Turquoise Energy News #204 - May 2025 Report

Turquoise Energy News #204
Covering Research & Development Activities of May 2025
(Posted June 9th 2025)
Lawnhill BC Canada - by Craig Carmichael

Also at craigcarmichael.substack.com

[Subscribe: email to CraigXC at Post dot com ; request subscription]
Main URL: TurquoiseEnergy.com

Highlight: The SeaWing: Very high speed water transport with low power

Month In "Brief" (Project Summaries etc.)
* The SeaWing - Cabin Construction - etc.

In Passing (Miscellaneous topics, editorial comments & opinionated rants)
* Scattered Thots (South Africa - Classes/Schools of statesmanship - Progressing Knowledge Vehicles - Starving Whales - the Infinite) - ESD

- Detailed Project Reports -

Electric Transport - Electric Hubcap Motor Systems
* SeaWing (was Waterski boat): concept for very high speed, low power, smooth riding water transportation

Other "Green" & Electric Equipment Projects
* Faraday Cabin
* WiFi & Radio Also Cause Tinnitus !?! Ack!

Electricity Generation
* The usual Latest Daily/Monthly Solar Production log et cetera - Monthly/Annual Summaries, Estimates, Notes

May in Brief

Along with the unipolar motor, somehow, the OLAHP heat pumping seems to be fading away into the spring again. I checked a motor similar to the one I had chosen for the pivoting vane compressor to see if I could reverse its direction by swapping around some spade lug connector wires but I wasn't successful. (Surely I'm not going to let this slip for years again! Heat pumping with a potential COP of 10 would cut energy usage everywhere, and not just a bit!)

SeaWing: High Speed, Smooth Riding Water Vehicle Design ...plus RC Model

Adding feedback by others to my conception of the "waterski" catamaran boat I wrote of last month, the revised design concept has become a cross between my previous Ground Effect Vehicle conception, a Hovercraft and a Catamaran Boat.

   In particular, Marc's bringing to my attention an early 1900's boat design called the "sea sled" led me to thinking about trapping air bubbles under the craft which would reduce friction with the water. The Sea Sled's underside was hollow at the front and gradually became flat at the back, trapping air and achieving higher speeds with lower power than other boats.
   I started thinking that in spite of the narrow, flat hulls, my design wasn't going to achieve the high speeds I was hoping for with the low power I was hoping owing to friction with the water. (After all, that friction is just what a ground effect craft avoids.)
   My design just needs a small but vital change: by putting a "transom"(?) across the back between the two catamaran hulls, but leaving the front open, at "highway" speeds air entering under the front becomes trapped and has to lift the boat to - or even just over - the water's surface to escape out under the sides and rear. like a hovercraft skirt but with a six inch wide flat bottom all around the three sides. I think it should be pretty much the ultimate in friction reduction.

   So I re-made the model to show the new features.

   To help test some of the concepts I modified the radio controlled model of the ground effect craft made some years back, making it rather similar underneath. [TE News #???] The take-off "step" in each hull was removed to provide the flat bottom, and the sides of the bottom were trimmed off at 45 degrees to make them thinner. The rear "elevator", which I fixed in place when the canard took over the attitude control, was adjusted down to be even with the hull bottoms. It lifted better that way than when it was an inch or so higher. In fact, the air from the ducted fans lifted the rear end of the 4-1/2 Kg model off the floor with 3 Kg of books placed on top at the rear.
   But as I had been finding in previous tests with this model, the weight was all too far forward, especially now with the front buoyancy reduced by cutting off the take-off steps and the diagonal side cuts. Even with the batteries moved from near the front to the middle, the rear lifts right off the water while the front wants to dig in. It spins around to point back the way it came from at the slightest excuse. This confirms the impression I had that the cabin and center of weight should be toward the back as shown on the planned model. [More detail under SeaWing]

   The concept was as far as I had planned to take this project. Hopefully I can get the new grid tied solar system onto the roof this summer - along with planting and watering gardens, the unipolar motor stator, the air heat pumping and more work on the cabin ???

Faraday Cabin Construction

I finished covering the south wall - with scraps of birch plywood.
I suppose I'll be putting up thick wallpaper. Whatever hodge-podge of different shades and pieces of wood lacks in appearance, it's a lot lighter than gyproc.

Then I put up scaffolding and did a section of the "cathedral" ceiling, with partly styrene foam and partly fiberglass insulation, including most of the ugly foam from the beach and finishing off the open bag of the horrid old fiberglass. That's 3 sections out of 8 now, each of which needs its own scaffolding arrangement to reach way up to the 12-16 foot ceiling. If I do a lowered ceiling for the other half, then I just need to scaffold one more section so I can do it without endangering myself.
The cabin seems to be taking forever. I guess I'll have it done some day. I was hoping this summer, but thinking of all the things there are left to do - along with all the other things I'm trying to do - it sure doesn't look like it.

   The job also included cutting up, painting and installing trim boards to cover the gaps between coroplast sheets, incluing in the bedroom where it also hadn't been done yet. The walls are one thing, but I'm really glad I'm not trying to lift gyproc sheets up to the ceiling. The featherlight coroplast can be held in place with one screw near the middle while I go check the fit around the edges.
          Three full sheets was perfect. I only had to notch one corner of the top sheet.

Misc.

   Of course spring, despite cold, clouds, wind and rain, has meant gardening, and a short "north coast gardening" report is below. I expect to do a bigger one next month. The main garden isn't planted yet. Of great concern to me is that in this cold spring my prize walnut trees haven't budded yet. A similar walnut in Port Clements, in a pot by a garage wall where it is warmer, is already in full leaf.

   I finally got internet into the Faraday Cabin with a WiFi "wireless bridge" repeater and a USB to ethernet adapter. In doing so I discovered to my dismay that every radio and UHF frequency as well as 60 Hz causes tinnitus. The cabin lost its "quietness" and my tinnitus was louder in the mornings than when I went to bed. The WiFi repeater (largely) and even the 100 foot ethernet cable itself seemed to be to blame. I put them outside and got some relief, but it seemed even the DC to DC power adapters, which switch around 100 KHz, were causing the problem. This means that carrying a cell phone probably also contributes to tinnitus, as well as any "modern" switching AC to DC power adapter. [Report]
   An ad on Youtube was itemizing some "hidden health horrors" happening especially to young people, caused especially by carrying a cell phone around.

Solar in a Big Way

   Some guy on youtube was enthusing about going more or less "off grid" powering his house with solar and batteries. The video focused on efficient appliances. He used lots of electricity for heating and air conditioning (via a heat pump), hot water (also heat pump) and laundry for two people. He had a huge inverter and ran everything off AC. He talked about kilowatt appliances. The biggest thing was perhaps a low wattage clothes dryer.
   It all seemed to be on a bigger scale than my two 9 solar panel, 10 KWH "off grid" setups, running LED lights and lower hundreds of watts of radiant heaters as the only major loads. I would have trouble charging the car off grid, even with the lowest 120 volts, 1500 watts charger. I'll probably put a small hot water heater in the cabin with a 120 W element just for hot water at the washroom sink. And none of it except some lights and the laptop will work in December.
   He finally showed out in his yard. As I was suspecting before he was through, he must have had 60 or 70 "largest" solar panels on various mounts all over the yard. Presumably he had batteries to match. He was also in Texas where they get more or less year round sun. (When and if I get my new 20 panel on-grid array up on the roof, I'll still only have 38 solar panels.) Apparently he has other videos about the solar setup itself, but I didn't look them up or save his name or video link.

In Passing
(Miscellaneous topics, editorial comments & opinionated rants)

Scattered Thots

* One day I brushed my hair in sitting at the coffee table. In the bright sunlight I could see dandruff dust drifting down around me. Some landed on a sheet of paper on the table. I looked at it with a magnifying glass. Most of it was little flakes, but a few bits were about the same size and color but long and thin. Those must be the very tiny scalp mites (Demodex Folliculorum), which are said to be "everywhere", that I believe are the obvious cause of thinning hair and baldness because they eat the sebum in the hair follicles that feeds hair growth. And that probably explains why brushing is better than combing: it sends the dandruff and the mites flying out everywhere.
   As we age our immune systems weaken and they can multiply. And some, especially men, seem more susceptible than others, some even at younger ages. As I've tried to tackle in previous issues, management can include brushing (2x or more daily?), brushing with a wet brush, and in the shower letting the shampoo stay in the hair for five minutes, which duration of soapy suds is said to kill them all. (2x a week or more?)

