Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

For those interested. Stumbled across this video. Metro-North Hudson Train Line Grand Central Station to Poughkeepsie (Last stop). This is the exact train Lady Cop takes when she visits. The video is about 37 minutes. The actual elapse time is approx 1 hour 40 minutes so sections have been cut. For example, the first 10 minutes out of Grand Central the train is underground and then comes out elevated in Harlem with first stop 125th Street.

Some points of interest. At 29 minutes train basically goes through "Sing-sing" prison. You can see the shell of the old cell blocks that are no longer used. New York State's remaining electric chair is at that prison and still regularly tested. Being shipped "Up to river" meant you were going to Sing-sing.

At 34:50 minutes across the Hudson is West Point Military Academy.

As the train approaches Poughkeepsie is the Mid-Hudson Bridge which I come across to pick her up. I'm about 5 miles up yonder. 

   

 

[AVGresponding]

Electrophoresis, you say...?

   ...the only fun I was able to have was torturing a lead in my pencil and a little tingle across a fingertip.

mnem
 

It's 200W max.
It also has a timer so remembering is not so essential.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/hoefer-scientific-instruments-ps500xt-500v-variable-dc-power-supply-_serviced_/

Here last minute offers to London started from 26€.
(possibly with self pedaled propels)
Since transport seems to be always an issue maybe I'll start traveling with empty and hard core luggage.

BTW,
I'll take back that earlier voltage reference drift.
It doesn't drift, it's just ambient temperature dependent, maybe 0,05mV/3C around 20C.

Seems a bit expensive; mine was a lot cheaper though icr the exact price

[AVGresponding]

I suspect that Zucca's being a little unkind to his employer's products. I've had the 330e for a week and 70 miles of driving now and I'm still getting the measure of the thing, but in terms of handling it's very reminiscent of the Saab 9000 I had donkey's years ago. That was a lovely car to drive in winter, and even in snow, so if the initial seat of the pants feeling is right then I think the 3 series would handle snow underfoot perfectly happily, not that what snow we had yesterday was enough even to tax a pedal car.

I think comparing a Saab 9000 with FWD and known performance in snow with a RWD 3 series BMW is a bit of a stretch. Agreed?

Nevertheless, to the driver they feel very similar. I'll have to wait for some proper snow to actually know, but the seat of my pants says the BMW will behave well. They both have a similar 'planted' feeling to them. Of course, if one wanted to get the RWD deliberately out of shape in the snow it would be much more fun then the FWD which would have probably been terrifying if deliberately pushed to slippijg point.

It's about traction, which as I'm sure you know has a number of factors including weight distribution, contact patch size, tread depth, tread pattern, and dynamic weight transfer, not to mention initial torque, overall mass etc.

Instinctively I'd expect the Saab to be better, despite the fact it's an early[ish] shared platform, Saab would have had more interest and experience with setting a car up to drive well on snow than, say FIAT or Lancia etc (Fiat Croma, Lancia Thema and Alfa Romeo 164 all share the type 4 platform with the 9000). Certainly it's going to be better in general than a modern 3-series, which will have silly tyres (unless you specced sensible ones), and stiffer suspension.
On the plus side, the bimmer will have a modern advanced TCS, but it can't help you if the basic traction isn't there.

FWD cars have hugely different characters also, and tyres aren't necessarily the main factor. The Vectra saloon I had was great in snow, even with marginal tyres. The Insignia estate I have now is absolute shite, even with good tyres. A lot of that is because the weight distribution is so far back, the battle is lost before you even start.

My advice is, take it very carefully on snow; the electronic nanny-state gadgets will make it feel 100% planted, right up to the point where they can no longer compensate and you're heading straight to the scene of the accident. You may not get much or any warning of this, unlike an older 'analogue' car.
If you're lucky enough to have somewhere to do it, turn the bollocks off, and learn the cars' actual limits.

[AVGresponding]

Noun
discord (countable and uncountable, plural discords)

Lack of concord, agreement or harmony.
Tension or strife resulting from a lack of agreement; dissension.
(music) An inharmonious combination of simultaneously sounded tones; a dissonance.
Any harsh noise, or confused mingling of sounds.
A group of crusty old enginerds talking shit.

[tautech]

Noun
discord
A group of crusty old enginerds talking shit.

Who are you calling OLD ? 

