Each fall, at the Oak Point Nature Preserve in Plano, TX the city hosts the Plano Balloon Festival. Oak Point Nature Preserve is within walking distance of our house and we’re frequent visitors there for walks with our dog, Crockett, but we’ve never actually attended before. My parents were in town for the weekend and their visit was a great reason to check out the festival. We got up for the early morning launch at 7:00 AM on Sunday had a very nice time.

We saw a number of hot-air balloons launch from Oak Point Nature preserve and then a few that launched elsewhere that came in to land. Each of the incoming balloons threw bean bags at a large “X” taped on the ground as part of the Balloon Fly-in Competition it was pretty impressive that each of the pilots were able to get their balloons in throwing distance of that spot. One of the RE/MAX balloons dropped its bean bag from its “cruising” altitude before heading off with the other balloons that launched ahead of it, they nearly scored a direct hit!

We certainly enjoyed the festival, being within walking distance I feel a bit silly that we haven’t gone before. In the upcoming years, I predict we’ll make our way out to watch future festivals.

In an earlier blog, I wrote about a do-it-yourself Wireless Charging option for the Samsung Galaxy S3, which I absolutely loved. However, in the long run, the fragility of the back of the Galaxy S3 and the extra bulk of the wireless charging bits caused the cover to fracture in a couple places. Initially, my plan was to just buy another cover for the Galaxy S3 and to swap the wireless bits into it. But ultimately, I decided that the unfortunate combination of the bulge in the phone from my DIY wireless charging modification and my Galaxy S3 Car Mount was the combined cause of my issue. The car mount for the phone pinched down on exactly where the wireless charging bits were taped into the phone’s cover. I suspected that if I replaced the cover, I’d just wind up in the same spot a few months later again.

I wound up heading out to Amazon and seeing what sort of new Galaxy S3 wireless charging options there were. I was surprised at the number of options that showed up that hadn’t been available previously. This included someone who was selling the same modification that I had found online.

Immediately, the QI Standard Wireless Charger Charging Receiver Tag caught my eye. It looked to install directly in the phone and was built to the Qi inductive power standard. This was a double bonus for me since it was inexpensive and because we happened to have a Nexus 4 Wireless charger at the house for my wife’s phone which was Qi-compliant. I planned to buy the Qi Charging Tag and a new back for my phone and to see if I thought it would easily replace the Palm wireless charging bits. Assuming that the test was successful, then I could look into some Qi chargers and pick up two to replace the Palm Touchstones that I had been using. I promptly ordered my Qi Charging tag and the new back for my phone.

In reading the reviews, I was definitely aware that the new Qi Charging Tag would create a slight bulge of its own on the back of the phone. But in looking at the images and at the back of my phone, I was confident that the bulge would be higher up on the back of the phone, and the region that was bulging would not get pinched as severely aby the car dock, hopefully eliminating any cracking like I had seen before on the phone.

When the parts showed up, it took more time for me to find my wife’s Nexus 4 charger than it took for me to hook up the new pieces. The charging tag basically lies down on the battery and has some contacts that go right over the charging terminals. It has some adhesive to hold it in place. The bulge the charging tag created is slight, but it’s noticeable. The phone does not sit flat on a flat surface. I was fine with this because the Palm Touchstone charging bits essentially had the same effect. The only difference is that the Qi Charging Tag’s bulge was more towards the middle of the phone, and the Palm Touchstone charging bits were down lower on the phone. Once I had everything put back together, I set it on my wife’s Qi charger and it started charging right off the bat, which was great news.

The bad news, however, is that the Qi-compatible chargers are pretty pricey. They’re especially pricey when compared to the price of the Palm Touchstone, although I anticipate a year from now Qi-compatible chargers are going to be much easier to find than Palm Touchstones, since the Palm devices that use them are obsolete and being liquidated.

I wound up considering quite a few different Qi chargers, and ultimately I settled on a couple of GMYLE Qi-enabled Wireless Charging Pad (Model #: Qi1000AS). At the time I bought them, they were around $25. I wound up paying a bit of a premium to get the 1000mA version of this charger.

In the reviews of the Qi1000AS on Amazon people seemed to have two recurring complaints. Firstly there’s a red/green LED: the red LED is on any time the charging pad is powered, and the green LED flashes any time the phone is charging. This would be insanely annoying anywhere you want the room to be dark, like a bedroom. Secondly, it likes to beep! It beeps when you set it down and it starts charging, and then it beeps again when it thinks it’s finished charging. If you leave it on the charger at full, then the phone will run down and then start charging again (another beep) until it’s fully charged again (another beep). Leaving the phone on the charger indefinitely could lead to an infinite cycle of annoying beeps. Thankfully, in some of the reviews that I was able to dig around in, it didn’t sound like it’d be a huge hassle to open up the charger and “fix” either of these problems with a pair of wire cutters. In the end, I have the wireless charging pads at both my computer at home and then at my computer at work. I tend to only charge a little bit on these chargers during the day, and then there’s a traditional charger in my bedroom where I keep the phone overnight. The beeps and the LEDs are not very distracting at either of my desks.

