Date: July 29, 2007
Total hours spent today: 5

I feel like I'm swimming up stream! The dome is STILL killing me. This entire project should be called "Munson Vs. The Dome". I swear, that thing has been the most problematic part of the entire affair. Nothing against the maker of said dome. It's a fine dome. I'm just learning as I go, and the curve is pretty steep on this beast.

I ran another test on the dome electronics today. This battery lasted almost exactly eight hours. That's pretty darn good if you ask me. The battery is also small enough that it will fit nicely and easily in the dome. So that's cool. BUT, I was crusing around some other R2 websites today, and I noticed on one of them that the shima electronics I'm using can be ran as two separate packages, instead of one. Currently, both my front and rear PSI's and Logic Arrays run off ONE battery. That's twice the draw. So it occurred to me to split them up. That way, I can use the two really small SLA batteries to drive them, and I might get twice as much life as I got out of using a single one. Follow?? Either way, what it means to you and me is that there's another day of battery testing ahead.

This part is not very glamorous at all, but I'm painting the bolts that hold the skirt in place. Here they are, all masked off and zapped with a coat of etching primer. I also nailed them with a coat of white primer, so these should be ready for painting tomorrow.

And here's the beast I spoke of. UGH!! It took A LONG time to get all of that corrosion off. I started sanding it by hand, thinkging that the stuff would just lift right off. No such luck. So I switched to the mouse sander. This is AFTER spending about an hour peeling all of the clear coat off. The mouse sander did it's job after about an hour. Then I switched to hand sanding. I have NO idea where I went wrong last time, but this time, I'm going to try to stick to some advice offered online. I found a REALLY great faq online that has lots of "how to" information in it. It had a section on dome polishing. So I'm going to do it by the numbers, and see how it turns out.

Here's a link to that FAQ if you're interested.

I installed my dome drive motor and gear today. Only took a few minutes. Good stuff.

A while back, I was chastizing myself for modifying the feet. I milled out the ankle channel, thinking that I would want some extra room. Then, as I assembled R2, I realized that I had taken out too much. To fix this, I glued in a little styrene shim to take up the extra space. It was pretty thin, but it was enough to make the ankle fit in snugly. But now that the ankle has been painted and zapped with a clear coat, it's too wide to fit into the shimmed ankle. So I pulled out the shim. That Maxim glue I'm so happy with held the styrene in place really firmly. It took some doing to get it off, and then even more doing to strip the glue off the metal. Good to know the glue works so well. Then I sanded the area smooth.

While I had the foot on the bench, I took a closer look at it and decided to do some more finishing work to it. Since it was already destined for another coat or two of primer, I figured I'd clean it up a bit more.

Somewhere in the day, I made a trip down to Radio Shack to pick up these two battery holders. I'm going to power the front holo projector with three AA batteries. The flashlight that I gutted had three AAA batteries in it. If I'm not mistaken, AA and AAA batteries have the same voltage, so I should be fine. but the AA's will last longer. So I got a holder that will fit into the dome. I expect to use some good AA rechargables. Of course, this will require a time test!!!!

The whole thing MIGHT work with two batteries, so I got a container for those too, just in case.

And that about wraps it up. Tomorrow is going to be a paint day... I hope. I'm thinking I might simply put off dome work until the painting is done. Wait, I've gotta clear coat that sucker. Oh well. Back to the drawing board, I suppose. Thanks for reading!!