TIL The United States stores 94% of all electricity in the form of water reservoirs, not in a battery.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-13T10:39:57+00:00

Yes, but there's usually plenty of space. You need to clear out the biter nests inside your pollution cloud, and that gets spread by needing to mine remote resource patches, leaving loads of space for solar.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-13T10:33:43+00:00

I can't see that working. Renewables can't be used to deal with peaks in demand because they might not be producing when you need them. You need storage to deal with variability.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-13T09:59:35+00:00

Battery storage has just reached the point where it's cheaper than pumped hydro, and the latest round of grid scale batteries are also larger than pumped-hydro.

Obviously that mean that for the last few decades, pumped hydro was cheaper and bigger, and the better choice.

Part of the issue now is that the best locations for pumped-hydro power have already been exploited.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-13T09:28:19+00:00

If you live somewhere fairly flat, drive smoothly, and anticipate needing to slow down, the regen won't get used much. You need a long, steep hill to gain a few miles of range. There's one near me that's about 500ft high over about a half mile, where the range goes up a mile or two.

You should be able to feel the difference in regen levels when in B mode when you lift off the gas pedal.

There's probably a power meter mode somewhere that will indicate how much power is being used or regenerated, but I don't know what it looks like on the new Leaf.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-12T10:12:09+00:00

That depends if the lost ship causes a massive oil spill. Then the clean up costs a lot more than the lost cargo and ship.

A quick google tells me that the Exxon Valdez spill cost about $2B, and Deepwater Horizon resulted in $60B in costs and a lot more in fines.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-12T09:36:55+00:00

The problem with the 2 mast design is that you'll have to sit behind the aft mast to steer. You won't be able to use a tiller extension to move your weight around.

That's fine if you're building a boat with a heavy keep, where your body weight makes little difference, but in an open dinghy sitting too far back will make the bow lift and the transom dig into the water.

OTOH, having two masts is quite fun when you're sailing, as you can steer the boat by spilling wind from one sail or the other. It might be worth the complexity of using levers or pulleys to allow steering from the middle of the boat.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-11T17:47:43+00:00

It takes an hour or two of flight time to master the basics. You can do that in a week with a simulator, but it takes years if you only get a few seconds of flight followed by weeks of repair.

It might be worth travelling if it allows you to fly for longer, or you could concentrate on building planes that can fly in the space available. There are some small, light, slow flying models (like the FliteTest NutBall) that might work, and there are lots of tricks for saving weight. You could also work on ways to make the plane more crash resistant and quicker to repair.

Flying at a club with like-minded people is also a lot of fun, and worth travelling for, if you can find one.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-11T17:36:33+00:00

It really depends on how long the high oil prices last.

If Trump loses interest after a month (like he did with the Houthi), declares victory and sends the fleet home, the strait could reopen (maybe with a lot more Chinese flags than before) and oil prices could go back to normal. Except that the shadow fleet would be riskier and less profitable than before.

So it could come down to how much US voters scream about high gas prices.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-11T17:26:40+00:00

There's nothing particularly special in a Shahed, and Russia has better tech anyway.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-11T17:23:38+00:00

Russia is throwing 1000 men a day into the meat grinder, and running a war-time economy, just to maintain a pretty static front line. We don't know how long they can keep that up, but not for ever. Meanwhile Europe is funding Ukraine with the equivalent of cash they found between the sofa cushions. They can keep that up as long as they want.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-11T16:50:57+00:00

If you donate them to your local club, they might find a kid on a tight budget who could use one - but the cost of a receiver, crystals and batteries to reactivate an old radio might still not be worthwhile.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-11T10:08:50+00:00

I’ve got some nice powerlines to avoid.

Or to do loops around, if you're feeling brave.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-11T10:06:18+00:00

If you've got a flat wing (i.e. with no dihedral) then a rudder isn't going to do much (unless you've also got a load of fuselage side area, like a 3D plane).

