Stitching done

I didn't get a chance to post what we did on Thursday. After we had glued the seams and waited for them to cure, we had taken out the stitches. Once these were out, we sanded the seams down to nice curves, and then fiberglass taped two of the four seams. We were running out of time before we got to the last two seams. Our dad has been helping out lately, too. He's always wanted a canoe, so I think he's hurrying along so he can ride in it! Sorry, no pictures, this was a messy night.

Completion of stitching and hull tack welding

We worked well into the night, about 11pm. Long night, and we even got started early...


Stitching the frames on, now you can see the curves of the canoe.


Frames in place now.


Putting the top panel on. We decided it would be easier to stitch the ends of the top panels together, then spread them and start stitching from the middle out to the tips.




Check it out! we've got a canoe!


View from on top of the deck.


Gettin kind of dark...


Here we're putting the epoxy/wood filler mix into the seams. This is the 'tack welding' process. Once these dry, we can take the stitches out and fill in their holes.

Back under the tarps for the night

Stitching

Tonight we moved the workshop outside since the basement windows/doors are too tight to get the canoe out once assembled. We threw together a simple table instead of saw horses, and it's a lot sturdier.

It looks like a canoe! Almost there... It's curved downward in this picture, and obviously it's supposed to curve the other way. That's because the side panels aren't pushed out as far as they will be in the end, and the wood needs to be pushed out at an angle, hard to do when you're air-paddlin.

It was getting pretty dark, we didn't make much progress because we had to build the table, too. We usually start around 7, right after dinner, which doesn't give us much time. I need to start going to work earlier and getting off before 5.

We finished up around 9:30 tonight. The flood lights in the backyard don't provide too much light, and some of the bow is in the shadow of the deck. Also, it's not supposed to rain for at least a week, but we put two tarps over it just in case. We don't need any bird poop on it.

A bit mo work

Ok, so I've been out of town the past weekends/weeks on vacation and such, so we haven't had a chance to get some quality work knocked out. The other night we glued the panels together, then fiberglassed over the seems.

These panels are looong
I'm about to head down and pull off the plastic to see how well we fiberglassed the seems.

Tomorrow we are planning on starting to stitch the hull together! We have to move our operation outside, though, because the canoe, once built, won't be able to fit through any of the windows or doors in the basement. We're going to setup a large tent in the backyard to work under, and hopefully you will see this thing floating soon!

More work

We got a lot of work done on the canoe today. We finished tracing all the parts onto the plywood, then started cutting them. It took us a good 4 hours to do all the cutting, ugh. It was a hot day, too, but it was fun.

The builders, the brothers

Matt stopped by so we could borrow his saw horse, which turned out to be about 2 ft. high. Not good for two guys over 6ft tall, haha.

A lot of "This one goes over here" "Uhhh no we should cut like this"


Something was funny here...


First injury, bro had to get a kiss from mommy before continuing.




Haha, woops, too heavy for the swing seat


Finishing up before the sun sets, it looks like a canoe! kinda.. maybe?


Well you just have to add the rest of these parts.

A New Adventure

My brother and I started talking about building a canoe for over a year. It finally began tonight. Apparently being at school puts a dent in your hobbies.

We're building a 18' canoe from some free plans we found online. It's called the DK Touring Canoe. Just google the name and you can see the basic shape of it. For now, it looks like this:

It uses a stitch and glue technique, and fiberglass tape on the seams. Since my brother and I are cheap, we just bought exterior plywood, not marine plywood. We are planning on being very careful when epoxying, to get the whole boat encased in epoxy, so the type of wood shouldn't matter. I've had enough experience with epoxy, so I don't think will be too bad.
Last weekend I was in Raleigh, and picked a windsurfer mast from a friend and drove it up with my civic. It's actually the last mast from the set of 3 of Team RAF's boats of the EC.

After the canoe is finished, we'll make a bracket to clamp onto the gunwales for the mast, like the other sailing canoes around.

We got back from getting the wood around 8:30 tonight, and drew up all the reference lines and one of the bottom sections by 9:30, then my brother had to go to sleep. More to come on the weekend!

Rider 629: DNF

DNF = did not finish... These two pieces are supposed to be connected together

Obviously my bike is not as extreme as me.

The Cohutta 65 went down like this. I missed the start of the race by about 3-4 min because the clock on my speedometer was off by a few minutes. I lined up near the middle of the pack with the 35-milers, but soon realized this was the wrong starting pack. I made my way through them and sprinted up the first climb of the race. This climb was about 900ft up over 3 miles. I caught up with the back of the pack as we hit the top of the mountain and entered the singletrack.

This is where I made my first mistake. I assumed the line of people I was behind was the main pack. I could not see far enough ahead because of the mist and twisty trail to see where I stood at this point. I figured it was just a long line of riders so I did not bother passing anyone for the next ~8miles. At this point, the 35milers started catching up, and I realized I was just behind a pack of very slow riders. Once we were on a straight section I finally passed them all and took off. This is where the battle really began.

