The Flight

With the holidays coming up and lots of vacation time, both men were able to schedule time to do "the build" as the EVDL called the process of converting a car. Parts were ordered ahead of time, made easy by the previous owner's parts list, which also featured a list of vendors.

While assembling the adapter to the motor, David noted that while the huge DC motor looked impressive, it had a nameplate rating of only 23 HP. "23 HP," David said. "What good is that?"

"Remember, that's continuous, and at 5000 RPM," Dick replied. It can actually produce many times that for short periods, and produces a godawful amount of torque even at zero RPM."

"Oh right," David said. "I remember the information from the EV website now. It only really takes about 15 HP to move a car down a flat road at 55MPH. The rest is there for acceleration and running the accessories. While an internal combustion engine has to run in a small band of RPM's to be most powerful and efficient, the series wound DC motor has a torque vs. speed curve that actually better matches the demands of everyday driving."

"Right," Dick Continued. "In addition, the internal combustion engine rated HP is determined under laboratory conditions that usually can't even be achieved in the real world, so they have to have a safety factor."

"When in doubt, make it stout!" they both shouted the old aerospace stress engineering motto.

"You know, it's amazing the internal combustion engine is still only about 30% efficient after the hundred and twenty years or so of refinement it's had," David said. "You'd think it could be a lot better."

"I think it's just a matter of not being able to beat the energy or power density of gasoline with any conventional technology," Dick said. "In an EV, the efficiency partially makes up for not having very much energy stored in the batteries, and todays sealed AGM batteries are much more efficient than the old flooded batteries we're used to. These orbitals are supposed to be capable of more than 1800 amps sustained for several seconds. That's just incredible!"

The build proceeded uneventfully. David's welding experience came in handy creating secure racks for the batteries, and a rear mounting point for the motor. Dick did most of the wiring tasks, and there was plenty of them to do. There was a ton of low current, high voltage wiring to power the new electric heater, the new AC motor, and the instrumentation to monitor the batteries. Then there was the high current high voltage cables to the batteries. There were fuses on each leg of wires to battery charge regulators for each battery, and lastly, all of the 12V wiring still had to work, and a lot of it had to be reworked to avoid going through the ECM. Then individual instrument drivers had to be created to run the speedometer and tach, since the engine sensors that ran them did not exist anymore. Even after the EV build was complete, there was still the matter of incorporating the fusion and antigrav components. Fortunately, the engineer who developed them had pre-engineered them to work with this particular EV system. After two weeks, all that was left to do was to plug in the computer and go for a test drive, and that's just what they planned on doing that Saturday morning as they cleaned up the exterior and topped up the charge on the batteries.

"This is just to test the EV systems. I'm not about to power up anything else until I understand it better," Dick said.

The car performed flawlessly, with David being quite easy on the accelerator. They stopped after a mile or so and checked for hot connections, which could indicate loose hookups, as they had learned from the EVDL. No problems appeared.

Finally, after about 10 miles of very careful driving Dick said "Come on, quit tiptoeing around. We're not going to find out anything unless you really go for it. Take us out to highway 169 and let's see what this baby can do!"

Highway 169 was crowded, and they kept to the speed limit, impressed at the acceleration and handling. After they pulled north of Pine street, however, the traffic started to dwindle. That's when Dick said "OK. You're clear. Punch it!"

An eerie screech emanated from the tires, all the more accentuated by the lack of a roaring engine. The tires squealed in 3^rd, and yet again in 4^th. By this time they were going almost 120, and the little Fiero kept pulling hard. David eased off and settled back to 3^rd gear at 75 when he saw Dick's face was looking a little pale.

Unable to remove the huge grin from his face, David said "Look, here's 86^th. Time to go to our recharging spot. The batteries are about 60% down." The car coasted the last two miles to the off ramp without losing more than 10 MPH. David pointed the car out 86^th towards the Cherokee industrial park.

"What's out here to charge from," Dick asked. "This is looking more and more desolate."