* South Africa continues its slide into the abyss of failed civilizations. Dutch settlers, who became the Boers, were the first people to settle in the Cape of Good Hope area (around 1600 AD IIRC), finding only a few nomadic aboriginal Hottentots. (These will never be "reclaiming" this land from either the whites or the blacks!) The blacks lived to the north and were first brought to the Cape as slaves. By the time slavery was abolished the black population was substantially larger than the white throughout the country. Before modern times having a few slaves made life easier. But by the middle of the 20th century South Africa was a thriving center of "first world" civilization where the world's first heart transplant was performed, with reliable electricity and running water. The culture was far above that of the surrounding countries.
   Nobody liked Apartheid, but what would happen when it ended seemed quite predictable to me. More and more, primitive conditions prevail. The government is utterly corrupt. The jealous or opportunistic have looted the successful enterprises and the prosperous have been made poor. The most talented and the more capable people of any race - the ones who hold a civilization together - have long since left. Remaining white (and Indian AKA "coloreds"?) pools of capability are being driven out or killed.
   Now it is even written in the laws that it's okay to take the property of white people without compensation and increasingly they are being murdered. 35 years after Apartheid ended they are still the scapegoat for all the country's ills. The white population peaked at around 30%. Last I had heard it was down to 15%, but a recent video said it's now 7 or 8%.
   I talked to Mike who has visited South Africa. He says the level of hatred there is very high. Not only do the blacks, whites and "coloreds" hate each other, but each tribe still hates the other black tribes. Don't cross to the wrong side of the street or you might violate a social taboo and get mugged or murdered.

* If I had been an all-powerful potentate running South Africa, before ending Apartheid I would have instituted classes of statesmanship. Those who wished to have the right to vote would have had to pass a few basic "high school textbook" tests as to what government and its institutions are all about. The separation of the executive, legislative and judicial branches and their basic functions, as the first example. These would be the same tests for all, no discrimination. The illiterate and ignorant would thus be excluded from choosing the leaders, but would be rewarded with the vote simply by becoming more educated and knowledgeable. This would give a great impetus for becoming literate and more educated. In order to run for office, more advanced qualifications would need to be mastered at more advanced schools of statesmanship.
   I don't know if such a program would have worked, but it would certainly have had a better chance than suddenly throwing everything open to the ignorant and unlearned without preparation. I'm also not saying that we shouldn't have such programs in all including "Western" nations. After all, the American revolution and constitution were made possible by the Scottish Dean of Princeton College (Ian McNaughton, IIRC) ensuring that all known schools of political thought and knowledge were being taught there, with students including many if not most of those who drew up the charters for the new republic. (Thomas Jefferson for one comes to mind.) And in many "Western" nations we still haven't even separated the executive and legislative branches. If youth were being taught today's more advanced ideas and ideals, perhaps we could have a sudden leap in techniques and institutions of democratic governance. This is long overdue as our parochial forms seem to have become ossified for a couple of centuries now and increasingly corrupted by opportunistic wealth and power seekers.

* South Africa is following the course of Zimbabwe (ex Rhodesia). Cecil Rhodes encouraged British and Boers from South Africa to settle and farm there, employing large numbers of black natives as farm labor. Rhodesia became the breadbasket of Southern Africa. At its peak the white population was ~10% of the total. Following independence from Britain in 1980 the white farmers were gradually driven out or murdered. I knew a couple who moved to Victoria BC who were permitted to leave Zimbabwe with only the shirts on their backs - two of the lucky ones. Since then Zimbabwe has had virtually no economy, no productive farms and requires food aid.

* In Uganda the white population was never large but many Indians settled there and eked out a myriad of small scale enterprises which in the aggregate endowed Uganda with a considerable economy. But jealousy reared its head and, especially under Idi Amin, the Indians were driven out. Uganda's economy collapsed.

* Now Uganda and Zimbabwe are inviting - almost pleading - for the Indian entrepreneurs and White farmers to come back. Good luck with that! ...and while South Africa is busy slaughtering the remnants of its white population.

* It should be noted that some countries in sub Saharan Africa are improving, not retrogressing. They have however started from the lowest rungs of civilization. (Zambia has encouraged White farmers from Zimbabwe to settle there and (IIRC) is now exporting food, including to Zimbabwe.)

* Average "blacks" in America are now considerably admixed with other peoples. Many would be considered "mulattoes" (mixed race) in other lands. just saying.

* With the advent of the internet the world in general is gradually becoming much more educated and aware. It is - gradually - getting harder for those having power and influence to "pull the wool" over everybody's eyes and create false narratives to channel the public's sentiment and actions to where they want them. The mass media no can longer fabricate a story that goes unchallenged since even individuals can now start a news or editorial blog or channel. Important news and views that the "mass media" chooses not to report now gets reported anyway. "Mass media" is presently losing viewership rapidly. It would seem some stories on some news channels on Youtube actually get more views than TV news shows.

* And this awakening is only a continuation of a process that is easily traced back at least to the printing press. My mother once told me of seeing (probably in 1929) three men sitting at a new device -- a radio. The oldest put the earpiece in his ear and listened a moment. She said his eyes lit up and he said "This will change the world!"
   (One man was her uncle. The oldest man, her mother told her years later, was her great grandfather (age 101 IIRC). "He died when you were three." So he would have been born about 1828. This is certainly the farthest back in time I know of having any personal/family connection with other than through written records.)

* The internet has also expanded worldwide trade and commerce, and brought the world's goods to our doors wherever we live. No longer are special items available only in the big cities. I used to be frustrated that Victoria BC was barely big enough to have a store selling components for my electronic projects. I would often have to get the store to order what I needed, or mail an order with my credit card number or a cheque to a store in Vancouver. But now I can order on line virtually anything that can be mailed or couriered, often straight from factory dealers around the world, and they are delivered direct even to remote Haida Gwaii BC, at low cost.

* Gray whales have been dying in abundance on the Pacific coast of North America this spring, often beaching themselves. I saw a huge carcass on the beach at Miller Creek. In the past (1990-2000?) whales have died from poisoning by toxic polychlorinated biphenals (PCB's) discarded in the ocean in "50 years guaranteed canisters" in the 1970's. (The whole idea seemed incredibly short sighted to me even as a high school student. What was supposed to happen after 50 years?) That plague seems to be over. Without waiting for this year's autopsies, in the last decade or more they and other marine creatures have been starving to death in increasing numbers. Krill, the chief food source for the whole marine life chain including whales, many fish species and many sea birds, have been harvested in great abundance, especially as feed for fish farms. Krill mostly eat phytoplankton, the tiniest of plants floating around in the oceans. Without managing to dig up any relevant figures, I expect the moral of the story is that you can't take vast quantities of the second lowest rung of the food chain from the oceans without starving and depleting stocks of every species above that level.
As usual the real problem is that there are so many people that we are eating everything. When a "new" source of food is found it is harvested at the expense of other species. (There are even people advocating eating "bugs" -- while insect populations are already on the decline!)

* The lower birthrate since the introduction of "the pill", intensified later by poor quality of life (which again owes much to overpopulation) will end overpopulation in the coming decades, but probably not without some spectacular calamities. Most civilizations have ended with a sudden famine after the population had become too large to sustain, after which the resources had been gradually drawn down and consumed without sufficient annual replenishment, as is now happening globally.

* It has been said that if in infinity and eternity Absolute Nothing had ever existed, it would have been permanent, forever, because absolutely nothing could ever have come of it. Since our very existence shows this is not the case, it was said that somewhere in infinity an absolute, infinite all consciousness was an infinite possibility -- and therefore is a reality that has always existed.

* An existing in all time consciousness is "Everything". But what, in infinity, is time? An existing in no time consciousness is "Nothing". In this same philosophy, it is said that any assertion about the absolute must apply equally to both the "Be" and the "Not Be", or it can't be absolute. It says that all reality hinges on this absolute paradox.

* If reality started with an infinite consciousness, the universe must have been created with a purpose or perhaps many purposes. Astronomy is gradually discovering more and more order and pattern even on the grandest scales within the apparent chaos of the heavens.

* How our Spiritual Father, the Uncaused Cause, the First Source and Center of infinity, can divide his absolute, infinite identity and send a spirit fragment of himself to indwell every mortal human being in the grand universe is said to be a great mystery even to high celestial beings. As humans we can't prove or demonstrate any of these phenomena. But by living Faith we each can gradually come to Know the Father's beneficent Spirit presence within our own mind.