When comparing these two wireless charging options, DIY vs Qi, my preference is still the DIY method. The modification is very easy and only involved a little trial and error on my part. The chargers are dirt cheap, so you could theoretically have one just about anywhere you would want. The only drawbacks that I can see is the amperage of the charger (500mA) and the fact that Palm’s days are numbered. What really ruined it for me is trying to use it as the same time as my car charger and dock. The combination of the two put additional strain on the flimsy Galaxy S3 back cover and cracked it. There might be something a cleverer individual could do to avoid this like relocating the charging bits in the phone cover or using a different style car-mount.

In this case, my reality trumped my preference, and I went with the QI Standard Wireless Charger Charging Receiver Tag and the GMYLE Qi-enabled Wireless Charging Pad (Model #: Qi1000AS). I chose this because I felt that it was less likely to crack the S3 cover again and because I’m hoping that my next phone will be Qi-enabled and that 1000mA will be enough to charge that device; hopefully I’ll find that out in about a month.

If you’re a regular visitor, you’ve noticed a recent change. I decided to switch my blogging engine to Octopress. I was content with MovableType 5 and it worked very well for me while I was using it, but I decided that Octopress suited my needs better. So far, I’m pretty pleased with the new look and feel of the blog. I downloaded and installed Justin Kelley’s Octopress theme and made some pretty insignificant changes to it.

I switched for a variety of reasons:

• Because I could: I’m a hopeless tinkerer. I wanted to try something different, so I did. Mucking around behind the scenes is a significant chunk of the what I enjoy about blogging. Switching just gives me a good bit more of that same fun.
• Feels More Responsive: This isn’t a scientific measurement at all, but the blog renders much faster than it did previously with Movable Type 5.
• Mobile Layout: All of the reviews seem to suggest that Octopress is very mobile friendly. About 10% of my traffic comes from mobile devices, so I wanted to make sure the blog was presented to them nicely.
• Using a Text Editor for Blogging: In Octopress each blog article is a separate text file that you can work with in your favorite text editor. I prefer this to Movable Type’s web-based editor.

Quite a few people have blogged about the virtues of switching to Octopress and their reasons are all reasons that I decided to take the plunge. Rather than re-hash what they’ve aleady covered, here’s a few links I found helpful in my research:

• I Migrated To Octopress From Movable Type by Pat Regan
• Switching to Octopress by Aijaz Ansari
• Why I Switched to Octopress by Akash Devaraju
• Advantages of Octopress by Alex Blewitt
• Blogging with Octopress by Matt Gemmell

A family wedding brought us to Spokane, Washington this August. When planning the trip, we decided that we’d drive after the wedding to Seattle and check things out. I had been to Seattle almost 20 years ago as a teenager on a family vacation, and it left such an impression on me that it’s still one of my favorite places in the world.

Originally, we budgeted about four days for our Seattle trip: one day to drive into Seattle from Spokane via the scenic route recommended by family member, then two days in Seattle and to head home first thing in the morning on the fourth day. However, as it often is with extended family gatherings, we were having too much fun and decided to shorten the trip to Seattle by one day.

As we drove across Washington through some pretty country, I asked my wife, Julia, if she wanted to try and be really insane and see just how much the two of us could pack into our one day in Seattle all on foot. We got into Seattle about dinner-time and checked into our hotel, the Red Lion on 5th Ave., around dinner time. We had a nice dinner at the Castle & Elephant beneath the hotel and discussed our plan. We decided to finish up dinner and then just hike around to get a feel for the area around the hotel, then we’d head back to the hotel and try to plot out everything we wanted to do the next day.

Seattle Aquarium & Pike Place Market

Here’s where we encountered our first snafu. Originally, I just wanted to walk by the Space Needle and take a few pictures. Google Maps had informed me that it was only a mile away. So, we set off to do a quick walk by the Space Needle. Unfortunately for us, I didn’t have my bearings, and it’s much harder to tell where you’re heading on your phone while walking. Either that or I am a bit oblivious, let’s blame the phone. This difficulty allowed us to set off in the completely opposite direction than what I intended. After walking about a mile in the wrong direction, we decided to turn around and rearrange our activities. We’d wound up down on the waterfront and figured it made much more sense to stop at the Seattle Aquarium and save the Space Needle for later.

