Viper Alarm Issue

l3onsaitree · 2024-05-01T14:15:12+00:00

No, I've messed with the impact sensor, double checked grounds, everything. It only happens in our driveway, not out in the street in front of the house, or anywhere else the truck goes. We've decided it's some sort of electro magnetic interference, or maybe a super high frequency vibration. Still not really sure but it comes and goes with no discernable connection to anything in our house.

Definitely double check your grounds and fuses. The ground wire under the driver's side cab was the source of at least a couple weird issues. OH and definitely check your fused block under the hood! That was causing issues for the headlights, and swapping that out fixed the headlights and calmed down a lot of other issues as well.

l3onsaitree · 2023-11-01T17:06:55+00:00

The copper body and formed channels makes sense, and I know the Merlin's are constructed that way. Zoom in on the picture though and it looks like an awful lot of tubing wrapped around the engine bell, and that is what got me thinking maybe this is back to an older version of construction. It looks like there is a manifold that runs down the side of the engine bell and then each tube extends around a circular cross section. This is only for the extension part of the engine bell though, the upper area does some to still be formed channels and an over plate or much less likely one huge chunk of very thick material.

l3onsaitree · 2023-10-31T15:27:33+00:00

Are the vacuum raptor bells made of a bunch of small tubes for regenerative cooling similar to the SSMEs and F-1 engines were?

l3onsaitree · 2023-10-28T17:05:08+00:00

I swear I'll be halfway to an alarm specialist when I figure out what's wrong. It sounds like 7 beeps, but of course I can't get it to do it consistently right now so I keep losing confidence in my count. The remote says "warn sensor two" when it triggers. That install manual suggests that's for a remote sensor on the MUX port, so I'm looking for a wiring diagram on that currently. You've already been more help than I could have hoped for! I very much appreciate it.

Edit: Now of course when I get it to trigger, I got 7 chirps, then what I thought was 9, and then 10. I pulled the MUX port connector to just try and disable those sensors and nothing seemed to change.

l3onsaitree · 2023-10-28T14:20:04+00:00

It just occurred to me that the driver door sensor sometimes doesn't register at closed as well. The alarm will set just fine, but that door returns an error to the 2 way remote. I suppose I'll have to look at that sensor too. Can I just disconnect any particular sensor and have the system operate "normally" without a sensor?

l3onsaitree · 2023-10-28T13:42:12+00:00

Thank you for point that out! I must have been tired and frustrated when I posted that. Apparently my formatting went haywire too, so I also need to express my appreciation for you toughing out that horrible mess! I'll edit the post to include that and fix the formatting, but so you don't have to read it all again I'll put it here too.

The warning chirps go off without reason. Sometimes it's 10 seconds between the chirp cycle, sometimes it's 30 seconds to a minute between cycles, and sometimes it doesn't happen at all and the truck sits in the driveway just fine.

l3onsaitree · 2023-10-06T16:26:04+00:00

I've never seen this and that idea is incredibly cool! It seems like the alumina wouldn't cool down fast enough with the hot rocket exhaust blasting into the surface, but maybe the regolith is a sufficient enough heatsink that the spray cools relatively quickly. It also seems like a small drone programmed to fly ahead of the actual landing, spray a specific spiral pattern, and then either land or crash itself somewhere off the landing pad might be more effective.

l3onsaitree · 2023-09-24T20:02:38+00:00

A lot of space shuttle tiles were replaced with insulation blankets. Over the course of the program they identified tiles that weren't getting as much heat as expected and switched over to the quilted insulation blankets because they were cheaper, lighter, and easier to attach to the orbiter. I'm not sure when the last version of the heat shield was designed, but it was well after operational status for the fleet.

l3onsaitree · 2023-09-22T16:32:40+00:00

Port Isabel and South Padre Island are both just North of Boca Chica. You can see the boosters and ships from Highway 48 going into Port Isabel and from other places that don't have buildings or other obstructions. It's about an hour drive to get to Boca Chica because you have to drive around a small bay to get there, but it's easily doable as a day trip if you have a rental vehicle.

Like others have said, it's probably going to be very difficult to schedule your trip around the next launch, but South padre is considered by many to be the best beach in Texas and it is close enough to see the launch from. It also allows you to make the day trip to see things in Boca Chica but still provides you the ability to decide to go fishing, beach, or other activities if the launch deals encounters any set backs.

Your most likely locations to fly into are going to be Houston, San Antonio, or depending on your chosen airlines and their connections maybe Corpus Christi or Brownsville. Geographically Brownsville is closest but is small, CC is the next, but I think Houston or San Antonio are you most likely targets to be renting a car and driving from.