ESD
(Eccentric Silliness Department)

* A cation is an atom deficient in electrons compared to its protons, which is a positive charge.
* An anion is an atom with a surplus of electrons, giving it a negative charge.
* An onion is an atom with no net charge, as indicated by the word starting with a zero, and likewise by the shape of the onion itself.
* I think calling a surplus of electrons "negative" and a deficiency "positive" stinks worse than an onion.

* If the three infinite deities of existential reality, the Universal Father (bestower of personality), his Eternal Son (infinite spiritual personality) and the Infinite Spirit (the infinite mind, intermediary between Spirit and Matter), would the the trinity members be the I AM, the YOU ARE and the HE IS?

* Putin has said Russia isn't interested in administering all of Ukraine, just the part comprised mostly of ethnic Russians, who were being savagely discriminated against by Ukraine, not to say genocided. Much less did he think ruling crazy DEI, LBQWERTY Europe as a whole had any merit.
But strangely, now I hear they may be interested in some town way off in Ireland -- "O'Dessah" I believe was the name.

* Owing to the recent gigantic landslide in the Alps in Switzerland, the town of Blatten is changing its name to "Flattened".

"in depth reports" for each project are below. I hope they may be useful to anyone who wants to get into a similar project, to glean ideas for how something might be done, as well as things that might have been tried, or just thought of and not tried... and even of how not to do something - why it didn't work or proved impractical. Sometimes they set out inventive thoughts almost as they occur - and are the actual organization and elaboration in writing of those thoughts. They are thus partly a diary and are not extensively proof-read for literary perfection, consistency, completeness and elimination of duplications before publication. I hope they may add to the body of wisdom for other researchers and developers to help them find more productive paths and avoid potential pitfalls and dead ends.

Electric Transport

SeaWing: High Speed, Smooth Riding Watercraft Design Concept
...plus Radio Controlled "Test Model"
(was "Waterski" Boat)

Preamble

I thought the "water skis" catamaran should be great, but some feedback got me thinking in a modified direction. Even planing across the surface, water has drag that takes extra power to overcome. Other than a ground effect craft, what can eliminate or reduce surface friction traveling over water? A hovercraft rides on a cushion of air above the water and can go very fast for its power owing to the minimal friction, but among other things, the flexible skirt is said to wear out rapidly.

Enter the "Sea Sled", a boat whose hull shape traps air underneath when it travels rapidly, somewhat akin to a hovercraft, and so it partly rides on that cushion of air, using less power to go faster than other boats.
By the 12th I was convinced to modify my design somewhat along these lines, with the flat bottom catamaran hulls forming two sides of a solid "skirt" and a sloping stern "wall" ("transom"?) forming the third. The front is open. Running at high speed should force air underneath the center "wing" to lift the boat off the water.

Then it seemed to have an awful lot in common with the ground effect craft RC model I made some years back. I modified that to test out some aspects. The chief discovered concern seems to be to keep the front end up. The "boxed in" rear rises out of the water surprisingly easily, pointing the front end down. With the model being 4.5 Kg instead of 3 Kg owing to the heavy batteries, the nose can even dig down into the water if the fans aren't aimed upward. (Dive, dive!) The fans threw up a spray of green water.
The solution would seem to be the new design's long thin hulls with the solid top between them going right to the front, and with the balance of weight well to the rear - as already planned.

The rear is right clear of the water but the front remains immersed.
So it had a lot of friction and was hard to get moving. Then a motor controller blew.
(Mike at the camera, me at the controls, and Mike's neighbor's boy observing.
This lad has apparently already made some pretty cool stuff including some sort of model fan boat.)

   Mike said we should test it down by the wharves, where if something went wrong it would soon drift to the float or to shore. Great idea! The RC tests came to a sudden and premature stop when the second "ESC" motor controller blew - the mate to the one that blew before. I don't want to buy another controller. I would have done another testing with the rear elevator/wall/transom removed or adjusted to point the nose up, to see if it could take off as a ground effect craft per the original idea, but especially having cut the take-off steps out of the hulls I didn't have high hopes. I'm sure the SeaWing is a better, more practical idea for high speed water transport anyway!

Diary

[8th] The water ski design with an air propeller eliminates all underwater drag. If it needs a rudder at all, it should be up in the air like an airplane. Surface drag is minimized by the long, thin hulls with flat bottoms.
   But I started to realize that if the boat was going to travel at freeway speeds, it needed to be as streamlined as possible above the water too, to minimize the coefficient of drag in the air. On the model I trimmed the tops off the stern ends the way I've seen on racing (sailing) catamarans and other boats. I never thought much about those before, but that surely reduces big square un-aerodynamic rear ends, while leaving the same hull length in the water. I even rounded off the tops to smooth the air flow. And I rounded off the lower rear of the cabin.

   Matt thought it needed cross braces between hulls at the front and rear so it couldn't twist in the waves in a bad storm. Sometimes you just can't avoid being out in a storm once you've started on a trip. For example however brief your transit times, it could blow up while you're out before you go to return home. The cabin is fairly long, and a brace between the hulls would add air drag. I think it would be superfluous at the back. The front section ahead of the cabin is much longer, and the front fan needs mountings anyway.
   For a cross brace there, the top could be flush with the deck so it only drags between hulls and not across the tops of them - four feet wide instead of eight. Then, it should be a streamlined shape, like a wing. I wasn't going to bother with a canard, but at this point, the fixed front wing might as well have a movable flap (elevator) at the back to provide more lift for keeping the bow at the tops of the wave crests. The elevator could aim up and down along with the fan. Here I've copied one of the key aerodynamic features of my ground effect vehicle to the waterski boat!

[11th] Seeing my plan last month, TE News reader Marc emailed me about the "sea sled", an early 1900's "sort of" tunnel hull design said to be very fast per horsepower. [drawing repeat] Marc has dug up some great old designs that were experimental or are long since out of use! But "sea sleds" were made up until (IIRC) the 1970's.) This sent me on a quest looking at hull profiles. Then Laird, seeing my model, suggested I extend the cabin front and rear to trap more air underneath and provide more lift for keeping the craft on top of the water.

   Taking the feedback to heart I thought I'd change the "tunnel hull" profile to the second one in this diagram with the concave underside center "wing" profile, and extend the center fore and aft, thus going back to the "tunnel hull" idea. Perhaps the whole thing including the cabin could be more streamlined and it would certainly be strongest. That eliminates the aimable "canard" elevator, but the propeller could still be aimed up and down. I would make the hulls symmetrical but retain the narrow flat bottoms, my key "water skis" feature. (Probably a flat underside instead of concave would be just as good, and easier to make.)

   With the "Sea Sled", a key feature for high speed with low power was that air would get trapped under the boat. Where the bow's "tunnel" profile gradually flattened out to a flat bottom at the stern, it trapped air toward the center of the hull, creating a cushion of air that reduced friction with the water. Another fast boat I saw deliberately pumped air under the hull near the bow. Some say that tunnel hull boats replaced Sea Sleds, but in performance terms I find find this unconvincing since tunnel hulls don't make a cushion of air underneath. That Sea Sleds are no longer manufactured may say that people designing new boats just didn't hear about them, or else didn't understand them. or perhaps they were rough riding?
   I started to see the great value in this idea. If the boat can ride on a thin cushion of air, friction with the water will be greatly reduced - giving it this key advantage of a ground effect craft -- or a hovercraft. If it rides with air under the hulls, is it actually "flying"? I guess it depends how that word is defined.

I started to think more about the "hovercraft" aspects and advantages.

Time to make a whole new model!

[12th] I made new hulls, changed to a symmetrical profile. I made the top of the cross section square, 24 x 24 inches. They will form the lower spaces for passenger seating at each side, with a lower roof over the cabin. From there they curve a bit then slope in at 45 degrees to the 6 inch wide flat bottoms, about 32 inches total height.

   So a key reason for the change to "tunnel hull" is so air can be scooped and pushed underneath between the hulls. A downward flap?/transom? at the back will help trap the air underneath to increase the pressure. If this is extended down to, or near to, the flat hull bottoms, it should be rather similar in effect to both the Sea Sled, a hovercraft and my ground effect vehicle design, where the trapped air was intended to help lift to get it airborne. The air will have higher pressure, lifting the whole boat from underneath and bubbling out to the sides and at the back all around, like a hovercraft. The flat hull bottoms (and a similarly flat rear bottom section) will tend to hold the lifting air underneath instead of the weight pushing it immediately off to the sides. Air flowing underneath the hulls will reduce friction with the water. The concave bottom of the center section will help scoop in the most air. I expect it would be sufficient.

