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Date: September 9, 2007
Days left until R2LA V: 20
Today was another one of those CRAZY busy days! I spent almost the entire day in the garage, and got a ton accomplished! It was truly a great day, and I'll tell you why:
Today is the day that Matt Munson won the battle of the dome!!!!! For those readers who thought that the nightmare that is the dome would NEVER end, your day has come. I've written time and time again about what a collossal pain in the rear this thing has been. Seems like something goes wrong at every turn. Today, I put that all behind me.
For the time being!!
Though not visually very interesting, I should point out first of all that the shims I glued on yesterday are all cured, and are holding quite fast to the legs. yay!
But who cares about the legs! My goal for today was to finish the dome. This thing has been dragging on forever, and by my calculations, the only remaining task is to get the electronics installed and a few macro tasks completed. Shouldn't be too bad.
The day started off with 'Pot run, where I got some velcro and velcro straps. These are to hold the batteries in place inside the dome. I had originally envisioned a much more ornate way of holding the batteries, but I deemed it too much trouble. After all, I think a more simple solution will work just fine. And if it doesn't, I can always come back and change it.
What I was NOT ready to give up on was my idea for the main control panel for the dome electronics. I started building a little box for it the other day, and finished it today. I wired it all up, soldered it, and used shrink wrap on all the connections. I love that stuff, by the way. Highly recommended.
Flash forward a number of hours, and here's the final results. This is the inside of my dome, showing the control panel (held in place with epoxy), the rear logic board on the right, and the batteries for the holo projector on the left. Each of the batteries is held in place two ways. There's a strip of industrial strength velcro on one side, and then a velcro strap that runs around the battery, and through the ring that is welded to the inside of the dome. I think that should keep them in place. I distributed the batteries fairly equally around the dome, so that it won't be weighted too unevenly.
Here's another shot of the inside of the dome, showing the front logic display, front PSI, working holo projector, and battery.
And speaking of "turning out really well", here are a couple of "state of the union" pictures showing progress on R2 so far.
Here's the dome, with all of the holo-projectors and radar eye installed. The body is almost done. The only thing not installed in this picture are the two center vents, the power couplers, and the octagonal ports. Once those are in, the body will be done. Save for the installation of electronics, natch.
The back side of the dome, just to cover all the bases.
So today really was a landmark day for me. The dome is just about done, and that's a beautiful thing. I still have to give it a good cleaning, as there's a lot of dust and junk on it, and there's a couple little spots I'd like to polish out, but I'll leave that for last. The main engineering work on the dome is behind me, and that makes for one very happy R2 builder.
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Yup, it sure ain't pretty. But it works like a mofo! I had a mis-hap with one of the buttons AFTER I got everything installed. I guess when I soldered one of the switches, I got it too hot and melted something in the switch. It made the switch kind of "moody", and it sometimes would not turn off without an additional flick or two. That would simply NOT do. By some grace of whomever created R2, I had a replacement switch on hand. My design allowed for quasi-easy replacement of the switch, so it all turned out really well.