[Robert763]

I suspect that Zucca's being a little unkind to his employer's products. I've had the 330e for a week and 70 miles of driving now and I'm still getting the measure of the thing, but in terms of handling it's very reminiscent of the Saab 9000 I had donkey's years ago. That was a lovely car to drive in winter, and even in snow, so if the initial seat of the pants feeling is right then I think the 3 series would handle snow underfoot perfectly happily, not that what snow we had yesterday was enough even to tax a pedal car.

I think comparing a Saab 9000 with FWD and known performance in snow with a RWD 3 series BMW is a bit of a stretch. Agreed?

Nevertheless, to the driver they feel very similar. I'll have to wait for some proper snow to actually know, but the seat of my pants says the BMW will behave well. They both have a similar 'planted' feeling to them. Of course, if one wanted to get the RWD deliberately out of shape in the snow it would be much more fun then the FWD which would have probably been terrifying if deliberately pushed to slippijg point.

It's about traction, which as I'm sure you know has a number of factors including weight distribution, contact patch size, tread depth, tread pattern, and dynamic weight transfer, not to mention initial torque, overall mass etc.

Instinctively I'd expect the Saab to be better, despite the fact it's an early[ish] shared platform, Saab would have had more interest and experience with setting a car up to drive well on snow than, say FIAT or Lancia etc (Fiat Croma, Lancia Thema and Alfa Romeo 164 all share the type 4 platform with the 9000). Certainly it's going to be better in general than a modern 3-series, which will have silly tyres (unless you specced sensible ones), and stiffer suspension.
On the plus side, the bimmer will have a modern advanced TCS, but it can't help you if the basic traction isn't there.

FWD cars have hugely different characters also, and tyres aren't necessarily the main factor. The Vectra saloon I had was great in snow, even with marginal tyres. The Insignia estate I have now is absolute shite, even with good tyres. A lot of that is because the weight distribution is so far back, the battle is lost before you even start.

My advice is, take it very carefully on snow; the electronic nanny-state gadgets will make it feel 100% planted, right up to the point where they can no longer compensate and you're heading straight to the scene of the accident. You may not get much or any warning of this, unlike an older 'analogue' car.
If you're lucky enough to have somewhere to do it, turn the bollocks off, and learn the cars' actual limits.

Interestingly the Vectra C shared a platform with the Saab 93 and the Mk2 Croma (yes there was a Mk2, I had one)

[Cerebus]

I suspect that Zucca's being a little unkind to his employer's products. I've had the 330e for a week and 70 miles of driving now and I'm still getting the measure of the thing, but in terms of handling it's very reminiscent of the Saab 9000 I had donkey's years ago. That was a lovely car to drive in winter, and even in snow, so if the initial seat of the pants feeling is right then I think the 3 series would handle snow underfoot perfectly happily, not that what snow we had yesterday was enough even to tax a pedal car.

I think comparing a Saab 9000 with FWD and known performance in snow with a RWD 3 series BMW is a bit of a stretch. Agreed?

Nevertheless, to the driver they feel very similar. I'll have to wait for some proper snow to actually know, but the seat of my pants says the BMW will behave well. They both have a similar 'planted' feeling to them. Of course, if one wanted to get the RWD deliberately out of shape in the snow it would be much more fun then the FWD which would have probably been terrifying if deliberately pushed to slippijg point.

It's about traction, which as I'm sure you know has a number of factors including weight distribution, contact patch size, tread depth, tread pattern, and dynamic weight transfer, not to mention initial torque, overall mass etc.

Instinctively I'd expect the Saab to be better, despite the fact it's an early[ish] shared platform, Saab would have had more interest and experience with setting a car up to drive well on snow than, say FIAT or Lancia etc (Fiat Croma, Lancia Thema and Alfa Romeo 164 all share the type 4 platform with the 9000). Certainly it's going to be better in general than a modern 3-series, which will have silly tyres (unless you specced sensible ones), and stiffer suspension.
On the plus side, the bimmer will have a modern advanced TCS, but it can't help you if the basic traction isn't there.

FWD cars have hugely different characters also, and tyres aren't necessarily the main factor. The Vectra saloon I had was great in snow, even with marginal tyres. The Insignia estate I have now is absolute shite, even with good tyres. A lot of that is because the weight distribution is so far back, the battle is lost before you even start.

My advice is, take it very carefully on snow; the electronic nanny-state gadgets will make it feel 100% planted, right up to the point where they can no longer compensate and you're heading straight to the scene of the accident. You may not get much or any warning of this, unlike an older 'analogue' car.
If you're lucky enough to have somewhere to do it, turn the bollocks off, and learn the cars' actual limits.

