So with the news of the Chinese spy balloon being shot down an idea occurred to me. 
The tech bay was about the size of a 747... why didn't we just grab it?

So given this is Makestation, a place for new ideas, making things, and being creative I'm going to propose a competition for a hypothetical scenario.

You have 1 mission, intercept and capture the payload or entirety of a balloon based aircraft with the following dimensions without damaging or destroying it.

Balloon, 200 feet long, made of a Kevlar weave and filled with hydrogen, resembles a zeppelin.

payload is a box 150x30x30 feet. LxWxH

Velocity 75mph.

has four control propellers roughly 11feet in diameter off to the sides on arms adding an additional 15 feet on the sides to watch out for.

Rules:

You cannot blow it up.
You cannot simply deflate it and bring it to the ground, it must be captured in the air for complete recovery.
You can work by yourself or in a group.
You can jam the signals coming from it.
It will attempt to evade capture but does not have any active defenses.

you have until march 1st when the ideas will be put to a vote.
Winner gets a custom banner made by yours truly as well as a custom title on the site.

Best proposal wins, if you're in a group please state who's in the group with you.

Remember, submit your proposal by 03/01/2023 by posting it here and I will link to it on this post for easy viewing.

Good luck!

What are some things you've wanted pockets in and other things that left you questioning why they had pockets?

For me I can never have enough storage so I want pockets in everything but when I came across boxers with pockets I had to ask myself why.

The US is tracking a suspected Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental United States, defense officials said on Thursday, a discovery that risks adding further strain to tense US-China relations.

Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said the US government has been tracking the balloon for several days as it made its way over the northern United States, adding it was “traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground.”

Speaking on background, a senior US defense official said senior military officials had advised President Joe Biden not to shoot it down due to fear the debris could pose a safety threat to people on the ground.

“We are confident that this high-altitude surveillance balloon belongs to the [People’s Republic of China],” the senior defense official said. “Instances of this activity have been observed over the past several years, including prior to this administration.”

While the balloon’s current flight path carries it over “a number of sensitive sites,” the official said it does not present a significant intelligence gathering risk. The balloon is assessed to have “limited additive value” from an intelligence collection perspective, the official added.

The US, the official said, is “taking steps nevertheless to protect against foreign intelligence collection of sensitive information. We are also tracking what abilities it could have in gaining insights, and continue to monitor the balloon as it was over the continental United States.”

Here

I know that Bandoliers exist but they aren't designed for what I needed.  I know utility belts exist but they sit upon the waist.  So why not combine both?  Thus one of my projects that I'm always working on is a storage solution that's easy to wear, handy to have, and easy to tinker with.  The Band-O-Gear, a bandolier of pockets and storage!

Here's the original design I came up with based on using a belt as a bandolier and modifying it.


It was based on this idea from a cross country Bicycling bag that used to be a thing in the early 2000's.


I took that and ran with it making my own since I couldn't find what I wanted anywhere.
 

And as a first version of it so far I have no complains other than it tends to not stay where I want it and shift around as I move.

but I'm working on a Rev 2.

Some notes I have are A: find a way to make it more stable for long duration use. B: Better pocket design (recently learned to work with leather so I'm going to try it out as a material.) and C: more pocket variety... also a larger rear bag and maybe something like a camel back. Gods know I get thirsty tinkering on something for hours and having it right there would be nice.

Also thinking of making Rev 2 a Cross bandolier instead of a single one to add additional pocket attachment points.


Like this but with various pouches/pockets for holding stuff.

US President Joe Biden has spoken out against delivering F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. When asked by journalists if he was in favor of delivering the fighter jets to Ukraine, Biden replied "no" in Washington on Monday. The Caribbean leadership is currently urging its western allies to deliver fighter jets.


Good decision, more guns and sanctions haven't ended a war yet 

Eminem said he doubted he'd release any more music past 50 as he celebrates milestone birthday today

Eminem has hit the big 50 today (17 October) but as he celebrates his milestone birthday, his career as a musician could be over.

Well, at least according to previous comments made by the rapper, the now 50-year-old hinted that he may stop putting out music after hitting the big 5-0.

From Here

Top secret documents reportedly found in Biden cache

Classified files recovered from US President Joe Biden's former private office reportedly include some material marked top secret.