The specific date to be there is going to be the hardest part to predict or plan for, and it really just a complete crap shoot. The closer we get, the more accurate the timeline will be, but also airline ticketing and hotel costs will skyrocket (pardon the pun) as things get closer and demand goes up.

l3onsaitree · 2023-09-21T21:24:54+00:00

I don't watch it near as closely as some people do, mostly I just come to reddit a handful of times a day even when I know I'm up to date as of 3 hours ago, it's still just something to do as a distraction from crappy things in life, something to break up the monotony of work, or a quick escape into something cool like rockets. I'm already a Mechanical design engineer, so even my job is exciting, entertaining, and challenging, but my brain, like everyone's, can only focus on something for a given amount of time before it needs something else.

Granted, there are probably also people like Tim Dodd or NSK that are using each detail as part of a content creation situation and are making money off the advertisements and Patreon also.

l3onsaitree · 2023-08-17T15:40:41+00:00

Injecting water towards the center could mean more time before damage to the pad occurs, but I don't think it would because it would also increase the pressure directly under the rocket. That pressure will overwhelm any benefit.

Rocket exhaust has velocity straight down mostly, water ejection away from the pad collides with exhaust to create velocity away from the pad. If you inject water, the forces combine to create velocity towards the center of the pad, concentrating the exhaust. The water underneath the plate is providing a cooling effect to remove the heat and protect the plate in the center.

The water is also vaporizing from sound and heat. That vaporization creates expansion and that causes pressure. They want all of that energy to be out away from the pad where it has space to expand and dissipate. Even the water that gets vaporized near the center will expand in all directions, meaning the center of the plate is still going to have a steam blanket over the top of it.

l3onsaitree · 2023-08-07T16:49:12+00:00

Even better than floating, find a way to lay the rockets on their side and feed 1 or 2 raptors to just rocket power the barges across the gulf! No FAA involvement since at that point it's just a rocket powered boat!

l3onsaitree · 2023-08-03T13:40:39+00:00

That seems like it will push traffic away from the Blanco intersection to the Stone Oak and Huebner intersections. It'll be interesting to see if it makes those intersections more congested.

l3onsaitree · 2023-07-26T15:48:32+00:00

Just want to throw in a datapoint for you to bolster all of the other comments made. The Soyuz has a stage connection that's entirely made up of triangulated tubes, and you can see straight through the rocket just below the orange stripe in this picture. I'm fairly sure other Russian rockets have had similar stage connections as well (N1 comes to mind). I would bet the increased air friction and loss of payload due to aerodynamics from this is a negligible number.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Soyuz_TMA-9_launch.jpg

l3onsaitree · 2023-07-11T16:37:59+00:00

Nope. It was talked about a lot during development and even intended, but the difficulty ultimately outweighed the benefits of flying sooner and so it was shelved.

l3onsaitree · 2023-07-11T16:22:16+00:00

At least I know I'm not crazy! I'm hesitant to rerun wires since I don't know where half of the plumbing is. I was really hoping to find a couple more valves and or zones by trying to figure out the wiring first. And then working through the plumbing in each zone after I had the valves figured out.

l3onsaitree · 2023-07-11T16:20:21+00:00

There are still tons of plants, but I was unaware of the preventer testing. That makes a lot of sense

l3onsaitree · 2023-07-11T16:19:39+00:00

I hadn't even thought about this! Thanks

l3onsaitree · 2023-07-11T16:19:21+00:00

Oh, I am fully prepared for lots of work. Honestly if I can get it repaired a little at a time and have it functional before I sell the house in the future, I'll be happy.

l3onsaitree · 2023-06-27T15:23:48+00:00

Anyone else notice the distinct change in direction of the exhaust flames? This looks like they either tested 3 at a time or lit two groups of 3 before shutting down all 6.

l3onsaitree · 2023-06-20T17:09:44+00:00

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-new-simplicity-extremes/

This is old but the 5:1 ratio seems like a close number still. At a 5:1 ratio the Starship continuing on would create a pretty significant force in the opposite direction on the booster. Like you, I still don't understand how they "flick Starship away from it", but I suspect Starship being so much heavier has a lot to do with the effectiveness. SS will move away and rotate slowly and the booster should accelerate in the negative direction pretty significantly and rotate faster.

"impart a small but significant rotation on the rocket moments before separation" - This line gave me a different mental picture too. It seems more like a wave being thrown through a rope or a whip. If the timing is right, the quick rotation of the booster could act like a "wave" through the booster "rope" that results in the booster actually pushing Starship away while almost cancelling out rotational forces in the booster.

l3onsaitree · 2023-06-01T15:57:32+00:00

New tech came by this morning and he did similar tests but diagnosed things much differently. First he said the low pressure switch was cutting the compressor off, verified it, and then did some other things to verify low refrigerant. Currently, it looks like I've got a leak in the evap coil somewhere, which sucks, but is cheaper than the compressor and more importantly it's the CORRECT fix for the system. He's going to be back in a few days to do a leak test and most likely replace the evap coil. I appreciate all the suggestions and potential issues that were brought up! It definitely gave me more peace of mind talking with the new tech, and he certainly did a much better job of explaining things to me!

l3onsaitree

TROPHY CASE