SITREP

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

You bet they're clever.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

This is the pond.

 

[john connor]

Looks exotic, vaguely Mediterranean, compared to the northern European landscapes I live within. Can you walk up on those hills there, or is it all private property in Australia? Finland - where we go in the holidays - has a great law whereby you're allowed to roam literally anywhere, even if it's private property, provided you don't get too close to houses etc. So not in people's back gardens, but out in the forests and archipelago you can go all over.

 

[jimcarravallah]

Looks exotic, vaguely Mediterranean, compared to the northern European landscapes I live within. Can you walk up on those hills there, or is it all private property in Australia? Finland - where we go in the holidays - has a great law whereby you're allowed to roam literally anywhere, even if it's private property, provided you don't get too close to houses etc. So not in people's back gardens, but out in the forests and archipelago you can go all over.

Civilized country, that Finland.

Over here, where "property rights" are sacred in most instances, I live on a deeper property than most in suburban areas because there's an unbuildable stretch of drainage plain and a creek at the back of the lot. The walk along the creek is more isolated from traffic and bustle than most, but not too wooded. Makes for small nature trail leading to a confluence with a larger creek well containing wooded acreage in less than a kilometer north of the house.

Many who live backed up to that creek will stroll along it, in sight of the housing built at the top of the small valley that lines its length to the wooded confluence.

Difference in what we euphemistically term "home of the free" is nobody living backed up to our creek has called authorities to remove "trespassers" from the unusable grass expanse of flood plane on their property.

Most other deep suburban lots such as ours which have wide undeveloped land (the original use of most of my city was farming, our particular corner once a horse farm) are fenced, not so much to keep pets or occasional livestock in, but to make sure "strangers" stay out.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Looks exotic, vaguely Mediterranean, compared to the northern European landscapes I live within. Can you walk up on those hills there, or is it all private property in Australia? Finland - where we go in the holidays - has a great law whereby you're allowed to roam literally anywhere, even if it's private property, provided you don't get too close to houses etc. So not in people's back gardens, but out in the forests and archipelago you can go all over.

Most hills in Canberra are open to the public. They all have walking trails and are great for a walk with a view. I'm not aware of a right to roam in Australia but then we're blessed with a lot of space. The city of Canberra lies within the Australian Capital Territory. this was hived out of New South Wales to provide a space fore the national capital. Seventy percent of the ACT is a national park, the Namadgi. It borders on the south to the Snowy mountains. Canberra is high country well at least high for Australia. We have a lot of very good cool-climate wineries just outside the city. It also boasts a thriving coffee culture (albeit impacted by the Covid pandemic). But man is resilient and a company started up an aerial delivery service in the adjacent suburb. The service is called Wing and it uses spunky drones to deliver piping hot expresso to your door. We tried it out and now all down our street our neighbours use it too. Check out these photos.

 

[Grognerd]

Well that's just crazy! Pretty Funny...

 

[jimcarravallah]

Most hills in Canberra are open to the public. They all have walking trails and are great for a walk with a view. I'm not aware of a right to roam in Australia but then we're blessed with a lot of space. The city of Canberra lies within the Australian Capital Territory. this was hived out of New South Wales to provide a space fore the national capital. Seventy percent of the ACT is a national park, the Namadgi. It borders on the south to the Snowy mountains. Canberra is high country well at least high for Australia. We have a lot of very good cool-climate wineries just outside the city. It also boasts a thriving coffee culture (albeit impacted by the Covid pandemic). But man is resilient and a company started up an aerial delivery service in the adjacent suburb. The service is called Wing and it uses spunky drones to deliver piping hot expresso to your door. We tried it out and now all down our street our neighbours use it too. Check out these photos.

The drone delivery is innovative, but what happens when the customer waiting for the drink decides the one sugar cube he ordered with the drink wasn't enough and wants two after the drone has left the store? ;-)

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Well if the second wave of the delivery service hasn't departed yet I'm sure they'll oblige and add another cube. Each run can deliver two coffee cups or one cup and a cake etc. So when all my family is here we usually get two or three runs. They have multiple drones, so there is only a minute wait between drops.

BTW we usually have flat whites, no sugar, so I'm "winging" it here!

 

[john connor]

Insane. The coffee is still hot when it arrives? What's the mark-up for such a delivery? And there's no danger of them malfunctioning and spilling hot coffee on bystanders?

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

It's always arrived hot so far. Currently there is no surcharge for the delivery. But that will change after their introductory period, which has gone for three months already. I believe it will add $2 per cup when the intro period ends. Each of the takeaway cups has a slick stick inserted into the sipper slot on top of the cup. There is usually no spillage but there have been a few close shaves when the drones have been attacked by birds. It's nesting time and so the risk of an incident has been high. I saw a magpie take exception to the drone when it was delivering next door. Whoever was at the controls of the drone was pretty good. They managed to shift and dodge the bird while the cable lowered the parcel to the ground.

As to spilling hot coffee on bystanders, so far we Canberran's have been content to remain clear of the LZ till after the drop. No Darwin awards here yet.

