Why Virgin Galactic’s recent crash is not a setback

Virgin Galactic has suffered a seemingly crippling blow in confidence because of last weeks accident.  As unpleasant as it may be, it is also part of the vision that Burt Rutan (the inventor and designer of all the gadgets Virgin Galactic is using) espoused at a lecture that he gave in 2013.

Where I just happened to be at the time.  In fact, I briefly met him and shook his hand.  And he has talked about this subject many other times (see link below).

Burt explained that, as a child, seeing Sputnik and the space race start, he reasoned that he would be able to go to space in his lifetime.  But that didn’t seem as if it was going to happen, and he wondered why.  He compared the development of flight, to that of the exploration of space.

He pointed out that when people started figuring out how to fly, many people killed or injured themselves trying to figure it out.  It was a completely new beast- how COULD anyone figure it all out at once, and without incident?

The great thing about the development of aviation, however, was that it wasn’t too difficult to get into the game, if you were prepared to take some gambles.  The resultant prestige and possible profit were worth the effort, and in just four years form the first flight there were thousands of aircraft flying.  But development has seriously stagnated, and stalled in the exploration of space.

Burt reasons that the discovery of space would never really develop to its full potential if it was believed that you had to have the budget of a government to make it happen.  His goal was to figure it out as the flight pioneers had, and accept that you cannot make it 100% safe 100% of the time.  You do your level best to anticipate any problems, but you’re exploring virgin territory.  You’re going to make mistakes.

Burt argued that these mistakes, and one hopes that they involve less and less loss of life, are essential to the development of sustainable and useful space travel.

This little bit of universe that we live in, as in all other bits, has many potentially lethal threats to life’s existence.  NASA has been tracking an asteroid, named Apophis, the size and mass of Everest.  It is on a potential collision course with earth- in 2036.  In 2029 it will pass so close that we will see it flash through our atmosphere.  If an interesting gravitational interaction, called a Gravity Keyhole, wobbles it in the right way, it will return to earth in 2036.  This time it will not miss.

A great percentage of life on this planet will cease to exist in a remarkably short time- hours, if I understand it correctly.

This is why it is so important to pursue the journey into space.  Presently we may actually have the technology to potentially divert the Apophis catastrophe, and there is determined international collaboration to pursue this end.

One thing is sure, we need to quit squabbling, we need to figure out how to use the abundance that we have on this planet, to serve everyone.  This asteroid does not care if you are yellow, green, blue, red, black, brown, white, religious, spiritual, atheist, or indifferent.  If it all goes tits up, and if we didn’t have the ability to see, track and asses it, we’d all end up as superheated gases when Apophis hit our planet at 18 times the speed of sound (psst… that is EXTREMELY fast).

The majority of life will be vaporised in the first few hours, the remainder will perish in a few days.

So we damn well had better get our shit sorted out; we need to toss aside differences, figure out how to help one another so that we can all help in the massive effort that will be required to protect all of life’s existence, as we know it.  Toss idiotic and archaic beliefs out and get with the program!

In 1914 Ernest Shackleton posted the following advert:

Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.

He had to turn people away, so popular was the allure of taking part in such a voyage of discovery.  I hope that Michael alsbury, the pilot killed in the Virgin Galactic accident was similarly motivated by what he had, and has, helped to achieve in this discovery; and that he accepted the concomitant risks associated with such a journey.  I would.

Its 100 years since Shackletons journey launched; the present journey has far greater implications for the survival of life (not just human life), and it should proceed with the same spirit.

It should also focus and direct our best understanding for the betterment of ALL life as we know it, else none of us will survive.

Yours Sincerely

Horrible Hyde

 Apophis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcGrQaHMd_4

Search google on the subject; it looks kooky, but there is substance.

