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OT Busy, weather, etc

It's been busy.

I haven't been able to burn as much, since the weather got warmer, drier and windier, but I'm still trying to get at it, though I now mostly have to use a burn barrel. I have a dark, heavy, stinky (smoke and bug dope), but protective set of clothes on the porch to wear for this. I got a cinder down my shirt last week, which made me think of my lampworking friends. Unfortunately, this work doesn't result in beads, or time to work on beads or sales of my work, or even a clean house! But I'm so glad to be getting this done.

We had record cold weather last week, a 29F hard frost Sat night (Sun AM) was a 113 year record. And last Sun (4th) after the frost, we had snow flurries all day. But it's hot again now -- 75, 80 -- and there are fires raging again. More reason to be glad the deadwood is burned here. Today we have some wind here, so the smoke from the fires 30 and 50 miles away is cleared out.

I've had company too. The lady I stay with in Mexico is home to get some medical work done, and has been staying at our place. But she has been sent to Portland for Workers' Comp medical exams. (That should be Employers' Liability Insurance, since it protects the employers rather than the workers). And the kids with the baby have gone off fishing. And it's too windy to burn. So it's been quiet.

Quiet, since I'm not doing the laundromat today. Quiet, because we won't go dip netting for out 40 salmon on the Copper River for a few more days.

Quiet, except for the news about the engine. We have finished our Small Business Innovation Research that we got a Phase I grant for. And we are now in final negotiation for Phase II. The first phase studies the problems and describes the solution (grant $70K). Phase II produces the prototype and sets it up for production (grant up to $800K). Phase III would be a gov't contract to produce the items.

Phase I shows we can work with the big boys and gives us credibility. Phase II says they want to work with us, and will really bring the engine out of the closet. This has been so long in coming, I had almost given up. This is the Big Time now. Wow.

Tina

Reply to
Christina Peterson
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Congratulations! That's wonderful to hear. SBIRs are so fun to work on as a COTR; I really enjoyed everything but the initial candidate evaluations, which were insanely tedious.

I shepherded a number of SBIRs through Phases I and II, but nothing ever got to Phase III. Our SBIRs tended to be more directed toward research and less toward production, though, being things like research into pilot-vehicle interfaces, flying qualities, simulation, etc. Still, the potential was there, particularly in the displays areas.

Mary

Reply to
Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer)

Hi Mary,

I think it's funny that the two people in two very different newsgroups who have an idea of what I'm doing are both women. Less surprising to find a woman with understanding here because there are mostly women here, but the other group is very predominantly men.

Almost 10 years ago, when I first got involved with this engine, we applied for an SBIR grant for general aviation needs with NASA. Failed miserably, because though we followed directions, we just didn't have the knowledge to do this sort of grant writing stuff. This time, the marketing part of our group applied for a DoD grant for 'Low Fuel-Consumption, High-Altitude Capable, Heavy-Fuel Internal Combustion (IC) Engine Concepts for Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV)' .

At the time of the first application, I had wanted to connect with a friend of my mother's, Max Faget, who was with NASA since its inception until 1986 (I think) and who was in charge of Manned Space Flight, had the patent on the Mercury capsule, along with a 3 page single spaced list of other patents. Anyway, Mom refused to let me "bother" him. And he died last year.

What is a COTR?

The engine really is very exciting. It's a two stroke engine with a zero scavenging rate, which has a variable compression chamber (thus maintaining optimum compression ratio), it super charges, and turbo charges, the fuel is super aerated. And it has only 3 moving parts and weighs less than 50 lbs.

"We also hired a consultant to do a first-order calculation of the engine cycle to determine an approximation of performance. The results, although very rough, were very promising, especially as regards horsepower. They showed that our engine, with two compression events and two expansion events, could produce approx. 350 HP. This from a 600cc engine."

This engine is designed for petroleum products, though it could be adjusted to use other fuels.

Walter's efforts have been toward eliminating current design flaws and then making some adjustments to refine the engine function. The opposite of the tendency to try to add things to improve an engine.

You say SBIRs are fun to work with, and I can well imagine. New ideas carry such wonderful excitement and imagining of ever better solutions. Though I am not a scientist and am rather mediocre with hard facts, I just love science and especially physics.

Tina

"Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer)" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Reply to
Christina Peterson

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