Touch Footy Update: Big Win for the Mighty Cobras

Last night in a battle of the Div 4 dropouts (they and us moved from Div 4 to Div 5), the Cobras rolled their opposition 10-1 (their 1 came from one of our players having maroon rather than black stripes on his shirt). All of a sudden we're showing some solid defence and some creative attack. And it helped that the other team had no idea.

We managed to win with only one substitute, while they had about five. And I swear some of their boys were on the angry pills - one big bald bugger with no neck wouldn't even shake our hand afterwards. It didn't help that they didn't know half the rules,and weren't willing to listen either.

Anyway, I managed to score once and came up with one vote - which may have been for picking up the hats after the game - saving the refs a run. I'll take it! Good times.

In other news, I'm looking at another company - a big international firm that does a fair bit of different stuff - and they have a workshop in Moonah. Might drop in today.

Oh, and I leave for Perth tomorrow night. Anne-Sophie arrives back in Tassie from Sydney in the morning. And I get my results tomorrow. My knees are already rather weak. Hopefully I got through. Hopefully. We'll see how we go.

Movember

Well Movember is almost over, so I decided to start growing a mo... I'm possibly a little late with it - at least I have a good reason for having a crap mo seeings as I have started so late in the piece.

The race that stopped a nation

Well, I went to Maryborough. We worked hard. We lost. We learnt. We had fun.

We worked frantically on our four-wheeled carbon-fibre beast - arriving at Maryborough on Thursday morning, working all Thursday on it, all Friday on it, got it past the scrutineers on the Saturday morning, worked till 1pm on the Saturday. The raced started at 1:30. We pulled it off the track at about a quarter to two and let it back on the track at quarter past four. And then there were numerous hindrances that slowed us down.

Essentially, the drive-train was crap. To give you an idea, I was doing 3min30 laps(1.3km track) during the afternoon. We gradually improved things and I got it down to a 3min02 lap. The other rider managed a best time of 3min20 on that vehicle. He then completed a few laps with another vehicle from Tassie and completed a 2min17 lap - knocking 1min03 off his previous best and set a Rosny College record for fastest lap time. The drive-train of the quicker vehicle was by no means good.

Anyway, we raced til about 3am or so before hitting the hay. We got up at 7 to give it another go. Unfortunately, the drive-train had suddenly worsened. I managed two laps and Reuben (the other rider)after much coaxing for the sake of photos, managed three. The rear sprocket was wobbling really badly, suggesting a bent rear axle. Nobody knows what incident could have caused it.

On the plus side, the four wheels meant that rather than taking the racing line, you could accelerate into the corners, throw yourself around and keep accelerating, without getting off that inside line. We never looked like rolling.

So for my 3min02 lap, the average speed corresponded to 26km/h. For Reuben's 2min17 lap, it corresponds to about 34km/h. The lap record was 1min45. That corresponds to 44.5km/h. The track speed limit is, in theory, 60km/h.

So, looking at the efficiencies, based solely on times, the drive-train efficiency (including extra wheel - all the other vehicles were 3-wheelers) was ~25% worse with our machine. However, the fact that our machine could take tighter lines, it had reduced frontal area, reducing aerodynamic drag and was about 5kg lighter, meant that the drive train would be about 35% worse. Assuming that the drive-train of the better vehicles was about 80% (finely tuned drive-trains have efficiencies upwards of 98%, but they cost big bucks, and experts are tuning them, furthermore, in the race there would have been significant deterioration, so I'd say 80% efficient is a conservative estimate), then the efficiency of the drive train of our 4-wheeler would then be around 45%. We'll say 49% to be generous. Now, assume power input is proportional to velocity (which is not quite right, I know). So if we doubled the drive-train efficiency, we would say that we could double the average speed to 52km/h, which corresponds to me setting a lap record.

But, unfortunately, aerodynamic drag is proportional to velocity cubed... so on a bicycle, this means that, while pedalling at 30km/h, 80% of your input energy is going into overcoming aerodynamic drag. So, 52km/h average speed is no longer a realistic target, even with the reduced frontal area and drag coefficient of the HPV (They are both linearly proportional and aren't reduced quite as much as is required to make our machine record-breaking.)

So, room for improvement all round.

24h Endurance Race at Maryborough and Weight Loss

Well, I'm all packed for Maryborough. Maryborough is 2.5h west of Melbourne, so it's gonna be a bit of an epic trek to get there, considering we're taking the boat.

The race is from midday Saturday to midday Sunday, I think. Heaps of scrutineering and presentations and all that sort of stuff on Friday. And still got a reasonable amount of work getting the vehicle in shape - got all the parts now, just a case of assembling the jigsaw. We did our last lot of carbon fibring last night, so that's done and dusted.

I've also been getting fit... or starting to. I trained again with the running group last night and realised how unfit I really am. It's struggle street all the way. But on Monday Justin and I managed to get to the top of Leslie Vale, which was 40 mins of solid uphill running, 5 mins break at the top, then 32 mins to come back down the hill. So the fitness is starting slowly to return. I have lost 2kg since exams though, so I've done a few kms.

Antarctic Division

Well here goes. Off to the Antarctic Division to see if they'll tell me to bugger off again... hopefully not. I'm kind of sick of getting knock-backs. But at the same time, it means holidays, and plenty of opportunities to muck around, writing, playing music and kicking back.

Meant to be running with the running group tonight. It's a bit scary because I'm not in the greatest shape at the moment, so I'm going to really struggle. We'll see how it goes.

Played touch footy last night. A much improved performance to the ones that saw us demoted in recent weeks. I'm not sure if we won or not. The original word was a 6-4 loss, but they had forgotten to mark down a try we scored after the final siren (play continues after the siren until someone is touched, or there is a score). Furthermore, they played two suspended players for the first half, one of whom scored four times, and had amazing speed. You apparently lose one try for every suspended player you play. So that would have us 5-4 up. But the shirt of one of our players had dark maroon stripes rather than black stripes because the manufacturers buggered up, so they were talking about taking a try off us, so it might be a 4-4 draw. Who knows...

Right, off to get some work.

I'm alive

I started preseason training yesterday... running, weights, etc (I'm not sure what the etc is referring to) but there are no two ways about it, this uni business makes you very unfit. And trying to recover leaves you very sore (or me in any case).

I've been relatively productive already since those exams - got some contact lenses sorted, got a trip to Perth booked, and done a bit of other random stuff.

Then there's been the partying... it's all been good times. Holidays really are fantastic!

End times...

2h15mins of assessment left in my degree! And it's worth 80%.

I had my intelligent systems exam yesterday, which went relatively well. It's always a pain when the lecturers are vague about what won't be in the exam - this guy was saying how different the exam was going to be. It was the same format with different questions, which would is what one would expect... it just added to the confusion.

I really don't like exams (except for 1st year maths and 4th year enviro). I put heaps of effort into getting internals done (even if they're worth next to nothing) because I don't want to submit something that's substandard. So I'm generally too tired to really study properly - and there just isn't time to study in the lead up to Swat Vac.

So, you're exhausted and all of a sudden you have to cram 13 weeks times 4 subjects worth of new material (remove 2 weeks cos... just because), so 11*4=44 weeks worth of work crammed into 2.5-3weeks... I find it a bit of a struggle. Anyway, I'm almost there! It's all almost over.

Will I miss it? It'll be strange, different and unusual, but I love holidays and never struggle to find things to do. So hopefully I'll be able to catch up and keep in touch with everyone. It's always the people you miss the most.