The most important characteristic for me to [re]learn is about polar moments of inertia. For 22 years my daily driver has been mid engined RWD, the BMW has a great big lump of metal at the front, and a great big lump of battery at the back and by comparison, a huge polar moment of inertia.

Just before the Saab I had an horrible Audi 100CD dumped on me when one of my employer's directors left - heavy 5 cylinder engine with a huge flywheel just to persuade it to keep turning stuck mostly in front of the front axle. Result: massive polar moment of inertia and having to set it up for a turn about half an hour in advance. Actually, at that particular company I was the poor sod that always had the senior leaver's cars dumped on me as various car contracts run out - they were supposed to be the 'better' cars but our directors and senior staff all had poor taste in cars. I even got lumped with a Citroen XM at one point - now that was a horrible car.

Anyway, what makes you think I don't immediately turn off the stability control in the BMW the second I start it? I'd much rather get some feedback that things were getting a bit wobbly in time to correct, rather than discover too late that the electronics had tried to hide it from me right up until the moment that they can't cope any more and dump me into a world of hurt with no time to recover. No thank you. I'm of a generation that learned to drive before there was even ABS on anything affordable and every car I've owned personally has been, to a greater or lesser extent, relatively high performance, plus there were all the motorcycles so if I hadn't leaned a thing or two about driving without a computer helping I wouldn't be here now.

[Vince]

Hey Vince.....have fun. 

I will, and I have ! It's all fixed now !! 

So the problem in that final, 5s stage was indeed again the cap.
As I said it's not a Sprague, it's a General Electric, big metallic can bolted to the deck. It looks very fancy, it looks sophisticated, it looks the business, its looks... expensive. It looks like the last cap on earth you would incriminate.
But, every evidence points to it so... I looked in the parts list, it's listed as type " PMC " , which stands for " Paper Metal Can " .  Yes, PAPER !!! 

So I disconnected one of its wires so I can measure it. It measured just fine, close to its 1uF rating.
But because it's paper it's likely to leak a lot so... I replaced it with a film cap, and that fixed the problem ! 

So AGAIN a cap that measured perfectly good with a DMM, but leaks badly when in service.

So that's it, I have now diagnosed and fixed all of the 14 stages of this puppy. Now works just fine.

So in the end we had 3 bad Mica caps, a bad expensive looking can cap, a few Sprague that although were not "bad", had drifted too much so the trim pot had run out of adjustment range so the stage could not be made to function properly. Oh, and a broken wire, and a dead/white tube.

So this Tek was a nice adventure. A new kind of TE I had never owned / worked on before. Learned some cool stuff, and of course learned that YES, Mica caps can test just fine yet leak badly !

It has to be said that working on all stages starting from 100ms time interval, was... not fun. Signal is so slow that you can't use an analogue scope anymore, you can't see squat.
Switching the Combiscope to digital mode was a saviour, as you get a nice trace no matter how slow the sweep speed... HOWEVER it was useless at first, because at such slow sweeps, the SAMPLING rate is ATROCIOUSLY slow as well, which means the scope can't capture the markers/spikes ! So many markers would either not show up because they happened to be in between two samples, or for the "lucky" markers that got blessed with a sample, depending where exactly the sample landed on the marker, marker would have a, seemingly, amplitude that jumps all over the place from zero to 100%. So basically you just see markers dancing all over the place like vu-meter in an audio console...or not showing up at all. So you can't know what is due to the scope or what is due to the instrument itself, for real.

Thank Goodness, I tried the " Peak Detect " acquisition mode, and it improved things dramatically. All markers would now show up, and their amplitude would be stable, where they should be. I could then at last pretend to troubleshoot the instrument 

However in " Run " mode, at these ultra mega slow sweep speeds... go figure, the scope can't trigger reliably ! So the markers would move all over the place horizontally, making it again impossible to trouble shoot the freaking thing ! 
But.... I noticed that if I trigger it manually, using the Single Shot button / feature... somehow that fixes the problem 

So I was single shooting repeatedly, to mimic the "run" mode by hand. Doing that a dozen times in a row, I always got a 100% consistent picture, never an odd result. So I had a decent degree of confidence that I got it all working and adjusted properly.  But... it was not fun. It was boring... having to wait ages or two to get ONE screen... then do it all over again many times in a row... wow..... 

