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Messages - PonoBill

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1
Alula is light and strong, but not particularly durable. I've seen a few Allula wings that appear to be delaminating. I don't know if that's the right word for what is going on, but it doesn't look good. The newer fabrics have a lot of promise but designers don't seem to be able to get the best out of them yet. I bought a new 4.5 F-One V3 when my V2 F-one disappeared. The new wing has some nice design features and lots of high-tech fabrics. But the center of effort is far forward that the wing can barely be depowered. I might push through and learn to use it, but I found my V2 4.5 and I'm back to using that so it isn't getting much of a chance.

2
It occurs to me on reflection that snowkiting is probably not a useful comparison. I'd think in most conditions a kite in snow would never have liquid water on it to freeze into ice. The mental picture I draw is of a fairly thick patch of ice, perhaps on both sides of the fabric. The wind force on the canopy stretches and flexes the canopy, creating a sharp-edged layer that the fabric stretches across. That doesn't sound good to me.

Think about this is making me cold. It's less than 70 degrees this morning in Maui, I'm going to put on a jacket, or at least a long-sleeved shirt. Freezing.

3
Great review. You make me want to pick an aspect of wingfoiling and stick to it though at 105Kg I don't think a Carver is for me. If for no other reason than kneeling waterstarts are currently my limit.  I'm battling a deteriorating hip lately that I might have to do something drastic about. I hate the thought of spending time off the water, but I might not have a choice. At any rate, I'm at the point where I need to concentrate my efforts to see any progress--I've been doing the same shitty stuff for years now. Mowing the lawn is better than nothing, but I'm sure I can do better than that.
 

4
Gear Talk / Re: surf SUP volume
« on: March 23, 2024, 09:13:48 AM »
I've ridden both 10'X32 and 9'6"X31" and liked them both. My balance has declined a bit and I had some issues with the 9'6" but the 10' was fine. The 10'4" surfs so well and is so easy to use that I'm just kind of addicted to it. I have a 9' Foote custom that is also surprising. It's a great board, surfs and turns great, not quite the "one board quiver" the production boards are, but it's great. I don't know what the "William Foote" thing is about, he probably couldn't get Bill as a Facebook name, but yes, it's him or an incredibly ambitious scammer.

I don't surf much anymore, I'm basically a foil addict, but my brother Bob was here for two weeks and it revived my interest. I'm going to get out on both boards and see how quickly it comes back. I don't get enough exercise foiling, especially since I'm mostly winging, and I miss the glide. When I was learning foil surfing I found SUP surfing really screwed up my progress, but I think that issue is over with.

5
Gear Talk / Re: surf SUP volume
« on: March 23, 2024, 02:31:12 AM »
Bill Foote's 10'4" Triton is a surprising board. Whatever else you get, hang onto that thing. As big as it is, it turns amazingly well--it's the easiest big board I've ever used--surfs well, paddles fast, and catches anything. I have no theory as to why it works so well other than the somewhat strange rails which seem to have more rocker than the rest of the board. I bought one and shipped it to my brother because I knew it would be great for him (it was, and still is), I bought another for myself, and then years later, when mine was beat to shit I found a used one in good shape and snapped it up. It's still my goto board.

I'm also a big fan of the L41s. I had an 8'8" that I loved--especially for the speed.  Mine seemed almost as fast as a foil board.

6
Random / Re: GPT 5, Sam Altman, What's coming
« on: March 17, 2024, 05:30:44 PM »
77. I'm definitely slowing down a bit mentally, things that were easy a few years ago are a bit more difficult. Inevitable, I guess. Still having fun though.

7
Random / Re: Vision Pro
« on: March 09, 2024, 11:06:32 AM »
Very clever to claim and focus on the adventure/SUV/truck space. I think anyone making sedans will have a super tough time staying in business, even if China is somehow blocked. There's no reason a sub-200-mile EV sedan can't be made for less than $20K and still turn a profit. As with the current ICE market, the profit margin for sedans is slim and disappearing completely quickly. People are still whinging about EVs being unrepairable and taking too long to charge. Both claims are just monumentally stupid when you factor in day-to-day use (you get up in the morning and your battery is always full--no fueling) and zero maintenance. A new EV will cost about the same as three years of fuel and maintenance of an ICE car.

