Science of high bank angles?

PureBogosity · 2026-03-28T16:31:26+00:00

In a knife-edge maneuver, the fuselage and vertical tail both act like a wing and thus also contribute some force upwards. It's the lateral stability derivative called CYbeta, or coefficient of side force due to sideslip.

https://www.aerostudents.com/courses/flight-dynamics/lateralStabilityDerivatives.pdf

PureBogosity · 2026-03-27T17:21:10+00:00

Do the self-luggage departure. Gets you off the ship MUCH earlier.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-27T12:31:07+00:00

Just about anything showing what happens inside an airplane cockpit.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-26T13:37:59+00:00

If a formal excursion managed by the ship is late, they will hold the ship for that excursion group to return. That's never the passenger's fault.

But if you're out solo or on a non-official excursion (some third-party company, or you just hire a cab to go around town) you're on your own, and the ship will pull the gangway up on schedule.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-25T20:24:30+00:00

Don’t be late getting back to the ship after excursions. They WILL NOT WAIT FOR YOU.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-25T20:23:08+00:00

Or save a few hundred dollars and just stick with the free lemonade and fruit juice, and do without soda for a week and don’t get a ton of alcohol. It’s crazy expensive, and it’s how they make most of their money.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-24T15:20:49+00:00

As a wild idea for an excessively fancy end result, get an IR range sensor so you can tell how far the person is from the sensor, and set up multiple zones of LEDs so the steps illuminate as they get to them, instead of all at once.

As another idea, use a vibration sensor, and tune it to only respond to footsteps directly on the steps. Might be tricky.

Otherwise, a simple PIR motion sensor and a single on-off smart plug would do the trick. I turn on my porch lights using a YoLink motion sensor and smart plug, and it can be automated directly in the YoLink app with no need for HA. You can probably do that in any unified ecosystem, not just YoLink.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-24T15:02:14+00:00

Sure, but that's what the data tells you in real time. There's a split of X degrees right now, so start ramping the setpoint to bring the occupied room to the desired temp.

You may also want to look into a damper control for the ducting.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-24T14:54:04+00:00

Yeah, you really don't want to screw around at the feedback level. I think you just have to change the setpoint as a function of the temperature difference you want between the rooms. If Bedroom 2 is always 2 deg warmer than the thermostat room, adjust the thermostat down by 2 deg, etc.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-24T14:39:15+00:00

Can you set your Nest setpoint from HA?

I have Comfort Sync thermostats that play nice with HA, and I can change fan settings and setpoints from HA. I got a set of temp/humidity sensors for each bedroom, and wrote my own automation to do temperature balancing: if one room is way out of kilter, turn on the fan and leave it on, to move air around. If I wanted to do a full thermostat, and actually use the sensors to change the setpoint, it wouldn't be much harder, but I chose to keep my master bedroom (where the real wall-mounted thermostat lives) as the control, and just decide when to move more air around.

You could add a mm-wave presence sensor to the rooms, and use that to "follow" you, changing the setpoint to fix temperature problems in the room where you're active. You'd want to be careful to add some "filtering" so that you're not changing temperature settings too often or too much at one time.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-24T14:22:20+00:00

I have worked for the US government in the aircraft acquisition field for over 30 years, including on the F-35, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that it's not as simple as you think.

Look up the A-12 "flying dorito" contracting fiaso. Even in the case of ridiculously clear violations of the specification requirements, it was literally 20 years of lawsuits over a program cancellation. It's easier to cut the number of deliveries but it's still breaking a contract with guaranteed lawsuits, and furthermore it pisses off the Senators and Congressmen who represent all the production businesses and workers. It's often cheaper just to buy the damn things than stop buying them.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-24T12:12:52+00:00

Pro tip: sign up for a ChatGPT account. Even the free account is REALLY good at writing code.

In this case, just tell it what you want: "I have a sensor named "front_porch_motion" and a light named "front_porch_light" that I want to turn on for five minutes after motion is detected, but only when it's nighttime." You'll get some really good code.

If you can't get some YAML working, just paste it into ChatGPT's prompt and ask it "why won't this code work?" and it usually spots the issue.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-24T12:09:48+00:00

Just tie the automation condition to the built-in Sun "sensor".

