Mission Planning for 2nd Annual B5Q

I am starting this post as a way to create a list of ideas/todo list for this upcoming year.

Party

1. Date??? Keep the same? Move back?
   

Location

1. Do we need a new location??? Where the view is better and we could create a better target area??

Hardware

1. Ripple multiple
2. Software driven drop
3. Actually be able to get it out of the aircaft
   

Software

1. Make config file xml serialized and config a singleton
2. Add constant record of flight data and drop info
   
3. Add trigger to have software drop the bomb(maybe)
4. Maybe goto directx or opengl
5. Figure out what to do with GPS liscense
   

Misc

1. Kludge is working on new patch(may end up a T-shirt)
   
2. Motto, callsigns and fun stuff like that
3. Anand needs to buy a flight suit, try ebay

Feel free to comment or email me with suggestions, info etc....

Hail to the Victors!

Sorry I couldn't resist. Anyways we were 100% completely and totally Victorious, and the end results were better than expected despite some unforeseen circumstances.

Here's how things went down.
0910 - Very sketchy takeoff from 2E8, pretty nerve racking, bad start.
0916 - We overfly the field and are already late, which means gliders could start taking off at any time
0920 - Anand can not get the delivery device outside the plane, ut oh.
0921 - Anand, uses his Bombadier expertise and knowledge to determine we can safely proceed with him dropping the bombs by hand. Dan and I trust his vast experience and agree.
0925 - Can't see everyone until about 5 seconds until drop, can't see target until about 3 seconds before drop.
0926 - First drop with the Rubber Safety Oridance(aka Bouncy Ball), nothing bad happens.
0927 - Once again we rely on Anand's years of expertnessosity to decide it will be safe with a 10.0 pound water melon.
0930 - Watermelon is dropped and no one dies. Confidence is rising.
0935 - Second watermelon kills exactly no one.
0940 - Still no gliders have taken off which is crazy, We Drop The Bowlign Ball Bomb, and land withing 15 feet!!! which means we were within 0.08 seconds of being perfect! Amaizing! (purposefully spelled that way)
0945 - Safely depart

Miss distances Rubber Bomb(75ft), Melon1(25ft), Melon2(75ft),Bowling Ball(15ft) !!!!!!

Here is the video of the bowling ball, we will have more video and pictures to come once everything is montaged up and combined.

Also I had to add that spectacular picture of us in flight suits.

Itenerary, When are we doing what?

The Bowling Ball Bomb Barbeque and Pool Party

presented by
ShowMeTheRent.com
Will take plane on SUNDAY morning! Times are eastern.

The Plan is as Follows

0800: Get to ARB
0815: Take off from ARB
0830: Land at 2E8 for loading
0900: DROP THE BOMB
0930: Return to 2E8 for unloading
1000: Return to ARB

The plan is to first drop a rubber ball, then cantaloupe, then the bowling ball. 0900 is not firm but we won't do it any earlier. We will communication by cell phone right before we take off from the second airport. Josh Norman will be in charge at the drop site so listen to him. He will be communicating with us in the plane.

Directions were sent out in the last email but as a refresher its west of Pinckney on M-36. Turn left at Howlett, and its about half a mile down. I will make sure there is a sign where you need to turn. It's just a two track and there won't be much parking so you might have to park on the street.
Make sure you're not wandering through the woods at about 9am looking for everybody!
Call me right now if you're not sure where to go. Also people will be leaving from my house to go watch at about 8:30 so feel free to go to my house first so you can get a ride or at least follow.

Bring $10 if you want to buy a mission patch, they are pretty sweet. Ask Jenny she will have them, first come first serve.

Failure to Launch

Delivery Problems
Mr. Kult has been hard at work building the delivery system. He has ran into some snafus though. He is having trouble getting it up, I mean down, I mean... Nina and I have talked about it and we have decide he is going to buy a bigger "magnet" which should help. Hopefully the magnet will get the job done, but if not we will just have to scramble here to get some sort of rudimentary system that works. That would mean no big red button though so hopefully Kult's new big "magnet" will help him get the job done.