   It seemed to me that an important aspect to pressurizing the air sufficiently at lower speeds would be to have the propeller mounted so that by aiming it upward, it blows air directly under the concave center. (The concave profile would also let in the most air from the fan when so aimed.) Perhaps the most unsure adjustments will be how low to mount the fan and how far down to extend the rear flap for optimum performance. [Tests showed that right to the bottom gives more lift.] The up-down aimable propeller would help find the best spot for it. (Eg, if it has to always aim up to blow air down, it may be mounted too high.) I expect it would be useful to use a "pusher" propeller with the motor in front. Then when it's swiveled to blow down, the whole propeller will be lower. [Later thoughts: It would be better if the boat can pick up speed and lift up without the propeller aiming extra air under. Best forward thrust per horsepower would be to have the prop high up (more or less above the cabin) blowing straight back.]

   This is starting to look like it should perform a lot like a ground effect vehicle for speed and power and with few doubts about seaworthiness - perhaps not quite as smooth riding as actually flying, but with fewer complications.

I think this should go really fast and ride on air pretty smoothly.
As long as waves aren't high enough to hit the center deck, they
should mostly pass underneath, and will probably (hopefully) be
considerably reduced by the time they reach the sloping rear "transom".
(Okay, my motor mounting is ridiculous! This is not to be a working model.)

Mount the fan up high and solidly at the very front, I think. It's sturdier. Vanes to steer akin to fan boats.
"Dorsal fin" is to prevent sideways drift, especially in turns.
(A similar fixed tail at the very rear would probably make it hard to turn.
The fin's center of weight position should allow a much sharper turning radius.)

Three sides enclosed hulls: at speed, the SeaWing rides on air

(On a working craft, the little gaps at the back would of course be filled in)

Some Specs:

LOA 22 feet
Outer Width: 8 feet
Hulls: 24 x 24 inches top "box" cross section, to 45 degree slope lower leading to 6 inch flat bottoms, end tapers roughly as shown. (~36 inches tall)
Center: concave (or flat) bottom of deck connecting hulls virtually bow to stern. (~Per diagram; 4 feet width between hulls)

Form: streamlined. Cabin top ideally below airstream from propeller.

Power: at least 10 horsepower electric or 35 HP gasoline
Reduction: planetary gear to propeller
Propeller: ~Per illustration, ~40 inches diameter, ~500 RPM
Mounting: Sturdy fixed mounting, As high as practical, airstream to aim over top of cabin

Steering: Vanes behind propeller, like airboats/fanboats

Central Guide Fin: 25 square feet

Body: Foam Sandwich strengthened with Wood Frame parts. Plywood flat bottoms, plywood front of transom slope.

Suggestions for outer skin: Diolen cloth: A tear and dent resistant polyester cloth made for boat skins. Supposedly better than fiberglass or polypropylene cloth. (Polypropylene is supposed to be stronger and lighter than fiberglass but a thin skin of PP with epoxy seems to tear easily.) Bond it with plastic adhesive: Scotch-Weld 4693 - "PP, PE, TPO". Supposedly better than resin. These are experimental suggestions; I haven't tried them. (I plan to get a bit of each to try them out but I haven't yet.)

A Working Test Model!?

[14th] I pulled the ground effect vehicle off its shelf where (even on its side) it occupied a fair bit of space, thinking to dispose of it. I thought "I have no use for this now. The Waterski Boat is better." And I had no plans for making a working model of that. Then I started noticing how similar the underside lines were. They were both tunnel hull in form with flat bottom hulls. If I cut off the slope that made for the take-off step on each hull, it would have similar long flat hulls. Then if I cut into the sides at the bottoms, at a 45 degree angle, they would become much thinner along the bottom, more akin to the long, thin "water skis" hull design.
   These changes wouldn't be hard to do. The wing ran almost the whole length, from not far behind the canard to the rear elevator. The rear "elevator" finished the coverage right to the back. I had simply fixed it in position when I changed to the front canard configuration, leaving it a little above the bottoms of the hulls. But it could still be adjusted to see where it worked best: up a little to allow more air to shoot out the back (contributing to thrust), or as low as flush with the hull bottoms, in fact forming a three sided "hovercraft" with solid "skirts". The open front has the "hovercraft" (and the fan or in this case two fans) scooping air under the "cushion" when traveling at high "transportation" speeds.
   And then it wouldn't have to "take off" to fly a couple or a few feet over the waves, but will merely ride on a thin layer of air like a hovercraft, which is also just as my latest conception of the waterski boat. That should take a lot less power than taking off - and apparently be just as fast, at least in calm seas. Almost Everything seemed very fortuitous for a quick conversion to make it a working test model fairly similar to the desired design! (Except of course for the blown motor controller. But I have a new one.)

   This sounded like a good project! And at last after sitting several years since "covid" dampened all thought of going anywhere, the model should do something useful. I'd better check the batteries' state of charge!

(Just what I keep trying to avoid -- starting something new again!)

[15th] I cut off the foam and skin to give it the new shape. The painted PP skin worked poorly with the hot wire cutter, so I cut the diagonals with a knife. None of it is very straight or smooth. I have to find a hand rasp type plane or something to smooth it all off. (I used to have one... looked like a hand plane except sort of like a fine food grater. Much more aggressive than sandpaper and doesn't clog. Haven't seen it, can't find it. Probably it never made the move to Haida Gwaii... if I even still had it before. I think it was my dad's. Building supply doesn't have one. Do they still make them?)

[16th] I repaired a spot in the diagonal bottom where I had cut right through the hull making a hole, by gluing a piece of foam on the inside. Then I connected a battery to the working left motor, put four AA cells in the handheld transmitter control, and tried it out with just the one motor/ducted fan. Hurrah, it still worked! Then I wired up the ''new'' motor controller and connected it up. Once I got everything right, the other fan worked too.
   That still left me with the same problem I had all along - no reasonable and practical way to control the motors to do both thrust and steering. I wonder if I can get a handheld RC control made for a tank or something, eg with left and right tread/thrust controls.
   I put it together and ran it with just the right motor. It didn't move on carpet. On smooth floor, if I aimed it to blow air into the tunnel/under the wing, it seemed to lift the rear up and start it moving (in a sharp turn of course, almost a spin), but not easily. There was a fairly powerful blast of air coming out the back from under the tunnel/elevator. If I didn't aim the air underneath, it didn't really move.
   I unscrewed the bottom from the wing. Apparently the elevator was only glued/painted into place. I cut it loose. I used screws and adjusted it with a shim so the rear was at about the same level as the hull bottoms, ie, all three sides just touching the floor at once. This time it would move without aiming the air down, although by aiming it down it went more easily with the fan running slower. That was experiment #1: Having the rear even with the hull bottoms seemed to give the best lift (well duh?), which should translate to least power required for a given speed.

But it seemed the rear end lifted off much more easily than the front, which never got off the floor. Perhaps too much weight was still toward the front? Also of course the front was the open end, and the craft wasn't moving forward rapidly to scoop the air in. I set a heavy book on the rear; 1.5 Kg.

It hardly seemed to make a difference. Last I got a binder, also 1.5 Kg, and set them both on it near the back. This time it worked harder, but if the air was aimed under, the rear still rose and it slid forward. I was pleased that it would move with that much extra weight, with just one fan running. (The craft itself is over 4.5 Kg, with the batteries being 1/3 of the total, so the total with books was 7.5 Kg.)

   So that was finding #2, even just on the livingroom floor: With the rear lifting before the front even with the batteries center and these weights on the rear, I anticipate that the new boat's longer hulls forward, with the cabin and weight toward the rear, should give a more balanced distribution of lift to weight. This verified my intuition since I had already placed it there on the model. The position of batteries and cargo, and perhaps seats, can also adjust the front-rear weight distribution.
   With a single center propeller, the concave center profile for the tunnel hull makes sense. In fact, at the front one might even make it thin at the center but going much closer to the water on the sides so the prop can blow the air in but it has less room to escape except by lifting the whole vessel off the water, hovercraft style. But the lower the center section is at the front, the lower the waves it can accommodate. When a wave goes in freely under the front it probably (I trust) won't be too disruptive by the time it comes out the sides and rear. But it won't handle it so well if the wave smacks against a flattish front area on its way in. It's probably about right on the model as is.