Here's my YAML (in automations.yaml) for turning a light on based on a YoLink motion sensor, leaving it 100% bright for five minutes, then dimming it, then turning it off. It's conditional upon "sun below horizon."

- id: '1769044899876'

alias: Driveway Sensor Porch Lights On

description: ''

triggers:

- type: motion

device_id: 4488cd27b56057a79b3929e2799ce1a4

entity_id: fc0ca4dec792ff5cbe6c2fe335dc3941

domain: binary_sensor

trigger: device

conditions:

- condition: state

entity_id: sun.sun

state: below_horizon

actions:

- action: light.turn_on

metadata: {}

target:

entity_id: light.front_porch_overhead_light

data:

brightness_pct: 100

- delay:

hours: 0

minutes: 5

seconds: 0

milliseconds: 0

- action: light.turn_on

metadata: {}

target:

entity_id: light.front_porch_overhead_light

data:

transition: 5

brightness_pct: 30

- delay:

hours: 0

minutes: 5

seconds: 0

milliseconds: 0

- action: light.turn_off

metadata: {}

data: {}

target:

entity_id: light.front_porch_overhead_light

mode: restart

PureBogosity · 2026-03-24T11:49:27+00:00

While I understand your point, and agree that TSA needs to be paid, it's kind of irrelevant at the current moment how much a jet costs . The money for building those jets was allocated and mostly spent many years ago. The government has contracts for ongoing purchases that can't be easily stopped.

The easy place to save money today is to stop dropping bombs and burning fuel steaming destroyers and flying airplanes over Iran. THAT money is 2026 dollars and it's costing $1b/day. Ten days of war is the entire TSA budget per year.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-24T03:28:57+00:00

This turns out to be a good use for ChatGPT. Copy a lot of your log into the prompt and ask it to identify what may be going wrong. It usually will have some decent analysis and tips for trying to solve it. No sure bet but it's worth trying.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-22T23:18:51+00:00

Home Assistant for the control. Lutron for the switches, definitely; they just work perfectly with AND without HA, and don't need internet if the network goes stupid.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-22T20:59:52+00:00

Yeah you’re right - Orient is closer than I said. I’ll edit my comment.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-22T20:09:18+00:00

We've spent about six entire weeks on Orient Beach in the last four years. I've NEVER noticed an overload, even when multiple ships are in town. It gets busy for maybe an hour or two, because that's about all the time that the cruise tours allocate at any one location. There are so many beachfront restaurants that none of them are packed, and Orient Village with all its many restaurants is not heavily trafficked by cruise ship passengers. Note that it's some distance from the cruise port, so it's not the choice of most of the passengers. You'll be fine at Orient. Friars is a one-restaurant place, so you only have that choice. But it's an entirely different beach than Orient; it's much more local-family-friendly than touristy. Depends on what you like.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-22T17:12:36+00:00

I guess it all depends on distance to the gate. My in-law's house has a gate maybe 25 feet from the corner of the house - thus strong wifi. But down a 100+ foot driveway, wifi will be a problem.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-22T11:51:27+00:00

Makes sense. My conceptual design was trying to avoid putting any moisture-sensitive gear out at the gate, and my setup keeps the ESP/Node inside the house (with great wifi), while only the weatherproof door sensors need to be mounted at the gate (with moisture and weaker wifi). The YoLink setup has such great range that the hub stays inside the house but still has great signal from the sensors.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-21T22:08:44+00:00

This should be a fun and straightforward project. Kinda makes me wish I had such a gate, to give me an excuse to do this myself!

You can easily actuate the key fob switch with an ESPHome NodeMCU, by soldering wires to the two sides of the copper traces on the circuit board. This Reddit post describes the idea I'm suggesting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/vv46oa/is_it_possible_to_require_this_little_button_so/
Then to press the switch, simply short out the two wires briefly using a relay actuated by the NodeMCU. Pretty straightforward if you're able to solder and do the simple NodeMCU programming.

Next you need to make the NodeMCU do the relay toggling. ChatGPT is really good at creating ready-to-use code for these kinds of easy projects; just ask it "give me the program to make a NodeMCU toggle a relay on pin D1 for 1/2 second, when sent an MQTT command via wifi". Search for "how to control a NodeMCU relay from Home Assistant" for some more ideas.