Just before highway 75, they pulled past a huge factory. "That's whirlpool," David said. My employer is down whirlpool drive a ways."

When they pulled in to David's employer's parking lot, he could see what David had in mind. There was a 110 outlet at every third light pole. "Some of the guys here use these for block heaters year round. I don't know why you'd need one in the middle of the summer, but some of the guys use them for that."

They attached the extension cord and the green charger immediately began to pump current into the battery pack. The instrumentation measured the energy going back in.

"Even at maximum current, this'll take a while," David said. "Let me show you around my work, and it should be done in a couple hours. The facility across the street is ours, too.

"As long as we don't do another 120 MPH run, we should be good. In fact, we should keep it under 50 to minimize energy use," Dick said. "And I get to drive it back."

"No argument here," David replied. "Sorry about that, by the way. I just forgot that the preferred operating RPM of an electric motor is higher than that of an internal combustion engine."

"Right," dick replied. "Most EV drivers don't ever use high gear. They cruise around town in 2^nd, and use 3^rd for highway runs."

The drive back to David's place proceeded normally. There, they plugged the charger into a 220 volt power source, and it started recharging at a more respectable rate.

"While we're recharging," Dick said, "now is a good time to try to fire up the interface system. We at least need to see if it works."

"We left the power leads to the reactor disconnected, remember? Nothing can happen without the reactor on line."

"Are you sure about that," David asked. They both knew the question was rhetorical. If they didn't try it, the world might miss out on a revolution in inexpensive, clean power, and easy travel that would change literally everything from space travel to the balance of power in the world.

Dick powered up the control and interface boxes, and plugged in the USB cable and the RJ45 connector. The computer recognized the connection, and began auto-configuring. Dick was right, it was self-configuring.

Before too long, a new icon labeled "FIERO" appeared on the screen. Dick double-clicked on the icon.

A graphical control panel appeared. Each section addressed a different system: battery power bus, reactor status and controls, inertial dampeners, antigravs, shields, appearance generators, and a section dubiously labeled "armory."

"That’s what I was thinking. Could it really be controlled with something that simple?"

"Looks like you were right, Dick. He set everything up already, just like you said," David responded.

Dick's voice was quiet in the garage. "Not only that, but the data you found has all the theoretical background and blueprints to enable anyone to manufacture all of this stuff. Now if we could just learn to use it. Ah! Here's a simulator selection in the main menu."

The simulation was pretty basic. Everything was laid out in a simple manner. "Well, after all, an engineer like us laid it out," David remarked. "It makes sense that it would be easy for us to understand.

They did learn that some discrete controls should be added, such as a joystick and throttle setup for flight control, and an artificial horizon/heading indicator and a GPS with a navigation display. All this needed to be integrated to give feedback during flight. This could be taken care of in short order, though, using common components. Other functions were designed to be handled through the computer.

This gave David cause to wonder. "You know, Dick, the way the system is set up, it must have been intended for public release soon. Yet this guy was supposed to be fiercely independent and supposedly kept to himself. Something doesn't fit."

"You think someone else was in on it?" Dick responded. "What happened to him? Why didn't he show up to claim the system out of the estate, and how did he get to this guy in the first place?"

"Or did he kill the engineer when he realized what this could mean, or was he killed by some other party or interest?" David finished. "We've been operating under the assumption nobody else knows about this, but this could already be bigger than any of us could imagine. Maybe they're just waiting til we get it working to step in and take it."

"You did find the information hidden in the car." Dick replied. "Perhaps the engineer who died knew something was about to happen. He obviously prepared for the eventuality."

"I think we're jumping the gun, here," David replied. "We really know nothing. Let's wait and practice on the simulators til we know this stuff cold, and try to research the guy who came up with this. Maybe we'll come up with something."

"OK. I'll try the court records on the property to get his name and maybe a former address. You try your engineering contacts, and see if anyone has heard of him."

"That sounds good," David replied, "but you do realize that our mere inquiring may tip someone off."

"I agree. For as much as this means, I'm willing to take the risk," David replied