Burt Rutan and Space

Paddling Waterfalls, and the mysteries of life

Well, it seems I’m back. I’ve had a long break to think about the meaning of life (even if we know that the answer is 42). To find things that I am truly passionate about, and to write about them, make movies about them. To assist in the education of the world to a better place- and to kill flies!
Sah-riously; our world, and we, are evolving at an exponential pace – and its through the magic of the internet that we are creating a giant brain out of our world. The infinite interconnectivity that we are creating is the next evolutionary link to helping life survive.
In the interests of a habitable earth, with prosperity for all, here are observations and demonstrations of where we might be heading….. The contents may seem obscure at first, but read the text and let yourself be drawn in. If you still feel the same the morning after, even in a diminished capacity, then start your own research. Stay on the light side…. But don’t be a goodie-goodie.

Explore….

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WHY PADDLING WATERFALLS IS MIND BLOWING

Paddling waterfalls is the most, well, close to the most (they vie for attention), amazing thing I have ever done- and I have done some pretty amazing things…
It’s the back end of a tar dream, the relief that it was only a nightmare, the last gasp of the most amazing sunset. It’s a razor on the edge of life, and every one of your senses are sharpened.
It is to take your life, literally, into your own hands, on your own recognition and to say, “I am responsible enough to do this, and, if not, I’m prepared to pay the price.” If you don’t have that attitude you cannot paddle white water, and you certainly cannot paddle waterfalls.

But, stoking up just a little courage and tackling each challenge judiciously, you’ll end up at the lip of that fall and find out what you are made of. It’s a powerful challenge and one that may be tackled in any sphere. You have to be as brave as to plunge over a waterfall, as you need to be to challenge a boss; or to stand up for what is right, when that’s not cool…
To paddle waterfalls, to challenge life, you need to be that kind of person who says, “that’s enough”. To get outrageously mad, incensed and determined. These people kick at the foundation of all we know or hold true- and they are the new explorers into our zeitgiest’s “New World”..

It is an exploration into the potential of our minds- and there are jewels in the searing and deep canyons, that are found in each or our minds, and their equivalent peaks. We desire to see the world, but often neglect exploring the world we have within ourselves. There are the darkest and lightest paths in this jungle that lurks inside us.
In moments when you poise yourself at a precipice, is when you find what you are made of; that is the allure of waterfalls…

I salute you, the new young breed, the Evan Garcia’s, et al; all of you wondrous gods who paddle waterfalls and respectful rivers. From the tentative grade 2 novice to the backward somersaulting, nonchalant, professional grace of Evan and his ilk, thank you so much for allowing us older paddlers to show off the grandeur and beauty of rivers as we have seen them all of our lives…. but have never been able to share, so intimately, with others; nor with such skill!
I love what is being shown about how wonderful, powerful and fulfilling rivers are. Seeing rivers from a low down, deep-in-it point of view pulls forward a very powerful image of the beauty of our rivers; all over the world. It serves to realize how fragile and important our water assets are.

We need to work towards keeping trash (in all its insidious forms; plastic, chemical waste, effluent…) out of our rivers. We need to show that rivers are beautiful, powerful, mesmerising and worthy of attention; at the expense of our survival should we attempt ignore this (and many other) issues.

This does not mean that we should discard the apparent problems in our society, nor the allure of profitable chemicals. We must instil a mind-set that values life, and earth, above all, but not exclusively. We will, as part of our desire to live, protect our species, but I feel that the collective consciousness is becoming ever stronger, and that we will ensure the continuation of life as we know it best; for good and for bad. The continuation of LIFE is our primal drive. That collective conscious is hurtling us along a path that will, I hope, lead to all beings alive living in harmony with one another.

I feel that the good part of mankind is gaining a foothold; and ‘good’ is not meant in that sycophantic, religious, Save-my-RSE crap, but rather the kind of goodness that comes from understanding; ourselves and those around us. The understanding that you get from the education you receive on the shoulders of others- the kind that propels us to become a better race.
Humanity.

