A Place On The . Net

The following article is one that I wrote for several publications and it seems reasonable to share it with you. After all, you are the folks who can give the best critiques of ideas and also are the best ones to find ways to share these things.

Here goes:

It's in the news. Print journalists are having to write the obituaries of their own newspapers.

I am weepy eyed. I was once a journalist, too. Things do change and humanity will just have to live with whatever replaces print journalism.

Plenty happened on the road to and from stellar reporting. It began with Newspapers controlled by the wealthy. If you weren't wealthy, you called it, “Yellow Journalism” and considered it vaguely dishonest. The rich used print as means to state their own views to the exclusion of all else. The theory back then was that if you worked hard to own something, then you had the right to use it in your own way.

EAA517 Perks

One of the best things that happen when you join the Experimental Aircraft Association is learning. EAA is not your grandma's tired old schooling. It is lively, fast-paced, fun and often stuff that saves lives. It was like that Monday, January 19, 2009 when the Missoula chapter met for tutoring by Harry LaForge.

Harry is President of Hoffman Pilot Center, Inc and a world class flight instructor. His session dealt with the compass as used by pilots. (But you had better know this material even if you don't fly because the north and south are not what Grandma said they were.)

The following links will get you to first base:

http://www.hoffmanpilotcenter.com/

I wrote to the Experimental Aircraft Association magazine, Sport Aviation, asking for a forum on new approaches to electric flight. The responses have been satisfying and I think we're on to something. Now it is time for you to do a little daydreaming and some basement research on the same subject. Hey! I've already got some input (but I know you can do better). One excellent contribution already came in and it came from somebody I know.

My good friend, Dick Sprague, EAA # 861970, says that it should be possible to build an electric aircraft based upon the form of a manta ray. It would be a kind of ornithopter.

Wait a minute!

Can that be?

Looks like it can. Lets count the possibilities:

1. A manta ray (fish) is shaped a little like a flying saucer and a little like a rhombic aircraft (double delta). That suggests excellent wing loading.

2. The disk shape is the second most economical of 3D geometric shapes

3. The disk shape may lend itself to undulations (Dick thinks of these wingtip movements as “porpoising motions”) for economical, low-speed flying.

My favorite magazine, Sport Aviation, had been lagging in the matter of encouragement of fliers who are interested in flight under electric power. Oh, there are a few planes in the air but they have shortcomings that annoy.

So I wrote a letter to Mary Jones, the editor, and asked for a forum on the possibilities of electricity on the wing. The article went over well so I share a copy here:

Advancing Electric Aircraft Concepts

Much has been said in the flying community about electric flight's possibilities. It is time to start a forum on the subject and I'd like to prime the pump here.

Let's begin by wondering if there are regulations in America or elsewhere that needlessly restrict electric aviation research and invention. For instance; Mercedes was recently developing a high voltage replacement for the 12-volt automotive system. There were very compelling developments but engineers stopped development without explanation. The reason may be some regulations making 50-volts the maximum. If such laws exist, they would have been intended to keep passengers from being shocked.

Spark plugs, of course, have operated in the 10-20 thousand volt range for years. There is little to fear in ignition voltage because its bite has low wattage and pulses come slowly enough that few people are injured.

If you have a Kindle (electronic book with wireless download in big cities) you may enjoy my good book.

You will find Tales of Our Germans at http://www.amazon.com/Tales-of-Our-Germans/dp/B001B4BAEO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213920206&sr=1-1

Give it a shot. The action-packed, historical tome is well written and a keeper you will want to pass on to your children. It is cheap, too at a crummy $9.95.

I spent a couple of years researching and writing Tales. The book is far more than a history book. It shows how people thought and why they thought that way. You will be fascinated to discover how the Germans came so far west and why they did so in such great numbers after the War BetweenThe States (Civil War). You will meet some folks who lived around Chelan and Wenatchee, Washington. You will meet some folks just like you. You will also meet some folks who are really, really not like you.

When Missoula police officers smarted off with some illegal speed entrapments, I was incensed.

I wrote this letter (below) to the Missoulian newspaper. Would you like to write one like it?

Tristan Scott of the Missoulian wrote a story, Crossing guard,
revealing that police are speed trapping near Saint Patrick Hospital.
The story highlights the difficulty we have in communicating. Tristan
called it a “sting.”

The proper word is entrapment. The area forces motorists to speed.
Officers then hand out citations, claiming that motorists should know
better.

All entrapments are illegal but police often mistake citizen leniency for
permission.

Illegal entrapments do not raise awareness nor do they decrease accidents. If
signs on such broad roads remain unchanged, accident rates will
remain unchanged. That's a communications problem.

Five officers on this one entrapment cost somewhere around $875 per day.
That figure could buy effective signs that would end accidents,
rebuild respect and last 20-years.

It was especially disappointing to see Tristan's story speak of a
“bipedal” officer. That suggests that there is also a unipedal
officer. Another goofy, uncommunicative title is “Quality of Life

    I'd like your opinion on this article, the first in a series of nine. I am writing for senior tabloids and magazines. Colleen suggests that I am overreacting to a few bad experiences in gas stations. If I am, I am missing something.

    I am eager to have your comments before I sell the series:

Gas Station Cheats

Part 1 Screaming Accusation

Copyright 2008, John H. Wiegman

In the wake of dramatically high gasoline prices, drive-offs at pumps are forcing gas stations to operate security cameras, to establish quick links to police and to make customers prepay for fuel.

Those gas station fears cause cruel overreactions up to and including false accusations.

Pull-Quote: Those gas station fears cause cruel overreactions up to and including false accusations.

Here is how this works: You roll into the station. There is no attendant at the pump so you'll do the chores yourself. (To keep your clothes clean you'll just hope that oil, fan belt, radiator and tire pressure are OK.) As you step to the pump and start to decipher its otherworldly controls, a screaming voice over an intercom stops you.

              I wrote the following for Servo Magazine but those folks never paid. So here it is for free.    

You may have heard of Thomas Moray, PhD. The good doctor lived in the late 1800s and early 1900s around the time of Nicola Tesla. Like Tesla, Dr. Moray spent his time wondering about electricity. He claimed to have found a way to harvest electrical energy far from power lines, rivers or windmills. Witnesses said he got enough power to cook a turkey. The aroma must have been enticing!

Observers demanded to know how the good doctor did it but refused to pay for lessons. Moray wouldn't budge without cash in hand. It was, after all, his invention and he had the right to reap his rewards from it. The story remained a mystery, a scientific standoff. A few people in the states and in Germany replicated his work. Still, it didn't seem right to others. Moray and the people who copied him were accused of being fakes and liars. Well, they were accused until modern times when NASA did some experiments with magnetic lines of force surrounding Earth. Seems there is plenty of low density power, high up in the atmosphere and in near space. It may have existed close to the ground before the planet was girdled with power lines. We know that Moray used little more than a long wire, a tuned coil and a vacuum tube diode. The patent office was irked because the tube was a cold cathode diode and they just knew that no diode could work that way. (Cold cathodes have been serving mankind for some 50-years now with no difficulties.)