We crossed the river and hit the more technical singletrack. At about 15 miles in my legs were not feeling great, I hadn't really eaten or drank anything. I also noticed that one of my bottles of cytomax had jumped out, probably on some of those huge 4" roots down by the river. I had only about 45 minutes of fuel left in my remaining bottle. I'm hoping that 1st aid station comes up quickly...

Some of the scenery
With a bad front derailleur, the single part of the singletrack was fairly tough stuff. Wet roots made the climbing worse, but I only had to dismount 2 times in the first 18 miles. At the top of the single track climb was aid station #1. I took about 3 minutes to rest because my legs were cramping up, I didn't have much time to drink on the single track sections. My nutrition plan for this race was already falling behind :(

From then on out to where I got the mechanical failure was all fire roads. My speedometer was also working intermittently, so I didn't have a great idea of when the next climb was coming other than by attacking it when it came. I started taking down the nutrients after mile 18 and started feeling great. I made up huge time on the climbs, which is somewhat surprising because I didn't have my granny gear to use. Remember? I'm running 1x9 in this race.

I rolled through aid station #2 (I think it was 2...) and spent the next few miles by myself. I thought I had taken a wrong turn. Anyway, I didn't expect the next climb. I suffered through it, but caught up to another rider at the top. I was glad to see another racer. Turns out he's from Cary and rides the same local trails as me. Small world... We stayed together for the next ~3 miles until we got to station #3. He got out of there quickly, and shot down the next few downhills. He was faster on the downhills, but I caught up to him and flew past on the climbs. This was on the next big climb at mile 33. This was a ~700ft climb over the next 3 miles. At the top of this climb I was spinning out the legs minding my business when it happened.

A small stick got lodged in my rear derailleur, pushed into the spokes of the wheel, and the rest is history. The wheel locked up before I knew what happened and lurched me off the bike. The derailleur was sticking straight up, towards my seat. Ugg. Curse words ensued....

I pulled the derailleur out of the wheel, and it broke right off. There not much I could do. I thought about converting to single speed, I had a chain tool and everything, so I lined up the chain but it didn't look like the right tension. So I started hoofing it back to aid station #3. Mind you this down the mountain and across a gap about 5 miles back. At least I could roll downhill...

Dave from Scott's Bikes was awesome help back at the station. Unfortunately he didn't have a derailleur I could throw on. He said the sweep rider was coming through after the last rider and I could see if he had the part I needed.

Waited 1.5 hours or so, I lost track of time.

Nope, don't have the part, but did have a power link. Dave was bored and I let him mingle with my bike and the power link, and he got a mediocre chain tension, but the wheel axle was not really in the dropouts.

I tried riding it for ~.5 mile, but it was skipping all over the place. I walked back to the station to receive a DNF...

Disappointing, yes. The ride back was what made it though. I rode in the back of Dave's pickup in a recliner patio chair taking pictures of riders we passed on the way back. I saw some familiar faces from when I had to walk my bike back. But, I recognized one from TV. Floyd Landis, 2006 Tour de France winner for the non-bikers out there, was racing a nice Mooto-x. Baller!

He said he wanted to ride in the truck, and I said back to him "Break your bike like I did. Or, I can ride your bike for you!" He chuckled and kept riding up the hill. Cool dude, made my day :)

I did not get to ride his bike though.

I asked Dave from Scott's Bikes to send me some pics of me and Landis, expect those soon. Getting a used X-9 derailleur tomorrow to get back on the bike. Also need another spoke

It was a muddy ride, too. Thunder-stormed the night before the race, still a happy rider though.

Suckers. I got a "Finisher!" mug even though I rode in on a truck

363 days to stare at this mug and earn it for real....

Another Round of Weekend Training

Well it was an exciting weekend. A total of 156 miles on a mix of the road rocket and mountain goat. Friday afternoon was a mtb ride through Umstead forest, doing some climbing loops, which led me over to Lake Crabtree. I did a loop and a half there because I was feeling great and for some reason I was on fire through the turns. It felt like every turn was the perfect speed, you know that flowy feeling? Especially while listening to some great music. Sadly I didn't have great gps reception and the bike computer wasn't working properly, but I'm guessing between 40-45 miles for the day. It was definitely longer than my last enduro ride which was 34 miles through the same areas. Needless to say I was cramping by the end of the day because I left from classes with no sport drink.

Sunday, I left North Raleigh with some other members of Team NORSA (Mike, Alan, and Adam) to head up to Virginia on road bikes. We were headed for the small town known to locals as Virgilina. This small town straddles the state line, and beware of dogs if you try to make this trip!

Upon entering the town, we were immediately greeted by the locals at the (you guessed it) Baptist church yelping at us. Apparently they've never seen men in spandex before.

Check out the GPS track of the trip. 116 miles, 5,300ft of climbing... rather flat ride I'd say. You can view it in Google Earth following this link.

