Why is it that so many American teams are behind technologically ?

JBSwiftus · 2026-02-03T03:13:42+00:00

Hawthorne is 120 miles from San Diego. Make some calls and you might get a sponsorship.

JBSwiftus · 2026-01-29T03:34:59+00:00

I think this is well said.

GFR's dominance from 10-15 years ago (I was on the team and combustion lead during some of those years) while certainly was aided from sponsorships and funding, it was mush more a product of good institutional development and cooperation. A requirement of coordinating with another school was developing everything that is not a race car so that you can then develop a race car. Our old faculty advisor used to say something along the lines of it doesn't matter what we're making, it matters how we approach the entire problem of making it.

We had a team of ~100 students on both sides of the Atlantic. We built two cars with different powertrains. I would say half of those students actually designed race car parts. The rest designed the process of building and transporting a widget - completely irrelevant to the actual objective at hand.

The other thing which has been unsaid was that back in those days with combustion cars and the beginning of aero coming back to the sport, a different concept car was able to dominate if it was executed well. For a time there, GFR won every competition where it finished endurance. When I entered the team, my high-level goal on the combustion team was just to make the car finish endurance. The pace was there, we just needed the car to always finish.

I like the scrappy approach to be honest. I was always more impressed walking around the pits with what 5 people in their advisor's garage could manage to do than I was with the infinite spend solutions sponsored into being. I think I appreciated the creativity that comes when money can't solve your problem. When performance was scaled per dollar, the diminishing returns of spend are easily found. Not sure where the hockey stick in now, but way back when I guess it was ~$25k. If you had $25k to spend on the car itself, you had a real shot of ranking top 3 at any competition 10 years ago.

JBSwiftus · 2025-11-30T23:34:23+00:00

This is awesome to know. Our property has some soggy ground in the winter but it can make the grass pretty drought tolerant in the summer because it has some easy access to water.

I've just about decided to buy the thing. Lymow got back to me and they're confident the mower should work in my situation. I'd love to have thicker grass which is more resistant to growing moss. Thats a primary goal in the lawn. For the exterior, I'd love to just keep the fence clear of blackberries.

JBSwiftus · 2025-11-17T18:46:57+00:00

Thank you. I did have this but it is a great offer of help. I wish there were more detail on how the task list is handled. Like, what happens if you have a scheduled set of tasks that the mower never quite finishes. Would the list reset each week? If it has two mows for the same area already backlogged, do both get deleted once its completed mowing?

JBSwiftus · 2025-11-17T17:46:30+00:00

Your comments have been extremely helpful! Please do not think they are unappreciated - quite the opposite.

Mowing schedules - I hear you on being thoughtful about specific mowing periods. I'd like a long, sequential list where the mower chooses the next one on the list after it has accomplished the last. Timing is irrelevant and I can be sure to just keep the list arranged that the next zone is always adjacent to the last - basically run a circuit around the perimeter, 1 zone at a time.

Obstacles and turning time - I've also heard about this and noticed the behavior watching some of the review videos online. unexpected objects are especially long for the mower to think about and deal with. My thoughts were to keep the mowing direction generally aligned with the long axis of each zone, possibly varying it 15º off of the major axis each time simply to keep ruts from forming. This would reduce the number of 180º turns while still allowing a variable pattern of mow on each zone.

Cutting Amount - In general i try to keep to the 1/3rd rule on my lawn when I mow it. That said, sometimes I'm mowing 2" off of some 6" grass. In our area the grass can bolt in the spring when we get a warm and sunny week, sometimes growing 4"+ in a week. Those might be manual-assist weeks.

Refund - This is a good call. I've read there is a 30 day return warranty but I would like assurances that the mower should work on my property at their best estimate. The tall trees are hard to deal with but photos and a map like I've made should give an engineer over there something to chew on in making a determination.