If only it worked with something on it!

NORMANDY!
I flew a bunch of test runs today and was able to get as low as 300 feet and as slow as 80 knots. So those will be the target for the actual drop. Also it looks like we should be able to get a fairly safe drop. I need to decide pretty quick here if we should do it Saturday or Sunday morning.

Josh and I went to Normandy by land and there is a place to stand that should be at least 1000 feet from the target point. Now we just need to get the target setup. The area is pretty marshy so its not going to be super easy to get the target spot setup. Also we might need to change the angle at which we approach depending on where we have everybody stand. I am pretty sure no one wants us flying over their head and no one wants to stomp through muddy marsh.

Lori is going to either bring her transceiver or give it to Kurt to bring up so that is taken care of. We will have communications with the people on the ground so they can warn us if they think we are going to hit them or something else we don't want to hit.

Mission Card
I got a good start on the mission card but any suggestions for additions would be much appreciated. Right now it's only taking up about half a page and some of the numbers on there are only stubs( so don't email me that the tof is wrong).

Coming Up
The following things need to be completed or decided:
1) More test runs preferable with the B3C2 software
2) Make it so the B3C2 software can take inputs for size and weight for different bombs
3) Setup target
4) Decide exact date and time, its between 9amish Saturday or Sunday
5) Get exact GPS coordinates for target
6) Sacrifice a lamb for good luck

Were gonna drop a bomb!

Normandy Recon
Josh and I checked out Normandy on Saturday and were able to figure out quite a bit. First, it appears that there is enough open land for us to drop the bombs, and for spectators to safely watch. Secondly, that area is extremely busy during the middle of the day because of the glider club that is right next to it. This means we will want to drop either really early Saturday morning or near dusk Saturday night. This week Josh and I will check it out by land to make sure we have enough room. It's really the only hurdle left. As long as it seems safe we will be a 100% go.

Delivery mechanism
Mr. Kult has been busy constructing the delivery device. As you can see by the pictures its pretty much done other than a few possible tweaks. We need to add a safety device to make sure we don't drop the bombing while loading, Josh's neighbors will appreciate that.


Graphs
Mr. Kult has been asking for graphs so I created a spreadsheet of a sample launch that shows the projected bomb position after drop. The good news is the bomb is projected to be a full 20 feet below the aircraft when it should be even with the elevator. So that means we won't hit the elevator with the bomb causing us to lose control of the aircraft and spiral to our death. The picture is another mode that I added to the B3C2 which allows us to view the flight path. I plan on adding more data if time permits.

What's Next?
I already mentioned that this week Josh and I are going to recon Normandy by land. I also need to fly a few more practice mission as well as test out the B3C2. I hope to fly once this Saturday at the time we plan on dropping to check out the traffic around that airport and then maybe one more time the next week for a practice run.

Finally Flying

Finally got checked out at the other airport in a 172SP, so there should be a lot more action in the next few weeks. Measured the baggage area so that Dan can start building the delivery device.

Here is what we need to get done before we can drop any bombs:
1) Recon Normandy
2) Determine final bombing site
3) Do multiple practice runs
4) Plan and build delivery system(Mr. Kult)
5) Create mission cards...for the mission
6) Figure out logistics at site, where people are going to be etc.
I am sure we will come up with a bunch more stuff as it gets close.

Also I need to know what everyone feels is a safe watching distance, so please give an honest answer in the poll on the right. Only vote if you might come and watch the actual dropping. Not to sway anyone but I am thinking 500ft is a nice safe distance. I will be extremely surprised if we miss more than 100ft on the sides. But I will be in the plane so thats why I am not voting.

Slowly but surely

A few updates. Mr. Kult has attached a solenoid to the big red button which is pretty awesome. This will allow us to hit the big red button and cause the bomb/bombs to release. Also I ordered the patches so they are in the mail.

The main delay though is finding an aircraft to drop the bombs from. I have attempted to get checked out TWICE at another airport and both times the instructor no showed! I think its a conspiracy by the Canadians. No really they are worried that if we are able to drop bombs, that the Royal Michigan Air Farce will be superior to the Royal Canadian Air Farce.

