34th America's Cup: multihulls!

First Foiling America's Cup

Matthew Sheehan: Oracle interceptor*(picture below) and rudder T-foil fairing:
http://www.yachtingworld.com/blogs/matthew-sheahan/535389/america-s-cup-oracle-further-evidence

*Note: Bieker calls them "interceptor ramps": http://www.biekerboats.blogspot.com/
click-

 

I think the logic of the Oracle gizmo is now becoming clear. It wasn't like an automatic transmission, it was like a preselector gearbox. If you've never driven a car with one, you move the shift lever but nothing happens until you punch the clutch. In the Oracle case, the problem was the intermittent nature of the hydraulic power. So the operator moved the preselect lever to the proper "click" (as described by Sheehan) but the motion doesn't happen until the grinders pressure the system up. The mystery element that has the SA posters all in a twitter looks like a simple damper to eliminate the tendency of "bang bang" systems to "hunt," that is, overshoot, then overcorrect, then overshoot a little less, etc. The damper "shapes" the power curve away from a square wave so the device "settles" into the stop point. If you look inside an old Honeywell round thermostat you'll see a little nichrome heating element next to the bimetallic temperature sensor. That's appropriately called the "anticipator" and performs same function.

Cheers,

Earl

 

For those of you still wanting/needing your AC fix for the day, you may find this free webinar interesting:
http://www.numeca.com/en/about-us/e...back=.gde_3830914_member_5791806962085679105#!

"Wish to gain an overview of the possibility to simulate sailing boats with CFD?

NUMECA International is glad to present this FREE webinar co-organized with Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ).

Len Imas, Senior CFD Engineer for ETNZ and Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, will share his experience about the usage of FINE™/Marine in hydrodynamics applications."

On the 24 OCTOBER 2013

 

Knowing from the last AC that I'd be afflicted with AC withdrawal symptoms,

I ordered one of these units, 40 meters tall, to have in my swimming pool:




It will soothingly revolve around and around.

Maybe I'll install a live webcam, for the benefit of other frustrated AC fanatics!

 

34th AC

Partially quoted by Stingray on SA: ( http://m.nzherald.co.nz/#!/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11135491 )

Spithill also said he was amazed at the rumours that swirled around one of the greatest comebacks in the history of sport.

"The last one I heard, [Sir Russell] Coutts had a remote control sitting on the chase boat. He could drive grinders, drive the boat ... he could do everything. I wish he had; it would have made it much easier for us."

Likewise, Spithill dismissed talk of automation being introduced to stabilise the Oracle boat midway through the challenge - some reports called the device Herbie.

"It's comedic, this talk of there being a super system on the boat ... [It's] people trying to look for a silver bullet. Unfortunately [it] just came down to hard work.

"Let me be crystal clear, because obviously you are very misled: There is no Herbie. Herbie is a car that drives around in movies.

"This super stability system, if anyone has got it, send it to me and we will use it next time. For people to suggest or come up with fairytales, it's comedic. can't believe people coming up with that.

"I'd be shocked if it was coming from Team NZ as they are champions and there is no way they would suggest that, as it was a fair fight and they were beaten fair and square.

"Our boat was measured every morning and afternoon just like Team New Zealand."

 

My comments in your text above are the final comments I will make on this.

If you chose to make any comments on them, you will have the last word.

I think I am right. You think I am wrong.

We may just have to agree to disagree, as neither seems able to convince the other.

 

WOW.

All I gotta say is simple, "Go Oracle."

Leave the landlubber naysayers on the beach.