You needn’t believe just me, have a look at:
{it’ll change your life, if you have that mettle in you….}

Religion, spiritualism, life and reality

At heart I am an engineer, a scientist; I require, perhaps not proof, but consistency to a supposition.  If you say that you can believe enough to make something happen (special or mundane) then you should be able to produce that result consistently for it to be truly real or believable.  This is the way that anything of worth has been discovered or advanced.  Someone proposes that, for example, combining two metals in the presence of an acid produces some sort of interesting tingling sensation that also happens to affect the nerves.  Another person discovers that they can produce the same result, and also figures out that this tingling thing can be used to move objects around.  Still more people figure out that this effect can be used to work all sorts of interesting things, and they figure out how to harness the effect and make machines that produce a massive revolution in human history, bringing us light, labour saving devices and eventually this thing that we are communicating on now.  The discovery and harnessing of electricity.

If humankind can do that, then the spiritual realm should be peanuts to have figured out- especially since we have lived with it since time began for us; surely we should have figured it out by now if we have figured out the electron, the atom, hydrocarbons and fuels, how to fly, how to travel to space- all in the last 200 years.  We’ve been living in the spiritual realm for more than 2000 years, and yet we still exist in much the same space that our ancestors of 2 or 3000 years ago did.  If there was really anything more to figure out or discover, I skeem we would have.

So I don’t think its there.  But our (well some of ours) desire for it to be there has not abated, so we still look for that greater meaning; that big plan; the deeper connection; the guiding principle; the universe’s thoughts; the complete interconnection; a purpose to it all; a power that has a plan to make sense of all of life….

Since we are capable of abstract thought we yearn for all of that; we can picture it and hold it dear- but take a simple step back and test the realities of all these beliefs, using the hard edge of logic that we muster for the rest of the ‘real’ decisions in our lives. Religion, spirituality and superstition are revealed as the sham that they are- a crutch to assist us in dealing with the harsh reality that, despite our ability to see beyond the here and now, we are confined to that here and now, and held in sway by its immutable laws.

The search for something beyond that is the same as those stories of the search for eternal youth, or everlasting life, which we quickly, and correctly, discard as nonsense and fiction.  The seemingly sophisticated position of understanding that we find ourselves in allows us to discard ‘pagan’ and primitive nonsense such as looking at a chickens entrails, or the casting of bones; but if one wants to look at it dispassionately, then horoscopes, or the idea of indefinable ‘energies’, a sense of our life being ‘mapped out’, any sort of order ordained by something that we cannot lay any sort of logical sense to, are exactly the same things.  They all follow the same desire to make sense of the big questions in life- where have I come from, why am I here, where am I going?

All of the faiths that require simple faith to answer these questions: I have a deep scepticism for these; they substitute an eternal, and magical, life to the reality that we see everyday around us.  We will die, and whether it is just our bodies that die, we have to wonder what happens to the essence of who we are.  We have built up a life and a history, most of which we can recall; how could we cease to exist given the history, perhaps wisdom, and imagination for the future that we have?  Surely that essence of who we are must survive?  And if it does survive it should, according to what we might desire, and anecdotal ‘evidence’, those essences of our lives be able to communicate with us?

But, taking it from a scientific point of view, how many people have existed since, say, ‘real’ humans have come about?  I’m guessing here, but I think that it would number in more than 20 billion.  A Google search says that we are at 6,775,235,421 (they must have person in every room!) right now.  Taking even a steep, steep backwards gradient of halving the population every 2 years, it would take 68 years to get back to a population of 1, and in that time there would be around 8,130,282,889 who were ‘late’, ‘passed on’, ‘shuffled off their mortal coil’, ‘kicked the bucket’, ‘bought the farm’.  Just considering those ridiculous figures, say divided by 2, there are around 4 billion people dead who could have figured out a way to talk to the living.  Say 75 percent of them are just like their waking cousins, just not that interested beyond a good time (maybe it is really the land of milk and honey (I’d prefer beer and the company of mates and the holders of my heart myself- I was going to say beer and pussy, but good company and conversation beats the other anytime..)) we arrive at 1 billion who might have the desire to contact us.  Lets say that half them have the ability to do so, that’s 500 million folks who are trying to get through to us.  Not many people, although they do have a large audience; sort of like throwing bricks- you’re bound to hit someone sometime…

So if this great beyond really exists (and the rest of ‘more about life’ may be contingent on this, to push a point) why the heck do we not have many more of these “I’m in the next world” cats talking to us?

