229: PROGRESS!!!

Today was pretty good, all things considered.

The main draw (obviously) is that I got my board finally done! It was only like another 15 minutes of work, and then I put on all of my protective gear (wrist braces, elbow pads, knee pads, and I always wear my helmet) and took it for a spin, and it's AMAZING. My expectations weren't super high, honestly, because the coolness factor of the board itself was most of the point, but this is going to turn out to be a huge upgrade, actually.

I didn't go far, the battery was almost dead, but I went and ripped around the road behind Sierra Madre and Yosemite, which is smooth and flowy and usually empty, and the new board is just so smooth! I didn't change anything except for the board itself, same spacers, same wheels, it's just leagues better, and I honestly don't know why. It's quieter, too, which I don't entirely understand either. I think most of it comes down to the length, a longer board is going to be an inherently more stable one, but it's also in my foot placement, because on the old board my feet were just about standing on the trucks at the front and back, and on this one I'm solidly within both trucks. I think (and I'm not a MechE so I might be wrong) that the weight distribution itself is better, because now the front-back distribution matters so much less, because both of my feet are inside the trucks, where before the front-back distribution was enough to get me speed-wobbling or thrown off the board. I will probably loosen the trucks a little, because I need to tilt the board more than I lean to do the right amount of turning, and it's a lot more ankle mobility, which is less intuitive.

I also definitely need to design bumpers for the front and back, as is I think they might be sharp enough to draw blood if I ran into somebody, and I don't have a very good way to pick it up right now either, so I think I'll make the bumper into a handle, at least the front one.

I have this idea for a rear bumper that doubles as a vertical stand, so I can have the board stand up without a wall needing to be next to it, because currently the back has two solid points to it, I could give it a tail-fin, and then have it stand on the 3 points at the back. It'd look cool, and be functional. It'll definitely take some design revisions, and I might not have filament strong enough for that, but I'll figure it out (eventually).

Here's a shot that shows the side view. You can see where the spacing is having to be compromised, those air gaps between the battery and the board are not supposed to be there...

I need to order some XT90s, so I can space out the batteries one nugget higher and then just jumper-cable them into the ESC. I also have an idea to add a handle to the middle, where that jumper cable goes, so I can hold it from roughly the center of gravity, and roughly the center of the board, instead of just gripping it from the battery like I've been doing.