I was born in the year of the Xinhai (辛亥) stem-branch in the sexagenary cycle of the Chinese calendar. Thus the name of this blog. It just so happened that I was and still am very interested in the Xinhai Revolution which took place 60 years before I was born. The name 辛亥生 is a pun in Chinese, as it means both “he who was born in Xinhai” as well as “he who studies Xinhai”. I had an ambitious plan to write something about this great Xinhai Revolution. But after an initial flurry of activities the initiative petered out. One day I will still carry it through. But for now, this website has turned into a conglomerate of my work on various topics of interest to me, including travel pictures, RC model airplane flying, inline skating, ice skating, classical music composition, science fiction short stories, evolution and atheism.
Feel free to leave comments on article pages, for article-related follow-ups.
If you have non-article-related comments, and only if you have non-article-related comments, you can reach me by submitting this form.
有天我忽發奇想，為什麼沒有人寫一本長篇辛亥小說，劇情緊湊如丹．布朗的「達文西密碼」，見解高明如「晚清七十年」，明註出處如「帝制到共和」，人物事件疏而不漏如「近代中國使綱」呢？
但既然起了念，從2010年4 月開始，我就開始把手上所有的書籍資料，慢慢地、分門別類地輸進了電腦，漸漸累積起龐大的資料庫。與上一代學者在紙上建立起來的資料簿比較，若稍有不同或 高明之處，那就是電腦資料庫支援隨機搜尋，只要資料分類正確，資料信息與索引規劃恰當，很輕易可以寫程式，用各種圖形、表格等來顯示人與人在時間與空間上 的交會。更可以讓程式自動搜尋、分析各革命團體與革命事件，以組織、會員與事件來發掘各團體與事件上承先啟後的關係，如此一來相信有可能揭開前人未曾發現 的幕後隱密，甚或成為一本書的劇情要素。所謂現實人生，常要比戲劇還要戲劇化，似乎被我在短短兩年的辛亥研究中證實了。
這艱鉅的計畫已經遠遠超越我當初的理想，剛開始還幻想要在2011年雙十前寫出第一部。但雙十都過了幾個月了，看過的書還才只有四分之一輸進資料 庫，手邊固然已經有許多材料，但隻字未寫。內人建議不如將心得先在網誌上發表，反正辛亥百年都錯過了，也不在乎再多花點時間，在網上與同好交換意見、互相 勉勵，說不定會有更好的成果。
Xinhai Dude 
Hi Xinhaidude,
Subject: RC Planes
I’ve just read your article on Salvage and Reprogram AR636A. And I am in the process of reading your second on “What on earth is SAFE…” Thank you for all your work on this!
While I’m recently retired, I am new to RC planes (a couple of years). I’ve acquired a couple of the Eflite planes with AS3X and SAFE. A club member was selling a AR636A receiver from a Parkzone 1.1M T-28 for a really good price. Not knowing about the issues you’ve researched, I bought it! Now I believe I know why he was selling it!
My initial concern was how to mount the receiver in a plane I was building. My thoughts were about the initialization of the gyros when the receiver is first powered up, did the receiver have to be physically level or close to it? I was researching that when I stubbled onto you articles! I’ve ordered the PC cable and downloaded the PC software.
All very much appreciated, Thanks again for all your work, You are awesome!
Dave Lentz
Hi Dave. Thanks for the kind words.
When I first wrote this article, I would not have know the answer to the question you wrote about whether the receiver has to be near level when you power it up. Buy now I know, after I found out how SAFE actually worked and wrote the second article.
By the time you see this reply, you will probably have gotten the answer implicitly from the second article.
The receiver does not need to be near level when powered up. It only needs to remain immobile for a few seconds when powered up. I thought in the past that the receiver would calibrate it’s attitude with respect to the ground level when powered up. But no such thing actually takes place. The internal attitude calibration is done only during a firmware update from 1.xx to 2.xx.
Do be careful when reusing that receiver in your new plane. If you are not reprogramming SAFE, you will need to ensure that you maintain the same receiver orientation.
Cheers
Fred