It's been some years since I did much Bible study, the other day I ran across something interesting. In the Bible demons refer to themselves as they, them, and us and we.

Now how do many in the woke movement refer to themselves? Just an interesting thought from the local Pagan... may the God and Goddess keep you safe.

As of 6 AM I have made 67 cycles around our star... it seems like just a short time ago I turned 25 that was five time the about of time the doctors said I was likely have to live.

So enjoy each day with an attitude of gratitude my friends we never know when it will be our last.

Goddess bless all may you day be blessed

I've been keeping a low profile for a while now... my back has been giving me fits. Laying wrong in bed at night then in the morning I can barely get out of bed is not a lot of fun. My doctor has been zero help. It really kills the creative mood and process, I know others dealing with the same issue... it slows things down a lot as we know but it doesn't stop the process.

I've been doing a little writing, some aircraft sketches and number crunching. It really comes down to what do I want out of my aircraft design. It looks like my design will be about the size of a Piper Cub. That being a 35 foot wing span and 20ish feet long.

To get good short field performance it takes big horsepower and lots of lift at low speeds.

How do you get good short field performance with lower horsepower? The simplest is wing area. From there you can get into complex systems that let you need less wing area but add weight. Mike Pati's Scrappy is one example of being complex.

I'm looking at simple and straightforward Hershey bar wings with a Fowler style flaps. Also in the mix is what airfoil to use? Well the NACA airfoils are off the table because they were never intended to be used on aircraft. They were and are only test specimens and NOT fully developed airfoils for aircraft use. It doesn't help matters that NACAs idea of a light aircraft is a craft with a gross weight of 12,000 pounds.

Harry Riblett took the next step with a few of the NACA airfoils to correct their deficiencies and make them suitable for light aircraft like I'm working on. Using one of his laminar airfoils I can get the lift needed with less drag of a turbulent airfoil. Meaning a bit more speed at cruise speed on the same fuel burn... with 175 square feet of wing area you want cut the drag where you can.

The projected stall speed clean is 39 mph and 29 mph with flaps. When it comes to cruise speed that's more a matter of how much fuel do you want to use an hour. Econo cruise looks to be 95ish mph on under four U.S. gallons an hour. This is also very dependant on the engine used and it's specific fuel consumption per horsepower.

The Aero Momentum engines I'm looking at have a .39 pounds of fuel per horsepower hour at 55 to 60% power. So the numbers say my design should cruise 97 mph at the power setting of 60 horsepower. As we all know your results may vary, but the numbers look good to me.

The fuselage will be Paper Glass, the wings will be aluminum sheet spars and ribs with fabric cover. The flaps and ailerons may be of composite materials for simplicity of manufacture.

Now I need a larger drafting board, my 3A board is just to small for the scale I'm working at on the wings and fuselage... something like a 2A would be sweet.

Blessing all be safe out there.

...helps, for months I've been talking story ideas over with Mouse she listens and makes suggestions. Some months ago my main computer stopped working... all my stories and writing ideas were on that system. As were my aircraft stuff... but I had back-ups for it.

With a bit of pushing Mouse got me into a writing mood... I picked up my werewolf story about where it stopped on the other system. So I should be able to put things together when I get the old system back up and working.

I must say I do like how silent my Atomic Pi is over my old system. But there are some tasks I need my old system for that I can't do on my Atomic Pi. I've been running Zorin OS on the Atomic Pi and really like it over Windows. By the way the Atomic Pi is a 64 bit X86 system that's why it will run a IBM compatible OS.

Anyway I hope you are all doing well
Blessing femm

... like to read about the red foxes here on San Juan Island.

https://www.seattletimes.com/pacifi.....ccess-to-them/

Blessing all be safe.
Femm

As I write this Mouse is quietly sleeping on the daybed here at home and not in Seattle! The last little over a week has been a big pain in the tail with moving her out of Ballard. We were going to move the stuff out of the box van yesterday but didn't have the energy to do it.

I love Mouse dearly but she is a packrat! She forgets we don't have room for 3/4 of the stuff she is saving for who knows why. I'm guilty of that too, but I know when to let stuff go from past projects most of time.

No matter what I grumble I'm very happy she is home after all the years of being in Seattle... speaking of Seattle we have to go back down next weekend to finish getting stuff out of the garage... again I have no idea where we are going to put it!

Anyway blessing to all
femm

Last Friday was my 66 birthday, I was looking through a few things Linda gave me after Dad died. His knife, his watch and a few other things that he prized... One was a small unassuming envelope... it was a notice of my birth...

