My new Carbon Monoxide sensor has superb pilot friendly features!

 Hi!

We're announcing our new CO ProTM carbon monoxide sensor. It is designed by a pilot (me!!!) for pilots and passengers and travelers and has features I've always wanted in a Carbon Monoxide detector. 

Startup Screen on CO Pro

Without much of a drumroll, here's a list of features:

• Five year sensor life; possibly extendible as field experience warrants
• Always On sensor -- useful CO baseline Zero reading in about 15 seconds 
• Rechargeable battery operation via USB power port 
• 5 hour life in Bright
• 10+ hours of operation in Dim mode
• Aural Alarm which may be muted (touch the SPEAKER button)
• Zero Recalibration on demand at the touch of a button (touch the CAL button for 3 seconds)
• 0 to 600 PPM range; 50 PPM denoted in yellow and 100 PPM in red
• Arrow Trend provides visual and aural warning when CO starts to rise, long before final value is settled
• Graphing of CO levels over a two minute period; wraps around to show more information
• Hazard Icon illuminates @ 100PPM and higher
• Brilliant daylight readable color display
• Bright mode for daylight and dim mode for nighttime (touch the DIM button for 3 seconds)
• G-Meter as secondary function (touch the NEXT button briefly and unit will switch modes)
• G-Meter has current, max and min digital values
• G-Meter has standard dial indication as well
• G-Meter has 'Ghosting' feature which shows G history
• G-Meter mode also displays digital CO values even while G-Meter is active
• When used in G-Meter mode, will automatically switch back to CO Graphing mode if CO levels start to rise

We also have another CO sensor which is called GEIGER CO.  

In its own right, the older GEIGER CO is a phenomenal product. Here's a photo of the GEIGER CO (orange metal) next to a CO PRO (black nylon with chopped carbon fiber case)

GEIGER CO and the new CO Pro, side by side

I tested GEIGER CO alongside the new CO Pro and uploaded the resulting video to YouTube.

You can see the video here:  https://youtu.be/aJz5FH31_2o

I am getting over a cold as I recorded that.  I hope you like my robust voice. :-)

Here's a look at the screen of CO Pro during a Carbon Monoxide event:

CO Pro screen during operation.  Note Hazard Icon (indicates +100PPM) and Graphing.

  

Here's a little bit of what's happening in this screen.

• The graph shows a wrapped history of what has happened.
• The Hazard Icon is on; it turns on whenever CO PPM > 100 PPM. 
• The current CO reading is 194.
• The max experienced CO was 212.
• The battery icon shows 3 bars.
• The speaker icon is visible. Whenever CO > 50 ppm the speaker alarm turns on.  We can clear it with the SPEAKER button.

Here's the G-Meter screen.

CO Pro screen during operation, in G-Meter mode

• The Needle shows the current G's (about 1.02 as also shown digitally).
• The 'Ghosting' effect shows needle history.
• Also shown are MAX and MIN g values.
• Below the thin line on the digital value list is CO Max and CO current level. Both are updated while using this as a G-Meter.
• If the unit senses a rising CO level, it will automatically switch to CO graphing mode.

The CO Pro can be mounted with the optional Holster. It is designed for a standard 3 1/8" instrument cutout.

CO Pro shown mounted in optional holster

It can also be mounted to any flat surface using the corner holes.  Rivets; screws; Duct Tape (hint, hint).

Please order the CO Pro (or the GEIGER CO) now.

The pricing and availability are as follows:

CO Pro -- $199 intro offer through the end of the month & year (December 2022).

Optional Holster -- $39 intro offer through the end of the month & year (December 2022). I wish I could include this at no charge, but I can't.  We print them on our $20,000 MarkForged 3D printer and it takes more than one hour of print time.  Also, it is printed using nylon / chopped carbon fiber.  It is an exceptionally high quality print.

Aircraft Spruce has ordered CO Pro inventory for stock and is participating in the intro offer.