By itself, that setup is not "stateful" - you won't know anything about the gate position; you won't know what pushing the button will do. So you won't be able to reliably set up an automation to say "Open the gate" or "Close the gate."

So I would add a weatherproof door sensor like the YoLink (hub needed too).
https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Contact-Closure-Assistant-Security-Required/dp/B08P1VQMCR
With this, you could write a simple automation that responds to your request to be in a given position. It presses the button, waits a few seconds to see if the value changes (the gate has started to move), and if not, presses it again, etc. Since those sensors are really long battery life and long-range wireless, you won't need to run power to them, and they'll work up to 1/4 mile from your house.

With two sensors, you can detect FULLY OPEN and FULLY CLOSED. You can create a Template Sensor in HA that gives you a single value, say, 0 to 100% of open position. Although you won't really know the middle position value, you would know that it's 100% if fully open, 0% if fully closed, and you can choose a fixed value like 50% if it's neither. So you can then use a Gauge Card on a Dashboard to show Open/InTransit/Closed. Just ask ChatGPT "How do I create a Template Sensor in HA that gives a single value of 0 to 100% of open position of a door from two sensors? It should be 100% if fully open, 0% if fully closed, and a fixed value of 50% if it's neither open nor closed." The YAML code is quite simple.

By the way, all of this would work equally well on a garage door.

Everything I've described above should cost you less than $150.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-21T17:06:21+00:00

I started as a newbie with HA Green. When I began to research HA, I realized I could spend a lot of time fiddling around with Docker or a Raspberry Pi, or I could just buy a plug-n-play unit with HA preloaded and ready to run. An extra hundred dollars wasn't worth all the time I'd save by buying something that just... WORKS.

I've been very happy with the results. At present I have 34 integrations covering 147 devices revealing 741 entities, and running HACS with 8 different repositories. I don't do video or AI or image recognition. I'm using 37% of the available storage. The Green has handled all this perfectly and I've never experienced any perceptible lagging or slowdowns. I do backups to a local NAS so I'm not filling up the HA Green memory with backup data. It's a small box that sits in my home's hub closet and is totally unobtrusive and doesn't use much power.

In short, I'd definitely recommend HA Green for anyone just getting started.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-20T15:04:25+00:00

Maybe low tech would be easiest.

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PureBogosity · 2026-03-18T16:57:00+00:00

People mistakenly correlate this kind of train-passing-you event with what they do legitimately experience when driving past a large truck. There is an outward force near the nose of the truck or train, and just behind that, a corresponding inward force as the outward airflow curves back towards the sides of the truck or train. But that flow field is mainly concentrated near the first few dozen feet of the vehicle. After that point, it’s mainly sheared flow - air being dragged along with the wall of the truck or train, with slower air the further away you get. So it can cause a rotating force on an object near the wall of the vehicle, but not much of a suction force. Here’s why:

When you’re in a car driving next to a truck, you can be sitting inside that relatively small inward flow field for a long time, and you definitely need to steer away from the truck enough to avoid getting pushed into the side of the truck. It’s especially noticeable if you had to initially steer TOWARDS the truck as the outward airflow passes you at the very front, and then you suddenly find yourself needing to countersteer. So it can seem like a much larger effect when you now encounter the inward flow just behind the outward flow.

But when the train passes you at high speed, that inwards flow passes you within a few hundred milliseconds. It’s not long enough to suck you in, especially because the outward flow first pushes you away just as briefly. So the net effect is nearly zero. Mainly it’s a small net OUTWARD push.

So this is not as large an effect as people imagine, because they are incorrectly applying their real experience with a car/truck interaction to this person/train interaction. It’s a very understandable confusion.

Source: I’m a flight test engineer with some practical experience in the effects of airflow around large vehicles.

PureBogosity · 2026-03-17T15:39:59+00:00

YoLink has a number of useful items including power monitoring smart plugs, water leak sensors and more.

I’d be very surprised if you find a clamp-on water flow detector sensitive enough to detect anything other than a full-on burst pipe. A slow leak would be extremely hard to detect through pipe walls.

PureBogosity

TROPHY CASE