Progress.

Work progresses adequately. Things have not gone as quickly as I would have liked, but that is primarily due to the lack of appropriate power tools. Additionally, a couple of the 'optimizations' I drew out in Google Sketchup 6.0 didn't work out as planned (note the picture below entitled surgery).


















However, in the timeline I envisioned, I took into account a number of mishaps of this sort and so we are not far off schedule. Here, Drisa (Diadie's apprentice) attaches a finished spider to the frame.












A spider is a small frame that we glue to the back of each mirror. Here are the spiders after we glued the spiders to the mirrors.


















The frame has eight 'arms' with screws at the end of them which permit us to deform the mirrors so that they approximate parabolas, yielding a focusing effect, seen here.

The balls of light you see between the mirrors are about 4 meters away, and are 10cm in diameter, while the mirror is a 30cm by 30cm square. In essence, each mirror focuses at 9:1 and there are 54 mirrors, so if we manage to focus perfectly we will have 486 intensities of the sun at the focal point.



Mirrors are not made to be flexed, though, and so some breakage is expected:


















Luckily, RV is on the case and he does his best to stay in the bounds of how much you can deform the mirrors.


Impatient for the oven to be finished, , Konan manages to roast a roast, Solar Fire style (even with only 2/3 of the mirrors mounted).

Meanwhile, Diadie 'makes with the oven':
Technology wise, things have slowed down a little with the making of the oven, as it is a precise process needing constant attention, so there is essentially only one working group. Compounding the slowness, RV has come down with some kind of illness and so has been out of action for two days. It's not too serious, but working all day in the sun requires a certain fortitude which he currently doesn't possess.

Politically, things are going well. The magical Tomota has done his thing, and has met with the Minister of the Environment to discuss the Solar Fire Project. The Minister is supportive and says he will 'accompany us, politically'. In real terms, that means he and his staff will attend our opening exposition.

The goal is to excite people as to the possibilities afforded by low tech solar power enough to create a research, development and training program which will develop technologies and train people how to build and use them to enhance their economic opportunities while promoting an ecological way of life.

Approx timeline: finish oven and any minor adjustments to the Helios concentrator by the 7th, have the array painted and pretty, set up at the Cite des Enfants by the 10th, commence preparations for the exposition and start actively promoting the technology on the 15th.

PEACELOVEHOPE