Links for purchase are here:

Co Pro™ Carbon Monoxide Monitor – Radiant Technology (radiantinstruments.com)

Radiant Technology CO PRO ™ Carbon Monoxide Monitor + Digital G-Meter | Aircraft Spruce

How I ended up in the Emergency Room with a blood clot

I've had growing concerns over my bradycardia, which is simply a slow heart rate. It can produce fainting, and I've never fainted, but I don't want to.  

A few months ago, I asked my family physician to get a little more aggressive in helping me deal with bradycardia.  He made a referral to a heart doc which fit into my medical insurance plan.

And so, I got to wear a heart monitor for 24 hours.  It showed.... pretty much nothing, other than the usual mix of benign contractions common to many people.  For instance, google "Premature Ventricular Contractions".  My heart averaged 49 BPM for the 24 hour period.  Low, but not a problem, according to the heart doc.

He also scheduled me for a treadmill stress test.  I did it, and I thought I was pretty spectacular.  No problems from my side.  

After I'd returned home, I got a call from the nurse. She advised me that the Doc had seen something suspicious -- he wanted me to take the more detailed version of the same treadmill test, this time with nuclear dye in my blood and pre/post cardiac imaging.  OK, I was concerned now.  We scheduled and took the test.

A day later -- the Doc informs me that there is no significant blockage.  My anxiety fades away.

Four days later -- my elbow, close to the catheter injection site for the dye, gets very tender and starts to swell to magnificent proportions.  It hurts. It is tender. It is warm.  Later, I take a pic of the elbow area:

The area of first trouble is obvious.

Two days after that -- with an unchanged elbow problem, I head to Urgent Care. It's Sunday around lunchtime, and the place is very unbusy.  weird....  The receptionist takes my quick info and schedules me for an appointment.  That's why no one is there.  Patients come in to urgent care, get assigned an appointment time, and leave to return at the appointed time.  Kathy and I do the same: we leave, eat lunch, and return.

When we return, the receptionist has us take a seat for a few minutes, and then advises me that I have an outstanding bill with the hospital.  I'm not sure what to do with the information that the institution that is giving me care first reminds me of financial obligations towards them.  That is so TREMENDOUSLY helpful in making me feel calm and collected.

I get into a room, then a PA comes and takes a quick look at the elbow. Without a great deal of consideration of the history of how I got this Big Bulging Elbow, she prescribes an antibiotic and sends me on my way.  My pleas to get alternative theories as to what is happening in my elbow fall on her very tired and deaf ears. 

Within two days, the swelling subsides, so I'm comfortable that the diagnosis was correct.

A week later, I'm still having symptoms.  Weirdly, some of my veins now feel hard and tender as they march up from my elbow towards my wrist.

Three weeks later, I'm still having symptoms.  The area of tenderness has rotated around the area below my wrist.

Five weeks later, I'm still having symptoms. I take a picture of my arm, marking off the progression of swelling and tenderness.  You can see areas one, two and three here:

A map of affected areas on my arm.

Six weeks later, I'm still having symptoms.  In fact, one of the veins crossing my wrist into my hand is now swollen and tender. That would be Area Four of this growing problem. My body starts to have general aches, like a cold.

One morning, I wake up and look at my left hand.  It is very swollen. My frustration of this situation has met a snapping point of sorts.  I take a photo of my two hands, showing the difference, and I write up a brief history and send it to my primary doc along with the photo.  (I do this using the online patient portal.) 

The picture that (maybe) saved my life

Expecting nothing more than an appointment with the doc, instead, my phone rings.  It is the nurse. She tells me:  "Go to the ER. We're sending the same instruction to you via your patient portal." I'm stunned. I ask for some reasoning, but don't get a lot. I read the email from her in my patient portal, and it also says to go get emergency services. ??? It mentions a possible blood infection.

I walk around the corner to Kathy's home office, and tell her that we are heading to the ER.  She is as puzzled as I am; she can hardly believe it.

The experience at the ER takes five hours. 

So I'll cut to the chase: you already know that Emergency Rooms can be a hell hole of frustration, right?

They triage me in and assign me to an ultrasound of the arm.

