People are always asking me how I make the pictures that appear on my web site. Up until early 1998, and took them with a Canon film camera and scanned them at 72 dpi. From then until late in 1999, I used an Olympus D-220L digital camera. At web resolutions (640x480), you really can't tell the difference in the two, but the $250 digital camera sure saved a lot of time, and film. It's already paid for itself several times. Several of us went to Wales for 6 weeks on business, and we took 2700 pictures with my D-220L. At an average cost of $10 per roll (which includes developing) I saved the company $1125! Batteries are rechargeable, so the cost was just about nothing! And the beauty is that we can email pictures (like we did from Wales) or transport every one of them on a single CD. No trips to the photo shop for reprints. And each 640x480 photo is only 100k, uncompressed. A little compression (using something like Paintshop) will get it down to 30K or so, with no real image degradation. That means the rather smallish 8M Smartcard will hold 80 pictures before you have to download, or just pop another one in for another 80 pictures.

But the real secret to my photography is "available light". Rather than letting the camera blast the subject with the strobe, I set it up on a tripod and set the self timer to eliminate camera shake induced by pushing the shutter button. When buying a camera, make sure that it will do both self timer and "flash suppress" at the same time. I know an Agfa that I bought at first wouldn't do both at the same time, because the same button toggled between them!

Back in December of 1999 I bought an Olympus C-2500L, an SLR digital camera that rivals film cameras in versatility and picture quality. If you'd like to see what it's capable of, check out this snapshot of my son Jordan that I made a few minutes after taking it out of the box (at http://www.n56ml.com/99120818.jpg, 512Kb). It cost $1000 at the time (now down to $600), but I was so spoiled by the D-220L digital camera that I never took pictures of the kids anymore with the film camera, so I needed a digital camera good enough for portraits of the kids. And with the 32M card it comes with I could take almost 400 pictures on one SmartCard at 640x480! Of course now I'm spoiled by the 1710 x 1520 resolution, which only gets me 60 pictures per card. So I now also have a 256 Meg Compact Flash card for it as well (it uses both, at the same time!), so I can take about TWO THOUSAND pictures at 640x480 without even bothering to download, or 450 photos at 1710 x 1520, the high resolution that I normally use. So now I don't bother to carry a laptop on long trips just to collect photos. Most of my web page photos taken between 1999 and October of 2003 were made with this camera. It is especially excellent for serious macro work, since you can fill the viewfinder with a postage stamp.

I've been through several digital cameras since then (all Canons), and currently have a Canon 7D Mark II. It's not cheap, and you don't have to buy anything nearly that expensive, but its low-light capability is staggering. So no more tripod, it's all hand-held photos now, at incredible resolution. iPhones and other smart phones are amazing at close-ups and general low-light photography as well, so you probably already have the perfect camera to make a website. As for the actual writing of the web page, visit the "HTML PRIMER" , and read the first few pages. This stuff is dirt simple. So simple, every page I do I do from scratch (well, I copy one of my previous ones and cut most of the old one out and replace it with new stuff). Then go visit somebody's SIMPLE web page. I'd recommend mine at http://www.n56ml.com . Go up to the top of your browser and pick "View" and then "Source" and you'll open the page in Notepad or some other text editor. Compare what you see in the text file with what you see on the screen. You can save that file to your hard disk and edit the crap out of it. Just take my page and look it over, delete most of the stuff between the two "body" tags (one at the top, and one at the very bottom), change the URLs, image names, etc, and call it your own. Don't get somebody's complicated one that was made with Word or something and saved to HTML, or you'll never be able to figure out what all those funny symbols are.

There are really only about 6 or 8 little things to know about HTML, and you only use about 6 "tags" over and over to make a web page.

is a paragraph, is bold, is to stop bold text,
is line break, etc. Use the example you've started with to get the feel of how they work, while comparing to the displayed version of the webpage. When you're done, you "ftp" this file and any associated images to "your" web space (usually your default login area at your ISP) and you will be in business. If you name your main page "index.html" it will open automatically if present in any directory. So my main page is but you don't have to type the "index.html" part. As you surf other web pages that have features that you'd like to copy, view source, cut and paste, and edit to get what you want. Database stuff is a whole nuther matter, however, and will require further studies on your part. Questions regarding where to put your files and how to get them there can be better answered by your ISP, but basically you use something like FileZilla to get them there and update them later.

You can always use one of the free HTML editors, or even Word and save something to HTML, but you'll be clueless as to how to fix problems if you don't know the basics. Personally, I don't like all that garbage in my HTML file. If you want to know what I mean by "garbage", just check out most commercial web sites (with "View Source") and you'll be instantly intimidated by the level of complexity of the code. By keeping it simple I have a complete understanding of what's going on, and I never have problems to fix that take more than a few seconds...

For those wondering what size wire to use when wiring their panel, please see the chart below (this chart is also shown at http://www.n56ml.com/tbe/wiresize.html).

