Fish and Chips, Niners Win!

The Brothers Fish and Chips Bar 

So last night I decided to walk to the closest take-away food. It is "The Brothers Fish and Chips Bar" and it is quite a short walk.  The place has been around since 1966, and does have a good reputation from what I have read.  I got a large cod and medium chips for 5.30.  It was more fries than I think I've ever had in one serving, and the fish was great.  Very meaty and great flavor.  I'm sure I'll be back, it's a great quick cheap dinner option.

Today I spent studying for the most part, and walked to Sainsbury's for a grocery trip.  I probably shouldn't have worked out before hand though, as the walk back with 3 bags of groceries got heavy!

Then I headed out to try and find the 49ers game at a pub.  Unfortunately it took me 4 pubs and at least a mile walk to find a place that had enough TV's that I felt comfortable asking about switching the channel from soccer.  The Niners did pull out the win, and made it more interesting than they should have.  But hey, for the 2nd win of the season you can't complain too much can you.

This week will be tons of studying, as our exams are next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  The clocks are already turned back here, so it is just a 4 hour difference if any of you want to call me on Skype this week.

Enjoying the Weekend

I took advantage of some great weather today to take a run to Willen Lake.  It is about 2 miles to the lake, and then the trail around the lake is about 1.5 miles I think.  The lake itself is quite nice, there were a few sailboats on the water.  They also have a motorized watersport park.  Instead of a boat, there are lines that are suspended overhead that pull you along to wakeboard or waterski.  There are assorted ramps and things if you are advanced enough.  More info is on their website WakeMK.

The wind tunnel testing we did yesterday was good.  We were given a car model and told to find the best setup of ride height and wing angle.  It was up to us to decide what values we tested at.  I think we had a good strategy and will be able to come up with a good setup for the lab report.

A view from the control center of the tunnel

Adjusting the rear wing angle

The leaves around here are slowly changing, nothing like the dramatic colors we get back home, but here is a picture.

Leaves are changing some

Well I will get back to "revising" (studying) as they seem to call it over here.  I think I might go find some fish and chips for dinner tonight actually.

Hey I Could use a Car!

I'd drive this!

Since my bus ride takes me by the former Aston Martin headquarters I figured this was appropriate. The original site is still functional as a repair and renovation facility. I think the last car produced there was the Vanquish until around 2008. There's always some nice expensive eye candy in the parking lot.

TGIF

Today is only 2 wind tunnel sessions, our group got the late morning session.  So that was good, but it also means we have the late afternoon session.  It only ends at 5 though, so it's not too big of a deal.

I watched the recorded State game this morning since I had some extra time.  I've never enjoyed football with breakfast before, it was quite nice!  I didn't quite make it through though, and accidentally checked Twitter before I left for the bus.  Someone we know had mentioned the word win, and so the last 10 minutes of the 4th quarter were spoiled.  I wound up watching it on the bus though, and it was still great.  Although knowing FSU was going to screw up the last drive somehow made it less exciting when they fumbled.

I'll write another post about the tunnel testing later so I can add a few pictures that will make things clearer.  So NCSU win, plus hands on lab session, plus maybe more beer fest time tonight = happy Friday.

Oh, and I do wish I could be in Charleston for Will and Laura's wedding, so hope you all have a great time this weekend!

Xscape

Xscape is a big entertainment center in Milton Keynes.  It is probably best known for the indoor ski slope.  I always walk past it on the way to the bus stop, but had never ventured inside.  Yesterday was a classmate's birthday, so a group of us met there to go bowling.  Well the inside was nothing like I expected.  I thought it was mostly the ski slope, and the other restaurants and stores were just kind of there.  That was hardly the case, it's basically a mall with a ski slope on the side that you barely notice unless you go in.

Bowling was fun, I missed the first game, but wound up posting the high score of the night in the second game, with a 151 (I know, it's no Lighthouse bowling).  I probably won't go back too often, it was really crowded with teenagers and the restaurants are all mainstream, chain, themed restaurants.  Most of the group hadn't eaten, so we wound up going to Frankie and Bennies, which claims to be a New York Italian kinda place.  I had eaten at home, so just got some garlic knots, but I guess it was good to check it out.

There does seem to be a fair or carnival of some sorts being set up in Campbell Park.  The rides have been under construction all week.  I'll have to find out the details for this weekend.