That turns out to be a spot-on idea: the ultrasound reveals that I have a blood clot in a vein in my left arm. The NP discusses the chronology of events with me. I am once again struggling to understand how I have a blood clot.  What was the sequence of events? How did it start in my elbow and move towards my wrist?  More questions and assumptions than answers. The diagnosis is a Deep Vein Thrombosis in the Upper Extremity (DVT-UE), which is exceedingly rare. It also has a very high mortality rate. (Since I'm alive, diagnosed, and on appropriate medication, I assume I've dodged that bullet.)

Good news:  It's not occluded, or my hand would be the size of an orange.

Even better news:  a $500 per month drug will solve the problem if taken for a minimum of 3 months.

Even better better news:  the first month is free. The second month has a discount coupon.

I am advised to make a follow up appointment with my primary care physician on my ER discharge instructions. It says to see the doc within "1-2 days".  I call my doc's office the next morning:  first available date is 2 weeks away.  I indicate that I'm happy with that, but what about seeing them within 2 days, per the discharge instructions? The scheduler replies: "that's just a suggestion."

Bottom line:  I was trying to solve the bradycardia slow heart rate issues, and I ended up with a blood clot in my arm.  It's kind of like planning to go to the party, and you somehow end up in the sewer, floating downstream.

I'll try and be a little less bitter in my next post.  I'm currently on day six of Xarelto. I will be taking blood thinners for 3 months.

If you enjoyed reading this post, you should also read my prior post on FAA medical issues relating mostly to depression and anxiety. The link is here:

Standard Pilot Blog: Failing the Medical for emotional reasons? I had some anxiety about that too. (jameswiebe.blogspot.com)

Electronic Production Inflation Blues

I took nearly 3 weeks off. The time was spent communing with moose in Wyoming. Yeah, really, ran into 3 of the critters over the course of my camping trip.  One got very close to the blue chair that I was sitting in, and a few moments later I took this pic.

Nice lady, isn't she? She's a pretty big gal, and she's definitely looking at me. Defnitely looking bigger than I remember moose to be.

Which, of course, naturally leads me to my topic of inflation & a small electronic business. (Sorry for the abrupt turn.)

I've seen social media posts talking up a general mistrust in "supply chain issues", especially as it relates to electronics.  Such as electronics for automotive production, or in my case, experimental avionics. Some people mock the reality of these issues.

Here's my reality.

Around two years ago, I started using a very accurate air pressure sensor, as a basis for the air speed sensor within my line of aircraft instrumentation. Drilling down to the exact part in question, it is a Honeywell SSCDRRN100MDAA5.  It accepts a Pitot line (from the ram air) and also a static line (used to establish the differential pressure), thus providing a basis for digitization and eventual display of airspeed in the cockpit of the airplane.

Here is the invoice from two years ago:

And you can see that I paid $31.52 for each sensor.

Here's the invoice from today, as I bought parts to fill orders from customers.

Over the course of 24 months, the price has gone up from $31.52 to $53.79, an increase of 70% on this part. 

Yes, I bought less. And other electronic distributors are posting lower prices than Mouser, from whom I most recently ordered.  But the other distributors have zero stock.

You can see this for yourself by using the global chip finder which is:  FindChip.com, and inserting the part number SSCDRRN100MDAA5 into the search field.  Every part in the distribution system on the planet will show up.  Most distributors have zero stock; the ones that have parts have high prices.  Pick your poison: ship nothing and suffer; or buy parts and kill your margins.

Meanwhile, I have not passed any cost increases on to my channel or distributors. And I'm going to be the bad guy by eventually passing these increases on... except I'm not.  I'm just a small businessman trying to maintain margins, on average, across the board.

Which gets me to the bad news: The promotional prices for Radiant Instruments Gen-2 instruments ends at the end of September. Our older instrument product line will also go up in price starting October 1.  As of this writing, Aircraft Spruce has placed some orders at lower prices, and so they will be receiving some stock of our classic instruments (for instance, Radiant Turn Coordinator) and will be able to honor older pricing while their inventory holds together.  You can always find out what's in stock at Aircraft Spruce by searching Radiant in their website search bar. Most of our product line comes up, and things that are in stock are identified.

