FSD update

cars

With v. 12.5.5.2 Tesla’s vision based autopilot (supervised) the emphasis is on driver supervision, still. While autosteer and adaptive speed control has become relatively polished and worry free there are edge cases where driver intervention is necessary/mandatory.

One might think that the driver, after having made a manual course correction or driving adjustment, would “teach” the car. Future revisits to that kink in the road would then go smoothly but Tesla’s system doesn’t work that way. At the end of the day, reams of video clips upload from the vehicle cameras to mothership — Tesla’s neural network.

Sampling the data (last 30 days) transiting my network from vehicle (as a network client) uploaded: 71.6 GB

Autopilot behavioral changes and improvements come from Tesla’s end-to-end AI training system, code named Dojo, via versional updates downlink to the fleet. In this my car (and all cars) becomes smarter. What needs to be smarter? Safety, always of course, but key on the list is the ability to flow naturally with traffic and mimic driver behaviors good or bad. For instance:

The “Hollywood Stop” aka rolling stop might be considered bad but most people do it. Autopilot is not permitted such liberty. It comes to a dead stop before proceeding and this is slightly irritating but lawful.

Along this vein, the NHTSA stop, where one comes to a complete halt at the white painted marking at a stop sign before edging forward to see traffic and proceeding. Good form but unexpected in the common place sense.

While at the intersection, number 1 at the traffic light signal, turns green. Go. Defensive driving used to be taught but people seeing the green light step right out. Autopilot waits a split second before proceeding. It’s a minor irritation, and I haven’t had anyone from behind impatiently sound their horn yet (but I know in certain parts they surely would). The pause is good. Drivers with the green should look for oncoming. Autopilot has been hardcoded to know that cross traffic frequently will run fudge the red light.

Not wanting to be labeled as one of those Hypermiling roadie types, I still like to begin a coast down as I approach a traffic light that has turned red. Aggressive drivers usually charge right up until the last moment before braking. This avoids the dreaded cut-in and unfortunately autopilot mimics this. I would prefer that autopilot would rely on re-gen to decelerate and minimize use of the friction brakes. Conversely, without traffic, autopilot accelerates from stop signals like a jackrabbit — way beyond Chill.

v. 12 autopilot dictates what it considers to be a safe rate of speed based on conditions and environment. Previous iterations of FSD would rely solely upon and match posted speed limits. But now, the car dawdles on some stretches sometimes doing 10 mph under. I know other cars in trail are thinking “Sunday Driver” or little old lady that can barely see over the steering wheel. You can poke the accelerator pedal a bit to help with the confidence I suppose. So much for the annoyances.

Intervention: the need to take charge, assume control, over-ride the automation. Save the day!

More seriously, and Tesla does require users to acknowledge the need and requirement for supervision, there are edge case where autopilot has low confidence or encounters a situation for which it can not deal without help. In safety situations autopilot (hopefully) recognizes and alerts the driver with an audio chime and a take immediate command text exclamation. A situation is imminent (1-2 secs.) and if the driver has not been attentive there could be consequences.

The Handover: automation off, manual control on, is fine when the human operator desires but when it happens unexpectedly because of autopilot initiative the human can be momentarily caught off guard. A surprise transition is messy.

Luckily, these are now rare. The vast majority of intervention occurs when the driver’s comfort level is close to being exceeded. e.g. the vehicle cuts a corner, or threatens to curb a wheel. In such a circumstance driver takes control by disengaging.

Disengagement (driver induced): press the off button, tap the brake pedal, or for the most immediate action; yank on the steering wheel

A disengagement by manual steering will literally cause the autopilot to take embarrassed offense by posting a text to driver: “what happened/what went wrong?” Optionally the driver can respond with a haptic press on the microphone and give a short verbal complaint. e.g. “the car lost situational awareness in that turn and assumed the incorrect lane”. This, along with associated before/after video clip sequence capture, goes to the engineers for review.