I think I am all set up to record the NCSU FSU game tonight.  I tried with the World Series game last night successfully.  The only problem was that the stream I had cut out about an hour in.  With the new Time Warner ESPN feed that shouldn't be a problem for tonight.

Some Updates

Our group had the first time slot in the wind tunnel at 2:00, and we were done by 2:40.  Luckily one of my team members needed to do some shopping in Milton Keynes so I got a ride with him instead of waiting 30-40 minutes for the next bus.  I took the extra time to finish folding some laundry, get what qualifies as a workout for me these days in, talk to Jess, and write this post.

The wind tunnel experiment went well, at least we think.  We won't really know until we analyze the data though.  The test is to determine the lift and drag produced by a standard wing profile at a certain velocity.  Pretty standard stuff, but I've never used a wind tunnel before, so it is good to see how it all works.

Some more on my Paris trip - I used the metro to get around, which let me get all over the city, I tried to explore a little bit all around.  The best deal was a 10 pack of tickets for 12euro.  Each ticket gets you one trip, no matter how far you go.  I also never waited more than 3 minutes for a train, which was absolutely wonderful.  With just the weekend, I decided to see as much as I could, and decided for example not to go up the Eiffel tower, or go in the Louvre.  It helped that the lines were long everywhere, and I didn't want to waste time waiting.  I was amazed that at the Sacre-coeur, which I got to about 11am on Sunday, they let tourists walk in while Mass was going on.  I would've assumed it was closed then.  Inside was very beautiful and majestic, but they wouldn't allow pictures unfortunately.  The area around there was tourist central - more so than any of the other areas felt.  The view was well worth the hassle though.

25-10-10 Paris

I did order food and drinks in French, which was a little difficult, but I always got what I ordered, and the servers seemed to at least know what I was trying to say.  It was a very expensive city to eat in, I kept thinking about how easy it would be to spend tons of money if Jess had been with me.  It's probably a good thing I had limited euro's, otherwise it would've been way too easy to buy bread and crepes and pastries all day long.  I was really surprised at how expensive the coffee was, I don't think I saw espresso or cappucino for less than 2euro.  And people live off coffee there apparently, an expensive habit!  Also wine being cheaper than beer was a real culture shock.  3-5euro glasses of Bordeaux, Cotes du Rhone, etc. were great.  Beers were at least 4 euro for a half pint!  And not for really great beers either.  I would've liked to sit outside at a few cafe's, but the problem is the people that sit there seem to all smoke.  So instead of sitting in smoke I just went inside.  I was disappointed to see Pizza Hut and McDonald's packed on Saturday night.  I'm really glad I went, I probably spent a little bit too much money, which was probably inevitable, but uh, yeah, I went to Paris :)  I am still enjoying my cheese and saucisson selection.

On a completely unrelated note - well it is about food - I somehow lost a bag of lettuce that I had in the refrigerator.  Roommates don't know anything about it, I used it Thursday and have no idea what I did with it.

I think that's all for now.  If any of you ever have questions, feel free to ask by email or just in the comments.

P.S.  It is still raining

Finally Raining

So it's finally been raining most of the day today.  Not heavy, but enough to be annoying and keep the temperature feeling pretty chilly.  The wind unfortunately got a hold of my umbrella, so I'm afraid I"ll have to buy a new one.

Well our lab session is starting shortly.  Thought I'd have more time to write, but anyway.  I'll try to get a better update this afternoon, should have a good chunk of time for studying at home.

Back to School

Paris was a great weekend.  I'll get pictures up at some point this week.  Class is going to be pretty busy this week though.  The module is aerodynamics, and we will have a project in the wind tunnel to complete.

I think I packed a lot into 2 days in Paris.  Went to the Boulogne market on Saturday to buy some charcuterie and cheeses.  Wound up with a camembert, a goat cheese, and a "stinky" sheep's milk too.  The goat wound up being my favorite.  Also enjoyed plenty of baquettes, a croissant, chausson pomme (apple), and pain au chocolat.  Sights I saw included the Eiffel Tower, the entrance to the Louvre, Champs Elysses, Arc de Triumph, Grand Paris Opera, Bastille, Sacre-coeur, Parc Floral, Chateu de Vincennes, and I suppose that was all.  It did rain both days, though there was plenty of sunshine on Sunday.  Overall I think the most impressive part was simply the architecture of the whole city.  Most all the buildings are so interesting to look at.  I wish I remembered more of my architectural history class!