Since this old Tek was of course meant to be used on analog scopes back then, and since any marker above 100ms is unusable in practice... I wondered what was even the point of having them available on the instrument  to begin with ?! 
Sure, the glowing Tek scopes of that era have sweep speeds up to 5s, so makes sense for the time marker to go up to 5, I agree, makes sense but again... you can't even see the freaking markers so....

Then it occurred to me that ... well, even back then you had STORAGE scopes... I have a couple type 549 with a storage tube.
With these yes of course, you can get a nice stable trace on the screen no matter how slow the signal.

So, this now gives me motivation to fix one of my type 549 so I can see if I can get them to display a cool super slow marker picture !! 

One more project on the pile ! 

So, now that this marker generator is all finished.. it was time to put it to the test : display SEVERAL markers at the same time, to display a "comb " thing. Would it work at all ? If so, how good or bad would it look on the screen ?

So I made this lovely picture just for you people. A comb of 3 markers, the 3 slowest ones : 5s + 1s + 500ms.

It looks absolutely..... fantastic ! 

Their amplitude adds up perfectly, one third, two thirds, 100%.
When 2 or 3 markers combine, they look like one single marker, not some "soup" ugly Frankenstein.

It looks as good as I could possibly dream them to look like.

That's what I call a nice piece of TE, a new tool in the lab one can actually use ! It's not an ornament in the living room !

To begin with, simply looking at that comb let's me check my Combiscope itself ! 
Looks like it's well calibrated. It's slightly of on the extremities, but it's just parallax error I guess, not actual error. The graticule is not built into the CRT.


I very much enjoyed fixing that thing, learned stuff and now have a cool new kind of TE in the lab, instead of just yet another, 35th scope ! 

So now just need to order a few film caps to tidy it all up, then a good clean and that will be it, it's good for service now !
The mechanical restoration and paint job will have to wait until the garage is built.

Have a good Discord !

[AVGresponding]

I suspect that Zucca's being a little unkind to his employer's products. I've had the 330e for a week and 70 miles of driving now and I'm still getting the measure of the thing, but in terms of handling it's very reminiscent of the Saab 9000 I had donkey's years ago. That was a lovely car to drive in winter, and even in snow, so if the initial seat of the pants feeling is right then I think the 3 series would handle snow underfoot perfectly happily, not that what snow we had yesterday was enough even to tax a pedal car.

I think comparing a Saab 9000 with FWD and known performance in snow with a RWD 3 series BMW is a bit of a stretch. Agreed?

Nevertheless, to the driver they feel very similar. I'll have to wait for some proper snow to actually know, but the seat of my pants says the BMW will behave well. They both have a similar 'planted' feeling to them. Of course, if one wanted to get the RWD deliberately out of shape in the snow it would be much more fun then the FWD which would have probably been terrifying if deliberately pushed to slippijg point.

It's about traction, which as I'm sure you know has a number of factors including weight distribution, contact patch size, tread depth, tread pattern, and dynamic weight transfer, not to mention initial torque, overall mass etc.

Instinctively I'd expect the Saab to be better, despite the fact it's an early[ish] shared platform, Saab would have had more interest and experience with setting a car up to drive well on snow than, say FIAT or Lancia etc (Fiat Croma, Lancia Thema and Alfa Romeo 164 all share the type 4 platform with the 9000). Certainly it's going to be better in general than a modern 3-series, which will have silly tyres (unless you specced sensible ones), and stiffer suspension.
On the plus side, the bimmer will have a modern advanced TCS, but it can't help you if the basic traction isn't there.

FWD cars have hugely different characters also, and tyres aren't necessarily the main factor. The Vectra saloon I had was great in snow, even with marginal tyres. The Insignia estate I have now is absolute shite, even with good tyres. A lot of that is because the weight distribution is so far back, the battle is lost before you even start.

My advice is, take it very carefully on snow; the electronic nanny-state gadgets will make it feel 100% planted, right up to the point where they can no longer compensate and you're heading straight to the scene of the accident. You may not get much or any warning of this, unlike an older 'analogue' car.
If you're lucky enough to have somewhere to do it, turn the bollocks off, and learn the cars' actual limits.

The most important characteristic for me to [re]learn is about polar moments of inertia. For 22 years my daily driver has been mid engined RWD, the BMW has a great big lump of metal at the front, and a great big lump of battery at the back and by comparison, a huge polar moment of inertia.