First they set fire to our aircraft now they are abducting instructors. I need to call my embassy, or do you do that when you are in a different country?

Sewn mission patch, Corporate Sponsorship!

With my superior negotiating skills, and savvy salesmanship I have secured Corporate sponsorship(for an undisclosed amount) for the B5Q which will hence forth be called:

The Bowling Ball Bomb Barbeque and Pool Party
presented by
ShowMeTheRent.com

We will also be writing ShowMeTheRent.com on one of the bowling balls and taking a picture of it.

Check it out

The sewn patch looks pretty awesome. Also let me know if you guys can see any other mistakes. I noticed that the R in FROM looks like a P, and I requested that they make the four leaf clover look more like.....hmmm... a four leaf clover.

Also on Steven Colbert the other night they showed Nixon in an air plane dropping a bowling ball out it!!!!!!!!!!!!

And he had a big read button on the next show. We should all email him about the B5Q and get it on his show. How awesome would that be.

FIRE!!!!!!

The B5q and Pool Party will be held on Sunday, May 25th!!

Fire
The plane we were planning on using for recon, recently caught fire and has been removed from the flight line. And to make matters worse that was the only Cessna 172 that they rent at that place. Now I have to find another place to rent from, but have no fear, a little fire is not going to stop the B5Q. There is another place at the same airport and they actually have a 172SP which is a 172 with a bigger engine, which means it can carry about 200 extra pounds. If we are able to use that plane we wouldn't have to worry about our weight as much.

Mission Patch
The sewn picture of the mission patch should be in any day and I will post that as soon as I have it.

Other People Dropping Bowling Balls
My buddy Jesse Cogswell (pronounced Cock-swell, not really) recent found a video of some people dropping a bowling ball off a pretty high roof. I can't believe it doesn't break or bounce! Also some wacko is dropping them on a car, wait thats a good idea!

Floating Balls
The ice finally melted and I was able to test the floating theory. Unfortunately she sunk like a bowling ball, so no dice on dropping them in the lake.

Big Red Button
Also this is a picture of the big red button that might be what we use to drop the bombs. Pretty sweet, curtise of Mr. Kult.

Delivery System2

Ok the B3C2 is about 99.9% complete. It currently has all of the features that I wanted. Safety zone, record playback, satellite display, etc. I just have to do some very minor polish. Then if I am lucky Mr. Hansen will provide me with some improved graphics. I will release version 1.0 sometime this weekend.

The Delivery System
Dan, Chris and I have been discussing different ideas for the delivery system. The requirements are as follows(optional requirements are bracketed[])
deliver_bomb_outside_aircraft
prevent_sideways_momentum
have_physical_safety_device
have_release_trigger
[triggered_by_computer_signal] has to be usb as there is no serial port on the laptop
[hold_multiple_bombs]

The physical safety device would not be removed until we are in the safety zone. The ideal system would allow us to hold down a consent switch telling the computer we are ready for launch. But then the computer would decide when to drop the bomb based of the time to release(TREL). This would also allow us to factor out any sort of human error or human delay. In addition, it would be easier to complete the mission with three people instead of four. Different plans have been submitted by Mr. Kult and Mr. Riegel and are currently under review :).

The Normandy Recon Mission has been canceled for this week due to maintenance on the aircraft. It has been rescheduled for Thursday of next week. At that time we will take measurements for the Delivery System, which by the way needs a sweet acronym. If you can think of one email me or comment below.

B3C2 updates

GPS
The gps is installed and working like a champ. I tested it by adding 500 feet to whatever the gps reports for altitude, then drove around in my car like I was flying. This allowed me to test the direction and the time to release and it seemed to work really well.
Kult's equations
I installed Dan's equations into the ballistic model and they worked like a champ. At 500 feet there was a difference of 60 feet between his model and my not nearly as fancy model. So hopefully no matter how you look at it we are 60 feet more accurate now.
This Week
I need to clean the gps code up a little as well as get some sort of gps record going. Wednesday Josh and I are going to recon Normandy and see if its a valid location. Also this should give us a chance to test the B3C2 in the actual aircraft for the this first time. I hoping the gps signal will be more accurate when we are in a plane. Finally, I am expecting to get a picture back from the patch people on exactly what the patch will look like.