We got to the Seattle Aquarium right around 9:30 a.m. and spent two-and-a-half hours there. It is a really fantastic aquarium that I enjoyed thoroughly. We soaked in all the exhibits and we got to watch a couple of the scheduled feedings: One in the massive tank at the very beginning of the aquarium, as well as observe a feeding of the harbor seals a couple hours later. I snapped a ton of photos while we were at the aquarium, and at around noon we headed up a few blocks to the famous Pike Place Market.

Pike Place Market was an interesting and unique place. I don’t recall visiting when I went to Seattle as a teenager, but my memory could be failing me. There’s tons of little shops which seem to cover just about the entire spectrum of things you might expect to see. There was a good crowd all over the market, and the one thing that I enjoyed was the multicultural aspect of it all. If you listened closely, it seemed as if you could hear people conversing in a number of different languages at any time. We poked around a few different shops/booths looking for knick-knacks and headed off to the next phase of our adventure.

Space Needle & Seattle Monorail

Having crossed Seattle Aquarium and Pike Place Market off our to-do list, we headed off to the Space Needle, hoping that my bearings had improved at least enough to get us there this time. My family did the Space Needle when we visited all those years ago, and Julia doesn’t like heights very much, so I didn’t have a whole lot of motivation to go up into the Space Needle. Mostly, I wanted to go and take a few photos of the building from below and move on to our next destination. However, the day was absolutely gorgeous, and I thought I’d be able to get a few good photos from up above, so I ventured on up alone. The views were pretty spectacular, but a bit of cloud cover off in the distance obscured the mountains more than I would have preferred. However, I had a great view of downtown and Puget Sound. As an added bonus I got a terribly dorky souvenir picture of myself to boot as part of the admission.

We explored around the Space Needle a bit and decided to ride the Seattle Monorail back downtown after discovering it’d drop us off pretty close to the hotel. This is when we encountered our second snafu and turned the opposite direction again. This time, we didn’t walk in the wrong direction all that far because we were tired and hungry. We grabbed some lunch near the hotel and plotted out the remainder of the day: some rest, a ferry ride, and then maybe a baseball game.

Round Trip Ferry to Bremerton

We were fortunate in that one of my mother’s cousins currently lives in Seattle and made it to the wedding in Spokane. He gave us two very good tips for our trip: Take the longer, much more scenic drive into Seattle via Highway 20; and that a ferry ride would be a great way for us to see Puget Sound inexpensively.

We were in a hurry, so I didn’t do a ton of research into the different ferries available. A few reviewers had said the ferry to Bremerton was a nice trip, the price was right at $7.70 a round trip, and the trip length and departure times worked well on our schedule. If we had not been heading to a baseball game right after the ferry returned, I would’ve been happy to stop in Bremerton and explore it a bit on foot, as a few reviewers suggested.

In our case, we had a nice trip. I stood out on the decks most of the trip, snapping some pictures of downtown Seattle and other things we saw along the way. As I ran out of things to photograph, I wound up bumping into people and having some nice random conversations. Firstly with a woman from Wyoming, she had a University of Wyoming shirt on and I just had to ask her about it since you don’t run into a whole lot of people who are from Wyoming. Next I chatted a bit with a fellow Denver Broncos fan and lastly quizzed a guy about his Texas Rangers T-shirt to find out that he had moved from Arlington, TX up to Seattle, WA. What a lucky guy!

Seattle Mariners Game @ Safeco Field

Our first night in Seattle while at dinner, I noticed that the Seattle Mariners were playing the Texas Rangers and that the final game of the series would be the next night. As we were adventuring around town, Julia and I decided that if we were still up for it, that night we’d go see the baseball game, since we’re casual Texas Rangers fans. I was excited that we’d be able to do this, because it was always such a treat when I was growing up and on vacation when we’d get to go see a baseball game. In fact, on our previous trip to Seattle, we watched the Mariners play back in the old Kingdome.. As an added bonus, I’ve always been a bit fascinated with the different ballparks with retractable roofs. Despite its rainy reputation, the roof is closed at Safeco fewer times than any of the other stadiums with such roofs. Even though the roof was closed, the design of the roof and stadium still let in tons of the fresh air and the temperature for the game was exquisite.

We made it through 8 innings of the ballgame, which Texas won in extra innings 4-3, before we finally began to run out of gas. The hotel was still at least a mile away, and we had at least one hill like this one to hike back up before we could get some well-deserved sleep.