The space Rivian is carving out should remain profitable for a lot longer.

8
Random / Re: Vision Pro
« on: March 06, 2024, 11:00:24 PM »
Ask anyone who shuttles with me, smell is critical in a vehicle.

9
Random / Re: Wacky PV stuff
« on: March 05, 2024, 05:59:06 PM »
Actually even premium PV panels are pretty cheap now, but the ultra bargains are from Santan Solar. They're cheaper than plywood and they have frequent BOGO sales.

I'm going to be using a Tesla model 3 battery, you can buy the long range (75KW) batteries on ebay for about $7500, the standard-range batteries(62KWH) are less--about $5K. The big trick for using these panels safely is a good battery management system. Unfortunately the best one (from EVTV is expensive, 7500 bucks, or $20K installed and testing on a long-range battery.

EVTV is a company started by Jack Rickard, a legend in the DIY EV car world. He unfortunately passed away about a year ago and the company is now being run by (I think) his daughter and son-in-law. The daughter seems very smart and capable, but Jack was a wizard, though old and irascible. The easiest way to understand what I'm up to is to watch this video, though you have to sit through Jack's musings, some of which are interesting, some brilliant, some wacky: https://youtu.be/7zO11Q237nA?si=uR15xktHA6hhGxhl

This might not be the right video. He made a lot of them.

10
Random / Re: Wacky PV stuff
« on: March 04, 2024, 08:41:10 PM »
I doubt it's going to make a huge difference though we live at the end of a dirt road and every morning our cars have a nice layer of dust and pollen. It's winter, so I expect variation even this close to the equator. Depending on what Maui Electric Company has up its sleeve I might add another row of PV and some batteries. I no longer have to worry about outages since I bought a little portable power EcoFlow thingy. In my experience, the day you add backup power of any sort is the last time you ever have an outage. But I'll add to the system and do a whole-house battery if it pencils out. This system paid for itself even though I had some prolonged outages due to microinverter problems. The lifetime generation for the system is 95.43MWh. At 43.31 cents per KWh that's $40,080, which is about what the system cost unadjusted for inflation. As a guesstimate, if I'd fixed the microinverter issue promptly it would be roughly double that. 40K for being a lazy buggah.

11
Random / Wacky PV stuff
« on: March 04, 2024, 09:59:00 AM »
It seems like everything I know needs to get upgraded every few years. For decades the gold standard for PV was installation on a slanted roof facing south, or if you had a flat roof, then racks, carefully angled to catch midday sun at a perpendicular angle. Then east/west roofs became popular. If you look at the output curve of a properly angled south-facing panel it's a single hump, with a maximum at midday tailing off to not much at all in the morning and evening. Here's what the panels at Ponohouse produce. I've never washed those buggers, I need to:

The sun angle at anything past noon is not optimal, so you don't get continuous generation. Your wiring, controllers, battery charger, inverters, etc. need to be sized for the peak, which lasts less than an hour. Conversely, panels on an east-west orientation have humps at morning and evening, depending on which side they are mounted. When panels cost bazillions, they were the expensive part of the system. Now they cost less per watt than an English muffin, so flattening out the curve makes sense. They benefit from being mounted more steeply to catch the low-angle sun, but it works like gangbusters and you don't need to upgrade the rest of the system.

Cool. But now we have Bifacial panels that are dirt cheap. They benefit from being mounted freestanding in a vertical position east/west so one panel does the work of two. They generate almost nothing at midday but do well for the rest of the day. Shading is tricky, but then it always is. They work best in a mixed installation where there are a more or less equal number of south-facing panels, depending on latitude. Shortly there will be panels optimized for vertical east/west installation that also take advantage of lower reflection, but current bifacial panels work fine. Current panels peak out at about 22% of the theoretical solar energy available regardless of installation because most of the sunlight gets reflected.

