was voted down. Those revised Class C rules still form the basis of the rules which now define racing motors in the GNC Twins class.

Walter Davidson might have envisioned a new OHV version of the KR (a production racer that had been made in both a flat track and KRTT road-racing versions for almost 20 years at that point.) But in fact, Harley's OHV racing twin was based on the 883cc Sportster street bike. Dick O'Brien, who ran the Harley race shop as a sort of personal fiefdom, and Pieter Zylstra (a H-D engineer) destroked a Sportster motor, producing an 'iron-head' XR for the 1970 season.

It was not, by any means, an overnight success. The top end couldn't dissipate the heat produced in racing. But Harley-Davidson cast alloy heads and made cylinders with a larger finned area. The alloy XR was a potent weapon on flat tracks, and the XRTT road-racing version was good enough for Mark Brelsford to win the (then combined) AMA Grand National Championship in 1972.

Harley-Davidson produced complete XR race bikes in limited quantities until 1980. By then, independent frame-builders were producing better chassis, and the factory saw no point in making and selling frames that weren't being used. In the late '80s, Harley stopped assembling XR motors, since by that time when teams took delivery of a new motor, they took it apart and tweaked it anyway.

By the mid-'70s, the modern XR-750 had (twin shock) rear suspension and a rear brake, to go with those newfangled overhead valves. Its teething problems over, it would go on to dominate the GNC for 30+ years.

 Except for the few years in which Honda created its own version of the XR - and an even-shorter period in which a few Japanese manufacturers fielded flat track bikes powered by two-stroke road racing motors - the XR has dominated GNC flat track racing ever since. It's pretty much accepted wisdom that the same uneven firing order that gives the Harley its characteristic 'potato-potato' sound at idle gives it a natural 'big bang' firing order that helps it to hook up on a dirt track.

In future Blue Groove installments, I'm going to check in with some respected XR tuners to find out what other advantages the XR offers, and what has to be done to minimize some of its disadvantages - not the least of which is the rule specifying 32mm restrictor plates.

Notes from the Blue Groove: Harley-Davidson's XRllent adventure, continued...

The Mile tracks are still dominated by Harley-Davidson XR-750s, and the half-miles are utterly dominated by them. So how is it that a motor designed over 40 years ago stays competitive against far more modern engines? The question's even more interesting when you consider that XRs compete under rules that are literally more restricted - AMA Pro Racing's technical rules insist that as purpose-built racing motors (as opposed to motors pulled from production street bikes) the Harleys' intakes include a 32mm restrictor plate.

One team that clearly hasn't been too hampered by their bike's ancient two-valve, pushrod architecture and those restrictor plates is Zanotti Racing. Their XR-750s were fast enough to win Jake Johnson the championship last year.

Motion Pro is one of Zanotti's sponsors. Motion Pro's Chris Van Andel, who has a keen eye for trick parts, recently told me, "If you take a good close look at Zanotti's XRs, you'll see they're full of unique components they make themselves." Van Andel raved about the amount of high-tech effort the team's put into extracting as much power out of the Harley twin, while building in as much reliability as possible.

I didn't expect Dave Zanotti to tell me all (or really any) of his secrets, but I still thought he'd be a good place to start, in terms of learning what it takes to win a championship with a motor that's decades older than the guy riding the bike. Read to the bottom to get a hilarious perspective how Dave, as a team owner, thinks of his rider as a stray dog...

"In past years, we had to run 33mm restrictor plates on the miles, and we could run wide open on the half-miles," Dave told me. " Now, we have to run 32mm restrictor plates - that's to allow other bikes to be competitive with the XR-750. We lost about 5 horsepower going from 33mm to 32mm, but you have to keep in mind that the carb is a 38mm, so in total, the restrictor plate probably costs us 15 horsepower."

In order to get some of that horsepower back, Zanotti is pushing his XR-750s to higher and higher redlines. The bikes he's building for Jake Johnson rev at least 1,500 rpm higher than the XR-750s Dave's dad fielded for Steve Eklund back in the '70s.

Dave pays a price to rev those old pushrod motors so hard. The cases crack around the main bearing journals, and rod bearings - which, brace yourself, cost $1,000 a piece - heat up and fail. Whereas motors used to last a few races between major rebuilds, Zanotti Racing now has to inspect them thoroughly after every race.