 

[jimcarravallah]

BTW we usually have flat whites, no sugar, so I'm "winging" it here!

American Exceptionalism . . .

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

Jim, I had to look that up. Am I correct that American Exceptionalism is a just a fancy way of saying American Ego?

 

[jimcarravallah]

Jim, I had to look that up. Am I correct that American Exceptionalism is a just a fancy way of saying American Ego?

Yes.

These days it tends to be used in a joking / sarcastic / derogatory manner after Trump promoted the "America First" / "We can go it alone" concept.

Used to mean we could accomplish anything on which we wanted to focus our innovation, manufacturing capabilities and diplomatic collaboration.

 

[GoodGuy]

... a company started up an aerial delivery service in the adjacent suburb. The service is called Wing and it uses spunky drones to deliver piping hot expresso to your door. We tried it out and now all down our street our neighbours use it too. Check out these photos.

The drone's design reminds me of the C-130, actually. Looks like the drone uses 4 propellers for thrust and the rest as rotors for hovering over the DZ, plus it has wings (so it can go faster than regular drones). It's more like a plane with hover capability. Pretty slick design.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

These drones launch from the adjacent suburb and are here in one minute and fifteen seconds. They take around 15 secs to lower the payload and release it. A few seconds more and the cable is high enough for them to rise, turn and head for home. You can see the cable retracting as they depart.

 

[jimcarravallah]

These drones launch from the adjacent suburb and are here in one minute and fifteen seconds. They take around 15 secs to lower the payload and release it. A few seconds more and the cable is high enough for them to rise, turn and head for home. You can see the cable retracting as they depart.

I worked a technical publication program with Caterpillar Tractor in the US as the vendor tracking the design and operation of air transportable construction equipment for the 82d Airborne and the 326th Engineers in the 101st Airborne.

The equipment was broken into two modules that could be transported some 100 miles or so hanging beneath a CH47r.

In some instances they would be placed on the ground in the same manner as your coffees.

The equipment's first combat use was when prototypes were deployed during the US invasion of Panama in the late 80s to displace Manuel Noriega.

 

[GoodGuy]

These drones launch from the adjacent suburb and are here in one minute and fifteen seconds. They take around 15 secs to lower the payload and release it. A few seconds more and the cable is high enough for them to rise, turn and head for home. You can see the cable retracting as they depart.

Impressive.
The German Postal Service started a drone project for future parcel deliveries in 2014, but the project was canceled this summer. It aimed at covering deliveries in the mudflats (to isles like Amrum, Heligoland, etc. as well as to a number of islets) and to mountainous regions in South Germany, possibly the German part of the Eastern Alps and some lower mountain ranges, where deliveries by car/on foot take hours.

Prototype runs in the mudflats from the port city of Norden to the Isle of Juist in 2014 were quite successful, the drone followed a programmed route from the Postal service depot to a pharmacy on the island, there was no manual interaction required, afaik. The drone covered the 12-km distance to the island in around 16 minutes. I am guessing that DHL didn't see too many business opportunities, and maybe they were too scared to use the drones in cities. Germany is packed with densely populated areas, so accidents/malfunctions could be disastrous.
Japan's postal service canceled the drone idea and went for boxy and slowly moving robots (tracks or wheels? - I can't remember) which can't harm pedestrians as they are so slow and which can navigate on sidewalks on their own. The postal service seems to beat 2 challenges that way: quite densely populated areas and a lack of personnel. In 2018, the German Postal Service picked up the idea and started to test their own delivery robots in Japan, but I never heard about that project again.

The real hype here is about "air taxis", fully automated or with pilots and with up to 5 seats, which are supposed to cover distances of up to 100 km, say between airports and city centers or neighboring cities. Some prototypes will be pure E-taxis (batteries), some will have fuel cells, and others will have regular engines burning hydrogen or methanol, most of them look like giant drones .
Anyway, Australia seems to be the ideal playing field for drone deliveries, the same goes for a lot of areas in the US, I guess.

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

SITREP Fri 3 Nov 21

Hi all,

This week I fixed a series of scheduling issues inside my new attack code. I was able to see several attacks, human and AI initiated, go right through to the finish. This is good news but will need more thorough testing. I'm now set to fix a scheduling related issue where slip orders arrive before the full plan orders. This can occur currently because the receive order event execution time is set to timeNow with no orders delay, whereas a full plan order applies orders delay. Currently there is a swag of complicated code to handle these cases. But I'm still finding cases not handled properly. So I intend to store the LastOrderExecutionTime inside a mission plan and update this each time we send an order, both slip and full plan orders. Then when we determine the execution time for the ReceiveOrderEvent we will make sure its at least equal to the plan's LastOrderExecutionTime. That should drastically reduce these issues.

After that I will fix the issue of assaults crossing paths. We're making progress. Thanks for your patience.

 

[john connor]

Thanks, Dave. What's left after those two items? Or is that it?

 

[Dave 'Arjuna' O'Connor]

i HOPE THAT'S IT.