Giving it a start...

First time blogging aimlessly, however, thought its worth a start...

Over the last few days, I have had all the time in the world for myself - to the extent that I have often gone to the nearby beach and have done a bit of google search to find out if is it just time or even tide has come to a standstill?!

This is when the mechanical engineer in me woke up. I have been out of touch for sometime now. There was once a time, when I used to read 'Auto India' the day it came to stalls, I knew the stats of most Indian cars right from technical specifications to monthly units sold - now haven't seen the mag for nearly a century (a bit of hyperbole, make it a couple of years). However, to say the least, it was interesting to get back to my roots.

The first part was a bit of search on passenger aircraft fundaes - at BITS, I didn't take any course in aerodynamics, nor in basics of aircraft. Probably the only funda I knew was pressure difference (Mr. Bernoulli had a theorem for this!) and the resulting lift on aircraft wings. Having done a bit of travel off-late and with a bit of luck, I have managed to get window seat on or behind the wings, got my curiosity going ab't how does an aircraft actually work. Everytime when the engine goes full blast while take-off on the runway, I feel a bit proud of being a mechanical engineer - in an age when innovation has shifted to other fields (Comp Sci, Elec) and the core mechanical has now shifted more towards nano fundaes and materials in general. So, eventually did ghot up some fundaes on aircrafts, wikipedia was a big help. However, with a few questions answered and other avenues exposed, my knowledge gap has further widened - hopefully one fine day will get a chance to speak to a pilot and download all information!

The second stage of getting back to roots happened kinda yesterday. Santro back home is having some pending maintenance and probably its time to change the car. So, I started off with a bit of search on current models in market, tech specs, features, looks and ofcourse the 'cash-outflow'! The final decision not withstanding, I am enjoying this process of learning the stuff all over again. Engine BHP, multi-point fuel injection, inline 4-cylinder, compression ratio and gear ratios is driving me nuts. And when I saw the gear ratios of Swift was slightly taken aback - it was 0.9 for 4th and close to 0.7 for 5th - thats a lot of overdrive - slightly more than Santro and I was thinking how would it have an influence on the performance. Then I saw, the engine is actually a power house - 87BHP of raw power and probably that has helped in higher overdrive of higher gears. I would wanna test drive Swift, coz another interesting part is that there is a huge difference in ratio of 1st gear and 2nd. Probably it implies that is a high speed engine with good lower end torque. In normal english, it implies that for city drive, 2nd gear can have a wide speed range. I need to test drive swift now...!!

I saw ABS somewhere and said, I know I know it all. Its has something to do with braking at turns and it is a bit of controlled electronic braking. Just when I felt confident of "I still understand the basics", my friend Maharaj came on chat - this dude, having done elec and instru in Bits is now doing masters in automobiles - so, its always fun. I thought of 'vibing' about my 'sudden return to form', but was thunderstruck when maharaj mentioned something called 'ESP' - I was completely taken aback! There was a sudden depreciation in my self-worth as a potential automobile engineer! Went back again to my friend wikipedia to ghot up 'ESP'. But...

So, was an interesting day, when once I thought 'I know it all' in Auto and then there was a sudden transformation towards the end of the day when I realised that 'the auto world has moved ahead'. With a dent to my auto ego, I decided to switch off music and crash!!