Perhaps they can’t talk to us from there- fuggit, we’ve figured out quite difficult things in the last 3000 years, why not that?

Perhaps they don’t want to?  Read any popular magazine, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, etc, they all want to talk about whatever, why would that change?  Where are all the fashion guru’s telling us how to die properly? Or how to live our life now? Or what to wear? What to do? Surely one of them could have consistently told one of us how to live forever, or how to get to Nirvahna/ Heaven/ Whatever by now?  The masses remain silent. The masses have spoken.

 I see no evidence, and perhaps that is too strong a word here, when dealing with the ethereal, but I cannot see any consistency that would lead me to believe that there is any path, beyond fantasy, that one can trust your heart to.  Better to deal with the reality- and thereby touch and hold the beauty of life.

And thereby lies my lesson, my chickens, get on with loving the life around you; its the only one you’ll know…

Jay

Perfectly Amazing English and a grand day out

Foofy valve rapid on the Steelpoort river

Perfectly Amazing English There is a short speech, delivered by movie character, in which I am amazed at the authors command of the language. The speech delivers, in a satirizing manner, a short, sharp political message that is the core of the movie’s plot, but it is done so well that it leaves you breathless in its artistry, and delighted in its prose.

What the speech, in plain words, says is: Here you see me, an old actor who has found himself on both sides of the issue, through the luck of chance. I present an alternate image, not because I am concerned by how I look, but as a statement of the cause of the people, who now cannot, or have forgotten, how to say what it is that they want. I stand here, encouraged, and I promise to remove the troublesome pests that are holding you to ransom in a cage of fear and violence. The original speech went: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.

The original speech is from the movie, V for Vengance in which the character V announces himself to the heroine, and to the audience.  Remarkable.

I have just returned from seeing the Faithless concert in Johannesburg, and find myself buoyed with the last bits of energy a concert bestows upon one.. 🙂 I’m listening to Sweet Disposition by the Temper Trap, amongst others, and enjoying the ramblings of my thoughts, combined with that happy, tired, headiness that one finds one after a grand day out.

Jay

without days like these there would be no sadness, without sadness, there would be no ecstatic joy….

It Makes Me Feel Really Safe

To know that the SA government and police have spent a great deal of time and energy in getting all of the legally registered firearms properly re-registered, so that criminal activity with firearms can be limited and controlled. It took a mere 3 ½ years since I re-applied for a licence that I already had, for a police officer to call me up and ascertain, over the telephone, that I had a safe and adequate security measures to ensure that my firearm would not be easily stolen. And probably only another 2 or 3 years before I will receive my new ‘legitimate’ firearm licence. I am sure that the authorities will, in time, get to all those criminals who also registered and declared their illegal firearms, according to their birth month, as required by the re-registration system. They will most likely, at that point, realise that these non- law abiding criminals do not have the requisite paperwork, or security setup (as I am sure they will admit to telephonically), for their firearms, and arrest them, thereby rendering SA a safer place. Fuggit, I feel so much safer! Thanks Gun Free SA!

Compression Tests and Throttle Mixer

It turns out that the compression is just fine; my methodology was wrong!  Now I have learnt a bit more; to perform a proper compression test you need to do the following:

1. Take out ALL the spark plugs- that is, one from each cylinder (the BMW engine has two per cylinder) so that the engine is not turning against any compression.
2. Screw your compression tester into a plug hole in one cylinder (the other plug hole in the same cylinder should have a normal plug in it so that compression will be experienced in that cylinder)
3. Before starting the compression test, by cranking the engine over a few times, open the throttle full wide (WOT or Wide Open Throttle in engine tuning parlance).  This was the problem that I had; the initial travel of butterfly valve is non-linear and very sensitive, so the slightest difference in the position of the butterfly valve here will show up as a difference in the compression from cylinder to cylinder.  When the throttle is fully open, the butterfly valve is not impeding the inflow of air to the cylinder and you get a better reading.  For example, with the throttle closed I was reading around 800kPa per cylinder, and 1000kPa with the throttle open- and with very little difference between cylinders.