Conclusion

Mostly, we wanted to see a bunch of Seattle, do a bunch of different things, and get the most out of the time we were in town. In a perfect world, we could’ve just extended our vacation by a couple days and then hung out with family and also see this great city, but sometimes you just have to play the hand you have been dealt. In this case, I think we took the house to the cleaners.

Due to a nap and a couple of wrong turns, we probably wound up wasting 2-3 hours of our day that could’ve been used to add another destination to the day’s activities. That is, assuming that we could have even mustered the energy for another destination! Overall, we had a fantastic visit to Seattle, and we wouldn’t change anything except for it’s length so that we could do even more things.

If you’re planning to be in Seattle for a short amount of time and you need an idea of all you could do in a single day, please keep this in mind. Downtown Seattle is awesome, with numerous interesting destinations all within walking distance of each other. Don’t assume that just because your visit is short that you won’t get to see much; you’ll see as much in one day as your feet and gumption will let you!

When I was growing up, the arcade in the nearby shopping mall would put price tags on all of their games around Christmas time. I dreamt about finding one next to the Christmas tree with a big bow on it. However the price tags on the games were numbers much bigger than we’d covered that semester in elementary school; this is probably when I first experienced “sticker shock.” However, a dream had been planted

Quite a few years ago, I heard about MAME(short for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator), which used your PC Hardware to emulate a classic arcade machine. I collected a few copies of my favorite games and had some fun for a couple months playing all my favorite arcade games on my computer. However, there was something missing. It wasn’t authentic enough.

The friend who introduced me to MAME beat me to the punch a while back, he built a cocktail cabinet style arcade machine from scratch and blogged about it. He did this while living in another state. Once he moved back to Texas and I got to see it, I went from just a little bit envious to jealous in no time flat. It’s a neat and very fun toy to have.

Within the past year my ‘some spare PC parts collection’ grew considerably as a result of a computer upgrade, and just recently I decided to use those parts to build my very own upright arcade cabinet.

Build it from Scratch vs. Rebuild Existing

The first decision I made was to decide between building it from scratch or refurbishing an existing arcade cabinet. Both had their pros and cons. Building your own means you can design something from the ground up to meet your exact specifications, which is appealing. However, it involves a certain amount of woodworking and investment in tools that I didn’t necessarily have. Furthermore, the more unique and customized your arcade cabinet is to your specific needs, the more you risk some of the authenticity of the cabinet.

Refurbishing an existing one is an attractive option. In that case, you find a cabinet already assembled and then get it back into shape. The tradeoff of saving time on assembly and tools, however, is that you have to spend a lot of time shopping and keeping an eye out on the exact cabinet for you. There’s also risk of having to pay a little bit extra for complete the cabinet.

For my project, I ultimately decided that I wanted to refurbish an existing cabinet, preferably something that I felt came straight out of an arcade. Because I try and be as frugal as possible when indulging my whims, I wound up surfing Craigslist for a few days. What I was looking for was a damaged machine that wasn’t working and had a shape that I liked. Unfortunately, most of what I found was functional and thereby expensive, or broken-down games that had unappealing shapes and looked to be too much work.

Luckily, I tweaked my search terms and found a listing for an arcade cabinet that someone appeared to have already started refurbishing but was getting rid of it for some reason. At its price, I was worried that it would be pretty beat up, but overall, I thought it was in pretty good shape. It’s got more than it’s fair share of dings and dents, and there’s quite a bit of work that it’s going to require, but I literally wound up savings hundreds of dollars over the other options available for fully-assembled cabinets. I bought the cabinet for $100 and I definitely feel that I would’ve spent way more than $100 in tools, supplies, and frustration just to get it to the shape it is in today.

Goals

1. Keep it Authentic: The cabinet in its shape needs some TLC. I tried to get it in the pictures, but there’s a few things that I need to fix up: there’s no back on the cabinet, the back and the bottom of the cabinet frame is pretty dinged up and I’ve got some other structural ideas shooting around in my head that I’d like to see. Whatever changes I make, I want those changes to be as authentic to the arcade games that I remember from the 80’s and 90’s as I possibly can.
2. Use an LCD: In terms of the cabinet’s display, I’m willing to make an exception to my authenticity goal. Updating the display from a CRT to an LCD makes sense
3. Include a Trackball: This is one thing that Pat has strongly suggested for my own arcade machine, both for games that require a trackball and also as a pointing device for the PC that’s powering the arcade machine.
4. Return it to 4 Player: From the underside of the control panel it looks like this cabinet started out as a 4-player game, possibly Crime Fighters or The Main Event but somewhere along the line it was repurposed as some sort of a Mortal Kombat cabinet instead. I think that we’ll wind up rebuilding the control panel from scratch and build out a wider 4-player control panel like Konami did with The Simpsons and X-Men.
5. Make it Mine: Even though the cabinet is already built, there’s plenty of opportunity for me to put my own mark on it. We’re going to invest some time and energy into redoing the control panel, and there’s damage to the back and bottom of the cabinet which will require our attention and will ultimately reshape the cabinet a fair amount. This my chance to “sculpt” it into my own unique creation. Hopefully it’s subtle yet noticeable.

