Re: OT: For those waiting breathlessly for news of my racing weekend.

On 2024-09-21 03:16, -hh wrote:

On 9/17/24 8:36 AM, Tom Elam wrote:

On 9/16/2024 7:28 AM, -hh wrote:

On 9/16/24 1:10 AM, Alan wrote:

On 2024-09-15 16:18, -hh wrote:

On 9/15/24 1:28 AM, Alan wrote:

Well... ...it came to an abrupt end at about 1:25pm today,
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Our race had only just started, and at turn 3 of lap 1, the car immediately ahead of me spun, and while I was able to get my speed off to the point where all we did was bump tires...
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...there was nothing I could do about the Formula Vee following me...
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...who hit might right rear tire hard enough to fold up and/or break every piece of the right year suspension...
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...and who ended up half on top of my car with his left front tire immediately beside my head.
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I haven't seen the video from his car yet (we have to have video cameras now), nor have I heard from the steward of the meeting about his conversation with the Vee driver, but to my mind, this was just a racing incident.
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Conditions were marginal--there had been rain for qualifying but it was drying out, but all three of the fast(ish) FF driver determined that we would all go out on the same tires, and the very last- minute choice was to run on slicks. 15 minutes before our race, it looked like the better call would be rain tires, but then the sun came out, and with other race groups before us dissipating the water on the track,  we call changed to dry tires.
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And this change proved too much for Martin's traction in turn 3.
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With me running close behind him, he spun 1/4 of the way around, and there was just no way I could have tightened my line to go to his left. So I moved as much to the right as I dared (with a wall preventing a complete off-track avoidance, and hoped for the best. And I nearly pulled it off.
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Unfortunately, the FV running behind me had opted for wet tires, and so had better grip in the mid-corner phase, and (despite not having seen the video or heard the report) I don't think there was any way he could have tightened his line enough to avoid me.
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The end result was this:
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<https://drive.google.com/file/ d/1Y9CbWveqC2PS5R3yR0vahcfqMSQ7cV4d/ view? usp=share_link>
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Bottom of the line: bad luck.

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Dang, that's an Ouchie.
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Nevertheless beats my weekend project, which started with removing some landscaping plants to gain access to replace a failing concrete skim coat.  Naturally, there's also some other scope creep discoveries involved...

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Scope creep in one's house is often bad news. I hope it's not too bad.

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Leaks on the irrigation system, which has also revealed that its indoor winter water shutoff valve has a leak too.  Resulted in ripping out the control valves too, to have easier wall access for the concrete work; now debating how to change the design while buying all new to put it back together, and what to do about the inside valve.
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Been debating adding this from YoLink, and if that would do double- duty or would be for belt-and-suspenders on the seasonal shutoff.
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<https://shop.yosmart.com/products/ys5001-dn15#owl1>
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Similarly, thinking about adding the capability of a rain detector to save water too; pros/cons of adding a local rain sensor to the controller, vs going to a "smart" device that checks the weather:
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<https://www.lowes.com/pd/Orbit-White-Wired-Rain-and-Freeze- Sensor/1043275>
vs
<https://shop.yosmart.com/products/ys4102>
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To make matters worse, the same FV driver was involved in an incident with Dave McKay that was even worse; resulting in the rear and front suspension of Dave's Lola being absolutely destroyed.
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<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CX7HmLymYCg_q9obYjWTQdk6GGXyTCYG/ view? usp=share_link>
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Apparently, as Dave was coming up to pass, the FV driver committed one of the cardinal sins:
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Having received the blue flag that a faster car was coming up behind him, he moved of his line to "help" let the faster car by, but by doing so, he had to guess where Dave was intending to go; guessed wrong, putting Dave into the grass on driver's left, where he spun, and hit the wall driver's right at something like 65-75mph.
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Sadly, in addition to the incidents with me and Dave, this particular driver has at least once had his license pulled.

  While mistakes happen, so too does accountability.

I certainly hope so.
Not only is he (in my opinion) lying about his part in both incidents, it looks like he's playing fast and loose with the rules and--despite being a Canadian--racing on a US license.

  

Two days before we left for Paris last month a basement water sensor went off. A leak had developed at the water softener's plastic intake.

 We've gone for decades without having any modern sensor/alarms, but I included two of them on the YoLink order which arrived yesterday.
 

I pulled it apart, cleaned it up, put it back on, but the leak persisted. With some spare copper parts I soldered in a bypass and ordered all new parts. If that leak had developed a few days later I hate to think what might have happened in the 2 weeks we were gone. The parts were delayed but finally arrived last week and fixed the issue.

 We had a similar luck some years ago.  A holidays trip to family which got changed at the last minute from leaving in the evening right after work to sleeping overnight and heading out in the morning for the 4hr drive.  Washing machine's hot water hose failed catastrophically at 4AM, so we caught it within an hour instead of 4 days later.
 Since then, the washing machine's water supply gets turned off whenever we're not doing laundry.  Of course, with the irrigation work being adjacent, pulling the washer for plumbing access revealed that this shutoff valve has a slow seep to it (doesn't close off 100%).  So I've picked up a replacement valve (they're not really rebuildable) and located the torch ... just need to find the solder & flux, as they weren't stored with the torch for some reason.

The joys of being a homeowner, huh?
The laundry room in our condo has been torn apart to deal with some water leaks...
Sigh.