 After doing all that I realised that the throttle mixer, where the two cables going to the throttle bodies ‘mixed’ with the three possible throttle inputs (main foot throttle, secondary instructor throttle and cruise throttle), was a problem.  The adjustors for the cables were not great, having been made to expedite getting the aircraft to a testing phase, rather than for long term reliability and indeed even short term quick and accurate testing and setting.  A BMW mechanic drew a sketch of part of the original adjustment arrangement and I was able to machine the parts from a hexagonal steel bar, tapping the threads as required.  The adjusting threaded cable holders were made in two parts from brass and soldered together.

 Next was the mixer itself; what a bugger!  I had the body laser cut and then machined the central cable holder from mild steel.  My plan was to have the central cable holder tie it all together and have each cable held in place by two 4mm grub screws.  It seemed like a very good idea.

The central cable holder/ mixing block is shown arrowed:

Then I put it into practice and found out why you need to have your actuating (main throttle, second  throttle, cruise throttle) cables free to move… if the main throttle cable pulls the central cable holder down the slide and the other cables are fixed to it they then twist the cable holder one side and jam it up when you release the main throttle.  The cables have to be able to move freely through the cable holder.

 Trouble is, one wants an anchor on the cable that will hold it solidly and indefinitely, but that can still be adjusted and fairly easily removed so that you can maintain the cable.

 The trouble with the present mixers is that they require a swaged cable end, which means that, if you get it wrong on assembly (which is easy to do) you have to cut the swage and then the cable is shorter; so now you need a new cable.  And you cannot easily get to the cable sheath to lubricate it.  So you have to cut it.  And you start again.  So my great plan was to provide a central cable holder that allowed adjustment and non-permanent holding of the cable that was still safe and secure.

But I discovered that you have to allow cables to move freely through the central mixing block (central cable holder).  #$%&@*()%$#  Back to the drawing board.

Jay

A BMW Engined Aircraft

For the last while I have been working on a weight shift microlight aircraft that will be using a 1200cc BMW motorbike engine to drive the propeller.  In the picture below is the injector body and its K&N filter.   Its a beast of an engine and the BMW Engine Control Unit (ECU) has been replaced with a locally manufactured one.  Why?  The BMW ECU monitors all sorts of sensors on the engine and bike, and if one of these goes faulty then it shuts the engine down- not a great idea in an aircraft.  The ECU is good and works well; its simple and fairly easily accessible in terms of being able to connect to it using a laptop.  The biggest pain is getting a USB to Serial/RS232 cable and a driver that will work on your operating system, Windows 7 in my case.

By the way, if anyone has had the irritating problem of a jumping cursor as you type when using W7 I have found the cure…  dang that problem annoyed me!

I have described the first parts of the electrical and mechanical installation on another site and if you are interested you can see it at http://www.microlighters.co.za/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=12767

I now have the prop on the aircraft and am getting ready to tune the engine, but there were a couple of chores to perform first.  The idle valve apparently (according to Otto, the ECU developer ) jiggles about when you run the engine and thus messes about with the air/fuel mixture, so you need to make sure that it seals properly.  You can see the idle valve on the injector housing here.  The way that Otto and Frans (Frans Grotepas, who has done a lot of pioneering work on the development of the BMW engine as an aircraft engine) have achieved this is to put a bit of nylon pipe around the bit that I have circled on the valve tip, as you can see in the second photo.  You then jam this back into the housing and screw it down using the interference between the pipe, valve and housing to create an airtight seal, with any luck.

I also had to move the EGT (Exhaust Gas Temp) sensors to a more sensible place than where they originally were, and seal up the holes where they had been (too far down the exhaust- they need to be 50-75mm from the exhaust outlets on the engine.  Whilst fitting the exhaust back on I came across another problem (it never stops!); the exhaust support bracket required that two of the gearbox bolts be extended to allow the bracket to be attached. 

