Linux gamer, retired aviator, profanity enthusiast

  • 4 Posts
  • 328 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I live in a town that is experiencing significant growth. The plot of land across the street from me had one house on it, it was torn down and they’re building four in its place. My own house sits on two lots, so I have an above average amount of land for this suburban town. My yard, all told, is 8-10 times the size of what is pictured above.

    I couldn’t grow a year’s worth of side dishes for myself on my land, if I knocked down every tree and shrub and replaced them with something productive. I do some backyard gardening, I can a year’s worth of jelly (in fact that’s a project for this coming week) and I raise a summer’s worth of peppers and tomatoes.










  • Major airline pilot is quite safe. There have been like a single digit number of fatal accidents among American major airlines in the 21st century not counting 9/11? That CRJ-700 that collided with a military helicopter in Washington is like, the only accident involving that type.

    I used to be a flight instructor. On a fundamental level, what that job is is climbing into the passenger seat of an airplane while someone who is not qualified to fly the plane climbs into the pilot’s seat and does as much of the flying as possible.

    Airline operations are pretty safe during enroute flying; they’re at high altitude miles above terrain on IFR flight plans participating in air traffic control to assist in separation from other aircraft. It gets dangerous when you’re near the ground and especially near airports because there’s more things to crash into. The vast majority of general aviation flight instruction takes place within 5,000 feet of the ground. There was a large TV mast within sight of the airport I taught at with two surface-to-air kills.

    Operating near airports is particularly dangerous. The pilot’s workload increases dramatically; enroute you might actually get bored, during departure or approach your workload is very high. Couple that with the increased concentration of other air traffic, low altitude of flight and the fact you’re going to touch the ground, on purpose…is there a wonder a lot of accidents take place on or near airports? That recent mid-air collision I mentioned? Happened within a mile or two of the runway. A major airline pilot might land 4 times a day? Maybe as few as one for trans-continental or trans-oceanic pilots. Hell, there are some crews that take off, fly for a few hours, then go to bed as another crew takes over to land the plane. Regional jet pilots might land a plane 8 or 10 times in a day on more, shorter trips. My record is 86. I did 7 hours of instruction one day when all of my students just happened to be practicing landings so I did an entire work day in the pattern logging between 11 and 13 landings each. At an uncontrolled airfield, in VFR flight, self-announcing and coordinating with other aircraft in the pattern or arriving on IFR approaches.

    Add to that airframes and power plants designed in the 50’s, manufactured in the 70’s and still in use today, significantly less oversight of aircraft operators, maintenance personnel and air crews compared to the airlines, and I think you’re starting to see my point.




  • I’ll warn you now it can get a little tedious, because you refer to the data in a spreadsheet like referencing variables in a Python script. In most fields you can type in a dimension, you can click a formula button or hit the = key and then type in a formula. Or you can reference a cell in a spreadsheet. that might look like “=spreadsheet.A4” for the contents of cell A4.

    That isn’t very readable and I don’t trust it not to break if you add rows or columns or whatever, so there’s an Alias function. You can give each individual cell a name. Which is slow and tedious. In the Addon Manager you’ll find some macros, one called EasyAlias which, select a cell, click the EasyAlias button, and the cell to the right of your selected cell gets the contents of the selected cell as an alias. In other words, if Column B is a bunch of labels and column C is the actual data, highlighting B2-B17 and clicking the EasyAlias button will automatically alias C2-C17. That feature should be built-in. There’s also a macro for clicking a dimension, clicking a sketch feature, and then semi-automatically applying a dimension. It’s slightly temperamental but it works faster than typing “Dimensions.notch_height” over and over.


  • My way into CAD software was 1. Dealing with DXF editors like QCAD. 2. Trying to tackle parametric CAD, I ran Onshape’s tutorials, they have pretty good technique tutorials, like how to draft a paperclip, that are applicable to most parametric CAD packages. Then learning how FreeCAD’s spreadsheet works.

    FreeCAD has a full-on spreadsheet built in, now it’s feature poor compared to Excel or LOCalc but you can store and calculate dimensions there and then use them in the main drawing. Other software has features that accomplish this but it’s not as flexible and familiar as a spreadsheet. FreeCAD has some usability issues but everything else out there is either drawbackware or subscription.


  • My local ham club treats that ultramarathon as an emergency preparedness drill. It requires us to bring radio equipment out into the woods away from power outlets and cell phone coverage and spend a day communicating by VHF FM over rugged wooded terrain. It’s a pretty solid simulation of setting up an ad hoc communications system during a disaster scenario such as a hurricane, no? We’re there so that we can figure out when a runner has gone missing, approximately where on the trail, find them, and maybe call for help if they’re hurt. That’s not dissimilar to our mission when we man the emergency shelters for the purposes of “do you have enough diapers” or “is this missing person at your shelter?”

    “Ad hoc disaster communications” can mean anything from keeping in touch with your party if you have to split up to getting news from the outside world to calling for help from the outside world. Frankly I think any of those LoRa networks are next to useless for that. The hardware is kind of pathetic, from my hands-on experience, and in a wooded area it’s almost designed to not work.

    For getting news from the outside world, an AM radio receiver as installed in every car can hear for a few hundred miles during the day and a thousand miles at night. Commercial broadcast FM radio has a range of 50 miles or so assuming a receiving antenna at about chest height. I might recommend having and knowing how to use a television antenna. Powering a modern television from a generator and receiving over the air broadcasts might just get you a news conference with the governor or something.

    This part is US centric: NOAA operates a network of radio transmitters in the 160MHz range broadcasting weather updates. If you don’t own one of those receivers, get one. They’re cheap, easy and useful.

    Communicating with your own group, a family or neighbors or whatever your situation is, GMRS or MURS is a better solution. Both allow 20+ times the power than LoRa. MURS is VHF, just above the 2 meter ham band, it punches through foliage a lot better but is limited to simplex only. GMRS is UHF, just below the amateur 70cm band, not as easy to push through the trees but repeaters are allowed. Depending on your situation and what other folks in your area are doing, those are likely better choices.

    Reaching out for help…the problem with something like LoRa for this is you’re relying on a bunch of very cheap, shoddy little radios to relay a message to…someone. CB might be a choice here, it’s a standard in the trucking industry and you might get some propagation, but being or knowing a ham is probably your best bet. Emergency comms is one of the stated purposes for creating the amateur radio service, that’s what the ARES service is for, if you’re really interested in emergency comms you should probably look into it.