I wish there was a way to similarly send kudos or an attaboy. Occasionally, autopilot does something unexpectedly brilliant. Recently exiting a parking lot with a construction barricade just prior to turning right onto the highway required a hard 90 degree turn which the self-driving accomplished with low speed steering full-lock all while maintaining lane discipline. I was primed to takeover because I was skeptical for the outcome but no need. Later, also a 2 lane road, I spied debris (a small branch and leaves clump) in my path and seeing it coming put my hands on the wheel when I felt autopilot do the nudging and offset ever so slightly right to avoid contact. Very subtle and I wanted to applaud.

There are other features with v. 12 that I am experiencing such as Autopark. More than a party trick (i.e. Summon) Autopark is cool and works well consistently backing into the white lined bounded box centered and without any involvement. When its time to leave the parking spot autopilot knows in which direction you want to go. i.e. if you backed into it you probably want to pull out forward when leaving it. Autopilot automatically selects forward ‘gear’ saving you the effort. (As supervisor, verify and confirm the selection of course)

There are times of despair when you say don’t take away the steering wheel just yet, FSD won’t be happening anytime soon, and not ready for prime time. You feel like a beta tester and wonder how they get away with selling this Full $elf Driving option. The manufacturer should be paying ME to be the early adopter helping with the machine learning. I do feel like I’m riding herd with a 15 yr. old with a learners permit coaching / anticipating everything.

The next FSD version 12.5.6 and within a short time (Elon time) v. 13 there are to be significant changes.

With FSD version 12 my driver job is quite secure. It is more fun to drive than to watch it being done and less stressful. I’m always comparing technique and so far I can still say I’m much smoother and more efficient at it. Never the less Technology is a wonder and it is exciting to be a first hand observer of innovation and progress.

AI Reading Pen and Paper Genealogy Records

computers

This old Danish Church record, written in longhand, is fairly legible and as a human I can make out the various dates and names. But to get a complete understanding one must read the top most header row to understand what is contained in the columnar rows. To avoid the laborious task of Danish > English translation, it seems logical to let Artificial Intelligence (AI) take a crack at it.

I feed this record in its original high resolution image page format to 3 of the top AI bots and posed the same question:

the person of interest is Fanuel Peter August. what is the birth date and christening date?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 

[reply] Looking at the church record, I can see Fanuel Peter August (written as "Samuel Peter August" in the entry) listed as entry #3. According to the record, his birth date is listed as 19 Jan 1817 ("19 Jan 1817") and his christening date appears to be on the same day as shown in the "Daabens Datum" (baptism date) column.

The entry number 3 is good as is the birth date. The mistaken S instead of F in the first name can be forgiven; it was penned with a flourish. The baptism date from its column in the record however is interpreted as being synonymous with date of birth. My eye can see that there appears to be a differing date in that column so I pose the following follow up question:

what actually does the Daabens Datum column say. it looks like an actual date?

Claude responds with:

Looking at the "Daabens Datum" column for Fanuel Peter August's entry (#3), it shows "19 Feb in die Kirch" (19 February in the church). So to correct my previous response:

Birth date: 19 January 1817
Christening/Baptism date: 19 February 1817

This would have been an apt first time answer but still the Christening/Baptism date shows the 19th when to my eye the number is clearly a 14. Confidence is low so I run this identical query with another flavor of AI: X’s Grok 2

Grok 2

[answer] For Fanuel Peter August:

Birth Date: 19th January 1817
Christening Date: 19th January 1817

This individual appears on line 3 of the document, with his full name listed as "Fanuel Peter August." Both the birth and christening (baptism) dates are noted as the same day, which was common in historical records where infants were often baptized shortly after birth.

This returned response, as far as the dates are concerned, is identical to that of Claude AI previously. There is the added claim that birth/christening dates are commonly one and the same (equal) in historical records. (expectation bias or confabulation? ) That will need to be a separate fact check investigation.

Now I come back with my follow-up question to try and coax the bot to have another look at the Daabens Datum column and:

[answer] Upon closer inspection of the Daabens Datum column for Fanuel Peter August, it reads:

Daabens Datum: 19 Jan 1817

This means that the christening or baptism date for Fanuel Peter August was indeed on January 19, 1817, which matches the birth date also listed as January 19, 1817. This is a common occurrence in historical records where infants were often baptized on the day they were born or shortly thereafter.