Plasti Dip is interesting neat stuff. People are doing all sorts of interesting things with it that get my attention, mostly with cars. Ever since seeing the first few As-Seen-on-TV type commercials I’ve been trying to come up with an excuse to buy some and play with it.

That chance finally presented itself. A few months back, I added wireless charging to my Samsung Galaxy S3 by taking apart some old Palm Pixi phone covers and using some copper tape and scotch tape to transplant it into the back of my phone. Unfortunately, the backs of the Galaxy S3 are pretty thin and the added bulk from those items caused my cover to crack in a couple places.

We brainstormed some ideas of what I could do. A new back for the phone wouldn’t be expensive, but I didn’t really want to go through the same process of re-transplanting the wireless charging bits and getting them positioned just right again just to have another cover crack and get in an endless cycle of replacing the back cover on the phone. Equally unacceptable was to just take out the wireless charging stuff and replace the back and return to a more “stock” form of the phone.

Somewhere in that conversation, that’s where it struck me: Here’s my chance to play with Plasti Dip! I picked up some white Plasti Dip, and because I was interested in keeping a bit of the glossy finish of the Galaxy S3, I thought it might be interesting to try out the Plasti Dip Glossifier to see if it would solve my problem.

I must’ve been a bit on the conservative when applying the coats of Plasti Dip; it wound up taking me like four or five coats before both the crack and the writing on the back of the phone were mostly covered. It was late and I was tired, so I let it set overnight before I tried using the Plasti Dip Glossifier.

The Plasti Dip Glossifier applied just as easily. According to the instructions on the can, applying more coats made the finish glossier. I continued my very conservative application method and wound up doing three or four coats of the glossifier.

One of the things that I’m interested in is how well it holds up over time. I have a holster-style car mount, and the phone fits pretty snugly due to the added width from the wireless charging bits. I’m a bit concerned that the Plasti Dip will get caught and start to rub off due to that friction.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. The color of the white Plasti Dip doesn’t quite match the phone, but there’s a nice grey border that separates the front and the back of the phone and is enough separation that the difference isn’t blatant. The big crack in the back of the phone is covered by the Plasti Dip but you can still somewhat see it. Normally, I wouldn’t have used Plasti Dip at all because it’s typically a pretty flat and dull color but a few coats of the Plasti Dip Glossifier certainly made it shiny enough to match the rest of the phone. Furthermore, the nice, soft texture of the Plasti Dip will help make sure that I have a firm grip on the phone and I will not be dropping it as I have done on a few occasions.

Working with the Plasti Dip was no more difficult than operating a can of spray paint with the added bonus of being able to use the sole of my shoe to scuff off all of the overspray that missed my workspace. When I screwed up and sprayed a coat on too thick, it was a cinch to go back when it was dried and peel off the Plasti Dip to start over again. I can understand why so many enthusiasts find so many different uses for the Plasti Dip and I’ve already made my mind up to use it on my Corvette to paint a black stripe on the rear window where the tint isn’t bound well to the window. Considering the cost and difficulty of re-tinting the window, Plasti Dip seems like a good choice to give a try.

This year, for my Dad’s 60th birthday we conspired with my mother and (mostly) surprised him with a quick visit in June. A few years back, my parents had returned virtually to the same zip code that I grew up in and I’ve been green with envy ever since that they get to live in Colorado while we live down here in Texas. Even though I’m quickly approaching the point in my life where I’ve lived longer in other places, Colorado will always continue to be the place I consider to be my home.

Since returning to Colorado my father has turned into quite an avid day-hiker and photographer. Naturally, we wanted to get up into the mountains and do some hiking as part of his birthday celebration as well as our own vacation. We spent a couple nights in Winter Park and scouted out a few hikes to take. We ended up deciding on the Monarch Lake Trailhead as the best hike for our party of four, which included two residents from Texas who were already having a hard time gasping for air while adjusting to the altitude. Monarch Lake is just outside of Granby, not too far from Lake Granby. Altogether the hike itself was about four miles, it was mostly flat, without much elevation gain and it was incredibly scenic.