Just before the Saab I had an horrible Audi 100CD dumped on me when one of my employer's directors left - heavy 5 cylinder engine with a huge flywheel just to persuade it to keep turning stuck mostly in front of the front axle. Result: massive polar moment of inertia and having to set it up for a turn about half an hour in advance. Actually, at that particular company I was the poor sod that always had the senior leaver's cars dumped on me as various car contracts run out - they were supposed to be the 'better' cars but our directors and senior staff all had poor taste in cars. I even got lumped with a Citroen XM at one point - now that was a horrible car.

Anyway, what makes you think I don't immediately turn off the stability control in the BMW the second I start it? I'd much rather get some feedback that things were getting a bit wobbly in time to correct, rather than discover too late that the electronics had tried to hide it from me right up until the moment that they can't cope any more and dump me into a world of hurt with no time to recover. No thank you. I'm of a generation that learned to drive before there was even ABS on anything affordable and every car I've owned personally has been, to a greater or lesser extent, relatively high performance, plus there were all the motorcycles so if I hadn't leaned a thing or two about driving without a computer helping I wouldn't be here now.

The polar moments of FWD and RWD cars aren't that different, as long as the engine is in the front. Put it in the rear and it's a different matter of course, and if you're well-off enough to experience the low polar moment of a mid-engined car on the limit, well, good for you.

The AUDI 100 with its engine forward of the front axle is an extreme example, one of the worst handling FWD cars ever made (all AUDIs of this era are the same, with the quattros being only slightly less so).

[Zucca]

Yes the tires are the point number one to get stability. The right shoes are VERY important, like in real life.
Do not go cheap on tires, never!

The reason I do not advice using BMW in snow is because normally they have a weight distribution [WD] front rear  50% 50%. This BTW is much easier to achieve it with a RWD.
A FWD has normally an asymmetric WD with more weight in the front traction wheels.

So if it is dry road the BMW give you the classic stability and wooow feeling even at high speed.
If it is snowy and slippery, then the pros for BMW are automatically cons, and normally where there is snow there is an incline (mountains)... so worst case automatically...

Does a BMW drive in snow?
Of course! I had my winter training in the beautiful Sweden on frozen lakes. (yes Mansa I love your country in winter, in summer too many mosquitos)
If is sooo much fun, but there is no mercy for errors. A little mistake and you need to take out the shovel from the trunk and start to dig the car out from the snow.

Anyway, what makes you think I don't immediately turn off the stability control in the BMW the second I start it? I'd much rather get some feedback that things were getting a bit wobbly in time to correct, rather than discover too late that the electronics had tried to hide it from me right up until the moment that they can't cope any more and dump me into a world of hurt with no time to recover. No thank you. I'm of a generation that learned to drive before there was even ABS on anything affordable and every car I've owned personally has been, to a greater or lesser extent, relatively high performance, plus there were all the motorcycles so if I hadn't leaned a thing or two about driving without a computer helping I wouldn't be here now.

Well... well.... well... The legendary driving tuning department BMW boss used to tell even nowadays the last real BMW he developed was the E46, when the DSC (Dynamic Stability Control, the ESP in for other OEM) was only an option.

That said, fun on public road is a big no no in my book. Driving without DSC active is fun, but with other people on the same road is pure madness and only a stupid choice. Teenager level IMHO.

I keep it short.... If the DSC goes active you see this light in the cockpit:

In other words the car is telling the driver he is a dick and can not drive. This light should turn on only if the driver made or is making a mistake.
Sometime the DSC saves your ass (even more than the ABS!) but if the driver mistake is too big, only God can help.

Another point of view: imagine to have four legs and four brake pedals, one pedal for each wheel. Only then you are allowed to say that without DSC you can achieve the same level of safety.
You still need to be a very good driver, and I mean a very talented one who can control four legs with reaction times of few ms.

[Zucca]

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/fs-(us)-swissmicros-dm41x-sn00129/

RPN ALARM!

[cyclin_al]

Y'all want to get the nice set with a carry case like Cerebus did!  
https://www.engineertools-jp.com/pad02

Once I've got mine, if they're as good to use as they look, I've got existing two crimp tools that are going in the bin, after a long conversation with Mr. Angle Grinder to protect anyone who might be tempted to recycle them from hours of pain and grief.