Grok doubles down sticking to its guns and refuses to modify its incorrect answer original interpretation. Let’s try ChatGPT.

ChatGPT

This was the best of the bunch. Chat pretty much nails it and with the single query . No follow up question necessary. 

[answer] In this record, the entry for "Fanuel Peter August" provides the following details:

Birth Date: 9th January 1817
Christening Date: 11th February 1817

The christening date gets listed as the 11th however. So… less than perfect. Yet, very cool that a machine can scan a difficult document make sense of it and feed a summary back to me with only a one or two sentence plain English prompt. The consensus of bot+person:

Fanuel Peter August
Birth Date: 9th January 1817
Christening Date: 14th February 1817

Keeping Things Straight

flying

The RV-14 rudder requires a fair amount of precision. Its surface controls aircraft yaw and as an aerodynamic foil it must also be slippery (low drag) as it moves through the air upwards of 200 MPH. The feature to get right, is the trailing edge (TE) which slims to a pointed ending. It must be straight and true without twist.

trailing edge depicted and a desired result

Observe the underlying aluminum angle bar fixed to the workbench in the photo. While the bench itself is quite flat, the aluminum straight edge clamped to the TE will minimize any pucker or wave tendency in the skin. The skin is quite thin (0.016″) and needs the support. A preformed wedge is sandwiched between the right and left skins as you can just make out inside the TE of the rudder (lying on side).

TE wedge

The TE wedge is machined so that its rivet thru holes are angled properly. They are matched drilled 90 degrees with reference to the chord of the wedge. The holes are also machine counter sunk so that the dimpled skin will lie within for an interference fit that also allows the skin to lie flush upon them.

An adhesive seal provides a bond between skin and wedge. Once the sealant cures the cleco clamps can be removed and the sandwich permanently fixed in place by riveting. With this effort the structure will be robust and provide good handling characteristic without adverse yaw or drag whilst cleaving the sky. Straight and true.

Continued VFR

flying

Fraught with the risk, a scud running pilot conducting a flight that started out under VFR may blunder into IMC conditions. The outcome is known as and described by the catchphrase continued VFR.

In a foray to get across the Sierra my hope was to have a “look-and-see” as it was obvious from official reports as well as my observation on the ground from the flat valley floor that mountain tops were likely to be obscured. My plan was to depart and follow the North Fork of the San Joaquin which would traverse the range and lead to the Mammoth Pass. At 9,300 ft. elevation this is the lowest point at the ridge for over 250 miles. I’d crossed there many times during routine visits to the MMH airport so I knew it visually. But today it wasn’t visible from start. I launched pretending that there’d be a break in the clouds as a possibility.

There’s the option to fly VFR over-the-top [of the clouds] but this assumes the there will be a clearing or at least a hole to descend through at point B. My Centurion P210N, while very capable altitude performance wise was ill-equipped for an in-cloud icing conditions encounter so I elected to stay underneath the deck.

Barreling up the North Fork canyon it was apparent that the cloud ceiling was solid. However, I still met separation criteria from both cloud and terrain so I pressed onward. Emotional stress began to factor in. The hope for a light at the end of the tunnel was not assured and further the undercast was a grey mass. In fact, to the left and the right was plenty gloomy with the canyon walls merging with cloud. I routinely swung my vision to assess. The Centurion has a back window and this scan included looking behind to verify that my completed route was still re-traceable. I found myself becoming increasingly concerned, not so much with what was ahead, but what was behind. I was relying upon a 180 degree turn route escape. That backup was becoming less assured as I pressed forward.

Canyon flying presents the peril of getting boxed in meaning U-turn collision with canyon wall. Further, that lovely diminishing tight circle of clear daylight aft was becoming quite small. Maintaining visual with the mountainous terrain was crucial and going IMC at this juncture could not be good at all. The grey tunnel surround was bleak.