Well I'm back in freezing Milton Keynes now, it was 30F (not C if you read this earlier, thx) this morning.  Frost was everywhere.  Glad the 49ers are so bad that I don't want to go watch them in London this weekend (the Panthers got their first win against them yesterday).  Well anyway, I should head over to class.  I think it's going to be fluid dynamics basics this morning, really hope I can stay awake...

In Paris

Very quickly, because I should be sleeping - but I'm in Paris for the weekend with a classmate.  Also got to see up close and personal some parts from the current RB6 Red Bull F1 car today!

Pretty exciting day I suppose ;)

An Interesting Night

After laying up all of the other components of our wing, and getting them in vacuum bags and in the oven or autoclave, we were done a little earlier than usual.  Luckily for me it was just in time to catch the early bus, which is much less crowded.  I took advantage of the extra time and ventured down towards the rail station and "The Hub".  I stopped in the Wetherspoon's to have dinner and get a bit of studying done.  The place has an odd reputation, of being the place for young kids to go get drunk cheaply.  I guess I was there a the right time, as it was nothing of the sort.  The cask ale was cheap, but very good selection, and the food was good, affordable, and they had a good variety of choices.  I'd say I was more impressed than expected after what I had read online.

For dinner I had British beef casserole, basically thick beef stew.  My first real English meal actually.  On the way back I needed to pick up some fruits and vegetables for the next few days, so I stopped by the Sainsbury's.  The best part however was as I was walking in, across the street a random (I assume) fireworks show started.  It went on for a solid 10 minutes.  And very impressive at that, a good mix, honestly it looked professional and better than some of the shows I've seen back home at things like Bull's games.  No clue who did it or why though.

A final thought - A lot of English people do not like Milton Keynes.  I think mainly because it is not very traditional.  It was all built in the 60's and 70's and so therefore has very little history like most English towns do.  I however think it isn't quite so bad.  I can go to the Centre for just about any shopping I want, The Hub for nightlife and higher end dining, and if I want traditional English towns, they are a bus ride away.  Basically it is a good compromise for me between the conveniences I'm used to and the traditional English town.  Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I think it will work for me.   If only the buses were a little more convenient and better scheduled for getting to campus...

Buses

I finally think I figured out the options for buses to get back home.  There is either one at 5:36, 7:20, or 8:50.  A bit frustrating since the 536 is hard to get if we have anything to discuss after class.  I'll probably wind up using the 7:20 a lot.  I also found a cheaper cafe for coffee and tea on campus, and it has a view of the tail end of the airport too.

Yesterday we laid up the first section of wing.  The carbon fiber comes in pre-woven sheets that have resin already applied (so they are sticky).  The term for this kind of carbon is "prepreg".  To put the part together, you start with a mold, and carefully lay down multiple sheets on top of the mold.  Then it is put in a bag (with various other layers to control moisture, air and resin transfer).  The bag is hooked up to a vacuum port while in the autoclave overnight.  This heats the assembly to allow the resin to cure.  The vacuum compacts the carbon sheets and resin together.  Over the next two days, we have 4 other parts to assemble, and then on Thursday we will combine them all together for a final cure.

Oh, and I don't think I've mentioned this, but there is another American guy here.  He wasn't here yet when we all did introductions.  He is from the Philadelphia area.

This was the coldest morning yet, the weather said it was 32 F, and I believe it.  It's only supposed to get up to 44, but it should be sunny, so that shouldn't be so bad.

Wings and Things

A quick update for the night - I was right, we will be building carbon fiber wings this week.  They will be of a prescribed design though, so it's more about getting experience with the materials.  The carbon fiber we were supposed to use might not be here, so we might be borrowing some of Red Bull's material, since they are only about 8 miles from the school.

I again tried to get the 630ish bus, and again it did not show up.  I double checked the timetable tonight too, and it still shows a bus around that time.  I'm going to ask the driver tomorrow morning and hopefully figure out what the problem is.  There is also supposedly an 850 bus, but I'm scared to wait for that one.

Either way, should be a fun week, almost 3 full days will be in the lab working with carbon fiber.

Sunday @ Brands Hatch

As I mentioned yesterday, a group of about 10 of us made the almost 2 hour drive down to the Brands Hatch circuit for the Formula Ford Festival.