Recon Mission 1 and Pumpkins

First order please vote to the right, if you can come both days, vote for both. Also, my grandmother(who is almost 80) helped us test bowling ball skip theory. A) She didn't skip and B) We will have to paint a ball red in her honor.

Recon Mission 1
I flew over Cantasplash a few times and checked things out. It was a little windy so I wasn't able to go slower than 100 knots(but with the wind my ground track was probably only 80ish), but easily got as low as 400 feet. I think we have plenty of room there to be completely safe. Mission two will be later this week and we should hopefully be able to fly slower and check out Normandy.

Pumpkins!
I was searching around and found some fellow crazies that dropped pumpkins out of a plane and tried to hit a target. They had news coverage and everything. Notice 1) How close the bystanders are, and 2) No one dies!!! This video helped negate my fear of killing someone, spending the next 10 years of my life in jail, and ruining my life, just to drop a stuff out of a plane. I was thinking we need to fly out to their second annual one and use all our sweet software, etc., and show them how its done.

Dan Kult is almost as obsessed as me
I am sure you are all surprised but Dan has become pretty obsessed(in a good way) about the bomb dropping). He has been looking into adding sensors into the bombs, as well as making cartoon images of me(I am not sure how to interpret this).

Crew
So I am trying to figure out who is going to be in the flight crew and am running into the problem that everybody weighs too much. We basically have 680lbs for crew and payload.

Position	Person	Weight	Comment
Pilot	Dan Cooke	190lbs	I am going to try to lose 15 pounds
Navigator	Dan Kult	165lbs	Already a lightweight
Bombardier	Anand Mody	150lbs	I think this a little high
Video/Safety	Maybe my brother	195lbs	He would have to lose a few pounds
Bombs,Laptop,Delivery System		50lbs	This will be as much as we can carry
Totals		750lbs	70lbs over, if we lose some weight we should be ok.

So Cameron had the idea that we could go on multiple runs, not a bad idea depending on how far away our base camp is from the target. Then we could have multiple Bombardiers.
Also if any one is interested my buddy Mike Cochran got my B3C2 to run on linux, here is the command line instruction:
sudo apt-get install mono libmono-winforms2.0-cil; mono b3c2.exe

Dan Kult, Mark Hansen, and so much more

Dan Kult
Dan has submitted an admirable entry for the Mission Patch, but it's probably a little bit too photo realistic. Remember this path is going to be embroidered. Dan also found time in his busy schedule to send me a 5 page document on how to redo my ballistics model which can be found here. I still have to take the time to digest it and attempt to translate it into the B3C2, but its a huge step up from my simple physics. I am sure Dan's next idea will be to strap a pumpkin cannon to the aircraft some how, but who would do that? I mean dropping bowling balls from a airplane is totally normal, but the pumkin thing is just weird.

Mark Hansen
Our tall friend from the desert has agreed to improve upon my graphics in the B3C2. Right now I am just using the simple C# draw functions and even when I run the application at a piddly 5hz, the graphics can flicker quite a bit. Mark has agreed to redo the graphics in openGL or DirectX which should look much nicer. He also has brought to my attention two things A) Bowling balls might float and B) Bowling balls might skip on the water. Both will have to be tested, although the second will be harder to test. If they float that would mean we could drop them into the lake, and if they skip(which would be sweet), we are OK because the Cantasplash target is on the far end of the lake.

Bowling Ball Bomb Central Computer (B3C2)
I have made some major improvements to the B3C2 software and you can click on any of the B3C2 links or here to download it.
The controls are as follows:
g will start the simulation
p will pause the simulation
+ will increase the speed
- will decrease the speed
spacebar will drop the bomb
Basically I am faking the GPS data as soon as you hit g. Then you can hit spacebar to simulate when the bomb would have been dropped. This starts the time to impact countdown, which actually counts down to -10 seconds so that the data is displayed for a longer period of time. The B3C2 is fully functional minus GPS support. I plan on adding more features like record play, back, Mark's improved graphics, Dan's ballistics, to name a few. If you want to help just let me know, I am setting up a CVS repository. If you are like "CVS what?" don't worry about, you can help build the delivery system.

