Day 6, Buzzin the Rockies

Today I got to go flying with my friends uncle over the Rockies! Our aircraft for the day is a Long-EZ, a plane dreamed up by Burt Rutan with a very unconventional design. Because we would be flying over 10,000 ft. it is required by law that we have supplemental oxygen (a first for me!) which consists of a tube you put into your nose hooked up to a regulator. Also the aircraft is controlled by a side stick, as apposed to the yoke I use in the Warrior and 172.

The Long-EZ

Not your daddy's 172

Another interesting feature is that because the engine is in the back, the plane is very back heavy. This means that unless a pilot is in the cockpit, the plane will flip backwards when the nose gear is down. To prevent this, whenever the pilot is not in the aircraft, the nose gear is raised and the aircraft sits on its nose.

Whatever that is supposed to mean...

 One more thing to mention is that this is considered a home build, experimental plane, meaning that it does not have as strict requirements for things such as maintenance.

Big wingtip/rudder

After the engine was started by a hand crank, we taxied out to the runway.

The canard out front as we taxi

Once everything was warmed up we lined up with the runway and headed towards the sky!

Rotate!

In the air we climbed parallel to the mountains until we were high enough to clear them.

Mountains on one side

Flat lands on the other

At this point he let me take the controls a little. It was very light and responsive to control. You more thought about what you wanted the plane to do than actually input control commands!

View from the back seat

My O2 regulator and control stick

At 14,000 ft. we turned left and headed straight for the mountains!

 

Over the mountains, my friend's uncle demonstrated some of the cool things you can do in a canard plane. It is almost impossible to stall, the second you let go of the stick, the plane more or less flies itself! This also means that it is near impossible to spin. He tried several times to get into a spin, and each time he let go of the stick the plane would level itself out!

The ski lodge we buzzed

Soon the sun was starting to set, and we had to be home for diner, so we headed back to the airport

Heading back

Coming back to flat land

Entering the pattern for runway 11

We landed and taxied back to the hanger (here is the video). I had an amazing experience and now want to do some more high altitude flying myself! The pictures don't do justice to how epic the views are from the airplane, if you are in the Denver area and have a plane capable of getting up there go check it out!!!

Day 5, Wyoming!

Since we were done with the build, we had some time to explore Wyoming a little. We strapped on our hiking boots and got into the car. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking!

Shoulda brought some carrots

Fact: there are more cows than people in Wyoming

Little bit of snow

Eventually we were running out of time, and more importantly gas, so we had to head back without getting to do that much hiking. The landscape is pretty awe inspiring (there is a reason they call it big sky country) and I would definitely like to spend some more time out of the city if I ever get a chance.
Soon we'll be driving to Denver, and my friends Uncle has offered to take me up over the Rockies in his plane! Stay tuned!

Day 4, Our Trials with Microsoft

Now that we had a machine that boots, it was time to put an operating system on our computer and start using it for what we intended! Because we only had an upgrade version of Windows 7, we planned on first putting Windows ME (I know...) onto the SSD. This would theoretically give us a licensed version of Windows that we could upgrade over. But before we could get and OS onto the system we had one last thing to unbox...

Our keyboard and mouse!

Whats inside

Ready for action

Now that we could type and use the mouse, we went into the UEFI to change the first boot drive from the SSD to the optical drive. This let us boot from the CD and access the Windows installer. Once we got the installer running we saw this funny option on the screen:

We have a little more than 512 MB...

We got ME onto the SSD, but for some reason we could not get it to run as an operating system. Most likely ME didn't know what to do with the SSD and as a result could not boot. Either way we assumed that it was working good enough and put in the Windows 7 upgrade disk. The system recognized the disk and we notice that there was an option to wipe ME from the SSD and do a clean install of Windows 7. We did not want any remnants of ME haunting our system so we gave that option a try, only to realize that our product key did not support a clean install. After scratching our heads for a while and looking for another product code we accidentally hit some key that allowed us to proceed without a product key! Soon we were running Windows 7, but we knew that there would be some problems down the line so we decided to call Microsoft and get a valid license. Before we could do that, we moved the computer upstairs so we could hook it up to the internet.

Windows is up and running! (pardon the horrible resolution)

After being on hold for 45 minutes, we finally were able to talk with someone. We explained our situation and they very kindly gave us a new activation key. With a licensed version of Windows and an internet connection it was time to star letting the updates flow!

7 of 52...