B&S GAUGE			22	20	18	16	14	12	10

milliohms/ft @68F		16.1	10.1	6.4	4.0	2.5	1.6	1.0

max fuse size (Amps, 7' max)	5	7	10	15	20	25	35
max Amps, 15'			2.1	3.3	5.2	8.3	13	20	33
max Amps, 20'			1.6	2.5	3.9	6.2	10	15	25
max Amps, 25'			1.2	2	3	5	8	12	20
max Amps, 30'			1	1.6	2.5	4	6.6	10	16
max Amps, 35'			0.9	1.4	2.2	3.5	5.7	8.9	14
max Amps, 40'			.78	1.2	1.9	3.1	5	7.8	12
max Amps, 45'			.69	1.1	1.7	2.7	4.4	6.9	11

This is the "differential elevator" mechanism from Don Cornwell's KR2. This concept was detailed in the October 89 KR Newsletter by Howard Kaiser. This was located half way between the stick and the elevator, and the cables were pinned into place inside the "pullies". The idea is to connect the round part to the stick cable and the elliptical part to elevator cable, and the elevator doesn't move much with large stick movements and moves more as the stick gets closer to the ends of its travel. I'm not sure that this works, and Lancair's solutions would indicate that this might be exactly backwards, so I'm not sure that I would try it, unless it's easily swapped out for a normal system.

This shows the area included for a wing tank located at the wing root of the RAF48. Use of the AS5048 will get you 20% more fuel in the same area, not to mention a 17% stronger main spar. There's 231 cubic inches in a gallon, so if your stub wings are 24" long, each would hold (24 x 108.6) / 231=11.3 gallons. I think the plans call for tanks in the outboard wings though, which taper a bit. And if you have tri gear, you have the gear leg bracket to dodge, which cuts into fuel tank volume considerably. Maybe the outboard wing is the ticket for tri gear.

My elevator counterweight.

Split flap system for the KR as done on N56ML.

Frise aileron for the KR, again as on my airplane.

This is the shape of the template that I made for the aft edge of my Dragonfly canopy.

This was a test to see if a "rolled" hinge (rather than extruded) could hold 150 pounds. It did! That's enough to prove to me that 72 inches of this will last far longer than the aileron or wing itself. That's a four inch long hinge. A 72 inch long hinge would carry 2700 pounds, which is more than my car weighs!

A view of my adjustable horizontal stabilizer, along with the elevator counterbalance. If you're wondering how it's adjustable, right now it's not. The spar is clamped between two angles on each side. If adjustment is required, I'll remove the two bolts on the front side, insert a drill thru the two angles (with sandwiched spar) and slot the spar. My spar is 3" tall, so I can afford a slight elongation. 1/10" will get me .75 degrees of incidence change.

Lionheart, near Moontown airport near Huntsville, AL. This was with a wide angle lense, so you know he was close! I took this out the window of Rick Stroud's Swift, with the window rolled down.

I think this canopy latch was in a Lancair 320 at the Perry Gathering.

Here's a comparison of the RAF48 and the AS5048, set at .5 degrees of incidence. I think 1 degree is probably a better bet for now.

I think this also appears in one of the KROnline articles, but it never hurts to show it twice.

Design data for Spruce and Douglas Fir. What is neglects to mention is the weight penalty that goes with the Doug Fir. And it doesn't mention the number one reason to go with Doug Fir, the PRICE! Be sure to get "aircraft grade", whichever you use.

A simple stick design.

Troy Petteway's original weight and balance sheet.

This is an image that Mark Lougheed (who did a stability analysis on the AS5046 wing) created using CFD analysis. It shows the wing at an incidence of 4 degrees and the flow field surrounding it.

Some more of Mark Lougheed's wing CFD work.

As is this, the new airfoil about to stall at 16 degrees of incidence.

Here's a very light Type 4 intake manifold runner made of thin steel, by Eurorace. The center casting is a little heavier, and the opening is wrong for our application. I think the whole thing was only $85.

Graphic demo of why it would be nice to change the bottom of the fuselage to match the AS5048 wing's aft end.

Jim Wier's antenna design, as published in Kitplanes. I built one, and the reception is astounding!

Basic gear design parameters.

Here's how I built my canopy hinge, modeled around the Beetle (Ghia) hood hinge. The left edge is the firewall, and the green lines are a scale, 1" apart.

View of the hinge brackets from the cockpit.

Here's a Dragonfly compared to a KR2S canopy. The Dragonfly is a lot longer too, but lighter because it's thinner.

Front view of the aft edge of the canopy, and aft deck in purple.

Here's how I defined the aft edge of the canopy to digitize it, using a polar coordinate system.

3D surface of the Dragonfly canopy, which I've since managed to delete, somehow.

Here's how I plan to do my cowling, somewhat like a missile. I think the engine in this view is a sub-atomic particle accelerator.

My instrument panel dimensions, which are just about stock. I scaled it from the S drawing package.

Prop drive shaft that I've since redesigned several times, and relegated to the Type 4 back burner, now that I've discovered the Corvair.

This shoulder belt design is for the KR series, sanctioned by RR.

Thse are the drag L/D plots of the 23012 airfoil. Note the point at which the wing stalls, very abruptly.

The23015 isn't any better, but is used on many spam cans, including the Piper 140.

Engineering data for Aeropoxy.

Here's what's kept me so busy for the last 2 years, Teledyne Brown's 25,000 pound aircraft loader, shown during testing at Travis Air Force base.

Solid Edge model of the loader. It takes a Gigabyte of RAM just to load it!

N56ML, with Corvair engine installed.

I bought this car new in 1974. Doesn't look too bad for 26 years old does it? It will blow the doors off of a stock 5 liter Mustang, and badly embarass any Porsche that's not lucky enough to have a turbo. I've done everything ever done to this car since it was bought, including the Imron paint job in 1988.

Compufire ignition installed on 009 distributor. Note fan shroud matches the rest of the Karmann Ghia.

This is a 3D model of the house that my wife and I designed (she did all the CAD work) and built (ourselves!) in 1990. Every board is in place. The plans were created by cutting sections thru the walls and dimensioning them...