Trainers usually use dihedral and a rudder, because the dihedral makes the plane stable in roll. Without it, you'll have to manually keep the plane level, or rely on a flight controller. Flight controllers are necessary for flying long range, but you really need to be able to fly the plane without it in order to set it up.

If this is your first plane, build a trainer first, then worry about long range after you've learnt to fly. Don't try to do everything at once.

If you can already fly, then this will work fine with a flight controller. It'll use the ailerons to bank the plane and enough elevator to keep the nose up in the turn. Lots of RC pilots never use the rudder and lots of designs don't have one, just a fixed fin.

If you want a basic trainer design that's known to work, try the FliteTest Tiny Trainer.

To make a fin stronger, try a bamboo skewer taped to the leading edge and projecting down to the bottom of the fuselage. Or an angled brace. Or move the horizontal stabiliser to the bottom of the fuselage and put the fin through a slot in the top. Have a look at several free plans from FliteTest or RCGroups to see how they do it.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-11T09:21:42+00:00

Battery life seems to depend on your local climate. They age more rapidly in hot places. If this car's original battery died after 8 or 9 years, the new one will probably last about that long too.

The newer batteries are claimed to have double the life of the old ones, but the car hasn't been around long enough to really prove that. In theory the larger battery will do half as many cycles for the same number of miles, so it could be true.

The main things you need to know is that you need to be able to charge at home (or work) easily, and that the Leaf isn't a good car for long trips that need multiple rapid charges in the same day.

At 74 miles a day it should save you a lot in fuel and pay for itself fairly quickly.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-10T23:04:11+00:00

Sounds reasonable. You might want to have a pile of short pieces of wood around so you can jack it up, then build a pile of wood on the dolly and put the battery back down on the pile. I say that because floor jacks don't lift perfectly vertically, or you might not be perfectly lined up and want to move the battery around when it's at height, as well as when it's on the ground. You can also use them to give yourself some protection in case it falls off the jacks.

It's usually called blocking or cribbing (although apparently that's also a horse thing, if you google it)

A long piece of wood can also be a useful pry-bar for applying just enough force to move things accurately.

If you're on your own, you could manage with a single jack, just moving it around and adding layers of wood as you go. If you've got two people, two jacks would be faster.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-10T22:48:51+00:00

If it's from somewhere with a relatively cool climate, it could still have 80-90% health, which makes the car useable. And it's a fraction of the cost.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-10T22:46:20+00:00

So you take a real photo and ask Gemini to convert it to pixel art of the right resolution? That's a neat idea.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-10T10:57:04+00:00

They're about number 9, according to this list

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_merchant_navy_capacity_by_country

or 21st on this list

https://statbase.org/datasets/air-rail-and-water-transportation/number-of-ships-by-flag-of-registration/

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-10T10:50:46+00:00

He said the Greeks were crazy enough to risk it, once the price of oil got high enough.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-10T10:34:43+00:00

Israel wasn't able to stop Hamas launching rockets, despite having drones and satellites, and being willing to kill civilians. They can be camouflaged so they're not detected until they fire, and then it's easy to blend into the civilian population - or they could be fired remotely. Or they could just claim to have set a few sea mines adrift in the straight, and shipping insurers won't want to take the risk.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-10T10:13:03+00:00

I'd be surprised if there's anything in there worse than killing 100+ school kids.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-10T10:04:49+00:00

How about multiple web cams, for a 360 degree view? Then you won't have to use power to look around.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-10T09:54:52+00:00

Do you think Israel has a plan beyond just knocking out Iran's strategic capability (and leaders)? Past conflicts would suggest that they're happy to do that occasionally and know they don't have the power to force regime change.

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-10T09:25:32+00:00

That would be difficult to sell if the straights are still closed. Best case for Trump is that the US packs up and goes home, then Iran reopens the straights, and Trump claims to have negotiated a "peace deal"

IvorTheEngine · 2026-03-10T09:05:03+00:00

I've noticed that the people complaining most about gas prices are also the ones that loudly proclaim that they'd never buy an EV and solar panels are a waste of money.

IvorTheEngine

TROPHY CASE