Arrgh.

Back to production tasks, now.  I promised Kathy that we would ship some orders tomorrow. 

...Hoping to repair the gross margins next month as prices go up. Hoping people still buy my stuff.

Best Regards,

Details on Ultralight Honeycomb Cabin

I'm now 34 hours into the build of a Chipper ProCub / UltraCub 2022 prototype aircraft. The design has the following characteristics:

• Safety first, with an enclosed robust cabin
• Compliant with FAR Part 103
•     - single seat
•     - empty weight of 254 pounds
•     - stall speed of 28 mph or less
•     - full power cruise speed of no greater than 62 mph
•     - maximum fuel capacity of 5 gallons
• Easy to build
• Classic good looks, unapologetically an airplane 
• Inexpensive
• Quick building
• Folding wings
• Fantastic flying manners
• STOL capability is a plus.

 A shoutout to my friend Landon!, who painted the seat in the photo. This seat was made for and first flown in my skydock design, and it looks great with the old Belite logo and gloss blue color. Everytime I do work on an ultralight, I find this seat and set it in the design to see how things are shaping up. I do have a list of brief skydock videos,

https://youtu.be/eI_arV4mu_A

https://youtu.be/5Q_JC0GhLQw

https://youtu.be/qJH9cKjkH5I

but I digress. Back to the business at hand. Here's the visual progress report on this Saturday:

Below is a closeup on that seat. It is resting on two honeycomb bulkheads, along with the backrest honeycomb cross piece. The honeycomb has been cleaned up with an aluminum cap on the heavier 3/4" rear bottom honeycomb and backrest cross piece. The front cross piece has a vinyl cap. Look carefully into the small 'windows' in the sides of the cabin, and you can see where I've begun to install aluminum tape over exposed honeycomb.

Another photographic point of view. The cabin is currently in 'flintstone' mode as the bottom skins aren't yet installed.

Yesterday, I designed a couple of new gussets for the top of the cabin. They are highlighted in green:

Today, I cut them on the shopbot and installed them. Here's the forward gusset. You can see the mirror part on the opposite side of the cabin as well. I pre-primed them before I installed them. The tab is intentionally overbent to keep the sharp edge away from the pilot-occupant.

For that matter, all of the gussets are bent with safety in mind. The tabs almost always face away from the occupant.

I already mentioned the backrest cross support piece. It is fabricated from 3/4" honeycomb, and then held in place by pairs of aluminum angles which were bonded using epoxy. I prefer 3m 2216, but I had original formula JB Weld on hand, so I used it.

The photo shows the parts bonded together and held with temporary bolts. As the rear fuselage side skin is not yet installed, these bolts will eventually be replaced and redone with washers along normal practice lines.

Changing my focus to the front box, I'm really pleased with the quality of the CNC parts; the general fit, and the way this is beginning to look. I'm excited for how things will be when the windshield and engine cowl are added. I'm designing a new cowl which reflects the fresh new look of this airplane; I won't be using the old radial bump design anymore.

I mentioned earlier that the cabin was still in flintstone mode (no bottom skin yet); these photos show the detail of the structure as seen from the bottom.

Make sure you've seen my youtube videos which show this evolving project:

This one talks about adding metal skin to the rear fuselage in CAD:

https://youtu.be/VmcgWRY3bb8

This one talks about using Sketchup to make this design:

https://youtu.be/rUkmoWByCws

Finally, as I am in bootstrap mode, I get a lot of enthusiasm and deeply appreciate my patrons. $10 per month gives you the rights to the blueprints for this plane (terms and conditions apply) and $35 per month indicates that you plan to purchase a kit. $80 indicates that you plan to purchase a Ready To Fly; I've set the price for the first 3 RTF planes at $30,000 in taildragger configuration and basic instrumentation.

Become a patron here:

www.patreon.com/jameswiebe

Thanks for reading,

P.S., this is how the cabin CAD looked on December 12, a little less than one month ago. It's come a long way!