Ideas That Did NOT Work Out Well

(OK, My Failures)

[Like all experimenting, there are far more failures than successes. Some lead to even better and workable ideas. Others leave problems for future solution.]

The Giant Gantry!

One of these was the giant gantry mounting. It was a thing of beauty. Of all of my attempts at lily gilding the Venus 2000 system, this has to rank as one of my most overbuilt. Standing about five feet tall and originally mounted on what you see as the sound suppression base it was a receiver support. The gantry's vertical member was a nearly five foot long length of 1/2 inch diameter aluminum rod.

At the top of this was a three foot plus crossbar made from a tapered stick of fiberglass, such as a stout fishing rod would be constructed from. At the very tip of that horizontal fiberglass rod, and at several other strategic places were mounted high quality pulleys in a complex configuration complete with counterweights. The counterweights were very large lead things called "bank sinkers" you get from a fishing supply store.

The idea was that a harness could be mounted to the cap of a Venus 2000 receiver with a swivel and attached to the cord hanging down from the end of the gantry. The receiver could thus be counterweighted, yet still free to move up and down and side to side. It would have essentially no weight since its weight would be cancelled by the system of pulleys and counterweights and cords running back and forth. When all ready for use, it looked a bit like a Saturn V launch pad.

It did work quite well enough, but it required you to carefully center yourself underneath the contraption. Combined with the setup and storage required, it was a hassle.

The simple Geo balloon mounting made it obsolete. The Geo balloon mount enables just about all the action possible with the gantry and then some, is much easier and more versatile and portable. With just about zero storage room required for the deflated Geo balloons.

The giant gantry is however memorialized in the much smaller version that is used as a hose support arm mounted in the sound suppression base fixture that is all that remains of the larger base and fitting which once held the huge overhanging "L" of the gantry.

The Venus 4000

One of the last frontiers of Venus 2000 system optimization is stroke randomization. Creating a stroke pattern that is more human and less mechanically repetitive. Various schemes have been tried and suggested, some even working to some extent.

One of the most extravagantly overbuilt was the Venus 4000 system. Since I had two Venus systems, I came up with the idea that if the two receiver air outputs of two independent power units were joined with an air manifold, one could produce a composite stroke. Like adding two waveforms of different frequency to create a complex waveform.

A base was constructed with eight holes, two patterns of four, into which the feet for each of the two units could drop, thus holding them in relative position. A manifold was constructed. Both units were set to short stroke lengths. The fast one was set to the shortest possible mechanical stroke length setting. The other which was meant to be the slow running unit was set to about hole 3 on the drive wheel.

From the manifold a single receiver hose emerged and went to the receiver. Turning on the one unit, the one which is meant to be controlled, at a slow speed, the other unit was turned on at a quite fast speed with its very short stroke. Sure enough, the rapid short stroke was superimposed on the slower longer stroke. When it did work, it was quite nice!

"WHEN IT WORKED" is the operative term here. The two Venus units acted like long lost cousins and used the manifold to "talk to each other". The pressure pulses from the one unit would try to synchronize the other unit just like two A/C generators applied to the same load want to run at the same frequency and phase.

There seemed to be no way to prevent this. The two units had to be set at extremely different speeds. Smooth adjustment was not possible. Unpredictable results would be obtained by changing one frequency or the other by a small amount. The best result came when the two units were running at similar speeds, at least in terms of the composite stroke produced being most satisfying. But that was exactly the kind of speeds the two units did not like and tried to force into step.

After considerable testing the entire idea was abandoned as terribly expensive, complex and yielding far too little satisfactory production of a simulation of randomized stroking. It was quite big and heavy to boot.

The base seen in the sound suppression section is all that remains of the idea. It was cut in half and first used for the gantry experiment and then when that proved way overbuilt for the results generated, ended up in its present form. As the sound suppression base with its four holes for one half of the Venus 4000 system, and a vastly cut down and simplified "gantry" for supporting the hose in some usage configurations.

08/04

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