*SIGH*  Once again this group is inadvertently preventing me from aquiring TE.  I would have taking those two crimp tools, rather than shelling out $$$ for nice tools.  That means my budget is about to be blown... on the good stuff.  Maybe I should see myself out, and go join the Tools Equipment Anonymous.

-- I'm back; it seems the quest for TEA leads only to here

[Cerebus]

That said, fun on public road is a big no no in my book. Driving without DSC active is fun, but with other people on the same road is pure madness and only a stupid choice. Teenager level IMHO.

So you've effectively saying that driving a car that doesn't even have DSC or its equivalent is "pure madness" and "a stupid choice". Well, I've never owned a car with DSC or its equivalent before, and the last "accident" I had was (1) in the 1980s, (2) the other guy's fault and I had a witness. Last time I skidded a car, at all, and recovered without incident, was also in the 80's, going up the A312 in the pouring rain in the aforementioned horrible Audi 100CD; and even then it was because the guy who'd had it before me had been lax in getting the tyres replaced soon enough, I foolishly hadn't checked them over thoroughly enough and the POS aquaplaned. I think that record speaks for the perfect safety of not using DSC if you've actually learned to drive properly.

Leaving computers in charge is no substitute for learning to drive properly and learning things like "maintain constant power in curves" instead of relying on something like DSC to fix your mistakes. Should one find oneself in front of the beak "the computer didn't save me" won't cut any ice and one will find oneself convicted for failing to maintain proper control of the vehicle.

[Zucca]

Back in the days cars did not have a safety belt. Today if you have one and do not use it, I am sorry it is NOT a wise choice.

I agree with you anyway. A good driver should never have a computer to control it.
But we can argue even more, in case of black ice on the road, (the one you can't see regardless how good your can drive).... a car with DSC on has more chance to save the driver life.
If something unexpected comes up, the DSC is something you want to be on.

That's why you can't turn it off permanently in a BMW, every time your turn it on the car it is ACTIVE by default. Thank God, this makes our public roads a safer place.

Best place to learn to drive properly in 2022?
Not the public roads...
First with DSC on, so you can SEE and learn where the limit is without breaking your neck (or crash your car?).
Then DTC... and finally DSC off.
DSC off first on wet roads or snow, then dry and finally high speed.

And yes there is also some theory to learn, understand and experiment on your skin (for example).... as always.

Anyway, Cerebus you are a good driver for sure I would love to invite you in one of our BMW classes

[Brumby]

Leaving computers in charge is no substitute for learning to drive properly

AMEN!

[med6753]

Leaving computers in charge is no substitute for learning to drive properly

AMEN!

Ditto. 100%. 

[mansaxel]

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/fs-(us)-swissmicros-dm41x-sn00129/

RPN ALARM!

I was going to take a bragging pic with my DM42, but I realised upon trying to start it that it must have been wedged somehow so it drained its battery. It measured 60mV as I took it out, and once free of load comes back at a rate of about 0,25mV / second. Easy-peasy measurement if you've got an 8060A

Just going to find a new coin cell, and we'll see about that bragging pic.

[kleiner Rainer]

Will somebody visit one of those events?

HAM Radio in Friedrichshafen - 24.6. - 26.6.2022

UKW Tagung in Weilheim - not sure, if this event will take place. I haven't found any information about the UKW Tagung in 2022.

I think, I'll visit the HAM Radio on Friday, perhaps we can do there a little TEA meeting? 

I plan to go on Friday, the last time I went I got some great flea market bargains - a lifetime supply of Stäubli banana jacks and some years ago a K2000 scanner card for 50€...

Lets get in touch shortly before the event - having a beer together outside in the food court is a nice way to celebrate flea market finds 

Greetings,

Rainer

[AVGresponding]

Back in the days cars did not have a safety belt. Today if you have one and do not use it, I am sorry it is NOT a wise choice.

I agree with you anyway. A good driver should never have a computer to control it.
But we can argue even more, in case of black ice on the road, (the one you can't see regardless how good your can drive).... a car with DSC on has more chance to save the driver life.
If something unexpected comes up, the DSC is something you want to be on.

That's why you can't turn it off permanently in a BMW, every time your turn it on the car it is ACTIVE by default. Thank God, this makes our public roads a safer place.

Best place to learn to drive properly in 2022?
Not the public roads...
First with DSC on, so you can SEE and learn where the limit is without breaking your neck (or crash your car?).
Then DTC... and finally DSC off.
DSC off first on wet roads or snow, then dry and finally high speed.