Papers with the highest classification level were among about 10 files at a think tank bearing his name, according to the BBC's US partner CBS News.

Fewer than 10 classified documents were found at one of his Delaware homes, but none were top secret, says CBS.

A leak of top secret information could cause "exceptionally grave damage".

Quelle

So for all of us who grew up watching Yugioh back in the day has anyone tried Yugioh Master duel?  It's a free to play Online TCG version of the classic card game.

@darth Apple ??? Is MENTIONME no longer installed? Or a bug?

lg Tc4me

Greetings! Zalost here with another tutorial!  This one is going to be a quite long and will cover several topics so I'm going to put an index here to link different subjects together.

*********************
INDEX
Wire Basics, Calculations, Charts.
Wire Splicing Methods and Practices.
Making Plugs and Connectors.
Constructing an RJ45/RJ11 cable.
Advanced connectors and specialty tools.
*********************

To start with what are cables?  well usually a cable is a strand of material, usually not made of fabric but woven much like rope and generally stronger.  Examples include steel cabling (as seen on suspension bridges), Electrical cabling (our topic of today), Network cabling (specific variant of the previous), etc.

Some key things to remember about electrical cabling specifically are the following.  The thicker the cabling the lower the gauge and the less resistance it has and the farther power can travel before losing some of it's overall power at the other end.  Why is Cable a lower gauge despite being thicker/larger?  Because the gauge actually refers to the number of times it was run through a machine to make it that size.

This used to be somewhat like a pasta maker but these days it's a kind of steel roller/press.  You start out with a metal rod, usually copper, and you feed it into a machine that squeezes and stretches it into a smaller longer size, rinse and repeat. 


There's also two different kinds of cable, bundled strand and solid core.  Bonded strand is what is typically used and makes very flexible cables, think of it like a copper rope that's been twisted together to make a thicker cable.  Solid core however is more common in scenarios where flexibility is less important such as the wiring in your house where its lower resistance matters over the distances in your walls.


As an example of wire gauges here are 3 wires, listed as 14, 10, and 4 gauge wire from smallest to largest.


Notice the stands in each one, all 3 are examples of stranded wire.  Be wary of fraying when working with these as it can make it so you have to cut and strip your wire all over again.

When working with wire something else you have to keep in mind is amperage.  Usually the lower the gauge the more amperage it can handle over a longer distance.  I use the following chart as a reference.


It doesn't cover stuff outside of what you would most likely be working with such as 00 or even 000 gauge wire which is more like what you'd see in power lines and power relay stations.

As for what gauge to use, you can use that chart and it's great if you're working with 12 volt but what if you want to use more voltage or need a specific wattage at the end?

Well you can use the following formulas to work that out.

Watts = Amps times Volts
Amps = watts divided by volts

So for example let's say you want to power a 15 watt bulb on a 120 volt circuit.  what gauge of wire would you use?

Well you would divide 120 by 15 which comes out to 8 amps.

Using the chart above you could run that for about 10 to 12 feet on 12 gauge wire, or over 20 feet using 10 gauge wire.

For a full reference chart of electrical calculations you can use this.


Your voltage divided by the watts your getting at the other end will actually tell you your resistance on a wire so if you're only getting 10 watts then your getting 12 ohms of resistance, meaning you're only able to get 10 amps of power that distance even if you're putting in 15 watts.

It sorta goes back and forth but the key thing is you want to make sure your wire gauge can handle the watts, amps, and volts you're feeding it or your Resistance will create loss and you won't get as much on the on the other end.  The easiest way to fix this is to just use a bigger wire and it doesn't hurt to do so outside of cost and of course a higher conductivity.  I usually put a fuse in circuit just in case but usually using 10 gauge in place of 12 should be fine since the difference isn't that much and your motor/bulb/etc will only pull as much as it needs usually.

Conversely when you under size your wires you end up not being able to provide enough amps/watts to your device and making it under perform.  If your wire is too small it'll have too much resistance and just burn through... this is actually how the filament on an incandescent light bulb works.  it's a high resistance thin wire that's heating up enough to emit light and eventually burns through.

Anyway that should cover the basics of wires, wire gauge, and how to figure out what kind and size you need for a project.

Stay tuned for more because we're going to cover a lot of topics from how to actually splice wires to making your own connectors and the use for things like bus bars and terminals.