The first big single purpose check.

Today I sent the xprize foundation a 2K check,
my first downpayment on the project I'm on the way to being an
offically registered partcipant.

I'm also starting to make a slight bit of technical progress.
This weekend:
I met with seveal other rocket nuts at the FAR site and discussed designs and ideas
with Charles Pooley and Ken Mason.

I spent sunday finishing my Lathe. I have a 13x40 birmingham manual lathe.
I had the mechanics converted to CNC by Industrial hobbies, they did all the mechanical work and I did all the wiring and electrical. I've had the Lathe for a year and never got around to finishing all the wiring. Last night the lathe cut it's first metal, and all of the CNC parts seem to be working.

Sunday evening my son and I did some work on converting a Ryobi right angle drill driver to a
valve driver. We mounted GMW angle sensors on the end of the spindle and used a Netburner and a Scorpian XL driver to drive the valve. With simple proportional control it overshot
unloaded and did not do well when loaded up. In the next few days we will ad the rest of the PID
constants and see how it works.