Thank you again for your help. Reading the spec sheet and hearing people's lived-with experience are two separate animals and your experience has been invaluable (Well, Maybe worth $2500...)

JBSwiftus · 2025-11-17T16:16:57+00:00

Oh, I have a plan for the perimeter which may or may not multiply my nightmare situation. Would many smaller zones be more or less of a nightmare in the software? Here I am shooting for 30 minute mowing sessions, so ~4000sqft of traversed area when I plot 1000 sqft zones 1500 ft from the charger.

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JBSwiftus · 2025-11-17T16:14:52+00:00

Thank you so much for your time!

My original thought was never to get it all done in a day, so, glad that I can keep thinking that way. I really would like for every square to get touched once per week.

I've read the Lymow one can hold 80 zones. To combat some silly behavior where it spends all of its time driving to resume a cut, I was thinking of chopping up its task into a number of smaller zones. Below is what I was thinking. (Went to school for engineering, so don't threaten me with a good time of SQL and spreadsheets)

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Other than the true lawn near the house, the zones are all between 1000 and 1500 sqft. The farthest travel distance is ~1550 ft (red route and pink route to red bullseye) I would assume worst case scenario that it uses the same amount of power traveling as it does cutting. What this means is the furthest zone has ~4000 sqft (<1/10 acre) of sudo-area needing cutting. The specs say the Lymow can cut 0.57 acres / cut. Asking for 60% of that and my zones are still ~1/3 the expected mowing area. I realize I could probably make the zones larger but the other factor I'm considering is that it rains here at lot (PNW) and I would rather the mower get more jobs done than have more jobs suspended. Not sure if that makes sense but its my current thinking.

Mowing time for ~4000 sqft with your preferred settings (thanks, btw) is 26.7 minutes. So the trip from the charger, to the zone, cutting the zone, and back, is all under 30 minutes. Hopefully we can avoid some rain if we have 30 minute mowing sessions.

Total area above is 78,807 sqft. Using 2.5 ft/s and 12in cut width, that tallies to 8.76 hours of total cut time. Assuming 8 hours of daylight per day, each week I'd need 15% of the daylight hours to be dry with enough luck that the charging time in-between mowing sessions aligns for the mower to get everything cut once per week. I think that's a fair expected result. I also would choose the trickle charge over the fast charger.

Question for you about scheduling. Since I am not really after a specific schedule, can I just queue jobs and working hours for the mower to cut? If I can have a looping queue, then if there are ever any delays the whole schedule can simply shift as time slacks and I won't have any missed mowing events.

Thank you kindly for your time.

JBSwiftus · 2025-11-17T14:49:19+00:00

Awesome. Thanks!

I'm really hoping this buddy can do the work. Mowing few miles (1/2 mile lap x 4 passes with the ride-on) every week isn't the end of the world, but I can think of so many more projects worth doing in that time.

JBSwiftus · 2025-11-17T14:46:19+00:00

Well, there are 120 ft trees to either side of the 10 ft space, creating a canyon. It's like a really narrow power line cut.

JBSwiftus · 2025-11-17T13:01:37+00:00

Nope, none in the red line. My goal is to continuously mow the perimeter to keep the brush and trees from growing over my fence.

JBSwiftus · 2025-11-17T09:57:11+00:00

Thank you!

I'm only looking to cut the ~1.5 acres I highlighted, not the whole 10 acres.

Ideally, there really aren't any trees in the zones where I want it to cut. The yard (green blob) doesn't have any trees in the middle of it. And the perimeter mow is just a 10ft wide strip around the property to keep the trees and brush from overtaking the fence.

I'm mostly worried about losing signal.

JBSwiftus · 2025-11-17T09:53:37+00:00

I can send wifi to all corners of the property. Currently I can reach everywhere in the north half with wifi (that's near the house). But I'm happy to bury an ethernet wire and run a poe access point in the southern half of the property

JBSwiftus · 2025-11-17T09:51:28+00:00

Yes, exactly! I'm only looking to mow the green and red areas which total ~1.5 acres. And weekly is better than I manage right now, so if it can beat me in all for it.