[17th] I had previously connected the right motor to the "ailerons"(or is it "rudder"?) control, the left-right part of the throttle joystick, of which I had previously removed the springs returning it to center position. The intent was to move the joystick diagonally to go straight, but to hold the control at 45 degrees so it was straight back and forth, with movement to the sides for turning. But I couldn't make it work. Evidently it wouldn't go far enough to the "completely On" or "completely Off" positions, which the motor controller uses to calibrate itself on power-up.
   This time I tried connecting it to the "elevator" channel. That worked. That way it would be left and right joystick down and up for the two motors. "Backward" -- down is full throttle. WHY is Up Off? Yuk! I ended up switching the two motor channels and holding the controller upside down. I put the canard on the "ailerons" channel. Then I disassembled (again) the control/transmitter and removed the spring from the "elevator" joystick. It wouldn't do to have one motor jump to 1/2 throttle any time I let go of the controller!
   I tried it on the carpet again. With two fans and the lowered elevator it moved grudgingly if the canard was aimed to blow air underneath as much as possible.

   With the long, thin hulls the planned boat should have no problem going straight ahead at lower speeds. But I started realizing that if it really acted like a hovercraft at high speeds, then in spite of them, it could start "drifting" sideways, especially in turns. ...just like those catamaran RC ground effect craft on youtube. So, add back in another feature of the ground effect vehicle: the central "dorsal fin" rudder to ensure it goes the direction it's pointed in. I must say that the two designs, ground effect craft and catamaran boat, starting out as completely separate concepts, came to have an amazing amount in common!

   I took it down to the ocean (it won't fit in the bathtub). Both hulls leaked where I cut away the take-off steps and sliced in the diagonals along the bottom sides. This was predictable, but I could hope until I tried it. Seems I have some patching to do before actually trying it out.

[25th] I mixed some epoxy with sawdust and painted it over the cracks opened up in the hull bottoms. The idea of the sawdust was so it wouldn't just run right through any larger cracks before it set. I screened the sawdust but it was still pretty coarse. Some divots were filled and some rough surface lumps made. The sawdust seemed to clump up to make little clumps sticking up 2 or 3 millimeters.

[26th] I sanded it down with a belt sander, coarse sandpaper. Then I mixed some more epoxy (70g, no sawdust) and added a couple of teaspoons of yellow iron oxide to make the clear epoxy into "yellow ocher" color, and painted the bottom parts of the hull. It proved to be just the right amount of paint. I wanted color to be sure I didn't miss any spots, especially at the seams where it might still leak. Other than that the epoxy is just a thin skin on the styrene foam. I'm not proud of my workmanship on this 'kludj' job, but it's just for a few tests and maybe a demo or two. The iron oxide came from Victoria Clay Arts pottery supply once upon a time.

[27th] With the heavy batteries now a little more than 1/2 way to the back, I took it down to the ocean again. This time it didn't leak. Everything seemed to work. When I tried to get it underway, the stern lifted right out of the water but the bow actually dug in. It was actually trying to dive in instead of lift and water started going over. I think the fan would have had to blow the air down steeper than 45 degrees to lift the front end. The canard only went about 20 degrees. Part of this imbalance of course was having cut off the take-off steps and carved away diagonally to make the hulls thinner, so it floated substantially lower, especially at the front.

Mike had some tools at his boat and we adjusted the elevator back up again so it wasn't quite as low as the hulls. This made a considerable difference to the front-rear balance with the fans on. The back still lifted a bit out of the water but not so much, and the front, while by no means trying to lift out of the water, at least wasn't trying to dive in with the canard aimed up. But since the front didn't rise out of the water it didn't go very fast, and being front-heavy it wanted to suddenly spin around with any imbalance - a problem since the beginning. I could (at last!) keep it going pretty straight with the left and right throttles, but it should have been easy and it wasn't.
It now seemed obvious that my proportions were way off for operation as a "hovercraft". There seemed to be more air pressure lift toward the three-sides-enclosed back than near the open front. The front including the center "wing" needed to be much longer so that there was more lift with lots of leverage considerably way forward from the center of weight, to cause the whole boat would lift much more evenly. That of course was just how I had designed the new model.

Rear lifted fine, front didn't - poor proportions and weight distribution as a "SeaWing" craft.

   On this second excursion, when I opened up the throttles, the left motor controller soon went up in smoke. This one was the same as the right side one that blew way back when. (They had both seemed to work fine until I had extended the wires to put the batteries farther back for better weight distribution. Evidently their input filters were inadequate for the longer wires.)

   So the next question is whether it's worth getting another new one. Had the tests showed as much as they were going to? In which case the model has no more purpose. Potentially i could remove the rear elevator entirely or adjust it to push the tail down, and eliminate the "hovercraft" lift of the stern. It should then run more nose up and have better balanced lift, but it would be less lift until reaching a considerable airspeed. It might then take off as a ground effect craft, but having removed the take-off steps I'm dubious it would reach that speed. But as a SeaWing the whole back end was lifting out of the water even at no speed.
   This 1/4 scale RC ground effect craft model is only 4 feet long. At that scale the designed SeaWing would be 5-1/2 feet long and somewhat narrower. It seems that to get really better results with the present RC model as a "WeaWing", I would have to rebuild it by extending the front of the hulls and the center wing, moving the canard well forward. Such a reworking might be as much effort as building a whole new RC model with the final desired shape and proportions.

I'm now thinking that it shouldn't need the fan to tilt and blow air underneath. Sufficient air should get trapped as speed increases without that. If possible I'd rather have the fan (a) at the very front, (b) mounted as high as possible to get the airstream above the cabin and keep the mechanism away from the salt water, (c) and solidly mounted, with pivoting vanes behind for directional control. It's just more robust that way. My idea of a good propeller for this is a fat 40 inch fixed two blade model something like this image. [Sensenich propellers]

[28th] I snipped the heatshrink off the two blown motor controllers just to have a look. Perhaps there was something to be learned for making the controller for the unipolar "Electric Hubcap" motor? 36 mosfets in two layers of 18, some of which were blown on each controller. THREE closely stacked circuit boards. It certainly was a compact arrangement.

I would love to build a real, 80 MPH SeaWing boat and zip between towns across water in minutes, or to the mainland in an hour! (The ferry takes 6-8 hours.) But I think I've taken this as far as I should go. It's time to leave it up to someone who has a real use for a fast water transport to decide to build the actual SeaWing -- or perhaps a better RC model first to verify and refine the design. It's not like I have no other exciting projects all needing development.

Other "Green" & Electric Equipment Projects

Faraday Cabin

[7th] After some days of insulating with styrene foam and cutting plywood, I finally finished covering the east side of the south wall in the cabin. I decided I just wasn't going to go into town and buy more plywood, so I finished the wall with scraps. I suppose I'll probably end up wallpapering over them, since they don't look like much anyway.
   But if nothing else, they're a lot lighter than gyproc.

   I also decided to put in a ceiling about 10 feet high instead of having the "cathedral" ceiling up to the rafters That should hold heat in better and I can insulate the ceiling by just laying down plastic sheets on the upper "floor" instead of having to carefully fit all the pieces in the spaces between the rafters.
   This at least for the east half. The northwest quarter has the bedroom over the garage, together occupying the entire vertical space. The southwest needs height for the stairs, plus there's the lavatory with a rainwater barrel on top of the low ceiling already made, probably making it easier to just put the ceiling under the rafters.

[19th] I had thrown up some 2 by 6'es with one end resting on the washroom roof and the other on the unsheathed wall outside the bedroom. Now I screwed them to the wall studs so they couldn't fall over. Then I threw up some plywood and screwed it to these boards to make a floor. Then I took off one of the railings of the landing at the top of the stairs. Now I have a scaffold over half of the southwest quarter accessed by going up the stairs. (It would be simple to turn it into another "upstairs" area, but I don't need the space - and would rather finish the rest than add a new job!)

[20th] I put some foam insulation at the lower end, filling the spaces. Then I put up a piece of coroplast ceiling. I had already decided I should do the trim boards along with this, but rain kept me from starting... for almost a week now.

[21st] Anyway I didn't think much of the boards I had for trim purposes, so I went to town and bought some 1 by 6'es to rip into trim. I want to do that outdoors owing to the large amount of sawdust. It keeps raining. A week now. Maybe tomorrow will be nice?