After the gearbox had been fixed (from when we last damaged it) the new bolts were not correct.  By now I had already fitted the box and of course it needed to come off to access the nuts holding the bolts that I needed to change…. grrr.  The bolts that had been used were quite long, see where I am pointing.  I got some threaded stainless rod and cut some sections to the length that I needed and then screwed the nyloc nuts onto them (the access is difficult and I am afraid that I said ‘golly’ a few times) and then long nuts onto the outside.  The long nuts had been turned down to the correct length to hold the bracket so that it did not rub against the gearbox oil drain plug (its never, never simple…).  The gearbox was replaced and the exhaust and its bracket fixed in place.  The manner in which I have used the half nut and full nut to lock the system may seem strange, but this is in fact the correct way to do it- half nut first.

 

When all of this was together I got out my compression tester to perform a cylinder compression test.  The tester had a male thread, 14mm metric fine (14 x 1.25mm), but the engine spark plugs had a 12mm metric fine thread (12 x 1.25mm)… @#$%^&@!

I had to turn and mill up an adaptor…

The compression was measured and may be problematic, with a 12% difference being measured between the cylinders; now my client is asking his BMW connections if this is significant.  I think that it may be, so perhaps you’ll get to see a head strip down next.

Jay

What’s in a lyric?

 To the start I’ll attempt to quote a few lines from John Steinbecks opening paragraphs of his book ‘Cannery Row’.

“Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches’, by which he meant Everybody.”

“Had the man looked through another peephole, he might have said, ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing.”

Lyrics are the essence of emotion; they’re thoughts and feelings that someone has condensed into the tightest set of words that can convey the peculiarity and presence of whom or where they are; the words above are an acknowledgement that anyone may see the same thing and draw different conclusions- and so with what they read.

Just like the formulas that scientists and engineers use, poems can be the most elegant and concise way to describe how we feel.  Modern (in the age of popular music, stretching from the early 1900’s till now..) poets have combined their talents, and sometimes are, the musicians that bring our desires, sorrows, joys, heartbreak and wonder to life.  Seemingly innocuous or frivolous songs have meaning far beyond the strains of the melody that echoes in the popular recollection.  Take ZZ Top’s “Rough Boy” for example.  A simple search by the almighty Google reveals the lyric, and which album the song came from; a lot of praise for the great music video, but nothing around what the lyrics mean.  So here’s my take- first of all the lyrics:

(you can see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1qkUZZ1aho)

What in the world’s come all over me?
I ain’t got a chance of one in three.
Ain’t got no rap, ain’t got no line
but if you’ll give me just a minute I’ll be feelin’ fine.

I am the one who can fade the heat,
the one they all say just can’t be beat.
I’ll shoot it to you straight and look you in the eye.
So gimme just a minute and I’ll tell you why
I’m a rough boy, I’m a rough boy.

I don’t care how you look at me
because I’m the one and you will see
we can make it work, we can make it by.
So give me one more minute and I’ll tell you why
I’m a rough boy, I’m a rough boy.

As an aside, microsoft sucks, pretty much just like mac as far as I am concerned; I have just downloaded this song and I cannot find it anywhere; windows 7 has hidden it from me; I am reasonably PC lucid but the new state of things tends to the mac version- show the user only what the programmer things you should see; which is exactly what led to the crash of an Aerobus aircraft a few years ago (the pilot didn’t need to know HOW it worked, because the programmers knew better, apparently- which ended up in a spectacular crash when the pilots and programmers ideas didn’t agree…); dumb it down so that the most basic of users will not be able to get in and mess it up- except that the intermediate users now have to have super skills to get what should be quite basic to the PC literate.  And that is why I dislike mac intensely- it caters to the LCD; the lowest common denominator, much like religions; dumb them down and then, once you have removed the tools of reason, curiosity and other manners of expression, then tell them how you, the corporation would like them to think.