For those that are unaware it used to be a custom to send out notices of birth to friends and family when you had a new child. Today well it just hits social media but again I was born before there was anything known as social media.

It's nice to know that Dad had kept that for all the years I've been plugging away at life. With all our arguments and fights over the years... the years we never talked to each other because I had been disowned by the family for being me so I could stay alive.

Yes life has been rough to me, I've got plenty of scars to show for it both physically and emotionally. But I wouldn't change anything if I could because it made me into who I am now.

Dad and I became very close the last 10 or so years of his life, I would learn he was the proudest of me because I walked my path many time alone. I didn't give up on what I knew was right for me.

I kept the door open to family even after family slammed it in my face... It's odd how you grow up being told how important family is, yet when you stop being what they expect you to be to them you get tossed aside...

No blood only makes us related... Loyalty is what makes us family!
I think I best leave it at that...

Blessing all be safe out there.

Lady Mouse went in this morning for shoulder surgery early this morning, talked with her about an hour ago. They just got her in a room, she had been in recovery a good part of the day.

Mouse is feeling very good, the nagging pain and discomfort from the wire ends and isolator catching on muscle and tissue is gone. She has more movement of the shoulder. She is a happy camper and is really positive and upbeat. She sounds very good and enthusiastic with how things are right now.

Blessing all be safe
femm

I am beat from this move and how long it's taken to move about 8 miles... But that happens when you have "friends" that you have helped in the past but blow you off when you need the help, so I was working by myself doing what I could when I could. Rich was a big help last week! And I thank him for that too!

Now comes the fun of putting things back together and organizing things so stuff can be found.

The last place we didn't see the sun till about 9 am this time of year because we were down in the trees. But this morning the sunrise was there filtered through the trees as it popped above the islands to the east! What a great sight to wake up to this morning.

Blessing all be safe out there
femm

The last two weeks have been a string of ups and downs...

Bella's health has been on the decline, we thought she was on the up swing. Over the last 48 hours it went down hill. This morning she passed over the rainbow bridge with me next to her. She will be joining Sky, Tundra and Sage on the hill above the driveway. I'm not sure what to say... other than I'm bummed.

femm

Over the last few months I've been in the process of moving... where I was at I had been there 18 plus years with a jurk landlord the only time regulations mattered are when they helped him. Otherwise he ignored them.

Anyway the move has been very slow because of health issues caused with the last bout of crude, I get winded easier now. The top of my lungs and trachea would burn and hurt with mild exertion thankfully I'm slowly getting better but it doesn't make getting anything done productive. So I've been plugging away.

I've has people I've helped or want my help later say they would be there to help and not show up... Thankfully Rich has been helping me as much as he can and is able to so that's been a blessing

I'm just about moved out with all the stuff that was here, loaded my storage shed on my boat trailer today, that moves tomarrow then clean up the place and get ready to move the 5th wheel maybe tomorrow afternoon.

The space I'm moving to had a bunch of crushed rock dumped there by mistake and that got leveled out Monday it been a big obstacle course...

As the crow flies I'm a quarter mile from work... by road it's a bit over a mile.

I traded my old 66 Dodge one ton for a 89 Chevy Silverado 3/4 ton K 2500. It runs good so far the mileage is not bad will be setting it up with a 5th wheel hitch in time.

It's something Mouse and I could set up for truck camping by adding a high top canopy and a bed in the back... will need to make some steps for it too.

I hope all of you are well blessing all femm

For well over 8 months Mouse and her orthopedic surgeon have been waiting on a group of allergy specialists to get tests done is find out what metals she's allergic to. Needless to say they've been dragging their feet and pulling all kinds of shenanigans that I would say are definitely unprofessional. We're not sure if it's laziness, don't give a shit or incompetence. Myself I'm leaning to dont give a shit and incompetence.

Her surgeon has finally had enough bullshit so he is going to go in and put titanium in her shoulder and be done with it. So Mouse has a office appointment on March 20th for a consultation, then comes surgery.

She has been a trooper with this whole thing seeing how she broke her shoulder 15 months ago, the first of January 2022.

Blessings all.

Some of you may remember I posted some pictures of some old iron as in my 66 Dodge one ton truck. Well it is gone, a young man had a need for the old girl because he works in construction so I let go of it.