We went in the mid-morning after a hearty breakfast in Winter Park at Carver’s and were on the trail around 9:30 AM or so. We didn’t see a whole lot of wildlife but some folks we chatted with had come across a moose during their hike. As far as our own sightings, we saw several curious hummingbirds, a very-well camouflaged (or poorly photographed) squirrel, a number of chipmunks and a whole bunch of butterflies cavorting amongst the wildflowers. I imagine that if we had set out around dawn or dusk we may have encountered that elusive moose and other similarly reclusive animals.

Being one of the poorly acclimated and out-of-shape people from Texas, I thought this hike was not too difficult. There was not a whole lot of elevation gain, and the terrain was pretty well groomed. If you are visiting the Denver area and have some time to drive up into the mountains, I think this is a very suitable hike for us novices.

Here’s a handful of photos I snapped while on the hike and some info about the hike that I grabbed using JogTrackerand my phone’s GPS:

For as long as I can remember, I have been both fascinated and terrified by the phenomenon of tornado producing thunderstorms in the United States. Just in the last few days, I’ve seen this activity hit pretty close to where we live and the horrific tornado I’ve been glued to the TV watching coverage of what’s going on in Oklahoma City today. Something about recent events struck a chord within and moved me today. I thought I’d meekly try and share a bit of that.

Disasters aren’t specific to any particular part of our country, or even the world. We’re all subject to disasters seemingly endless of the natural and man-made variety. There’s very little that people can do to avoid these awful things. We’re all powerless to stop it but we can all do something to help in the aftermath.

This isn’t a particularly popular blog out there, but I felt compelled today to try and use my feeble platform. Please join me in finding a disaster relief charity and make any kind of contribution that you can. I did some very basic research into charities to come up with this list below. If you have a charity that you recommend, please leave a comment or send me an email (brian@briancmoses.com) and I’ll append it to this list.

• Red Cross
• Salvation Army
• Catholic Relief Services
• United Way
• Habitat for Humanity

There’s a pretty endless supply of ways that you can donate to these charities. We all have excess money, possessions, time, etc. that can be a lifeline for the people affected. Supporting charities that help the victims of these disasters is a way we can all reach out and help our neighbors. Please keep in mind our neighbors are everywhere; our cities, our states, our countries, our continents and our shared planet.

At the very core, I am an “upgrader.” Whether it be computers, cars, smartphones, etc. I always seem to be looking for ways to make my possessions just a little bit better. Almost a decade ago my good friend, Pat introduced me to upgrading cars.

At the time, Pat had been driving an Eagle Talon, also known as the Mitsubishi Eclipse and Plymouth Laser (read more about Diamond Star Motors). Pat moved down to the Dallas area and immediately went car shopping for a “new” DSM to have down here, rather than ship his car all the way down from Pennsylvania. For those of you not familiar with DSMs, they had a turbo-charged 2.0-liter engine and an all-wheel drive transmission. The real beauty of the car was that with a few hundred dollars a considerable amount of power could be added right off the bat. A skilled driver with those modifications would turn heads when launching their cars from a stop.

Pat inspired me and I bought a 1992 Eclipse GSX of my own and began making a laundry list of upgrades to it. I got in way over my head. All the tinkering turned that car into something that wound up not being very much fun to drive on a daily basis and it wound up eating up so much of my money that I learned a valuable lesson and wound up ridding myself of that car and buying something a bit more practical again.

Predictably I replaced practical with something fun and bought a 2004 Mazda RX-8 and drove that for a few years. The car was neat, featuring a magical rotary engine, and it handled really well. Unfortunately, in the “oomph” category, it was sorely lacking. I was disappointed that the car didn’t have the get-up-and-go that my Eclipse had when it was stock. To make matters worse, I was disappointed in the upgrades that were available to the RX-8. They were expensive and didn’t result in enough performance gain to justify the cost. Ultimately, I was hindered by two factors; the RX-8 just wasn’t very upgrade ready, and auto manufacturers are getting much better at getting more out of their platforms.

In my most recent quest for the ideal car I kicked around a bunch of different models like the Mitsubishi Evolution, Subaru WRX and even gave some pretty serious consideration to muscle cars like the Mustang and Camaro. Ultimately, I chose a car that I had enjoyed since my boyhood, the Chevrolet Corvette. While doing my shopping for Corvettes that I could actually afford, the voice of the upgrader in me began sowing seeds in my head, which got me wondering what kinds of bigger exhausts, cams, superchargers, etc. I could wind up putting on the car after I purchased it. That got me thinking about the Z06a car that I’d always admired, in my opinion a borderline supercar. I was surprised to find out that the Z06s were not that much more expensive than the Corvettes I had been looking for. The added performance, the rarity of the car and the fact it was a hardtop coupe instead of a hatchback or a convertible sealed the deal for me.