As Dave bemoaned the amount of work - and the parts budget - needed to keep an XR-750 competitive, I asked him if he ever considered switching to a rival brand. "Oh, every day!" he replied. "We could buy a Japanese motor in a crate for a tenth of what we pay for a XR motor. And when you take delivery of an XR motor, it comes in a 5' x 5' x 2' crate. Every part is in an envelope. You have to send the heads out for work and the cylinders out to get nikasil-treated, and you have to assemble it from scratch."

There's subtle differences in tuning philosophies among top builders. It seems that the smaller restrictor plates have caused oversized valves to fall out of vogue a little. Compression ratios vary. Dave told me that although they like to stay in the 10:1-11:1 range, he's heard of people running as high as 14:1. While no one wants to share the intimate details of their XR builds, he described Zanotti Racing's approach in general terms. Basically, his goal is to lighten internals a bit to allow the motor to spin to higher rpm without shaking itself apart. The team never stops looking for any tiny advantage.

"I have an environmental company," Dave told me. "But every day, I'll be driving out to a work site or sitting in a meeting with clients, thinking about tweaking a PVL ignition to get a hotter spark, or trying different exhaust cones.

Mostly though, Zanotti's preparation philosophy recognizes that to finish first, you have to first finish. "My mechanic is just so finicky," he told me. "If other teams realized how much attention to detail we put into preparing for every race... I don't think they'd do it; I think they'd all change brands."

What keeps Zanotti in the Harley-Davidson camp - at least for the foreseeable future - is that after all the expense and hassle in the engine room, XR-powered bikes still out-handle all their rivals on the track. Dave thinks it's down to the heavy old crankshaft being located so close to the front wheel that bikes can keep weight on the front and steer better through the turns. And the Harley's been so dominant for so long that the people who prepare tracks basically define a good track as one that's good for Harleys.

"Other motors probably have 20 more horsepower, but if you can't put it to the ground, it's not going to do you any good," Dave told me. "Jake said, when he got to the Kawasaki at Springfield he couldn't stay in the draft. When Henry was on the Aprilia, you couldn't draft it, either." But while he'd love to deliver that kind of power to Jake, he knows they'd spend the next two or three years struggling to put any other brand of motor into a package that would handle, especially on the slippery half-miles.

So instead of spending pennies on the dollar, and buying more power and reliability, Zanotti Racing will spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours preparing Jake's XR-750 for Springfield, where it will run just about wide open, non-stop, for 25 miles... if they're lucky.

"We put so much time into this," Dave told me as our conversation was coming to a close. "None of us get paid, and maybe that's part of our success. We don't have to do it, we want to do it."

Then he mixed a funny metaphor, making a statement that both made me smile and think, 'This is why I'm a journalist.'

"When you have a rider that steps up, it's like a dog that steps up on your porch," Dave told me. "Once you feed it, you have to keep feeding it, because he's going to come back. When someone starts depending on you, you have to follow through. We feel that we have to work to our full potential, because our rider's giving us his full potential."

Finally - and I think he was talking about a race team, but it also applies to that big crate of parts you get from Harley-Davidson when you order a new XR-750 motor - Dave said, "When it all comes together, it's a beautiful thing."

design-cubed blogspot

 

I thought I’d share this blog with you, from Stephen Blowers of Design Cubed here in the UK. I have known Stephen for a number of years, he is an architect, is as passionate about technology as me, is a Revit User, is a member of the London Revit User Group, is a 3dsMax User & has recently started his own design firm called Design-Cubed.

His recent article about using the Ipad & Adobe CS5.5 is very interesting. Yesterday, Stephen showed me how he had taken a series of images from Revit & used these to create an interactive architectural presentation for use on the Ipad. Trust me I got “very” excited, really cool stuff. So be sure to check his blog….

http://design-cubed.blogspot.com/

Trailer Design

Coldspring Paddling needs a kayak trailer so that I don't have to transport 5 kayaks at a time on top of my CRV like I did last week (too bad I didn't take a picture of that, but maybe it's better to avoid photographic evidence). I have a nice sized utility trailer that I want to extend the tongue of and add trees to. I've been playing around with Google Sketch-Up to design my modified trailer. What do you think of the design? It should be able to haul at least 8 kayaks (would do 6 nicely as illustrated), or 4 canoes, or 4 kayaks & 2 canoes, and so on. It shouldn't be overly heavy or tall. Plus, there's a fair bit of room for gear in the 4'x6' box. Now, hopefully I can get Rod's help to build it!

Update (27/5/2011): My trailer is at a local welding shop for the modifications. He suggested stiffening the long tongue with a brace that goes upward from the tongue to the top of the trailer box. Also reinforcements are needed where the trees will bolt on to the trailer box. The trees will be removable, bolting into a socket that remains in the trailer box. Also, for simplicity, only one upright will be used for each tree (not two as illustrated), but with the cross bar joints strengthend with a triangular piece of metal welded in at the joint.