17-10-10 Brands Hatch

The drive was actually very enjoyable, the weather was good and there was some nice countryside scenery.  Brands is unique in that the circuit is just a little bit over a mile long, leading to lap times well under a minute for most cars.  The benefit to the short circuit is that you can see nearly every single turn from the grandstand.  A hairpin called Druids is obstructed by trees.  The cars were very evenly matched all day, making for some very exciting racing.  There were also quite a few accidents, including some big pile-ups and a car that got airborne for what seemed like an eternity.  He apparently forgot to brake, ran up onto the back of the car in front, got launched into the air, and when he came down in the gravel he started doing flips, then bounced up off of the tire wall for another pirouette until finally landing almost upside down.  Amazingly though he was out of the car and walking in less than 5 minutes. 

The pile-ups were related to cars who had left oil on the track at Paddock Bend - a tricky downhill right hander.  I guess the drivers were ignoring the debris flags!  One race was red flagged (stopped and resumed) after a car slid down the hill and impacted another car that was already stuck in the gravel with the driver still in it.  A note that some of you will understand - the corner workers were doing "hot-pulls" (recovering cars from the gravel while other cars were still racing) all day at Paddock bend.  What I'm used to at VIR is nothing like it was yesterday.  Corner workers were out attending to the cars in very very vulnerable situations.  It was an interesting contrast to the approaches I'm used to seeing both at VIR and other races on TV.

Damon Hill, 1996 F1 World Champion and president of the BRDC was there with his son who was racing in the Formula Ford Duratec Championship.  We did get a group picture with him after a classmate approached him and told him who we were - and he knew about the program.  I don't have the picture yet though, it was taken with one of our classmates DSLR.

This week is the module about composites, and from the schedule it looks like we will be having a lot of hands-on time.  We will learn how to actually manufacture a composite (presumably carbon fiber) structure.  It should be fun and more enjoyable than just a full week of lectures.

  

Workouts

Workouts have been hard to come by, about the only time I have to fit one in is on the weekends.  I did finally take the bus to the nearest Tesco Extra (Super Wal-Mart basically) and picked up a set of dumbbells.  Wish they were heavier, and I might go buy some add on plates at some point, but they are better than nothing.  Heck they were a workout just carrying them back from the bus station!  The Tesco was crazy busy.  I did buy a couple of food items for lunches next week too.

Tomorrow a group of us are going to Brands Hatch for the Formula Ford Festival. Hopefully we'll get some good weather!  Tonight I think I might actually be able to watch the ALCS game online, since it starts at 4ET.

Oh, and there is a Krispy Kreme in the mall here, and they had them in the Tesco too.  But they were £ 1.20 for just one original glazed!  I abstained, but I'm sure I'll get a few at some point.

I spent most of the morning studying info from the week.  I'll study some more this afternoon while watching football too.  I haven't been able to find a stream for the NCSU game yet though.  Stay tuned for pictures from Brands Hatch tomorrow!

Don't we all love computers?

So today we found out that the ANSYS model we built is not going to work for the optimization program that we learned about this morning.  It needs to be the current version of ModeFrontier, which for some reason isn't installed on the university computers yet.  Why, I don't know.  Luckily another team member had built the model in Abaqus mainly to verify that we had ANSYS configured correctly.  However, we cannot get the Abaqus input to work in the optimization program.  It cannot find the command .exe to get the program running.

ModeFrontier is a neat concept.  In the simplest terms, you can give it a range of inputs and outputs, and it will run as many different combinations as you tell it to.  That way you can find the optimum combination of inputs to meet the output conditions that you specify.  Audi supposedly gained 2.3 seconds of lap time around LeMans on the R8 with the program.  No details on the specifics of what they wound up changing though.

On a completely unrelated note - washing your hands here is a pain.  They have separate faucets for hot and cold, and the hot is definitely not turned down any.  Makes it very hard to properly wash your hands....cough cough  head cold  cough cough.  Don't really understand why mixing faucets aren't more common - even in new buildings I haven't seen many of them.

Engine Design

Today was all about the considerations in actual engine design.  It was all very detailed and interesting.  There is almost always no one right answer.  The most exciting part was that both lecturers brought in pieces of old F1 engines, and one cylinder head of an IndyCar too.  The pistons and crankshafts are so much more complex than a standard road car, obviously, but it was eye opening to feel how light an F1 piston is.

We did get out at 4:00 today instead of 5:20, so that was nice.  The time was spent on making sure our ANSYS model was ready to use for tomorrow's class sessions.