And yes there is also some theory to learn, understand and experiment on your skin (for example).... as always.

Anyway, Cerebus you are a good driver for sure I would love to invite you in one of our BMW classes

The main problem with having all these "driver aids" is that the vast majority of people using them don't realise they are using them until it's too late.

By this I mean, when the DSC (or ESC, ESP, whatever acronym your particular brand has) stops a driver from running a little wide, or from getting the back end out a little, said driver is likely to try that particular corner a little faster each time (mostly this is young and inexperienced drivers, who like to think that because they can win a race in Gran Turismo or Forza Horizons that they have 'skillz') until they reach the point where the computer can no longer compensate, and there is a big 'accident', which they probably walk away from due to airbags, and frankly are likely to do the same thing again with the next car they drive.

I see this happening, and/or the evidence left behind, on a more or less daily basis on a relatively moderate commute distance.

[Specmaster]

That said, fun on public road is a big no no in my book. Driving without DSC active is fun, but with other people on the same road is pure madness and only a stupid choice. Teenager level IMHO.

So you've effectively saying that driving a car that doesn't even have DSC or its equivalent is "pure madness" and "a stupid choice". Well, I've never owned a car with DSC or its equivalent before, and the last "accident" I had was (1) in the 1980s, (2) the other guy's fault and I had a witness. Last time I skidded a car, at all, and recovered without incident, was also in the 80's, going up the A312 in the pouring rain in the aforementioned horrible Audi 100CD; and even then it was because the guy who'd had it before me had been lax in getting the tyres replaced soon enough, I foolishly hadn't checked them over thoroughly enough and the POS aquaplaned. I think that record speaks for the perfect safety of not using DSC if you've actually learned to drive properly.

Leaving computers in charge is no substitute for learning to drive properly and learning things like "maintain constant power in curves" instead of relying on something like DSC to fix your mistakes. Should one find oneself in front of the beak "the computer didn't save me" won't cut any ice and one will find oneself convicted for failing to maintain proper control of the vehicle.

Personally, I leave all of my driving aids switched ON, but still drive like I always used, in other words, as if the aids were not fitted.

I'm pretty sure that in the unlikely event of you having an accident and the insurance company later discovered that your safety devices were deactivated, they would walk away from any claim you made and cite that you were inviting trouble by switching them OFF, and saying that you violated their rules by overriding the cars safety devices.

These devices are not there to make you a better driver, nor are they there to take over your driving ability, they are merely there to assist you should the unthinkable happen that you did make a mistake and push the car beyond its safe limits.

[Cerebus]

The main problem with having all these "driver aids" is that the vast majority of people using them don't realise they are using them until it's too late.

By this I mean, when the DSC (or ESC, ESP, whatever acronym your particular brand has) stops a driver from running a little wide, or from getting the back end out a little, said driver is likely to try that particular corner a little faster each time (mostly this is young and inexperienced drivers, who like to think that because they can win a race in Gran Turismo or Forza Horizons that they have 'skillz') until they reach the point where the computer can no longer compensate, and there is a big 'accident', which they probably walk away from due to airbags, and frankly are likely to do the same thing again with the next car they drive.

I see this happening, and/or the evidence left behind, on a more or less daily basis on a relatively moderate commute distance.

They can bite the experienced driver who's inexperienced in that particular vehicle too. If you don't know the way that a particular vehicle behaves under various inputs then some sort of automatic stability assistance can hide those minor loses of control (say a touch of understeer) that tell you that you're getting too close to a vehicle's limits and stop you from backing off and lead to overconfidence in where a vehicle's limits are. It's a different kind of overconfidence from that of the young and rash, it's overconfidence in what the vehicle can do rather than overconfidence in one's abilities.

Something regularly happens to me from time to time in summer. As I'm sure we all know rainy weather in summer can make the roads disproportionately slick and slippy when there's rain after a long dry spell; crap builds up on the roads and doesn't get washed off and then rain makes it all float about, acting like extra lubrication for the roads. If there's a few days decent rain, the roads wash clear and go back to 'normally slippy for rain' rather than 'extra slippy for rain'. Normally I consciously compensate for this and take it particularly easy for the first couple of days rain after a dry spell. After a couple of days of rain I switch back to how I'd drive on a rainy day rather than how I'd drive on a rainy day after a long dry spell. Every now and then it takes a bit longer for the crap to wash off the roads than usual. I can tell that by detecting just a little bit of loss of adhesion (for FWD it usually happens from a standing start, RWD accelerating out of a curve/turn). If the car gives me that feedback I fall back to the more cautious driving style I've described as "rainy day after a long dry spell".