Immediately after buying the car, I started reading forums and looking at various upgrades that could be done on my new car. Much to my chagrin I learned that one of the premier Corvette performance shops, LG Motorsports, was practically in my own backyard. However, my initial impression of the Z06 was that it didn’t really need all that much tinkering. It was more powerful and handled better than both my Eclipse and RX-8.

Despite the Z06 not really needing any upgrades to enhance its pedigree, the tinkerer in me could not resist, and I began eyeballing a few different modifications that I could make to turn a few more heads and take some time off of my timeslips the next time I went out to the drag strip. My wonderful wife, Julia, must have noticed that I was perusing and shopping, because this year she said for my birthday I should pick out some parts to have put on the Z06.

The Plan

So, my plan was to throw a few parts on the car to make it more enjoyable without having to back a dump truck full of money in order to get it taken care of and to keep the car relatively quiet and enjoyable to drive, since my commute has recently grown to just about 2-hours round trip. I also didn’t want to spend money upgrading things that Chevrolet had already done for the Z06. These three restrictions eliminated forced induction and work to the top half of the motor…. At least for now.

Ultimately, I decided that my first modifications would be: a cooler thermostat, an intake, some exhaust work, a short shifter and a custom tune by the local Corvette experts, LG Motorsports:

• Hypertech 160 Degree Thermostat: A cooler thermostat keeps the engine running a bit cooler, which gives the tuner (or the car’s computer) the ability to advance the engine’s timing a bit resulting in some more power.
• LG Short Shifter: I’m not sure what shifting an 18-wheeler might feel like, but the stock shifter felt a bit like I’ve imagined shifting a big rig would be like. The short shifter doesn’t really add any power, but because it allows you to make quicker shifts, you spend less time with the clutch engaged which isn’t insignificant.
• VaraRam VR-BR2: I especially liked the VR-BR2 because of how it uses the ducting into the nose of the Corvette to collect and force air into the intake.
• LG Super Pro Headers w/ High Flow Catalytic Converters: There are two advantages of an improved exhaust system. One of them is eliminating some of the restrictions associated with the stock exhaust (especially the catalytic converters), boosting performance in the process. Secondarily, the exhaust note has a much more noticeable and aggressive tone.

In the process of upgrading and tuning the car we also discovered that my car’s water pump appeared to be on the way out, as it was having a hard time cooling the car down at low RPMs. As a precaution, I decided to go ahead and replace it now rather than wait for it to give up the ghost.

The Results

I called down to the shop late Tuesday evening towards the end of their day, and LG Motorsports informed me that the car was about go up on the dyno to get dialed in with its new parts. Because they’re just a few miles from the house, I had my wife drop me off so that I could lurk and take some really bad cell-phone video of a couple of the sessions up on the dyno. I apologize in advance for the really poor camerawork.

Pass 2

Pass 3

Ultimately, here’s the verdict that the dyno rendered for my new parts and custom tune. The first video is the green line on the dyno chart, and the second video is the red line on the dyno chart. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a video of the first baseline pull (blue on the chart):

Conclusion

Between the baseline and tuned pull, I saw a max horsepower increase of twenty-one. I spelled that out instead of using numbers, because I wanted to make that twenty-one look as big and impressive as I possibly could. I’d be lying if said I wasn’t a little disappointed in the numeric, measurable result of the upgrades. Secretly, I was hoping for something about double what I got. My hope was that the wheel horsepower would meet or exceed the 405HP badge that’s on every C5 Z06. By choosing to upgrade intake and exhaust, my hope is that it will help my next modifications be more potent.

Measurable statistics are helpful, but many times they’re not complete. In this case, the differences between the car after the upgrades are quite noticeable when using my totally unscientific “butt-dyno.” I can definitely feel the additional power under sudden acceleration. The short-throw shifter really changes the dynamic of driving it’s a bit tougher to move now, but the shifts happen more quickly. Lastly the car feels and sounds more aggressive and angrier now. Most importantly, you should have seen the grin on my face when the tuner was making those pulls. At one point, I had to stop smiling because my cheeks were getting fatigued. That’s the same smile I’m going to get to experience every time that I press down hard on the gas pedal.

P.S. Thanks for the wonderful birthday gift, Julia. I’m very spoiled :)

In owning three different sports cars, I’ve been to the drag races quite a few times and I’ve actually gone out and made some of my own very amateurish passes of my own on a couple of occasions. The most recent time I did it was back in November of 2012 which was also the first time I went racing in my new (to me) 2002 Chevrolet Corvette Z06.