I learned about flying from this. The trap of continued VFR was raring to bite. Finding relief and dumping the anxiety, I aborted and turned back.

If you don’t like the mountain weather – wait a few minutes (hyperbole). I returned to base for re-fuel and flew an alternate mission plan. All the wiser, this was the safe course and a successful outcome. Discounting expectation bias will help a pilot to avoid a continued VFR pitfall.

Vertical Stabilizer Finale

flying

The VS has been completed. A buck (tungsten bar) in the one hand and a pneumatic gun in the other, fixed skin to skeletal structure. Rivets were placed one by one in the dozens of holes perfectly aligned and previously held fast by temporary cleco fasteners. The gun placed against the manufactured head and the bar against the shop head formed the rivet making each one fast.

Vertical Stabilizer mock up

flying

Inner skeletal structure

Once encapsulated by (0.032) 2024-T3 sheet aluminum the vertical stabilizer will be quite robust. The spars and interconnecting ribs enhance rigidity while retaining light weight. The outer skin will tie it all together. The spars are of the same material spec as the skin. To add backbone i.e. rigidity extra material is strategically employed. This doubler material is of greater thickness (0.125″). You will observe the large diameter holes in the doubler; they are for weight reduction.

Rear spar to doubler finish drilling and rudder hinge match drilling on the RV-14 project

Pre-Punched – In the kit manufacturing process the vendor enhances the product by machine piercing the rivet holes. The machine has a much more precise tolerance than any amateur in their positioning. In this application they are slightly undersize at 1/8″ (0.125)

Doubler – A small piece of plate attached to a larger area of plate that requires strengthening in that location

As described in the video clip the manufactured holes must be enlarged from 0.125 to final size 0.1285 in a process called finish drilling. I use a #30 reamer for this purpose.

A reamer is a rotary cutting tool that is used to enlarge and finish holes that have been drilled, bored, or cored. Reamers are designed to center themselves in an existing hole, which results in a rounder hole and with fewer burrs. 

Thanks to the precision of the pre-punched holes everything generally will line up for excellent fitment. When alignment is crucial a process called match drilling is employed. A piece that already has pre-punched hole(s) is used to center an underlying piece which does not. The former acts as a guide for the drill bit once the two are mated.

RV-14 Amateur Build

flying
Vertical Stabilizer Forward Spar Fabrication

Not without challenges and learning curve, the video for brevity has been somewhat polished. Behind scene lots of investigation, a little practice, and study has occurred. This is the beginning of an amateur build of an experimental (E/AB) Van’s Aircraft.

EAB –Experimental Amateur-built is an aircraft built by an non-paid individual and certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as “Experimental“. Colloquially known as home-built aircraft and kit-plane, they are typically constructed with acquired tools, a set of plans and parts from kit plane manufacturers.  E/AB aircraft make up nearly 10% of the U.S. general aviation fleet. 

Van’s Aircraft having a solid reputation as a kit provider will be shipping airplane parts from the West coast over a multi-year span for the duration of this project. A first sub-kit has already arrived. The end result when completed will be the RV-14 model.

RV-14 (Flyer Magazine JULY 2021) depiction

The Empennage (first sub-kit) includes the tail cone (fuselage aft structure) and the airfoils affixed thereto:

  • Vertical stabilizer (VS) and attached rudder
  • Horizontal stabilizer (HS) and attached elevators)

Wings, fuselage, firewall forward, engine/prop, finishing, and avionics will follow in progression. There will be ups and downs (idiom and pun) and lots to learn. The experience (06-02) begins!

aero workspace

WFU

flying, , , , , ,

Not an acronym for an off-putting phrase, in FAA lingo it means withdrawn from use. Occasionally, I run across an early days airframe that I used to fly. These machines may have reached the end-of-the line due to age, component wear limit, abuse or neglect but in some cases, with extra care and good fortune, they might be operationally airworthy and still going.