Its like buying a beer that is packed into a plastic packet for you to take home.  At home you’d take it out (but not before your hand dicked around a few imaginary packets first, and then, in frustration,  you burnt all the packets and the beer eventually dropped out) and now you try to open it.  Yeah, now you’re really pissed off, because they’ve hidden the opening somewhere abnormal, like on your left arm, after you grab the beer.  Before you grab it, it looks perfectly normal, but when you reach out they change it all and hide everything elsewhere, because now you are a ‘user’ and theirs, so its all according to their reasoning.  After a struggle you have the beer in your hand AND you’ve found the opening- but try to open it; its been cemented shut and won’t be opened until you’ve passed all the tests; is it your beer, where did you get it; what’s the secret word to get it open, does the seller know who you are; what is the password that they have given you to open it, what’s the beers serial number, what’s the number tattooed on your wrist, who’s your daddy, and so on…

Fuggit, give up, you break the bottle over a bowl and extract the contents- ms goes ‘waily, waily, waily, why don’t they like us….”

Back to the song, and just looking at the lyrics, the first paragraph is all about a guy trying to charm a girl, feeling daunted and scared “what in the world’s come over me- I ain’t got a chance of one in three…”

He’s got no clever line to win her over, no sure way,

“Ain’t got no rap, ain’t got no line”

But he’s asking for a chance to state his case; isn’t that what we are all trying to do, male and female?  We’d like to know that someone would like to know us beyond the personality that we immediately project, to the place whom we feel that we really are.

The next paragraph is about who the person might really be, and idea of who they think they are, the one who ‘can fade the heat’; make it all ok.  Or the person who ‘just can’t be beat’- someone who see’s themselves as on top, maybe arrogant, but we’re talking song fantasy here- poetry, imagination and desire.  And its couched in the terms of an observation “I’m the one they SAY….” , a opposed to “I’m the one that…”

But he say’s to give him time, give him a minute and he’ll explain why- why he’s that ‘rough boy’

Look at the video and see what it is that is too rough about the visuals around the song- its classic boy desire; to be a hero, sexy girls and the same kind of cars- it’s not rough at all really.  There is a beautiful theme of cut-offs; the band and their desire depicted as just parts; isolating those parts to attract you to the essence of just those parts- the sexy legs, the active hands, the skilful fingers that play the instruments and one that holds the girl back but lets her go- a passing tribute; a respectful but attracted nod to an attraction- and an attraction that is not unacknowledged by the bands videos; desire and admiration for the opposite sex, but coupled with a great respect, admiration and awe.

I’ll shoot it to you straight and look you in the eye.
So gimme just a minute and I’ll tell you why
I’m a rough boy, I’m a rough boy

There is a straight, secret and hopeful message in there; he’ll look her in the eye and tell it to her straight- give him some time and he’ll tell why…

The idea of a rough boy is a warning because he’s not really sure of himself, but feels a warning is appropriate.  “There’s something there, as you’ve guessed (I’m a rough boy), but I’ m a decent guy (I think), but I/ and he in the song don’t know how to show it all; gimme some time… (and I’ll show it all…)” –that’s my take..

The video may seem sexist to some- a cut off the great legs of a girl- but is also the cut-off of the band, showing the persona that the public sees them; the bearded faces and dusty sunglasses; nothing gets let in- and in the same way the video shows just those parts that you might want to associate with whom they are.  They may not be any more  sexist (but likely they are  🙂 ) than the video portrays, but there is also good chance that there is more to it than that- see their video around ‘Sleeping bag’ and you’ll get an idea of what I mean.

In ‘Rough Boy’ there is the embodiment of a cleaned car, one that is sleek and beautiful, dreamy and powerful, and theres is half woman who holds the attention of the band; who themselves are half embodied- the showing of the essences relevant to the song – and a car that has come to be washed and re-fulfilled in outer space.

There is an  element of change highlighted by the last verse, a spiritual, and washing of the bands main symbol (found 0n the car), vizualising ‘coming clean’ to be able to ‘look you straight in the eye’.

I’ll shoot it to you straight and look you in the eye.

leading on to:

I don’t care how you look at me
because I’m the one and you will see
we can make it work, we can make it by.
So give me one more minute and I’ll tell you why
I’m a rough boy, I’m a rough boy.

Its all change, just give a chance to see that change; he’s her one who can make it work; and it can work. Although the change is depicted in the metaphoric ‘minute’ he’s essentially still a rough boy, but he wants not to be that rough boy- and she’s always the one who’s really seen him, and perhaps the only one who can see who he really is.