Instead of exchanging money we did a trade because he had something more suited to my future needs... a 89 Chevy K2500 that is stock. It is something Mouse can drive after I make up some running board steps for it. As we have gotten older mine and Mouse's body don't move like they use to, so something with a lower ride height and softer ride is in order for us.

The body of the Chevy is in not bad shape over all, it's showing it's age for sure. This summer it may get a paint job, I'm not a fan of black it's so hard to keep clean. I'm thinking two tone as in white upper body with medium gray lower body.

The other thing I'll be setting it up for towing a 5th wheel the four wheel drive will be handy for off the beaten path travel that we may be doing.

As always be safe out there guys it's getting crazier out there by the day!

I've been using my Atomic Pi a fair bit, mostly doing spreadsheets and some games. For what it is the Atomic Pi does a good job with my needs. It has more computing power than my first IBM clone some 29 years ago, Zorin OS loads up in under a minute from a cold start... there is a lot to like about the Atomic Pi with Zorin OS loaded on it. I will be getting my IBM clone back to useable because it runs software my Pi will not run.

I'm running Zorin OS Lite on the Atomic Pi because it doesn't have the resources to run Zorin OS Core otherwise I would be running it.

The more I use Zorin the more I like it as an OS https://zorin.com/os/ My plan is to buy Zorin OS Pro because it seems to have all the apps I need and to help support the team that has made Zorin OS available to the public for free with Zorin Core and Zorin Lite OS.

Why do I like Zorin OS? It's fast to load, it is snappy when switching between apps. It seems to be a well polished OS over all. It is not bloated like Windows, so it is faster and smoother system to use. It will work on older machines so you can breath new life into older hardware you have collecting dust.

Best of all it's a good way to show the middle finger to Microsoft and Windows.

I suggest you have a look at Zorin OS you may find it will work for you too.

I couldn't get my old Dell to boot so I went to the back-up plan. Some of you may remember I built up two Atomic Pis last year I think it was one was a Christmas present for a friend of mine to replace his dieing laptop.

I got mine set-up and found I needed to work around a couple of things. It wasn't long before it was doing computer stuff. I put Zoron OS Lite on mine because has just 16 gb of storage and the OS has all the apps I use day to day.

For being a 1.4 gz quad-core with 2 gb of memory it is a snappy system for what I'm doing. What is very nice it there is no fan noise! I'm sure this will do word processing with Libra Office. I'm thinking I may get Libra CAD to see if it will run it. And to think... just one core has about twice the computing power of my first IBM clone and it's one tenth the size.

I'm wondering if I should mess with my old Dell? Maybe just clone the harddrive to a CD and USB stick?

I will need to get a powed USB hub if I want to use an external drive of any kind.

My grump right now is all my writing stuff is on the harddrive in the Dell. I did put my aircraft design stuff on its own USB stick.

Be safe out there
Blessings femm.

This morning everything was fine, then I look at my LED clock it's dead again... so I get dressed to take Bella out. She is all ready to go out till I open the door... it was a good thing I had the leash on her. Drag her out into the cold wet squishy world... didn't take her long to take care of morning business let me tell you.

A quick call to Opalco outage line... drum roll please. The outage is on the mainland again. Why am I not surprised?

So it's get the heater out to again to keep the chill off. The nice thing it's about 45 degrees outside and raining so it's not bad. There is still ice and crusted snow on the ground so the best place to be is inside.

With the 12 plus inches of snow most of NW Washington state got on top of that an inch or two of rain it's a safe bet there will be flooding in the lowlands. It may be just a flood warning but with that much snow and the amount of rain forecasted it all but a sure thing of flooding in Whatcom, Skagit and likely Snohomish County. We should know within the next 48 to 72 hours what the local rivers are going to do.

Anyway may all of you enjoy a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas day, may the blessing of the season be with you and those you hold dear.

femm

Power came back on about 3 am it took a long while for things warm back up. The Heat-Pail did the job of keeping things from freezing. But it still wasn't overly warm.

I picked up a few of those orange milar bivi bags some time ago. So I cut one open to use as a blanket over the top of my blankets because I couldn't find my Space Blanket that I know I have. This made a big difference in comfort under the blankets! I covered Bella with the milar blanket it wasn't long before she was half covered with it... then she was laying on top of it... a bit to warm for her I guess.

I highly recommend you get a few of these milar bivi bags to have ready on the chance you need to stay warm and dry in inclimate weather. I also recommend getting a couple of Space Blankets for the same reasons.

