Microship Status 08/06/93

Time sure passes quickly when you measure it against progress. I arrived today full of caffiene and bluster, armed with a TO-DO list of epic proportions. By mid-afternoon, I had written an article for the FLOTILLA alias, basically giving *other* people a TO-DO list. <sigh>

TJ and I did get our hands dirty, though: we mounted the Linear Recumbent on a wooden stand to begin the mockup process. On the first pass, with the seat low to the ground and the front dropouts 8" up to allow pedaling without heel-dragging, the required deck height for knee clearance is so great that there's only room for about 8" of console height if I also want to see the water ahead and not just video of same. Unacceptable, of course, so we raised the bike stern by sitting it on a box, concluded that it was an improvement, and left it at that for the evening. Tomorrow I'll try to optimize the bike frame placement and hopefully start hot-gluing cardboard. A commercial hull of suitable dimensions may be hard to find... apparently, most trimaran outer hulls are asymmetrical...

I had a good conversation with Mark Livesay in El Cajon, who is knowledeagable in composites and honeycombs. He feels that the polyurethane foam-core panels are a poor choice, and will quickly deteriorate (indeed, they powder easily on contact, and this will happen internally when the panels are cyclically stressed). He says the foam is useful only for flotation, has no structural value, falls apart when wet, and suggests instead "Nidacore." This is polypropylene honeycomb, which I would use without fiberglass, bonding the solar panels directly to the top facing. He further refers me to a fellow in Florida with extensive multihull experience, and cautions us to be extremely careful with the stresses at the hard points in the outrigger structure. Enough people have warned me about this that I'm listening...
Spoke with TERC (Technical Education Research Center) today about funding for Microship-based educational programs, complete with instructional materials and administration. They're serious. Could be interesting... I'll keep you posted!

The lab is about to be under seige -- in my continuing quest to get the power straightened out and security installed, I discovered that the building is going into major renovation starting next week, including re-roofing, re-doing power, tearing up walls and floors, and other surgery. Lovely. I arrived yesterday to find that the security system on the bike had been triggered and the other one shut off. Someone has been in there... I feel like I should start sleeping there so I don't have to worry every night. (At least the office now has a new lock, off the widely propagated building sub-master.)
Speaking of sleeping, I'm looking for a place to live starting in September -- going tonight to check out a place. Hopefully there will be more project news over the weekend!

Steve