[22nd] I cut three of the boards into nine pieces of trim, then realized that I had cut six pieces to a shape I only needed four of, and had only three pieces, all slightly different widths, that will I immediately need three of.
Then I spent half an hour searching through old cans of paint. I get them from the recycling place but seem to have acquired far too many. Then I spent an hour searching for my paint stirrer that spins on the end of a drill. I looked everywhere. No luck! Old paint cans need a Lot of stirring. This one was all oil at the top and the paint substance at the bottom, completely separated. I finally spent half an hour stirring by hand with a stick, and it certainly wasn't uniform. What a waste of time! Then I started painting. When I was half done it started raining. I carried the wet boards inside the cabin getting my hands covered in paint. Later I carried in the skillsaw I had cut the boards with. As I set it down I saw a glimpse of red color in a thin crack between two boards - my paint stirrer right where I thought it should have been except it had somehow fallen through the crack, with the fat end just fitting past the end of the boards and hidden by them from most viewing directions.

[23rd] I put up the first trim board, then donned crappy clothes, rubber boots, a dust mask, a raincoat and gloves, and slid some of the horrid old fiberglass insulation into the spaces. Bits of it were everywhere afterward. Then I put up a second ceiling piece, the trim board between the two, and slid the rest of the pieces of fiberglass in. One space was unfilled, but I wasn't opening another bag of that horror just for that. I have lots of beady styrene foam, also to fill the top ends of the spaces!

[26th] I filled the 8 feet of the one section with ugly foam slabs from the beach, then added some "nice" but thin foam under that to get to 5, 6 or 7 inches of insulation. I pinned loose pieces up to previous pieces with nails. (They push in easily by hand.) I made sure the seams didn't line up between layers. I broke off little pieces and stuffed them into the gaps. For a few larger gaps I sliced pieces to size with the hot saw. It doesn't have to be perfect to (surely!) be better overall than fiberglass. Little air spaces have their own insulation value. (or else fiberglass wouldn't work at all!)
But it's definitely more labour intensive than just stuffing in (clean, new) fiberglass that's already cut to the desired width.

[28th] I filled the rest of the spaces with foam, then put up the last ceiling panel. I ran out of big, thick slabs of foam (however ugly) and had to start using 1/2 inch thick pieces that weren't big enough to cover the width. Yikes! I had it easy with the big slabs! I used a lot of nails to pin lots of the thin pieces together, and several times major portions fell out and had to be redone. The thin pieces would have been much better used in walls or an attic space than in a ceiling being filled from underneath. My utility trailer where the foam still was "stored" started emptying out surprisingly quickly.
Well, this was the easy part, where 2 by 6'es could just be whipped up and screwed on, and plywood thrown on top, to make a scaffold that was almost like having a floor up there. and just going up the stairs to get to it instead of a ladder. The next section of the southwest ceiling is going to be trickier to set up safely.

[30th] I cut and painted the other half of the trim boards, 9 pieces from 3 boards. This time the rain started when I had painted just three. I rushed everything inside. Later I did the rest, somehow uninterrupted.
In the first two days of June I put the eight trim boards in the bedroom ceiling, similar to the picture above. I was glad to get it done, because I'm sure that horrid fiberglass has been raining tiny bits of dust down through the cracks ever since I put it up.

Wait... WiFi & Radio Also Cause Tinnitus !?! Ack!

   After my mysterious "one and only time with no tinnitus" experience away from electricity in 1990 or '91 and information three decades later pointing me to the reason, I was pretty darn sure everlasting tinnitus was caused by 60 Hz electrical fields. For a while I've thought it was THE cause. Previously, since I was young, I had thought it was from radio transmissions - because I could often hear what seemed to be CW (Morse code) transmissions in my head, even multiple stations at once. But by the time I moved to Haida Gwaii and the ringing got much worse with no radio transmitters anywhere nearby, I had dropped that idea. CW is usually low frequency (LF) - around 500 KHz. I didn't suspect that way higher frequencies like VHF and above could possibly affect the body's hearing mechanism. It turns out UHF and now EHF transmitters are everywhere - for WiFi and cell phones.

   As the weather warmed I started sleeping in my Faraday Cabin again, and also working in it a lot, but I seemed to get no relief from the ringing in my ears. But it had seemed to be helping substantially. I couldn't think that anything had changed. Was I wrong about everything?
   Finally it occurred to me: I had finally got internet into the cabin a couple of weeks before, with a WiFi repeater as a wireless bridge in a window where it could send and receive to another repeater in a window in the house. Could it be that UHF as well as 60 CPS could cause tinnitus? But it was a good 15 feet from my desk and bed. I had bought a USB to ethernet adapter For my laptop computer. (Laptops come without ethernet these days - Ug!) Ethernet went from the wireless bridge to the computer's USB and I turned the computer's WiFi Off, so there should be no UHF right at the computer. ("Airplane mode", it said.)

   I had recently found a sign in a video, posted at the base of a "5G" tower. I looked at it again in a viewer. "up to several hundred feet" It was on a pole right between two adjacent apartment buildings, right outside everybody's windows! Sure enough, there it was in black and white: "Tinnitus"! Along with a list of worse maladies. Of course in 1990 there was no internet or cell phones, so UHF was something used in "microwave" (actually centimetric wavelengths) ovens and for military aircraft radio, not something one might be exposed to all day at close range. If radio and even UHF frequencies also cause tinnitus, today I would probably NEVER have got away from ALL the tinnitus causes even once in my life! (And here I've been telling people I didn't think WiFi and cellphones could be causing tinnitus! And if power lines and UHF both cause tinnitus, then presumably so must All the radio frequencies in between: LF, AM, HF, SW, VHF... ANY oscillating electricity radiating an external EMF field!)

   I think it's egregious that 5G has been permitted everywhere, with UHF/EHF transmitters even so close to dwellings, when its effects on humans and animals have been so little studied and there are so many adverse indications. The probability that people's health and wellbeing is being undermined and lives shortened is much too high. It has the potential to exceed the deleterious health effects of "everyone" smoking cigarettes decades ago, and you can't say "No thanks!" or even "No way!" if the telecom companies decide to plunk one right next to your dwelling. (One reason I moved from Victoria was because Telus planted a 24-7 howling equipment box right outside my previously peaceful back yard. I suppose it has 5G now too!)

[30th] So I unplugged the bridge to see what difference it would make. (No internet again - ug!)

   Let's see... I could put the WiFi bridge in a weatherproof box Outside the metal wall cabin - at the far end or well away from it - and just run the ethernet cable inside from there.

[June 3rd] That only seemed to help a little. Good grief, what else? The WiFi was unplugged entirely. Very early in the morning I got up for a moment and unplugged the ethernet from the laptop - which was supposed to be "asleep", but which was still powering the USB to ethernet adapter. When I got up just a couple of hours later, there seemed to be a little relief. Why not? Ethernet cables used to be shielded. Now they're just unshielded twisted pair wires. But they transmit data at hundreds of megabits per second, obviously meaning hundreds of megahertz - VHF range. (Hmm... I'm behind the times. The adapter I got says 2.5 Gbps!, and there are even faster ones available. That's UHF!) I'm sure the same must be said of the USB. Those frequencies don't need a very long antenna - a few cm for 1/4 wavelength. The laptop's ethernet cable is about 4 feet from my bed. The cable comes closer then goes down to the garage about 9 feet under my bed, where (being a very long cable) it is in a big coil before it goes farther and plugs into the wireless bridge. I don't know why the ethernet signals should be "live" when the computer is asleep and the other end has no power (hence no signal) anyway, but apparently they are.

[June 4th] I got out the "EMF" meter I got a while back and checked. At the laptop there was no RF signal reading. I plugged in the ethernet adapter and there was a considerable reading.

   So... the WiFi puts signals into the air deliberately, and the ethernet does so incidentally. Ethernet is probably not as bad as WiFi or cell phones since the signal is supposed to stay in the wire, but it's obviously not trivial. Not only the WiFi bridge should be outside the metal walls of my cabin, but the ethernet cable should run straight from the computer through the nearest wall and around outside to the WiFi. The USB is probably not sending data except on request, so it (I think) should be quiet during the night with the computer asleep. Still, I think I'll look for the shortest USB data cables that work.