There's more. Current solar plus battery tech has crept up from 6V to 12V to 48V, driven mostly by the wire size necessary to deliver significant wattage and power expectations. Now it makes sense to use something like 400 V (the voltage of most EV batteries) because it's easy to get with ten or so PV panels in series and the wire size required is modest (current determines wire size, 1000 watts at 12 volts is 83 amps, meaning you need wire thicker than the battery cable in your car, at 400 V it's 2.5 amps). So basically, everything I learned from fiddling with Solar over the last few decades is now wrong. ....very weak Yay!

12
Prone Foiling, Surf foiling, Pump Foiling / Re: Swim Missiles
« on: March 03, 2024, 01:43:39 PM »
You were ahead of your time. Yesterday's downwind foil Maliko race was solid Kalama-style boards, AKA swim missiles.

13
Random / Re: Vision Pro
« on: March 03, 2024, 01:37:26 PM »
Or if you're just interested in something roadworthy we could just get the beast running. Not a great idea though, drivers do thoughtless enough things to bikes they can see. Even with the big flag I put on my eTrike I had people turning in front of me daily.

14
Random / Re: Vision Pro
« on: March 03, 2024, 09:37:06 AM »
That's pretty cool. You might recall I built an e-trike a long while ago after I had meniscus surgery and the doc said I should ride a stationary bike. He thought if I rode outside I'd be likely to fall and ruin his work. So I built a trike. A tadpole design, like yours, but foot and e-powered. No suspension, but as usual, way too much motor and battery (More Power!!). I did a century ride over Mt. Hood with it, and collected 4 warnings for speeding in Hood River. Two from the same cop, who was losing patience with me. That thing looks like fun. It also looks like it could use a bit more power and perhaps range. We can fix that if you're so inclined. I can't seem to find the old video of me hitting 48mph at Rowena Crest, but you probably remember it. Mine's gathering dust at the shop. I was probably gonna kill myself on it, and my knee healed. I've got a spare Alfine 8-speed internal hub to replace that silly derailleur or the Nu Vinci variable speed hub that's on my trike now. The Nu Vinci is gonna be toast if I keep using it on my trike. The trike is 1500 watts and the nuVinci is rated for something like 500, though I read somewhere they uprated them to 750 without making physical changes. I've also got a two-speed pedal bracket, it looks like that's a single-speed for the hand crank. I don't mind parting out my trike a bit, I doubt it will ever see daylight again.

15
Random / Re: Vision Pro
« on: March 02, 2024, 11:26:24 AM »
Back to the original topic (sorry admin), it looks like the backlash of Apple killing the EV and the substantial number of Vision Pros being returned before the return deadline is pounding Apple's stock a bit. I'm waiting for V2 or 3. Admin convinced me some time ago to spring for the top-of-the-line Meta goggles, which are gathering dust at my shop. That isn't a dig at Admin or Meta (well, maybe a little) but just a taste of living with rampant ADHD. I'm striving mightily to resist the urge to chase the new, new, and the bright and sparkly (oh look, a butterfly!!). I'm also certainly going to cancel my Cybertruck order in favor of my new, new PV and storage battery project. Diane is cautiously pleased--mostly because she suspects I'll wind up doing both.

My real motivation for ditching the Cybertruck reservation is I'm a little tired of getting V1 and seeing V2 is way better, and I'm very happy with my Model Y, which does everything I need, including pulling trailers when I have a load of junk for the dump, building materials to carry, or want to do a remote dirt bike adventure. I also really like camping in it, I doubt camping in the bed of the cybertruck will be nicer than lounging in the back of the Model Y with streaming video and climate control on tap, and the tent I bought that erects over the back to provide covered standing room.

And I confess, I like Admin's Rivian better.

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