A few friends and I returned to North Star Dragway for one of their Test and Tune events, which essentially is an open track event for anyone willing to pay and make passes. I suspect the intent is to allow some of the more serious hobbyists and racers the chance to make a few passes in their real racecars, but they also let guys like me bring out their street cars and have some fun. It was fun seeing a bunch of different kinds of cars out there and it was really interesting to see something like this in my side view mirror several times throughout the afternoon.

The last time we were out there, there were an odd number of us racing, so I wound up being the odd man out and racing against random strangers. However, this time there were only two of us driving myself and my friend, Duncan in his 2010 Ford Taurus SHO, aka the SHOboat, which surprisingly ticks off a couple things that I’ve loved having in a car in the past; all-wheel drive and forced induction. It’s unfortunate that the thing is so damn heavy with a curb weight of 4,388, pounds and considerably heavier with Duncan in the driver’s seat.

I was pretty eager to make a few passes of my own and to see if I had learned from my mistakes in the past. Namely, those mistakes were leaving the traction control on, shifting too late and launching poorly. I wish that I could say I didn’t repeat any of those mistakes, but unfortunately I cannot. At the very least, I think I can say that I managed to cut down the mistakes on each subsequent pass.

This is the part of the blog where I point out that my car is over a decade old, the tires are probably hardened from the years, and that there’s a plethora of reasons that my car wouldn’t perform like it did in 2002 when Car and Driver reviewed it. But while those reasons might have held the Z06 back a bit, I suspect that we all know the real reason the car went slow; it was me!

Pass One

The most memorable part of this pass is my distinct recollection of seeing the light turn green on the tree and thinking “Oh hey, I should go now” and then immediately starting to worry that my reaction time was going to be measured in sections rather than fractions of seconds. Reaction time had been a big problem the first time out there and based off this pass, I was worried it’d be a problem this time too. When I compared the time slips from November to these time slips, I was pretty surprised. My reaction time was bad, but not nearly as bad as it had been the first few passes in November. And to make matters worse, I forgot to turn off the traction control. Some lessons are just harder to learn than others, I suppose.

    Reaction....0.7934
    60 FT.......2.1590
    330 FT......5.7596
    1/8 ET......8.7961
    1/8 MPH......81.39

Pass Two

I made marked improvement in my reaction time and I trapped at a higher speed than the first pass, but for some reason my 60-foot time was considerably slower, all indicative of yet another less than stellar launch, but I made up for it a bit, turning in a slightly faster time than the first pass. Incremental or not, progress is still progress!

    Reaction....0.6575
    60 FT.......2.1865
    330 FT......5.8413
    1/8 ET......8.7677
    1/8 MPH......85.45

Pass Three

Thankfully, our friend Darrell showed up to mock us instead of racing his own Mustang. Apparently he was concerned with the plumes of smoke flowing from his exhaust under acceleration. I was surprised; I thought that this was just something that came stock on Mustangs. Darrell got his revenge by recording what I felt was my worst pass ever and posting it on YouTube. I think everybody’s favorite part is when the guy in the foreground chuckles at us and walks away, completely disinterested in our race.

    Reaction....0.5742
    60 FT.......2.2439
    330 FT......5.9081
    1/8 ET......8.8197
    1/8 MPH......85.88

Pass Four

I had brought my own camera, but my usual camera people weren’t available to go out to the races with me. Thankfully, Duke’s fiancee, Audrey, was kind enough to take a video of my final run. This time, I was determined to launch well, leave the traction control off, shift well and have my best pass ever. I hadn’t even beat Duncan yet that day in any of my prior attempts, so I was really setting my sights pretty high. Wouldn’t you know, I actually managed to put in a somewhat decent run and not continue to be such an embarrassment to Z06 owners worldwide. This run felt much better just while I was driving it. The result showed up both on the time slip and got me out in front of Duncan. Darrell also shared a video of this pass on Youtube but I liked my camera’s copy better.

    Reaction....0.3713
    60 FT.......2.1079
    330 FT......5.6941
    1/8 ET......8.6163
    1/8 MPH......85.41

Timeslips

In the age of the Internet, things are ruled with the simple statement of “Pics or it didn’t happen!” which is understandable, with as much racing people seem to do seated behind their monitors or smartphones. However, considering the very pedestrian nature of my time slips, I’d be astonished if someone seriously thought I was being dishonest, but just in case here they are:

Final Thoughts

I had a really fun time hanging out, watching honest-to-God fast cars barrel down the track and then making my own (often chuckle worthy) few passes. I’m much happier with the overall results from this time compared to last November. Hopefully next time we make it to the drag strip, I will make some additional gains and get to write about them!