[June 7th] I am not entirely convinced the bedroom is completely quiet electricly - I still seem to have excess tinnitus by morning. Next I'm going to put the laptop itself at the far end of the cabin at night. While designers try to keep every wire as short as possible, computers themselves operate at over 1 GHz these days, which can easily radiate some small amount.
[June 9th] I turned the laptop right "off" instead of just "sleep". The ethernet seems to still be active when it's supposedly "asleep", and there is such a thing as "remote activation" and "remote operation" via ethernet. But after some hours, there still seemed to be some electrical "presence" in my ears while I was asleep. I opened an eye. I saw the red light from a DC to DC power adapter. Really? Well, they operate around 100 KHz switching frequency. (LF band) Everything else seemed to be putting out electrical noise... Why wouldn't They be? If our DNA is a "fractal antenna" as has been claimed, we could pick up any frequency, and there is my apparently hearing LF CW transmissions when other aspects of my tinnitus aren't too bad. There were two of them in my room not far from the bed. I unplugged them. After a couple of hours I sensed that the presence was gone, and my ears rang a bit less by morning. Note that this would include "modern" switching AC to DC power adapters; the ones without heavy transformers in them. I guess they should all be in grounded metal boxes.
   I'm going to try switching from my fine new laptop to my old Acer Aspire One, which has a lower clock speed, fewer circuits and is probably actually asleep when it's asleep. Another option might be to have a very long USB cord and a large screen video monitor and operate with the keyboard and mouse a long way away from the computer and power adapter. Maybe put the computer in a metal box or behind a grounded screen? (The HDMI video cable is at least shielded? I hope!) (Hmm... some desk computers are in metal boxes. And older plastic ones had more metal shielding inside? Less and less these days!)

   I thought my tinnitus got worse sitting at my iMac because it was in a high 60 Hz electrical field area. It's the worst, but now I realize it's not dissimilar when working at Any computer. And once again, if I hadn't had the times of relatively low tinnitus by spending time in and sleeping in the cabin before I started bringing in computer equipment, I might never have figured out why eliminating the 60 Hz AC fields hardly seemed to help.

   Electricity has brought us wondrous improvements in our modes and standards of living and no one would want to be without it, but I think it is going to become the biggest health & wellbeing concern of the 21st century as deleterious effects of power transmission and various electronic technologies start to become recognized as causes of a growing litany of chronic ailments. (For example I'll bet everlasting tinnitus, now affecting 10-15% of the entire population and a much higher percentage of older people, was virtually unheard of before there were power grids. Is it mentioned at all in 19th century or earlier medical or other writings? In the "Tinnitus" article on Wikipedia there is no mention of electricity and no section on the history of tinnitus.)
   I'm pretty sure switching from AC to 36 volts DC is the optimum way to power living spaces, but it seems that's only a part of the story.

Gardening

[9th] I finally planted onions. Transplanted seeds sprinkled in a small tub around the start of April (and now looking pretty spindly) filled three rows. Those from a package of "onion sets" (small bulbs) filled 8 more.

   I planted some carrots in a thin space between the onions and the blueberries. On a couple of occasions I had pulled some weeds and done some prep for another spot of carrots, but the weather wasn't very cooperative. [22nd] After it rained on me while I was trying to paint, later it had stopped and I finally finished prepping the carrot bed by loosening the soil deeply with the "clam digging" shovel, raking it smooth and sprinkling a bit of a mix of fertilizer (6-10-10), calcium (garden lime), woodstove ashes (potassium &?), bone meal (phosphorus), borax and a bit of magnesium sulfate ("epsom salts").
   I read the instruction about "dig the soil deeply" on a seed package. Duh! Of course, carrots need loose soil for the root to easily grow down and expand into. (Rocks are also a no-no. Ideally the soil would be sifted and all impediments removed.) In fact I broke through and was mixing sandy subsoil into the topsoil. Maybe I'll get better carrots this year than my usual small, dumpy products?
   But I planted three short rows and could see a swarm of midges ("no-see-ums") had gathered around me. I'm quite allergic to their bites so I left the planting half done along with the painting.

   Mike replaced his house windows and gave me the old ones. Sometime I started separating the double panes by inserting a thin knife blade, then some thicker things, and very gradually pushing them apart until the black butyl tape finally gave way. I didn't really care if it took days or a week to get them apart, but I'd rather do it without breaking them. The first two that fit went on the greenhouse south/outer door, replacing some almost opaque "Solexx" coroplast. I'm sure the squashes just inside appreciate it.

[23rd?] Along with watering the corn I opened the box and went in and weeded it. There were plants as tall as the corn. Most of them toward the right looked suspiciously like quinoa. I had grown quinoa there 2 or 3 years previously. Perhaps in sieving the soil to get rid of weeds and rocks I had pulled soil with quinoa seeds from the dry part under the eaves and spread it around?
   I also weeded the "leftover" corn in the greenhouse. It had cabbage family plants growing all through it. Cabbages and cauliflower had gone to seed in the greenhouse and weren't all harvested. (I made bread once using cabbage seeds instead of poppy or flax seeds.)

[25th] Finally planted the rest of the carrots, 5 more rows.

   At the start of June I rototilled the south half of the main garden for the third time, each tilling about a month apart. The weeds outgrew and smothered the crops last year. This year I hoped to get them going then chop them down, and repeat when new ones seeded, until the ground could be planted without immediately sprouting more weeds than crop plants. Hopefully! On June 3rd I planted a row of peas. (The one plant that outgrows the weeds!)
   I also tilled the northwest quarter of the plot for the second time hoping to finally tame the fierce grass, which seemed totally unstoppable. It wound itself around the tiller and brought it to a stop a couple of times. I planted the Yamhill hazelnut in the corner. To my surprise it's not as big as the "native" beaked hazelnut next to it. I thought of it as being bigger, and it probably will be in a couple of years. That one has grown since I got it two years ago. (The beaked won't be a big producer, but as with many trees, two varieties are required for pollination. It was seeing the beaked one at the store that got me thinking about growing hazelnuts.)
   The northeast quarter is full of raspberries growing wildly, with lots of tall, wild grass beneath. It's hard to keep them both from spreading, but I get great raspberry crops!

   In the greenhouse I now have a cherry tree, two apricots and the grape vine, as well as the presently very small strawberry tree/bush and the patch of asparagus. I only got the second apricot because the first was unproductive and I couldn't get a peach tree last year. But after just one year it started growing more fruit than every other tree combined! I've twisted off about 70 small apricots for fear the drooping branches would break. In pots I still have a peach and a plum, and I don't know where to put them.

Strawberries toward the end of May. They looked pretty sad at
the beginning of the month, now they're growing and blooming.
I took more plant pictures, but I think I'll put them in the next
TE News and show a comparison after a month's spring growth.

Electricity Generation

My Solar Power System(s)

(My solar panels recent images - TE News #200)

The Usual Daily/Monthly/Yearly Log of Solar Power Generated [and grid power consumed]

Notes:
* All times are in PST: clock ~48 minutes ahead of local sun time, never PDT which is an hour and 48 minutes ahead.
* Unapproved AC/Grid Tied systems have been removed.
* House panels include four old ones on the roof (upper - total rating ~ 1000W), two 305W on the roof, three 305W on the south wall below the roof, and one broken panel mounted verticly on the porch railing (seems to still work but a lot of shade there).
* Cabin DC includes the three carport panels and the two on a pole in the yard as well as the four on the cabin roof itself. All nine are 305W.
* The wall, pole and porch panels are easily wiped off from the ground if it snows.
* Km = Nissan Leaf electric car drove distance, then car was charged. Car KWH does not add to or subtract from any other readings.

Recent fotos of solar panels, TE News #200:

House System Panels: House roof, wall (9 solar panels) - Porch (1 broken one - usually shady)
Cabin System Panels: Carport (3 - sunniest place on the whole property) - Pole (2 - shadiest place) -Faraday Cabin (4 - badly shaded in winter)

New Order of Daily Solar Readings (Beginning November 2024):

Date HouseDC, CabinDC => Total KWH Solar [Notable power Uses (EV); Grid power meter@time] Sky/weather, notes...

