Boy, now here is an example of what kind of information we have access to on
this list.  Now that Ernest mentions it, yeah, I recall that the heads of
the hard disk float on a cushion of air - but, I would never have thought to
associate altitude with hard drive crashes!  Thanks Ernest.

Ed


Ed Anderson
RV-6A N494BW Rotary Powered
Matthews, NC
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ernest Christley" <echristley@nc.rr.com>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Sent: Sunday, July 04, 2004 5:48 PM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Into the blue again :-)


> Haywire wrote:
> > Message    Today we flew for 6.3 hrs and everything was great again. We
> > calibrated a few items including the electronic governor for the IVO
prop.
> > What a difference that makes. Also calibrated the PSS AOA and the Dynon
AOA
> > and they each are phenomenal tools. The engine is running great with no
> > major issues at all. I do have a little tweaking to do on the low MAP
table,
> > but nothing urgent. Then only problem that I had today was that my Sony
Vaio
> > laptop doesn't seem to like high altitude. I have a small Vaio and have
> > built a place for it to mount easily and use it to display Jeppenson's
> > FlightMap in-flight GPS program. It works great until 10,300' where it
would
> > then display the blue screen and then reboot. After the 4th time it
refused
> > to reboot again so now I'm forced to use the system recovery disc and
wipe
> > the disc clean. I hate to think about all the files that I said I would
> > back-up soon... :-(. My old laptop still works fine(using it now) so
maybe
> > I'll try it tomorrow.
>
> All hard drives have a spinning platter with a read/write head riding a
> cushion of air just above it.  Go to 10,300' and there isn't much of a
> cushion left.  The head will fall into the platter turning at 7500 or
> 10000 rpm.  I think you'll be lucky if the drive ever works again.
>
> --
> http://www.ernest.isa-geek.org/
> "Ignorance is mankinds normal state,
>    alleviated by information and experience."
>                                    Veeduber
>
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