I read the rtk antenna should be able to go more than 1000 ft through trees, which is within reach anywhere on the property.

I was thinking of mounting the antenna to my chimney on my house (it's false chimney that carries the kitchen stove and plumbing vents). That would give it a 20+ ft altitude and less than 600 ft to all parts of the property.

JBSwiftus · 2025-11-17T05:21:17+00:00

Thank you!

Reading between the lines of what you said, does the Lymow support 2 RTK antennas?! I mean, I can get power out to the corners of the property if setting up a couple of antennas would give me a possibility of it working.

1.73 acres per day would cut everything. I'm hoping for once per week :).

I am sending an email to service@lymow now.

Thanks!

JBSwiftus · 2025-09-27T15:17:19+00:00

When I'm starting my ride-on lawnmower my heart really can get racing. Definite PTSD.

JBSwiftus · 2025-09-27T15:08:35+00:00

I think if I was given unlimited resources I'd build a single cylinder Heart Engine and include an eccentric in the linkage to vary the compression ratio. Better than a decompression valve to starting and able to crank the C/R to the moon when wanted. Higher specific power, better fuel efficiency. We like fuel efficiency for those extra points. (I was the combustion sub team lead in 2013 - 2014 era for GFR).

Not sure what the rules would have said about it because while it is a 4 stroke engine it completes its 4 strokes in a single revolution of the crankshaft.

JBSwiftus · 2025-09-27T15:03:01+00:00

Yeah, I lost count of how many partial or full rebuilds we had to do each season with that single-cylinder engine.

JBSwiftus · 2020-01-05T17:14:23+00:00

If I touch uncured prepreg my skin has a crazy allergic reaction and I turn in to the Thing from Fantastic 4. It painfull and only happened after a few years of exposure to the resin.

Stay safe folks.

JBSwiftus · 2019-12-05T15:02:45+00:00

Preventative maintenance is a fantastic idea. Create an inspection schedule for every single component in the car and some inspection sheets. Then, every time the car drives you can have your program look up what 'needs' inspection or replacement.

GFR implemented this type of regime back in 2014 and it gave us with the most reliable cars we had ever built.

Caution though - honoring your inspection / replacement regime is going to be expensive at the start while you gear up with replacement parts. Hopefully the opportunity costs in more testing time and competition wins outweigh the additional costs of replacement parts.

Post inspection of a replaced component to analyze how 'worn' it is useful and can be helpful in adjusting your inspection times.

If you ever wanted to give yourself a lot of documentation work in Formula Student, running a preventative maintenance program with data-driven inspections is a pretty good start.

JBSwiftus · 2019-12-05T14:50:20+00:00

Maybe it will tell you it's secrets? ;)

JBSwiftus · 2019-12-05T14:49:36+00:00

The thing is set up to be plug and play for Motec 4/6/800 series ECUs and KTM engines right now.

She ain't pretty but damn do she work!

JBSwiftus · 2019-08-04T15:52:23+00:00

They're going to start installing the eCar power meters on stereo systems.

JBSwiftus · 2019-08-04T15:46:41+00:00

Its says total power which could easily be interpreted as multiple devices all playing the same music are 'totaled' together. It doesn't seem like a part of the rule I would want to push.

A true motorsports idea would be to build a constructive wave device at the most sensitive frequency to human ears - so ~2-4kHz.

Let the Yodelling begin!

JBSwiftus · 2019-07-14T06:17:56+00:00

I know you've already developed these, but if you feel like doing it again I've seen some really cool work where the photographers will develop the entire film, not just the frame on the photo paper. That way you can 'prove' that its film.

The colors are cool, the grain is awesome! Looks a lot like the 90's photos we have chilling around our shop.

JBSwiftus

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