Once the updates started to slow down we noticed something peculiar, our WD hard drive was not showing up when opening "my computer." This was very strange, especially because the UEFI recognized that it existed. We tried to call Western Digital and after being on hold for 20 minutes they asked for the serial number on our hard drive, which was still in the computer. We hung up, turned off the computer, took out the HHD and wrote down the serial number.
After putting everything back, we looked at the UEFI again and noticed that the HHD was in IDE mode when we wanted it to be in RAID mode. We tried just switching it to RAID mode, but this led to registry errors and the infamous blue screen of death. We switched it back and read online that if you want to change the HHD mode after installing an OS, there are several registry edits that one must make. We VERY CAREFULLY edited the registry, and were able not only to boot the system (wohoo!) but also get the drive to work in RAID mode!
At this point Windows still was having trouble with the HHD, so we downloaded some software from Western Digital that let us test it. Western Digital says that if your HHD fails one of the five tests it needs to be returned for a new one. Our lovely drive failed all five, meaning that it must have been dead on arrival.

Useless

We took it out of the computer again and instead installed an old SATA 2 HHD from the previous computer. We noticed that the boot time was much faster than before, and that the CPU temps had fallen from the low 30's to the mid-to-low 20's. This dramatically shows how one bad component can effect the whole system! We then installed Battlefield 3 and finally go to pwn some n00bs!

Finally, the moment we've been waiting for!

Install was relatively quick, and with the settings all maxed out we were seeing 53 FPS using FRAPS on multiplayer. We would say that overall the build was successful, despite some glitches with our HHD. We were able to get the performance we were looking for, even using an older hard drive, with minimal glitches to our build. The only other problem we noticed was that there is a stuck pixel right in the middle of the monitor. This, albeit very annoying, did not ruin our gaming experience and can possibly be fixed later on.
Before we wrap up the part of the blog on the build, we wanted to give out some awards:
Best packaging: SeaSonic X750 Gold 750W PSU

Sooo nice!!!

Worst packaging: LITE-ON DVD Burner

Not so much...

Easiest to install: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB

And yes, those are gold caps

Hardest to install: COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus

Not looking forward to having to do that again

Most nerve racking to install: Intel Core i5-2500K

Nor this

Most DOA: Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB

Now that I think about it, could make a good door stop

That just about wraps up the build for us. Stay tuned for some pics of Casper and my drive to Denver!

Day 3, Putting It All Together

Now that we knew all of the parts work and were talking to each other, it was just a case of "fit this into this using nothing but that."

The major components

The first order of business was getting the power supply into the case. This was fairly easy as all we needed to do was place it on the bottom of the case and screw in four screws on the back.

Case with power supply

The next step was to mount the motherboard, but before we could do that we had to insert all of the motherboard standoffs. This was relatively easy to do because stamped into the case there were instructions on where to place the standoffs for different motherboards. Once the standoffs were screwed in place, we put the motherboard into the case and attached it using the screws provided with the case.

Mobo set in place

Next up we got to "unbox" the optical drive which involved removing the plastic sleeve the drive came in. We chose the LITE-ON DVD Burner - Black SATA Model iHAS124-04 because it was cheep and it didn't make sense for us to get a Blu-ray drive. Mounting it into the case was very easy. Our case has 5 optical mounting slots where the drive is slid into place and a button is pressed to release the pins that lock it to the case. 

Before

After

Once the optical drive was in place we opened the solid state drive. We chose the Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2CCA 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC with the plan of running just Windows 7 and using the remaining space to try out Intel's Smart Response Technology, thus we only needed 64GB. We are going to put everything else on a Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB 7200 RPM hard drive. 

SSD

Mounting the SSD on the bracket that came with the motherboard was actually a lot harder than we would have thought. This was mostly because neither the SSD nor the motherboard came with instructions on how it should be mounted. Eventually we noticed that the SSD could be just screwed in from the bottom, but it was not obvious and some help from the manufacturers would have been appreciated. 

Unboxed SSD

With the SSD in place we opened the WD hard drive and snapped it into one of the 5 trays in the case. 

WD hard drive

Once all the components were in the correct place it was time to connect everything to the motherboard and give everything power from the PSU, a.k.a cable management!

Everything is in place

We didn't really have a strategy going into cable management. Instead we just plugged everything in using a more or less random order,  focusing on keeping cables in the large space behind the motherboard tray provided by the case.

We're plugged in and ready to go!

We then used the provided zip-ties to condense all of the random cables into larger groups to decrease the amount of obstructions to good air flow inside the case. 

From the other side

With everything ready to go we re-attached the side plates, plugged everything in, and again held our breath...

Second moment of truth....

And it worked again!!!

Look at that UEFI!!!

The UEFI came up on the screen, meaning that everything is getting power, and all the components are talking to each other!! 

Let the domination begin!

Now that everything was working, the next step was to get Windows 7 installed. But at this point we were really tired and decided it would be better to work on it after getting some well deserved rest the next morning.