The analogy is around cleansing and time; change waits its cue in the wings.  Its written in the script, but time must run its course before the lines come to life.

Posted by Jay Harrison-Hyde, esquire  😉

Is flying dangerous? Is death hard?

In the last few years I have watched a mate of mine die, watched a colleague do the same and had to hear the news of the deaths of three other pilots whom I knew.  It is a certainty that flying is risky.  A few weekends ago a parachutist died at Virginia Airshow- I didn’t know him, but it once more brought home that what I am involved in caries a penalty for the enjoyment delivered.

How would you want to die?  Doing something you love?  I don’t think that I’d like to die flying, climbing or kayaking.  A good mate of mine was killed a month or two ago.  Not flying.  He died whilst trying to figure out what was wrong with his vehicle- a truck hit it whilst he was in front of it as he was on the side of the road.  He never had an inkling that it would be the last instant or day; we spoke earlier and he joked that I should leave a will with all my tools to him.  A few hours later he was gone.

A good way to go; no pain, no angst, no wondering what its going to be like to hit the ground in a few seconds.  Still, I’d like to have the time perhaps to recall all those that mean something to me; time to pass on my own messages of love- they may never know, but at least I’ll know.

Would you like the same?

I’ve held my dads hand as he took his last breath, and watched his eyes take in the last images, saw the love he had for me and our family.

I’ve done some questionable things in my life, and I have done some great things;  I have lived I think.

I have danced in the clouds and in the wild water, and I have been lucky enough to have been loved by a most magnificent woman.

Flying is dangerous, loving is dangerous, but if you cannot do the things that bring you life then is it really worth living, and have you made the most of the time that you have?

The little boy that tied plastic packets around his legs to be able to wade a flooded sandpit has felt hurt, joy, ecstasy, sadness, despair and has lived pretty well, if sometimes hard, in spite, and because, of it all.

He never stops learning more about life…  thank you Bob for all that you gave to us by sharing your knowledge – a small tribute to Bob Hoover, who ran a blog that dealt mostly with VW Engines.  He also died recently, of cancer (see http://bobhooversblog.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=9)  or just the last post at http://bobhooversbolg.blogspot.com

Jay

Progress on the Tundra.

The engine performance continues to plague… After solving the oil leaks and the throttle position I am back to trying to get the engine to run well- well enough that one feels confident enough to fly it that is. The trouble with an engine that has been ‘mapped’ is that it is mapped for a specific load; change the load and you need to re-map. Mapping an engine means filling in a couple of tables that describe to the Engine Control Unit (ECU) when to fire the spark to the plugs and how much fuel to inject into the inlet to each cylinder, at the appropriate time. To do this one normally needs what is called a ‘dyno’ (short for dynamometer) which is a device that measures the torque and power output from your engine; normally as it is delivered to the wheels of the car. And that’s the rub- ‘professional’ tuners would like to tune an engine on their dyno, in their shop; no dyno, no tune- well that’s the impression that they give. Certainly it is also the stance they take as I cannot prize one of them out of their workshop to come and help. A car dyno is a set or one roller that the cars driven wheels rest on. You can apply a measured amount of resistance to the dyno and therefore to the wheels and hence the engine. Trouble is, if you have an aircraft engine, you cannot drive the dyno. There are of course dyno’s that you can connect directly to an engine crankshaft, but they are in VERY short supply. But.. the original dyno’s were simple propellers… So now I am doing a lot of reading on how to tune an engine so that I can do the same to the Subaru engine in the Tundra. The mapping that the ECU came with is odd, and I am sure that there may have been good reason to map as they have, but without knowing the philosophy behind the map it is difficult to get it working better- mostly because you have the dreaded ‘detonation’ issue peering over your shoulder. Detonation occurs when the fuel/ air mixture in the cylinder ignites unevenly, or too fast; this causes an explosion in the cylinder as opposed to an even (but fast) burn of the fuel. It can destroy an engine in a matter of seconds and may be caused by a number of factors; mixture and spark advance being two of them. So you can see that I am treading carefully before simply fiddling with the map.