Al's Blog-o-Sphere

Well, I almost decided to ride my Trike to the Dayton Hamvention. I had the route all figured out and plotted to take about 60-70 miles each day. It would have taken a full week to get there. The plan would have been to leave Thursday the 12th and arrive at a hotel on Wednesday the 18th of May. I found a room less than 3 miles from the Hara Arena for a very reasonable price.

I though about a room at the QRP-ARCI Four Days In May conference, but that was a fair distance away from the Hamvention. There was a shuttle bus to and from the Hamfest, but I kind of wanted to ride there and partake of some of the BMHA (Bicycle Mobile Hams) events. Plus, the FDIM rooms were nearly twice as much per day as the one I found to the north. Continue Reading…

As I get closer to beginning my cycling escapades, I’m thinking about it all even though I’m not yet riding. So far this spring, the weather hasn’t been what I find riding weather yet. I’ve taken one short ride so far, just a couple miles, with the trailer on just to see how it handles.

So, I suppose some people may wonder why I’m riding around on a three-wheeled lawn chair instead of a “real” bicycle. Continue Reading…

I haven’t been posting much here lately. Things have been keeping me busy enough that I haven’t really had much time to ponder what to put here.

One thing I’ve been really busy with has been our robotics team. I’ve posted about it here before and although there is lots more I could say about the whole program, this is the main aspect I’ve been personally involved with. Well, one of them…

A sample of the upper-left corner of one of four autonomous routines for the Warlocks robot. This determines what the robot does during the part of the match it operates on it’s own. This is one corner of one of four Autonomous modes. It doesn’t even fit on the computer screen all at once. The Teleop code that runs the robot when the drivers take over is just as complex.

Continue Reading…

For those of you who might have noticed I haven’t written anything here recently, here’s what has been going on.

The last two months have been spent pretty much all with robotics. So much so, that I haven’t been skiing this winter at all. One day out to Holimont has been all I have done.

The robotics team finished their build season and we worked furiously up until the last minute when we had to seal up the robot in a big plastic bag until our regional competition in Pittsburgh. We spent the last weekend working on it at the Kenan Center, our local recreational center, where they let us use some space to practice and work on the robot while school was closed for part of the spring break. Continue Reading…