Locations and Mission Patches

Location, Location, Location
First is the second location, which I am going to call Normandy (I am going to call the lake location Cantasplash). Josh Norman, an old high school buddy, who thinks he is Brett Favre, and can't beat me in video game football, has volunteered his family's 20 acres. It just so happens to be right next to the glider club that I am going to join. The positives about Normandy are that we can drop bowling balls, we won't have to worry about asking boats to get off the lake, and the power lines etc. over in that area are well marked because of the glider club. The negative is that is mostly forest, so bad site lines, and it is smaller. Either way we now have two recon missions to do, Normandy and Cantasplash.

Normandy
Lat: N42 27' 22.13"
Long: W 84 03' 54.92"
Alt: 910ft

Mission Patches
Second order of business is I want to design a mission patch for everybody that contributes to the B5Q in one way or another. Here is my very quicky design without color or anything else. If anybody is more artistic then me and wants to design the patch then let me know. It will earn you a patch :).

Delivery System

I have had a few questions about, how we are going to drop the bomb. First we are going to drop it out of a Cessna 172 that I will be flying. Yes I have my pilot license and yes this is legal (see to the right FAR 91.15). Second we are going to build a delivery system that is essentially like two rails that the bomb will roll down and out the bay door in the aft part of the cockpit. As you can see the door is below both the Wings and the elevators in the back of the airplane(it is actually on the left side of the plane). Also it is behind the landing gear, propeller, and wing spars. Which means its highly unlikely that after we drop the bowling ball(or cantaloupe) that it will damage anything, and it most certainly won't damage anything important. Also it is important that the rail system has a stop at the end that prevents any side to side motion when the bomb leaves the aircraft. We want to make sure that the path of the bomb is the same as the path of the aircraft. I also plan to have a safety bar that will not be removed until we are in a safe zone.
More coming later this week about an alternate site that may allow us to actually drop bowling balls.

Math, For Fun!!!

So in order to be safe and make sure we don't kill/maim anyone, I am trying to do as many calculations ahead of time as possible. Below I have embedded a google spreadsheet that lets me calculate the distance the cantaloupe will travel in the air, how long it will be in the air, it's speed at impact, and how many feet we will miss by for every sec we are off. I am estimating we will be between 200ft and 500ft when we drop, and traveling 60-80 knots. The recon missions will determine the exact height and speed.


As you can see if we are traveling at 60 knots we can expect to miss by 100 feet for every second we screw up. Wow, you say if you drop it 1 second early you will miss by 100 feet! Really if you think about its not that much. If you look at the photo below you can see we have 4,400 feet to work with, which will give us a window of 44 seconds of safety. As long as we don't drop it more than 26 seconds early or 18 seconds late, we are safe. Also all of you who are asking the question, "What about wind?", my fighter pilot friends have told me that a bomb that is in the air for less than 6 seconds will not be affect by the wind. If you look above 500 feet gives us a time of 5.59 seconds.
Note: So I don't get ten comments, wind will affect the ground speed so I will factor that in.

Mission Planning

So one day a bunch of Boeing engineers were sitting at Bandanas, arguing about whether a 1000lb bomb or a 500lb was dropped on a terrorist. The comment was made that it didn't matter, they could have dropped a bowling ball on him and he would have been dead. The rest as they say is history.

So from that idea spawned the Bowling Ball Bomb Barbeque (B5Q). The dream is to one day build a temporary structure and try to drop bowling balls on it. Since I can't find anyone who will let me drop a bowling ball on their property, we are going to start with dropping cantaloupe into a lake.

Target Information
Latitude: N 42° 24' 54.09"
Longitude: W 83° 56' 06.22"
Altitude: 840ft