I did have a slight panic session this morning, I couldn't find my bus pass.  Wound up just paying the fare for today, and luckily when I got home I did find my pass.  I had pulled it out with the empty box of cold medicine and put it in the trash in my room.  That was a relief, as it's not exactly a cheap pass!

Also, I'm still waiting on the bank to get my account opened.  They certainly are no BB&T...I've been told to come back twice now just to get my basic account information.  That isn't even getting my cards either, those get mailed to me.  So I've been promised that it will be open tomorrow, we will see I suppose.

Head colds make lectures fun

Well I've had a small head cold the last couple of days.  It makes a long day of lectures feel even longer unfortunately.  Today we continued metal properties and behavior discussions.  Elastic behavior, plastic deformation, that kind of stuff.  In the afternoon, the lecture was on friction and wear and lubrication.  This was pretty interesting, since I don't think I've ever had a specific class or anything on wear, or anything this detailed on lubrication.  We went into the different modes of friction, which simplified are varying levels of metal to metal contact.  For example, engine components wear the most during startup because the lubrication is not thick enough to keep the surface irregularities from contacting each other.  This is because the components are acting in the boundary lubrication mode.  You want to be in hydrodynamic lubrication, as that means the oil film is thick enough to prevent surface contact.

I stayed on campus working with our second group project.  We are modeling a seat support bracket in ANSYS to analyze the structure and try to optimize it.  Dinner was a frozen chicken biryani meal, that only cost 1&pound and was actually very good!

Off to bed for me, wish me luck getting rid of the head cold please...

Real Class

No more easy intro week stuff, we're getting down to business.  First module (class) is Metallic Structures for Motorsport.  Today we talked about basic structural analysis - yes I need to brush up on my statics and dynamics :)  Also went over the effects of various heat treating methods and varying steel compositions.  The afternoon lecture was on material coatings which is now starting to become known as "Surface Engineering".

The bus ride back home was particularly crowded today and not comfortable.  I'll make due with it, but it sure would be nice if you could at least make some of the time useful for reading or something.  It's just too cramped to do anything worthwhile.

Cooked a burger for dinner, with some sauteed peppers and tomato slices on the side.  It was pretty good I think, I put some mixed herbs in the burger that really helped the flavor.

Wish the Braves game was an afternoon game though, then I might be able to catch a little of it.  The 6:30am wake up call isn't very helpful when first pitch is 12:30am.  I'm gonna finish up some laundry, and study a bit of the material from today while watching yesterday's F1 race (even though I know who won).

Good Time in Bedford

I took the long bus ride to Bedford - it was about an hour and 15 minutes. There was a quicker express bus, which I wound up taking home, but my monthly bus pass is only good on the long route. The parts of town I saw were an interesting mix of old historic looking buildings, and new looking shopping and retail sections. It was very crowded too, lots of people walking around the streets. Street vendors were very popular, there was a fairly large farmer's market, as well as food carts and also just generic merchandise for sale too.

Eventually I found the Corn Exchange building where the festival was being held. I walked in around 1pm, and it was already packed. There were at least two levels of seating, so they did a good job of keeping where you ordered beer accessible. They were selling half pint and full pint glasses for 2£. If you didn't want to keep it, you could just return it for a refund after you were done. I kept mine because, well I don't have any pint glasses here.

I was immediately impressed by the organization. As the fest had been going on since Wednesday, not all the advertised beers were still available. They had a printout, in alphabetical or ABV order, of everything that was still available when they opened. The sheet also said what style the beer was, and had a 1-4 number of how much was left. The casks were ordered alphabetically, which made finding what you wanted very easy. In addition, each cask had clearly marked on it what the beer was, what the abv was, and how much a pint and half pint would cost. Most of them were about 1.5£ for a half, and 3 £ for a full.

I think my favorite of the afternoon was probably the Potbelly Beijing Black mild. I found overall that I enjoyed the dark milds, porters and stouts much more than any of the bitters or lighter (color) beers. It is also tricky because some beers are called IPA, but they are 4% abv, and technically they are classified as bitters.

I did wind up stopping by a pub recommended by a guy at the fest for Belgian beers - The Wellington Arms. They had a ton of hand pumps available - 16 I think and a nice cooler of European and Belgian bottles. I wound up with a De Graal Dubble that was very tasty.

I'm glad I took the time to venture to Bedford, it was an enjoyable time.

9-10-10 Bedford Beer Festival

Picasa is being funny this morning, so I'll go through and caption these pictures later.