All in all it was a great trip. We were moving for a little over 7 hours, averaging about 16mph. The Cytomax I bought the day before works great! I felt fresh all day long, except I should have brought some Ibuprofen, my shoulders and back got a little sore. I'm definitely going to be using cytomax for the Cohutta! Which is this Saturday!

Anyway, check out the pictures from Sunday, the writeup on Team NORSA's blog.

Virgilina

Virgilina Trip

Team NORSA will be making the Virgilina trip this weekend, on Sunday. I'll be joining fellow NORSA riders Adam, Alan, and Mike on this ~103 mile trip. Should be a good training ride before next weekend, which is the Cohutta enduro! Which should be an interesting race, need to figure out logistics of getting there on time and what's going in my dropoff bags... time to do some elevation hw...

Are you kidding me?!

APRIL FOOLS! I hate weather reports. Didn't rain at allllll today. highs were in upper 70's, ahhhhhh! Will ride to class tomorrow...grrr, this day feels wasted. Though I did get a good amount of schoolwork done.

I may skip out tomorrow after class and get a long ride in...hmm 40 miler to and around umstead for hills training?

Go away rain

Can't ride to class today. Same thing happened yesterday. Day before that was Sunday, rained that day too, so all the trails were closed. :( Its supposed to rain every day of the week now... It's not that I don't like riding in the rain, I just hate getting to class soaking wet and muddy.

So what's up?

I'm building a small 20" wingspan flying wing, using the same wing cores as a few other friends. We're going to use them for some combat. Lars has already built his, but is using an edf with a feigao brushless motor as the power. I think all of ours are going to be similar except for the motor. A couple other guys are using a slightly slower feigao motor with props instead of the ducted fan, while I'm winding up a spare cdrom motor I had laying around

My vacuum bag system is almost completed. I'm waiting on some glue to dry right now. I had everything hooked up and powered, and the pump runs great, but is not powerful enough to turn over (its a piston pump) wiht a vacuum already established. The power supply would cut out when the vacuum switch would turn the pump on. I've added a smaller resevoir between the pump and the 1-way valve to remedy this. I'll know in a few moments if it works. Eventually, I want to vacuum bag the little combat wings I mentioned above.

The pump still has the same problem as before. I think I'll need a fairly large capacitor to prevent surging of the power supply...

DL50 Flying

Wow these pics are ~1 month old too. Adam took some cool pics with his camera of me flying the DL50 out at Dorthea Dix.

Launch
DL50

Also the thought of doing the GDR next year after graduating has crossed my mind...

OK so its been 2 months since I last posted. Like anyone's actually reading this garbage anyway. I mean c'mon, my last post included a picture that I didn't even take. Same with the one before that, I didn't even photoshop optimus prime in. Lame, I know. But seriously, school life kicked into gear and I'm dating a beautiful girl, so that's where my time goes now, along with aerial robotics stuff.

If youre just reading this blog, you'd probably think that I died in the wilderness of western NC on the extreme single digit camping trip I did with some friends in late Jan. Well, it was an adventure alright. Instead of doing a write-up, you can look at some pics that I escaped with from the wild:


Enjoy. My birthday was yesterday (21st), had a blast! Tomorrow is a pretty big joint party with another friend who just turned 21. So I'm taking it easy tonight and finally get an hour of spare time (first time in what feels like months) to write this jibberjabber.

On a related note, part of my birthday present was entrance fee to the Cohutta 100k race. No, not the 100 mile race! It was already filled up! DANGIT! I can settle for only 65 miles. I also bought some '08 aivd bb7's to put on the bike. I need to fix my front derailleur and get electro supplements dialed in before the race (3 weeks!).

Wintry mix

I'm going out to Linville Gorge this long weekend for rockclimbing/hiking/camping with some friends from AR. Weather calls for snow and lows in the single digits. I'm packing up right now, and expect a writeup when I get back. Here's a teaser pic of the gorge.

Optimus Prime is a Badass

Found this the other day

Transformers and bikes, a winning combo.

Subfreeze Hike!

I did a subfreeze hike over winter break, and never posted the pictures from it. It was a short hike along the Billy Goat Trail on the Potomac River.

Yup, definitely freezing out

Walking on water

The Potomac

The bigger parts of the canal weren't frozen

I saw a bunch of woodpeckers which is unusual. Quirky looking fellows, really

Part of Mather's Gorge

There are alot of parts along the river with a 50 ft drop to the water

More building

I've pretty much completed the horizontal stab, all except for the hinge slots. I'm waiting to borrow a hinge slotter tool from a friend to do that. Later tonight I will get the vertical tail built. The tail section is easy and fast to build, I am just taking my sweet time building this plane. I can't wait to start the wings, though.
Now some eye candy!




You can see the steed in the background
Here's a list of things to be done for her to be done:
Build vertical stab and wing
Sand all parts
Install hardware
Covering
Install electronics and engine
Break-in engine