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