Hello Again

It's Friday night, and might be my last truly free weekend for a few months.  The intro week was good, we had presentations from alumni working for Red Bull F1, Renault F1, Flybrid Systems, ART Grand Prix and MIRA.  All very interesting, though some focused a lot on CFD, which I don't really have a lot of interest in.  Still very useful knowledge though.  We got to see a cutaway of a mechanical KERS system (almost exactly what is on the Porsche GT3R Hybrid, and likely very similar to what might be on next year's F1 cars).  The system was surprisingly small, and could have a footprint the size of a 8.5x11 sheet of paper in the near future.

I did find out that the Social Club does curry on Friday's, it's only 4£ for a full plate with crispy naan. It wasn't as spicy as I might choose, but still very flavorful. We did have group presentations on the paper we were supposed to write this week. I think our presentation went well, even though one of our members had to go back home to France, so we had 2 less people presenting than the other teams. We were given a 10 minute time limit, which no one else really adhered to. Luckily we did, and got complimented on it too. Hopefully our content was as good :) Our paper got scored by another team, and we had the best score on that as well.

Instead of going straight home to MK, I got off the bus in Newport Pagnell and had a drink at a 2 different pubs. The town is very small, but there were lots of people out and about. I will probably wind up spending more time there, it is an easy bus ride from school, and the bus runs back to MK until 10 or 11 at night. There is a nice little river running through the town too, with some nice park areas around.

Tomorrow I am going to venture to Bedford, which is about an hour ride on the bus (unless I pay 12£ roundtrip for an express bus). There is a CAMRA beer fest there, free admission, and you just buy the beer you want in pints or half pints. Should be over 130 real ales and ciders, in addition to an international beer section. I'm curious to see what if any American beers might be there. Other than that I'm just trying to enjoy my truly free weekend, as life is about to get seriously busy. I do need to get important dates into my Google or Outlook calendar and finally do laundry too. I'll probably try to get a run and workout in tomorrow morning too. Hopefully it doesn't rain.

I did buy some Fox's bars (wafer and chocolate) and Cadbury's Caramel and Fruit and Nut bars too on the way home tonight. The first few bites of the caramel bar are pretty tasty!

To Bed...

Wound up with some real relax time tonight.  We got done with our paper a little early so I had around an hour and a half to burn until our free buffet and pub quiz at the social club.  I used it to call Jess for a while and then found a few classmates and hung out with them until the buffet at 6pm.  The food was pretty good, chicken pasta, rice with garbanzo beans, an assortment of cheese, and some deli meats too.  It turned into quite a late night, I got a ride back home with a classmate, and got back home at about 11pm.  I'm hitting the bed, I need to get a bit of sleep, that bus comes awfully early :)

Going to sleep to a stream of the Yankees and Twins game.

Silverstone!

The important stuff - pictures:

6-10-10 Silverstone

The school arranged a nice tour bus for us to get to Silverstone.  The trip took about 50 minutes, through some nice English country landscape.  Once we arrived we were led through the Silverstone Innovation Centre, where the track leases office space to various firms.  The CEO of Silverstone Holdings went through a presentation describing all the different functions the track has going on.  They are very much focused on making the almost 800 acre property a multi-function business.  Interestingly though, the whole "empire" is owned by the British Racing Drivers Club.  It was intriguing to hear the business side of running a race track, as an engineer and enthusiast you rarely think about the things that it takes to keep a track running.

The next presentation was from the architecture firm that was responsible for designing the new Pit Complex.  Populous has an extremely impressive resume of motorsport complexes and sporting venues.  Originally the building was estimated at 40 million (don't remember if that was $) but due to the economic decline and value engineering, the cost had been reduced to 27 million.  The structural engineers also supposedly reduced the amount of steel in the building by half!  Along with the pit complex, the firm has an in house circuit designer.  His presentation was really interesting, especially hearing about how he has to balance the various run off and safety barrier requirements between the FIA (F1, GT1/GT3) and the FIM (MotoGP).  The redesign of Silverstone accomplished many goals, from updating the circuit to all current FIA and FIM standards, to making more land accessible without having to cross the racetrack.  The original proposal had a Laguna Seca style corkscrew that dropped 8 meters.  Unfortunately this was scrapped because of water table and flooding issues.