The weather has improved it's warmed up to freezing rain. I cleared the porch and ramp... damn is it slippery... so much for clearing the rest of the driveway! Superior judgment trumps superior skills all the time.

It would seem my computer lost the bios when the power went out... anyone know how to reset it?

Blessings all be safe out there, be prepared it not having stuff when you need it most.

The fun of being tied to the grid... about 5 pm San Juan County lost power country wide... of course we get our power from Puget Sound Energy. PSE over the years has not been overly proactive with upgrading their system or proactive with maintenance... so we loose power three a year on an average... this time it's PSEs fault.

The projected time to get power 11 pm to midnight.

Over the years I've learned to prepare for the what ifs. I picked up a Orgo Heat-Pail it's a little heater that runs on denatured alcohol and it's doing a fair job of keeping the chill off here inside my rv considering it's 24 degrees Fahrenheit outside so stuff freezing inside is not must of a worry. But the water to the rv is frozen can't do much about that...

LED lights are a blessing at times like this I'm running them off a jumppack till the power comes back on. I'm also keeping my phone charged with it too... USB change ports are great.

The motal here, plan ahead for the what ifs it makes them more comfortable to deal with when they do happen.

Merry Christmas everyone be safe out there.
Femm

Last night when I took Bella out before bed we had 3 inches of snow on the ground this morning I go to open the front door and I'm pushing a load of snow with it. The forecast was for 6 to 7 inches... We have 12 plus inches of snow! So much for getting my paycheck today...

I got my morning workout clearing the snow so Bella would have a place to do her morning business... oddly she doesn't like being over belly deep in the snow! Of course I cleaned the snow off the porch and ramp and didn't think anything about it... leave it to Bella to walk off the side of the porch going head first into 18 inches of snow.

My plan for the day is simple stay warm and mostly dry as I slowly clear the driveway of snow throughout the day. I'm not doing like I did last year when I messed me up for a week with and angry low back.

As always, be safe out there you all and enjoy the beauty this day offers.

The cold and snow have arrived with them comes the Northerly winds... my water is frozen... no worry I took care of that with a couple of 5 gallon water jugs. They say warming by the weekend.

Bella doesn't like going outside unless she has to... odd right now I'm the same way. My messed up knee tells me it doesn't like being in the cold by hurting. Of course with the snow on the ground I'm concerned about slipping, so I'm careful when I'm outside with Bella.

Life is good and I'm enjoying the winter beauty and a few days of down time.

I'm back doing some sketches of a crazy airplane design... I was depressed and bummed out there for a bit... even if talked a good show... to keep others from worrying about me.

Life is good, remember as you think so as you are. The most powerful words you can use is "I am _____" so be careful what you fill that blank with! Another is "I can't ____" we set up many stumbling blocks for ourselves in the words we use about ourselves.

Merry Yule and Christmas to all of you, may the blessing of the season be with you always.
femm

If any of you look at Wayne Ison's PDQ-2 airplane design it's very basic... some years ago I had the enjoyment of talking with Wayne over the phone a few times, I think he enjoyed the conversations as much as I did. I picked his brain to understand his thinking and ideas. And after much crunching numbers and sketching it's hard to improve on the over all design of the PDQ-2, it's a flying go-kart! Here in the Pacific Northwest it's not a design that you could fly most of the year and changes needed to make it more comfortable to fly in the cooler months would add a fair bit of forward weight... but I do think with minimal changes it could make a fun off airport go fly machine... but I'll leave that there for now.

PDQ stands for Pretty Damn Quick, the 2 means it's the second design with this in mind. Now if I take Wayne's design philosophy for the PDQ and the PDQ-2 and apply it to the basic Nuthatcher design I think I can come up with a nice solution for a two place design that's fast and inexpensive to build. It will be more like a Australian ultralight called the Tyro only it will be enclosed and two place.

I'm guessing some of you'll are bored with me bouncing around with all the different airplane design stuff... trust me it's almost as much fun for me! This is all part of how my brain/mind works, it's how I sort ideas and design issues out. I run into a design issue mind has issues with, my mind takes a detour and picks up another idea to work on for a while. Sometimes the design idea gets proofed faster than others.

Mind you this mind shift can happen in a moment and people like Rich my mechanical engineer friend is just amazed at how quickly I can work out design ideas and issues. He does have to slow me down so I can get my ideas across in an understandable form.

Yes I will be playing more with a big tired PDQ-2 later but first get the two place design done.