April
30th 246.52,125.46 => 6.57 [55Km; 27839@19:30]

May
1st 249.39, 128.96 => 6.27 [27868@19:30]
2nd 253.36, 134.22 =>   9.23 [85Km; 27926@22:00]
3rd 258.12, 139.96 => 10.50 [55Km; 27968@21:30]
4th 263.27, 146.20 => 11.39 [45Km; 20815@23:30]
5th 268.62, 153.52 => 12.67 [28045@20:30]
6th 273.26, 159.91 => 11.05 [55Km; 28083@21:30]
7th 278.86, 168.26 => 13.95 [28136@"24:00"]
8th missed... 10.50 (est) [50Km; missed...]
9th 289.08, 181.79 => 13.25 (est) [90Km; 28230@"24:00"] 23.75 over 2 days
10th 292.81, 186.66 => 8.60 [115Km; 28293@"25:00"] dull day (up late!)
11th 297.75, missed => 10.91 [10Km; 28325@20:30]
12th 304.35, 200.16 => 14.92 [28375@21:30] Sunny: There was more power to be had if I could have used it!
13th 308.73, 205.65 =>   9.87 [75Km; 28414@'24:00']
14th 314.66, 214.43 => 14.71 [28440@21:30]
15th 317.42, 217.91 => 6.24 [28486@23:00] Clouds and rain
16th 321.61, 222.84 =>   9.12 [85Km; 28533@20:30] mor clouds
17th 326.32, 228.05 =>   9.92 [110Km; 28588@22:00] stil clouds
18th 331.04, 233.79 => 10.46 [28627@20:30] Just clouds
19th 336.78, 240.54 => 12.49 [28672@23:00] again clouds. (some very dull sun)
20th 340.97, 245.58 => 9.23 [28715@'24:00'] Lotsa rain. Not to mention clouds.
21st 345.38, 250.82 => 9.65 [55Km; 28758@21:30] even mor ov same
22d 350.67, 258.31 => 12.78 [28802@21:00] not very different
23rd 354.49, 262.94 =>   8.45 [28871@'24:00'] even less different. PS: around 8-10degree highs all these days; no frosts
24th 360.23, 269.06 => 11.86 [105Km; 28916@'24:00'] suspiciously similar. Everybody wants even one warm day for their gardens.
25th 366.40, 276.84 => 13.95 [28948@22:30] Warm and sunny for parts of the day, anyway. Yay!
26th 370.70, 281.48 => 8.94 [28987@21:00] Bak to cold, windy, cloudy & rainy
27th 375.47, 287.29 => 10.58 [55Km; 29031@22:30]
28th 378.65, 291.27 =>   7.16 [missed] even darker, wind, rain, cold
29th 384.34, 299.11 => 13.53 [55Km; 29118@21:00] Sunshine looked promising for a while, then went away
30th 388.38, 304.81 =>   9.74 [29142@21:00] A few sunny breaks.
31st 393.60, 311.70 => 12.11 [110Km; 29193@'24:00'] Similar

June

1st 397.60, 316.55 =>   8.85 [29222@21:30]
2nd 402.54, 322.79 => 11.18 [29279@'25:00']
3rd -- missed --      =>   9.69
4th 412.72, 336.00 => 13.70 [50Km; 29365@21:30] (estimates: 23.39/2=11.70 but today was notably sunnier.)
5th 417.93, 341.50 => 10.71 [55Km; 29404@21:30]
6th 423.95, 347.67 => 12.19 [29434@21:00] Wow, a real, sunny day! (So warm I'm running less heat!)
7th 429.76, 356.63 => [115Km; 29483@21:00]
8th 434.85, 362.83 => [29506@21:00]

Chart of daily KWH from solar panels.   (Compare May 2025 with April 2025 & May 2024.)

Days of __ KWH	May 2025 (18 Collectors, DC/ Batteries.)	April 2025 (18 C's - DC/ batteries only)	May 2024 (18 C's - Grid Ties & DC)
0.xx
1.xx
2.xx		1
3.xx
4.xx
5.xx		2
6.xx	2	5
7.xx	1	5
8.xx	3	4
9.xx	7	8
10.xx	5	4
11.xx	3
12.xx	5	1
13.xx	3
14.xx	2
15.xx
16.xx
17.xx
18.xx
19.xx
20.xx
21.xx
22.xx
23.xx
Total KWH for month	333.32	246.61
Km Driven on Electricity	1159.3 @7.9 kw/kwh = 150 KWH	799.1 (@8.0 Km/KWH) = 100 KWH

Things Noted - May 2025

* If it was sunny there's enough solar in the day to power some electric radiant heat (350-450W) continuously on each system. Since it has been cloudy, I have to be careful and shut them off part of the time and if I want the cabin warm I have to use a 500W heater on the power grid. (Of course, if it was sunny it might be warm enough without heaters on! ...In colder months, small heaters are inadequate and sunshine is usually scarce.)

Monthly Summaries: Solar Generated KWH [& Power used from grid KWH]

As these tables are getting long, I'm not repeating the log of monthly reports. The reports for the first FIVE full years (March 2019 to February 2024) may be found in TE News #189, February 2024.

2024
Month: HouseAC + DC +Carport+Cabin[+DC] (from Aug 2024)
Jan KWH: 31.37 + 3.14 + 16.85 + 16.82 =   68.18 [grid power used: 909; car (very rough estimates): 160*]
Feb KWH: 96.52 + 2.36 + 49.67 + 52.98 = 201.53 [grid: 791; car: 130]
FIVE full Years of solar!
Mar KWH 150.09+ 1.63 + 93.59 + 92.50 = 337.81    [grid: 717; car: 140]
Apr KWH 181.89+35.55 +123.50+142.74 = 483.68     [grid: 575; car: 140]
May KWH 129.23+67.38 +109.6 +126.32 = 432.53 [grid: 405; car: 145]
Jun KWH 152.54+51.02+118.99+141.17 = 463.72   [grid: 420; car: 190]
July KWH 174.22+30.53+111.19+128.62 = 444.56           [grid: 386; car: 165]
Aug KWH 221.99+ 2.63 +142.49+151.67+ 5.78 = 524.56 [grid: 358; car: 180]
SeptKWH 120.98+ 2.49 + 83.50 + 19.10+ 39.95 = 266.02 [grid: 662 (yowr!); car: 155*]
Oct KWH   78.48+ 7.29 + 64.39 + 7.52 + 40.75 = 198.43 [grid: 711; car: 120*]
Nov KWH   19.63+12.19+ 23.90 + 3.35 + 25.62 = 84.69 [grid: 900 (ACK!);car: 110*]
Now solar is charging batteries only. 2 DC systems: house, cabin.
Dec KWH 20.37 + 16.76 = 37.13 [grid: 1866 (using electric heat - awg!); car: 120*]

2025
Jan KWH   35.02 + 26.30 = 61.32 [grid: 2136 (electric heat OW!); car: 120*]
Feb KWH 55.43 + 39.00 = 94.43 [grid: 1937; car: 100*]
SIX full Years of solar!
Mar KWH 115.13 + 87.41 = 202.54 [grid: 1860; car: 155* KWH]
Apr KWH 126.25 + 120.36 = 246.61 [grid: 1246; car: 100*]
May KWH 147.08 + 186.24 = 333.32 [grid: 1354; car: 150*]

* Car consumption comes from solar and or grid: it does not add to other figures. (Just from grid from Nov. 18th. 2024 on)

Annual Totals

1. March 2019-Feb. 2020: 2196.15 KWH Solar [used   7927 KWH from grid; EV use: -] 10, 11, 12 solar panels
2. March 2020-Feb. 2021: 2069.82 KWH Solar [used 11294 KWH from grid; EV use: - (More electric heat - BR, Trailer & Perry's RV)] 12 solar panels
3. March 2021-Feb. 2022: 2063.05 KWH Solar [used 10977 KWH from grid; EV use ~~1485 KWH] 12 solar panels, 14 near end of year.
4a. March 2022-August 2022: in (the best) 6 months, about 2725 KWH solar - more than in any previous entire year!
4. March2022-Feb. 2023: 3793.37 KWH Solar [used 12038 KWH from grid; EV use: ~1583 KWH] 14, 15, 18 solar panels
5. March 2023-Feb. 2024: 3891.35 KWH Solar [used 7914 KWH from power grid; EV use: ~1515 KWH] 18 solar panels
6. March 2024-Feb. 2025: 3428.88 KWH Solar [used 12773 KWH from grid; EV used: ~1685 KWH]

Money Saved or Earned - @ 12¢ [All BC residential elec. rate] ; @ 50¢ [2018 cost of diesel fuel to BC Hydro] ; @ 1$ per KWH [actual total cost to BC Hydro in 2022 according to an employee]; or maybe it's 62 ¢/KWH [according to BC Hydro at Renewable Energy Symposium Sept. 2024]:
1. 263.42$ ; 1097.58$ ; 2196.15$
2. 248.38$ ; 1034.91$ ; 2069.82$
3. 247.57$ ; 1031.53$ ; 2063.05$
4. 455.20$ ; 1896.69$ ; 3793.37$
5. 466.96$ ; 1945.68$ ; 3891.35$
6. 411.47$ ; 1714.44$ ; 3428.88$

   I had to disconnect the system from the grid in November 2024. These two now independent installations (house, cabin) will continue to run their 36 volt DC systems and I'll see how I can most effectively utilize the available solar energy with the limited available storage.

http://www.TurquoiseEnergy.com
Haida Gwaii, BC Canada