This green job is still flying the airways. I have stick time in this one only when early on in my career it was liveried in United colors, a 15 seat EMB110P1 N102EB one of a fleet operated by Westair Commuter in California. Re-numbered TG-JCO you’ll note is not a USA registered tail but a Honduran one. We’ve both moved on.

photo credit: Gerrit Griem

There are significant others that I have tracked down from my office desk: N3053W LJ-613 a Beech King Air that I flew in the 1980’s now operating in South Africa; another King Air N511D LJ-951 operating as PT-OZJ in Brazil. The tail numbers and paint schemes change so if one happened to be physically within eye sight you’d never know it. A useful resource for tracing aircraft is a Dutch website with a database that can reference by registration number or C/N (construction number).

As there are many photographer aviation plane spotters worldwide actively capturing and identifying aircraft and location; it is usually easy to find any particular bird while stalking my Exes with a simple search. Some camera toting enthusiasts even venture into the graveyard.

photo credit: Jay Dee Kay

Sad and at the same time artistic as they return to earth, this boneyard in Bates City, MO turns up dozens of old relics that have many flight hours logged and recorded in my own pilot log book. Pictured is N616KC c/n 110238 “retired” in 1991. There is a DNA resemblance to the green one above. They are of the same fleet type but this one has been stripped for parts.

Not all have been put out-to-pasture. Tragically, a number have been damaged beyond repair — written off. This is a euphemistic way of implying Crashed.

THE LAST RADIO CALL MADE BY THE PLT WAS AT 0658 EST WHEN HE REPORTED LEVEL AT 8000 FT. RADAR DATA AT 0708 EST, SHOWED THE ACFT CHANGING HEADING FROM 327 TO 335 DEGREES, ALT DECREASED FROM 8000 TO 5000 FT AND GROUND SPEED INCREASED FROM 179 TO 188 KTS. COMMUNICATION WITH THE ACFT COULD NOT BE ESTABLISHED AT THIS TIME. RADAR COVERAGE WAS LOST 5 MILES WNW OF SAYRE INTERSECTION. THE ACFT CONTINUED ITS DESCENT COLLIDING WITH POWER LINES FOLLOWED BY THE GROUND. INVESTIGATION DID NOT REVEAL ANY MECHANICAL FAILURES AND/OR MALFUNCTIONS.

That was N806Q a Beechcraft 58 Baron that I flew during happier times and I am sorry to learn of its demise in a morbid way. I logged 523 flights in it. Her sister, N807Q, another bad ending with occupant fatalities.

On a much happier note: N4702X a 1966 year model Cessna 150G still flying!

I had my first flight and solo in N4702X c/n 15064752 [photo credit: SBJ over Watsonville, California]. It still wears the original paint color scheme from memory. At the time (1975) it was part of a small flying club at a small airport in Fresno and this is where it all began.

ZHA Visualization

computers,
Overview

This visualization of a home automation shows a mesh network of smart switches, smart plugs, and sensors.

The rectangle object in the diagram identifies a Zigbee Coordinator (radio adapter) which is the go-between for the automation hub. Sensor end devices (circular object) that are within close proximity can signal back to the Coordinator directly. Data is transmitted using a low power RF so signal strength is a factor. Happily, since this is a mesh network, the more distant end devices can chain relay through smart devices (oblong object) which relay amplify to the Coordinator like a router.

Router Detail

Harrison Genealogy

social

Having traced our Scandinavian roots we shift to a tougher one to crack; The Harrison side of the family– born into the Russian Empire what is currently Lithuania. Difficult because there was little to go on. We had first hand knowledge of those who were born in the USA of course but their parents that immigrated and who had enjoyed good lives here were loath to talk about their past. In other words any hard facts were not forthcoming. We did not have places of birth, dates, or even their former names and spellings.

Nanny Fan dismissed most inquiries, saying that her last memories of the old country were too distressing to re-live. We believe she probably witnessed religious prejudice, cruelty and even bloodshed. There were hints that some emigrated with just the clothes on their backs and valuables hand stitched into coat linings.

We think our relatives from the old world would have wanted to assimilate as citizens into the USA not only to avoid scorn or ridicule but to gain a normalcy that would not sabotage their sense of community or livelihood. First order of self help: losing a foreign sounding name and learning English. So, none of us twice removed had good intel.