The next stop was easily one of the highlights and could be a once in a lifetime opportunity.  We were welcomed into the British Racing Drivers Club by the current club secretary, Stuart Pringle.  This club is very exclusive, and to even be in the building is an incredible opportunity.  We got to see all three levels, the top level being an outdoor deck and great view of the final few corners of the Grand Prix circuit.

After the BRDC we got tours of Race Control and the Medical Centre (one of if not the leading facility of its type in the world).  In essence a complete small hospital.  Race control was impressive to see how much camera control and capability they have.

To finish the day, we got to experience one of the Circuit's driving experiences.  They maintain a fleet of "Formula Silverstone" cars at their Stowe circuit (completely separate from the main Grand Prix and other track configurations). The cars are something like Formula Fords with wings added on.  A Ford Duratec 1600cc engine is mated to a 4 spd manual racing gearbox.  No synchros, straight cut gears, and no reverse gear.  The transmission was the hardest aspect of the car to get comfortable with.  One time down the straight I kept grabbing 3rd gear, so I just kept bouncing off the rev limiter.  It wouldn't take a lot of time to get used to, but definitely more than the 20ish minutes we had.  The experience was absolutely great, easily the fastest and most responsive car I've ever driven.  I'm sure they are setup this way, but they were surprisingly easy to drive, you could feel the back end sliding if you were doing something too quickly and correct it very easily.  The entry to the pit straight and the chicane following the pit straight were the coolest bits of track.  At the end of the longer back straight you could very much feel the wind pulling up on your helmet - not a comforting feeling!  There was no speedometer in the car, only oil pressure and water temperature gauges and a tachometer.  I think I was getting to a little over 100, maybe 110 on the back straight.  The tach was too far down in the car for me though.  You are supposed to keep your eyes ahead when driving, and while doing this it was difficult to pick up the tach or the shift lights.  The view of these was basically through the bottom half of the steering wheel.  I mostly shifted based on sound, which worked out for the most part.

A very long, full, excellent day.  I do have to edit some of our group assignment though, so it's going to be a bit later night than I was planning on.  

Long Day

Today was one of those necessary evil days - we had 4 hrs of auditorium presentations on using the Library, IT Services, Plagiarism, and the Career Service.  Some useful information, but most of it could've been found on the internet.  On top of that, I waited around while working on our assignment to intentionally take the 6:20pm bus, that turned out never coming.  It is a different route and run by a different operator.  It wound up working out because there were others waiting for the same bus, so we split a taxi 4 ways back to Milton Keynes.  That turned out to only be 2£ each.

I did finally find a few water coolers around, I hadn't noticed any before.

The exciting stuff though: our bus leaves for Silverstone at 9:30am tomorrow morning.  It's too bad I have to go 30 mins to campus just to take the bus back towards my house to get to Silverstone.  None of us are really sure what all the day will consist of.  I'm sure we'll get a tour of everything, and one of the lecturers strongly hinted that we would get to drive something that was both open wheel and single seater, so that should be cool.  Maybe we'll continue to get lucky with the rain too (knock on wood for me please).

It will be weird to not be able to watch the MLB playoffs start tomorrow.  If we had Sky Sports in the house I might have a slight chance of catching some, but we don't.

I should probably go now, hope to have some pictures for you tomorrow.    

Another Sunny Day

I know the rain is coming, but the weather has been better than advertised these last few days, and I've been enjoying it. The process of getting to campus and the lecture hall is much more enjoyable without rain. Buses were much more crowded today though, and unfortunately the seats are not very big and don't provide much legroom. We have a week of introductory lectures, today we covered the basic course manual, schedule, some background, some of the computer programs we have access to and a brief history of motorsport.

We do have a small group assignment, which is to prepare a paper discussing some aspects of technical innovations in a particular type of racing. My group chose to cover drag racing, as we were given "all other motorsports" that weren't covered by the other 6 groups. After getting home and cooking some chicken and vegetables for dinner I did my research online so that the group can discuss tomorrow at lunch.

I did bring a sandwich, some fruit and a granola bar for lunch and our breaks during the day. I'm going to try to avoid having to buy meals on campus every day. On the way home I stopped in the Iceland to find some water as I haven't been able to find water fountains on campus. The store seems very cheap for things like milk, water, eggs, bread, but most of their other food is frozen and doesn't look too healthy. Maybe I can find some good options next time though.

Pictures From Yesterday and...

I uploaded some pictures from yesterday to Picasa. The link is:

Cranfield and Other Surroundings

Let me know if anyone cannot get to it, it should be public if you have the link.