What concerns me is something like DSC can mask that minor loss of adhesion from you, and if it does you don't, as you should, adapt to road conditions. A small light lighting up to say that DSC took over is not the same as feeling it in the seat of your pants, especially as it's likely to happen when your eyes are where they should be, on the road, and not on the dashboard looking for a brief flicker of the "DSC took control" light.

I'm sure that systems like DSC have their place, although I'm not quite sure where that is, but something that inherently masks the car's faults/limits when they are minor and easily corrected, and only reveals them when they are dangerous or close to dangerous doesn't sit well with me. If a car is going to have them then I think the little feedback they provide should be made much more obvious than a little logo lighting up out of the driver's immediate attention zone.

[Specmaster]

Activation of a car's advanced safety systems should never just rely on a warning light in the instrument cluster, it should also be accompanied by at least an audio alert to make it unmissable to the driver that their style of driving is forcing one or more of the cars safety features to be activated.

Edit:
My car has both light and audio alerts for such events, I remember sitting in a side road, waiting to join a major road by turning left. That turn was also going uphill, and on this occasion it had been raining. As I stepped on the throttle to slot into a gap in the fast moving traffic, because of the cars' attitude, the wet road, the throttle being applied and the cars weight transferred to the offside, it caused the nearside front wheel to spin (FWD) and the traction control kicked in, alerting me via audio bonging and a flashing light.

[Cerebus]

Personally, I leave all of my driving aids switched ON, but still drive like I always used, in other words, as if the aids were not fitted.

I'm pretty sure that in the unlikely event of you having an accident and the insurance company later discovered that your safety devices were deactivated, they would walk away from any claim you made and cite that you were inviting trouble by switching them OFF, and saying that you violated their rules by overriding the cars safety devices.

To which hypothetical argument the counter would be "There's a button there, provided by the manufacturer, that turns it off, argue with them, not me, or have clear wording in the policy that tells me clearly in advance that you don't cover vehicles fitted with that button which you knew was there and which I revealed to you by providing the make and model of the vehicle in my application".

The phrase "safety devices" contains an assumption that DSC (or whatever) is a safety device rather than what it actually is, which is a device that lets a driver push further into the vehicle's region of marginal control rather than staying outside of it. Which is "safer": driving a vehicle on the safe side of its region of marginal stability, or pushing into it and relying on a computer to stop it from falling out the other side. If you've got a vehicle with DSC and it activates, you've gone too far; if you don't learn from the feedback you get if you're in marginal control without DSC you're encouraged to unconsciously dip into that zone when you should only ever make that decision consciously when circumstances permit you to do so safely.

These devices are not there to make you a better driver, nor are they there to take over your driving ability, they are merely there to assist you should the unthinkable happen that you did make a mistake and push the car beyond its safe limits.

The whole point here is that if it's beyond the safe limits then it's beyond the safe limits. DSC (or whatever) won't save you from that, it will just delay the point at which you become aware you're near the limits. Having progressive feedback that you're getting into the region near the limits is good, discovering them suddenly because some electronics have been compensating for them until they are precipitously revealed is not.

[Brumby]

Activation of a car's advanced safety systems should never just rely on a warning light in the instrument cluster, it should also be accompanied by at least an audio alert to make it unmissable to the driver that their style of driving is forcing one or more of the cars safety features to be activated.

My take on a "lane departure" warning involves switching a spark plug lead to the butt of the driver's seat.

[med6753]

The CR-V excels in the snow due to it's AWD but is a wallowing whale on dry pavement if you push it on the curves. And it's further hampered by it's automatic transmission and the inability for the driver to select the proper gear manually as needed. It's top heavy and the suspension is designed not to spill the driver's coffee. Perfect vehicle for people who have no clue how to drive.

The Civic excels on dry pavement but absolutely sucks in snow even though it's FWD. I'm sure proper snow tires would probably fix that. But on dry payment push it in the curves and it's like it's on rails. And the suspension makes no excuses. Drink your coffee later and pay attention to your driving. And of course the appropriate manual transmission that most Americans don't know how to use and instills absolute fear.

It's hard to believe that both vehicles are made by the same company. And BTW, when driving in the snow the traction control on the CR-V is turned OFF.