 

I hope US Oracle fans would succeed in convincing themselves it is sooo "crystal clear"(sic) - because, evidently, they need it... So, it was just "hard work"(sic), that, miraculously, transformed the feather duster to rooster , in just one day, after the 11th race.
Before the super-automatic stability system they will use next time, why they do not show us the super-"manual" stability system they had used last time ? Or, if there was nt any such system, why they do not sail just ONE upwind leg like the one they sailed in the last race, to silence the "rumours" once for all ?
It is not comedic, it is tragic.They won on the water, because they had used a better boat, and now they run the danger to lose on the ground, because ( for some obscure reason I can not understand ) they are afraid of revealing the details of the stability control system, and < removed >

 

What's your experience with foils and foil control xarax?
Without knowing your experience your incendiary remarks come off as a really poor sport.

 

34th AC

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Your comments are outrageous and unacceptable! You knock Jimmy Spithill and Team USA in the most pitiful way with absolutely no concrete evidence to back you up.

 

So tell us where you're getting this inside information, about a secret stability control system that they removed after the races. I think you're pulling that 'information' out of a dark, dank and odoriferous secret place, because you have absolutely no evidence of its existence.

Oracle giving a demonstration to silence conspiracy buffs like you would do about as much much good as it did for Obama to show us his birth certificate. People with common sense don't need to be convinced, and those without it won't be convinced by anything Oracle says or does.

 

Then, you do not have anything to fear, do you ? Based on what I saw during the last upwind legs ( and on what I had read after the races ), I believe that the sudden leap in the performance of the boat upwind after the 11th race ( which, according to TSpeer, Sir Coutts and Spithil was just what we should had expected out of a "hard working" team... ), was not miraculous : US Oracle boat was faster simply because it used some efficient more or less automatic stability control system ( in any case, a system not as "direct" and "manual" as a rudder... ), which the team did not reveal then, and continue to do so now - while you are certain they had not - and you are sooo sure about this, because YOU have "concrete evidence" for the contrary, which should be not shared with us mortals...
TSpeer, Sir Coutts and Spithil are members of a professional team, they are paid to say what they tell them to say, even if is so comedic, indeed - perhaps the marketing department of Oracle, that has chosen this lamentable "pure denial" strategy, knows something I do not. I may be too naïve in this, but I think that if they had just revealed to the public the details of the efficient mechanism they had used, they would had shown ( they would have proved, by "concrete evidence" ) that all they had was just a better design, and so a faster boat - and AC is about the better design and the faster boat. Why they try so hard to persuade their fans that all was about "hard work", it is something I had not understood yet.

 

So tell us where YOU had gotten this inside information, that there was not any stability control system whatsoever - perhaps you have seen inside the boat, and you are pulling that information out of a picture taken from this dark, dank and odoriferous place !
We, the deprived of common sense people, do we have the right to ask where is this secret boat ? Why it is not publically shown, in all its details, as it should had been was there nothing to hide inside it ?

Fanatic Fans don t need to be convinced, and those who are not fanatic fans wont t be convinced by anything Oracle says or does - except, of course, if people in Oracle SHOW US THE BOAT ! The only thing they have to do is to put their boat where their mouth is ! Will this cost sooo much money, I wonder...

In a sense, the AC s history was always a history of secrets, lies and propaganda - by keeping the foil stability control mechanism of the boat secret, telling lies that there was not any such thing, and repeating this over and over again, just as any propaganda worth its salt does, Oracle does nothing more than respecting tradition !

 

First Foiling America's Cup

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Your comments are ill-informed pure speculation. You are impugning the character of Spithill ,Ellison and the whole team based on ZERO evidence. In addition to that you are impugning the character of the measurers that have found NOTHING ILLEGAL aboard the TEAM USA boat. That is concrete evidence that there was nothing illegal aboard the boat.
You have no evidence to the contrary and just run on with absolute nonsense.

 

Well, IMHO Xarax didn't say anything about "illegal" - he is just pointing at the sudden recovery of Team USA and doesn't believe that a usually gradual improvement in boat handling due to "hard work is sufficient to explain this. So, in his opinion (and not without reason), it must some technical improvement on the boat to achieve this.
It's just like in every other sport: if someone comes back from a training session and pulverises his former results in a miraculous way, people start wondering how this was achieved... .