Marc's Public Blog

Funny, google now on my phone telling me I had to leave by 04:56 to get to the track :)

Burning Man shirts double as Thunderhill shirts I guess :)

this plane had short wings

that's some serious downforce wing/diffuser

Unfortunately, the higher temps caused my brakes to get way too hot. By lunch, I had to get them flushed after boiling the fluid:

it's actually a bitch to flush, you can't reach the inside without removing the wheels

ready for my testing after the flush

Flushing didn't help for long though, just one session was enough to overheat the brakes again. Post mortem showed that they got so hot that I damaged the metal on the rotors (turned blue), so they'll have to be changed too. My brake rotors were also measured at 750F when I got off the track. That's why outside the acceptable range, so there is nothing brake fluid can do at those temperatures.
The temperature also broke one of the tire sensors:

no, the tire wasn't really 77PSI

In the process, I managed to crack my rear license plate and pop out license plate lighting:

As a result of all this, I didn't post great times, and it was a bit frustrating, but I guess that's part of testing a new car. My car is back at the dealer, and they're now figuring out how to improve brake cooling and general performance of my brakes in high workload and temperature scenario.

The Aston Martin crew was invited, and showed off some of their racecars giving rides, and letting a few of us drive the cars for a few laps :)

pretty colors

view from inside

I only got a few laps to try it, I think my best one was around 2:02 but I was still learning how much more I could push the racecars with real brakes and tires:

On the plus side, Ditto from Got Blue Milk got awesome pictures of my car, including pictures of my air brake:

Oh yeah, and the battery on the plane I flew crapped out, so I was unable to fly home. Thanks to Frank for driving me home.

many cars in their shop

how many lotuses do you need? :)

drivers meeting

car lineup

And here are the cars I drove in sequence:

plenty of gadgets and graphs, I love those :)

and it has room for people in the... actually it doesn't :)

Unfortunately, the loop we got was shorter compared to the one we did the previous time, and there was a pace car in the front, so even when the road was empty, it held me up a little bit :), so I just gave everyone some space and room before going myself to get a bit of clear road.

The amazing part is that the following pictures are only 5 days apart:

Yum!

Dinner :)

Our previous attempt was several months ago, and this time it worked a bit better.

They had some nice Ikebana:

Jennifer also got to look into Calligraphy:

OMG, the pond has such cute little ducklings:

they look so helpless :)

I had no idea that their huge plane could fly on just 4 10HP motors. That is less than a fourth of the power than the average US car has, or my new car has 15 times more power than their entire plane! Note that it is a super efficient glider that only flies at 25-30kts (i.e. a very slow sleep and wind currents can push you much faster than it can propel itself). This is not about to take passengers across the Atlantic quite yet, but the idea is to work on milestones one piece at a time.

So far, they have flown over 24H by charging batteries during the day, climbing high, and gliding slowly down (1ft/sec) from very high altitude at night while using batteries to sustain flight when they are low enough that they should use power to maintain altitude.

Next, they're planning on flying across the US and their end goal is being able to fly around the world.

Bertrand and André, interviewed by Pablo, one of our local pilots

Next, we went to Moffett to see their plane (which had been brought inside a bigger plane and put back together). You have to see it in person to see how big it actually is:

The plane is about as wide as a 747 while the pilot cabin is smaller than the planes I fly. It was difficult get a picture from end to end in the dark hangar, but these pictures give some idea:

I got to see the materials they use, that was impressive in itself: super light but solid honeycomb, as well as foam. The spars are made out of super light carbon fiber, the same kind that goes in expensive supercars due to its strength to weight ratio:

the solar panels from sunpower are also super thin and super light

It was really cool to meet with Bertrand and André, and see their first plane. V2 is going to allow for 2 pilots, better avionics, and ability for pilots to stay airborne longer.

You can go to http://www.solarimpulse.com/#6914 to see how the plane was rebuilt at Moffett. From there, they are planning on flying across America.

Long story short, it was very nice super dry powder with cold temps, but it just wasn't enough. Maybe 4-5 inches in the best spots, but that really wasn't enough to cover the ice sheets under it.
There were spots that were nice if you rode flat on them, but as soon as you rode with an edge, it got to the ice, and it wasn't that fantastic.

Still, it was reasonably fun, and better than the other days where you had ice and slush. But boy, I don't remember seeing so little snow around kirkwood (even if kirkwood itself had godo coverage on the trails still).

I don't think I ever saw that river, or forgot about it

steep :)

Very coool, a remote controlled snowboarding kid :)

Jennifer, her first day since her ankle sugery last year, did very well. Much better than both of us expected :)

supercharged

ok, my door opening isn't as tight...

drivers meeting

And it was time for the drive:

I got to follow the adventador, and the driver is not slow :) On the first section of the drive, he kind of pulled away from me because my car was had the suspension raised and it kept yelling at me "slow down, I'm lowering your air suspension" :) and while that was happening, I was also futzing with my google glass to try and start a FPV video :)
Once that was done, it wasn't too bad to catch up and keep up since my car is more nimble, but once it came to going downhill a very wet road I didn't know, I backed out somewhat. Turns out the car was very composed the entire time, it never scared me despite the wet conditions, but I was being conservative anyway. Once at the bottom, we wiated for the other folks for several minutes :)

In the end,

almost there :)