Blessings all be safe out there guys. It's crazy out there!
femm

I have been watching the fallout from Musk buying Twitter... we had the left and liberals up in arms about how bad it was going to be and the world was going to end.

Musk went in and cleaned out much of the deadwood and deadheads with canning 3700 people that were a drag on the company. Then firing most of top management with cause so they didn't get their cushy severance packages. These people were so full of themselves they lied in court about a host of things. So their firing was more than justified. These were also people that were pushing Musk to buy Twitter with court actions. These people are the same people running Twitter into the ground with their poor performance and politically motivated management decisions .

We shouldn't forget those that quit because they were asked to put in the hours and didn't want to put in an honest days work for a day's pay... others quit because of their political ideology.

Then Musk started unbanning conservative users and more leftists left Twitter as did employees... they hide behind the guise of hate speech. There is no such thing as hate speech it's just speech they hate and don't want to hear an opposing view.

The other day Musk did a pole about unbanning Donald Trump... the pole was clearly in favor of unbanned Trump... so as of today Donald Trump has his personal account back on Twitter. Oh my you would think the world is ending if you looked at the liberals out there that are flipping out over it. Me, I just sit back and enjoy the show with my popcorn... oh damn I'm out of popcorn need to make some more.

I'm hearing from people that use Twitter that it's running better, no glitches, no lost posts and the like.

With all that's happened to date at Twitter, Twitter will be saving 260 plus million dollars a year in salaries, benefits and compensation and the kicker they seem to have a better product for the public over all.

We are now in the cool to cold rainy weather. October was one of the driest I can remember so that was nice.

With the change in the weather so has Bella's attitude of going outside... this morning she wanted out so we did the usual. Upon opening the door dog backed away from the door dooing the oh no I'm fine thing. So it was foot under butt and push her out the door. In sure didn't take her long to find a spot and get back into the house!

Yep it's that time of year again... Bella is like Sky was with the rain... while Tundra and Sage it didn't matter. What can I say Sky was prissy... I do miss all of my furry kids.

... college and university professors are intelligent you may wish to reassess that. Apparently 12-15 University professors glued themselves to the floor in a large Porsche dealership in protest.

I suspect said professors were expecting the dealership to call the authorities to have them removed. After all Volkswagen agreed that they had the right to protest. So what were the professors protesting about? They are protesting for the decarbonization of the transportation system in Germany. Some are on a hunger strike as well. I have an idea... more later.

So what did Volkswagen do? Nothing, no authorities were called... they just left the protesters on the floor as they turned off the heat and locked the building.

It would seem the protesters had no exit plan on their table, they were expecting someone else to come up with a solution to their acts of vandalism of gluing themselves to the floor. Of course there's irony to be found here as professors protesting complained that Volkswagen was doing nothing to help with their protest.

Myself I would lock up the building and send everyone on a three-day holiday and just let the over educated, full of themselves morons stay there. I might offer them a dull hacksaw blade so they could cut themselves loose. After all they made the situation they're in so it's up to them to figure out how to get out of it.

Animals in the wild don't let the dumbest one lead the pack or the herd... just saying.

Coming up with design ideas is easy for me... many of you know this if you have been watching me long. So it's nothing new.

When you design something is it just for one thing or so it can fill different rolls?

Well I look at the my aircraft designs and wonder how much work is it going to be to change things around to fit another design without a redesign.

Wings it's fairly easy to do by moving things on the wing spars. With the fuselage it's a different story. A lot of stuff has to be move. What if you make a backbone or spine most everything attaches to? Like they did with the Australian ultralight design called Tyro. The aluminum tube they used is not available here in the States it looks to be 100 mm square and likely 2 mm wall thickness. The best I can do is 4 inches square and .125 inch wall or 3.2 mm. The last I checked the tube was 300 plus dollars a length and I would need two. Then add in a trip south of Seattle to pick them up.

So what can I get locally or have shipped to San Juan Island? Clear grain hemlock comes to mind it's less than half the cost of Spruce or Fir. Extruded polystyrene foam is readily available as is epoxy resin and fiberglass. Doing a rough weigh of what I'm planning it will be lighter than the aluminum tubing and it would be more complete when I'm done.

The spine would sat on and under if seating was tandem or beside it for side by side the only thing that changes is the width of the floor and cross braces. The cabin side panels and doors are fully removable... can you say wind in your face?

My mind at play is a scary thing!

The question is do I build the prototype tandem or side by side? What are your thoughts?