I did get a cell phone yesterday. A Samsung GT-S3370. Seems good so far. Twitter and Skype are free to use, they don't even count against my data limit. I'm on a pay as you go plan where I can get 300 minutes, 3000 texts and 500mb of internet for 10£. The top-up as they call it lasts for 30 days. On a slightly related note - I don't understand how they can have so much more technology in their basic phones, but yet the sinks here have totally separate spouts for hot and cold water!

There has been rain off and on this morning, but I caught up on college football and MLB scores. I also worked on a short presentation we have to do tomorrow. We are supposed to talk for about a minute about our CV (resume). I'm gonna go make some lunch here in a few minutes, and walk to the store a bit later. I'm gonna try and buy some things so that I can take lunches to school with me and not have to buy food from the cafe every day.

It really is too bad how the NCSU game turned out yesterday. I knew that the second half meltdowns would come back to hurt against a good team, and it certainly did. Let's hope they can keep improving and continue to fight for an ACC title.

Saturday

Well it was a great day here weatherwise, sunny most of the day, between 55 and 60 degrees all day, although the rain has just started a few minutes ago. I did take the bus back to campus this morning. I left some course packet info in the library that I was looking for, but did not find. I should be able to get another copy on Monday. I did however spend some time in the library playing around with ANSYS and Matlab, which are finite element analysis and math softwares that I will need to use a lot during my studies.

After that I attempted to head back home, but after discovering I'd left my keys on my desk! So I wasted some time exploring the area south of where I'm living while I waited for my landlord to get back in touch with me. I took a nice 30 minute walk to Woughton on the Green, which was a nice area, lots of grassy areas, a bunch of horse and cow pastures, and a quaint little town area. I took the bus back, but could have walked too. By the time I was heading back I was just ready to be home and back in my room.

I've been streaming Petit Le Mans online from Road Atlanta while waiting for the NCSU vs Virginia Tech game, which is about to start. That's about it for now, I've got a bunch of pics from today, I'll probably start something on Flickr, but if anyone has other suggestions please let me know!

GO Pack!!!!

Beer and Chocolate

Ever seen a KitKat like this?

It was a freebie in a goodie bag from the University. Haven't tasted it yet, but definitely not what I expected when the woman told me there was a KitKat in the bag!

Jeremy remembers a different version of this beer.

Found a four pack of this stout at the store, it was just a little over 3£. We used to get a Mackeson XXX Stout that Jeremy and I enjoyed. This one is only 3% alcohol, and a milk stout. I guess because of the lower alcohol the milk and lactose flavor stands out more. Quite enjoyable.

If the weather is good tomorrow I might take the bus back out to Cranfield and take some more pictures. The forecast says sunny and partly cloudy, but apparently the forecasts are notorious for being wrong.

Registration

Rugby and Football Fields

Today I officially registered for the course, got a general overview of things going on at the University and met my classmates. We also toured the motorsport testing facilities and Impact Centre where 70% of F1 cars get their FIA certified crash testing done. The course director, Dr. Njuguna basically told us to never walk in there unannounced or without a professor because of confidentiality agreements that they sign with the teams or organizations running the tests.

Rugby and Football Fields

After the tours we all met in a classroom and introduced ourselves. Let's just say it's a very diverse group. I'm the only American. There are student(s) from Belgium, Holland, Malaysia, Iran, Scotland, Ireland, England, Asia (didn't specify further), Canada, India, France, Spain, Poland, and I'm probably forgetting a couple as well. On Wednesday we get to tour Silverstone (current home of the British Grand Prix) and spend all day there as well. We were told to bring our driver's licenses, because there was a "driving activity." Don't want to be too opimistic, but actually driving a few laps of the circuit would be just absolutely phenomenal.

Afterwards we had a welcome BBQ, which was hamburgers, bangers, chicken wings, a couple pasta salads and cole slaw. Overall a pretty good meal, and a good number of my classmates were around so we got to know each other a bit more. Surprisingly I believe there are only a few others that have work experience - meaning they aren't coming directly out of undergrad or the "uni" as the English seem to call it.

The main task for tomorrow is to go get a cell phone. I'm going with the company 3 because you can use Skype on all their phones for free. I'll do a pay as you go plan for local UK calls, which should help me keep overall costs down. Hopefully I won't need to use it too much.

The Bus Stop at Cranfield