We had but one strong hint: the original family surname sounded like “Kurgon”. So where to begin…

Working backward with the closest relative, father or mother, we find out who their parents were and in this case learn that Zadie’s father, Max Boris Harrison had immigrated. Starting with a 1910 United States Census we scrape the year of immigration (1908) and discover that he, with parents and siblings, were under the same roof in the USA by 1910. It was likely that they immigrated together as well; but what surname? Harrison was the naturalized but how to search for this family in archival ship passenger listings?

A challenge is that invariably each tracking document has the names malformed in some way. Not only were names changed but then altered or misspelled through clerical error along the way. The Census poll has the name as Herrison. Sifting through passenger lists would have been and impossible task before searchable computer databases. Realize that a data set was once transcribed by human hand from records hand written and with hopeful accuracy. In our case Harrison turns up zilch. Luckily a search engine allows for fuzzy or broad pattern name spellings. Browsing dozens of returns we capture a hit with a Max Herison. And with a departure port of Hamburg, Germany it makes sense. A bit of sleuthing reveals that this was close proximity and the natural point for anyone emigrating from the area now known as Lithuania. A German document processor upon hearing Harrison phonetically would have written down Herison. The German word Herr (a conventional title showing respect when addressing a German gentleman translated as Sir or Mr. and sounds like “hair”) so naturally a local clerk might trade the letter e for the a. His counterpart in New York would switch it back from e to a!

SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria – Passenger List

Observe Max B, his mother Rose, and younger sisters Dora, Lena, and Hannah all together. (Father: Morris immigrated in 1904) Their ship makes interesting historical reading. It was operated by the Hamburg-Amerika Line and they traveled Steerage Class on the 9 day voyage to New York.

So we now know Hamburg. Our family boarded with their new surname Herison but the trail goes cold again. Searching the old name Kurgon reveals little except that an alternate spelling, Kurgan, offers many hits but with another obstacle. The first/middle name Max Borris would need to be translated along with everyone else’s given names. Mother, Rose was Rasha or Rasya in the old world. Dora Sarah was Sore Dvora. Morris Harrison was Movsha and had many name variations but ultimately was to become Morris. Max Boris birth name was Berel Mordekhay. That one was never going to turn up even with the broadest of search variations. There was better luck with his father’s name which helped to pinpoint him with the other family members.

Finally, having the names we could find places and dates. Browsing the LitvakSIG online data source for taxation, conscription, and family list ledgers was fruitful.

The central government did in fact run a comprehensive Census back in the day, which would have been most excellent for our purposes except that they only retained population counts and counts by ethnic percentage — discarding all the other details. Shoot.

Armed with a a place, also with spelling variations depending on nationality, required some geo-political learning. In the USA we have town|county|state with maybe a rural township to complicate the effort. The Russian Empire used province|district|town as we drill down. One aspect is that modern political borders and alignments are significantly less helpful. Lithuania for example wasn’t a thing before WW I but listing a country location as Russia does not work either. One must find and utilize period correct maps.

Russian Empire Provinces of Kovno, Vilna, Suwalki until 1918

These old time provinces today would encompass Lithuania and spill into current day Belarus and Poland. Our Kurgan (Harrison) group lived in Vilkija which is on the Nemunas River in the province of Kovno district of Kovno. An alternate spelling, Kaunas, is synonymous. The former is Russian and Lithuanian is the latter. Here we find our relatives and discover some who didn’t make it to America.

By the time we, as descendent children, take interest and get around to inquiring about family background history — direct informational account is no longer possible and by now second/third hand news. Logistically, one’s closest living relative was probably a youngster themselves (Nanny Fan was age 5) when she and her family emigrated and she would have had scant primary recall. She would have instead relied upon stories or tales after the fact and that these recollections may have been influenced by blur, bias, or emotion.

So the old family backstories were easily contorted or even lost all together. It’s interesting to uncover them in the perspective of historical times past and with a perceived glimpse into what once was.