One More Round for the Sheepdogs!

Well, the Sheepdogs have survived all the way to Round 1. Now vote & help this great Saskatoon band get to the top!

Playing At The Pool

I was out last night with the Kelsey Kayak Club and decided to finish off my evening in the pool by going off of the 4' high diving board.

Revit – More Baku Flame Towers

Thought I’d share these cool picture with you, kindly passed on by the project architect. Real site photos….

Vasari Tech Preview 2

As posted by Steve Stafford…..new toys are coming :-)

Boat Building Music

Thanks to Rider over on the WCP forum for pointing out this video to the paddling community. I love Matt Mays & El Torpedo!

Matt Mays & El Torpedo "Building a Boat"

OR Water Bottle Parka Review

Originally submitted at Outdoor Research

Works great!

By Pawistik from Saskatoon, SK on 5/16/2011

5out of 5

Pros: Insulates well, Effective, Simple
Best Uses: Day Paddling, XC skiing, Snowshoeing, Winter Camping

I've been very impressed with the water bottle parka used with a 1L Nalgene. I had made my own out of blue foam, webbing & duct tape. The DIY version worked, but I'm now ready to retire it or loan it out to friends in favour of the OR Water Bottle Parka. I used it this winter for snowshoe camping trips at -32°C and it kept my water liquid all day (starting with hot water). I used it this weekend in warm temperatures (sunny, but not hot) and it kept my iced tea cool all day.

In short, a great & effective product that does what it's supposed to.

(legalese)

PC Level 2 Course in BC

A few weeks ago I was in BC for a Paddle Canada Level 2 kayaking course. The course was run by Viki and Doug, who instruct with Kingston Sea Kayak Instruction and Comox Valley Kayaks, respectively. Viki and Doug work very well together and they put on a fantastic course, I can highly recommend them if you get the chance. It was tonnes of fun and I feel like I learned a lot. Rolling a loaded kayak in the current of Surge Narrows by the end of the course felt like a fantastic achievement!

Here is a slideshow of some of my photos and a couple of videos taken during the course. Enjoy!



If you prefer, visit the Picasa Web Album directly.

Parsing the weekend's TTXGP lap times

A regular Backmarker reader/intel source emailed me this morning, to ruminate on the times that the Brammo Empulse RR put in around Infineon this weekend. "I was interested to read about the TTXGP at Infineon this weekend," my friend wrote. " I wonder how fast Tommy Hayden or Steve Rapp would have gone on the top bike?"

For the record, Steve Atlas lapped in the 1:55 range in the under-subscribed TTXGP races. That was fast enough to win by a wide margin, and to knock a little less than two seconds off the course record for EV motorcycles. To put that in perspective, Steve would probably not have finished last in the slowest ICE race of the weekend, for Harley-Davidson Sportster 1200s. He would have finished second-last.

But all else being equal, I doubt that anyone else would have gone faster. Steve's finished well inside the top 10 in the Daytona 200. He's got genuine AMA Pro-level speed and it's safe to say that he's quite a bit faster than that bike.

His 1:55 time might have come down a tad if there had been another bike on the track to push him, although having been on track with him a lot over the years, I think he's pretty much got one speed, which is as-fast-as-possible. It's more likely that limiting factors were 1.) lack of quality seat time on the bike - I think they tested at a couple of track days, and that's it; and, 2.) fears that the motor problems that showed up in testing would resurface in the race, if they pushed any more power through the Parker unit.

Where does that leave me feeling about the Empulse RR's performance? I admit to being a little surprised that the very tidy-looking machine was 'only' a couple of seconds faster than the Lightning and ZeroAgni ridden by Michael Barnes and Scott Higbee last year. Two seconds a lap is a big improvement in relative terms, but in absolute terms the gap between the fastest current (no pun intended) EV motorcycles and fast ICE bikes is still about 20%. An eternity, in racing terms. My friend Chris Van Andel dug into recent AFM records and wrote to tell me that Steve, on the Brammo, would only have been able to finish 32nd (out of 36 finishers) in the AFM's most recent 600 Superbike club race.

And those are over short race distances that avoid the EV's current (argh) weakness. The winners of the 2009 Bol d'Or rode a Suzuki GSX-R1000 2,233 miles in 24 hours. I doubt that any EV motorcycle could get half as far.

So on the battery's-half-drained side, it seems that dreams the TTXGP/FIM e-Power/TT Zero field would soon close the gap to ICE lap times have been dashed. Even extrapolating current rates of improvement in a straight line, it will be over a decade before EV bikes are competitive with ICE bikes -- and anyone who has ever developed a race bike knows that the first seconds come easy, but that the last tenths come very, very hard. The sparse Infineon TTXGP grid, too, speaks to the fact that some investor enthusiasm's been drained.

From the battery's-half-charged point of view, the Empulse RR would not have been completely embarrassed in the Sportster 1200 race. I rode that Sportster at Road America when it was launched, and I had a blast on it. If an EV motorcycle is already capable of providing that much entertainment, it's a good first step.

Let's see if Brammo stays focused on developing the Empulse RR for the rest of the season, and if they reach a point where they're confident they can drain the battery over the race distance, without blowing up the motor. Let's see whether Mission, Lightning, and some of the other next-gen, lighter EV race bikes like the Amarok can walk the walk as well as they talk the talk.

I guess the lesson here is, EV race teams release these sexy photos and sketches, and it's hard not to get excited. But the pace of EVolution demands patience.

...CNC Routers...

Every new technology has a natural tendency to cater rich people first and then slowly look into the needs of common folks.
CNC Router is there in market for long. But large number of people still thinks that it can be affordable by big companies only. So this technology is yet to reach the mass workers in wood industry, those who still largely depend up on manual skills and conventional tools and machineries.
Understanding the potential of CNC Router machine in a normal carpenters daily work, many companies introduced low cost and affordable machines to the market. Most of the machines are imported from USA, Europe, and China.
The use of computerized machineries for wood in the world is in nascent stage. Even though there are few users, they have yet to take the full utilization of these machines. CNC Router usage has gained momentum in India for last two years.There is a dozen of International brands , other than Chinese and Indian machines in the Indian market. Most of the international brands are high quality . costly machines. and therefore for the one who invest high. But Chinese and Indian Machines are almost half and one third priced and so small shop owner can easily afford.

CNC Router is imperative for every carpenter shop having CNC router. CNC Router has the capablity for non-stop machining of identical jobs, There is very less manual supervision is required, So those operations can perform additional tasks. If skilled carpenters are not avilable , any one can get easily trained to perform the Job in CNC Router, But he should be from the CNC Programming area. CNC Router gives job consistency and repeatability. The quality of work done on CNC Router is high and it improves productivity.

It is easy to work with design changes and to produce highly detailed and complex designs. CNC Router reduces the waste of wood , frequency of errors during work and time to reach the finished product in the market. CNC Router can take the role of many basic carpentry shop machines, Like panel saw spindle moulder, boring machine, tenon, and mortises, copy shaper etc. It may used to machine a part. requiring operations such as cutting . grooving carving tenoning , mortising boring to plain surface etc.

CNC Router gives more flexibility in manufacturing process, Investing in CNC Router can serve general, specialized and multi purpose machining needs.

CNC Router can be used for different type of applications in wood , itself like door carving Interior and exterior decoration, wood paneling, sign board, wooden frames , molding, panels and cabinet making, musical instruments, furniture manufacturing, gift items, wooden patterns etc.

Buyers of this machine are more concerned with return of investment, suitability and adaptability of this machine for them , because this may not be a tested technology in their known neighbors shop. Customers creativity and marketing ability is the limit of profitability and machine supplier support is the foundation for success in the CNC Router Applications.

Giving support for CNC router Machines is really challenging one, When the customers are more carpenters and have no exposure to computer and Can not understand English.

As you know for CNC Router is not just a mechanical machinery, It has electrical , electronic and computer system. CNC Router can be controlled directly by manual programming, But the full potential of the machine Can be Derived only if CNC Routers are Controlled from files created by CAD/CAM software , So the user has to be trained not only machine operation but also CAD/CAM applications.

It is much known factor that the quality and features of high cost machine can not match with that of low cost machine, but the customer has to end up his / her buying decision to his budget,

Carpenters look for low priced machines with better quality and better support. So that there is hardly any down time and issues on quality , affect the machine performance , they look for a companies having dedicated supporting team for installation and training for regular preventive and repairs if any

CNC Router may not be completely replacing the service of skilled carpenter, But Definitely can reduce his work load. enhance productivity, creativity and profitability.

There are high end CNC routers which are controlled by Robots and having Artificial intelligencer with many more features and advantages , other than mentioned above . But its beyond the reach of small carpenter shop owners for now.

I will share about some Chinese made CNC router with Price and Features about the CNC Routers.