Weather must have changed awfully fast, Rich, as it was perfect when we departed at 1:30pm. And I must also add that we really enjoyed spending a few days there in summer weather, having left the northwest in the pouring rain and chilly temperatures.
As others have already covered the meeting in great detail, I'll just make a few general comments on my own experience.
First of all, Sunset Station is a BIG place! There must be a thousand slotmachines in the place, and I can still hear their infernal ding-ding noise ringing in my head. The dinner gathering the night before the SM was really great, with our guest of honor, Fred, at the head of the table, and all the others there as well. We enjoyed our conversations with duckster and his father, with I.N. Vester, and later with LWS, Pallisard, and many others. And being a flyboy myself I especially enjoyed the stories by the retired United Airlines captain (who'se name I wrote on the back of a parking lot stub which they took from me when I got back - help me out here, duckster). But just picture an airliner over-rotating on takeoff and behaving oddly all the way, only to have the captain discover after landing that all 80 passengers were sitting in the back end of the plane, putting things "out of the CG envelope" as pilots say!
I also want to thank Paul, once again, for his generosity to us all. I find his posts among the most informative on this thread.
After the SM, I have even greater respect and appreciation for our own "captain", i.e. Lev Dawson. Whenever I fly across the 'big pond' I tell myself that I wouldn't do it more than once a year, because sitting that many hours in the same seat is no fun. Well, Lev flew to NI 20 times last year - that's almost every other week! Plus trips to Korea and other places. He told us he gets on 3 separate flights each way, which is 6 for a round trip! That's truly dedication to the cause, I'd say.
On the cc's, Lev comes across as very matter-of-fact, fairly blunt, and not all that personable, if that's the right term. But in person, I found him a very nice guy, witty with many great one-liners. The tombstone remark was probably the best one. For anyone who might have missed it on an earlier post, Lev said he didn't want his tombstone to say "Lev Dawson made a lot of money" and on the back side "and everyone else lost their ass". He appears very sure of the course he has set for the Valence ship. I'm really glad that he's not getting off the boat at this point.
I was really blown away by the video of the NI facility and equipment. The scale of it all is absolutely massive! The size and complexity of the machinery is incredible, with battery cells moving along in a seemingly endless process while subjected to all kinds of "value added" steps by mechanisms that attack them from all directions. It is easy to see why alignments, timing, etc, must be right on the money.
At the Henderson plant I found the comments by the man who runs the cycling operations very interesting. He mentioned that the cells have retained over 70% of full charge capacity after up to 1800 cycles in some cases, and 80% after 1500. They can justly say "we've come a long way, baby." When he mentioned how he charges his own cellphone battery I told him he probably has a Valence battery in it, to which he answered "yes." He also agreed that besides the practical benefits, it also provides good beta test data.
Fred, who was in another tour group, later told me that in conversation with this man he emphatically told Fred "WE'RE THERE!" Meaning they've got a battery that really works!
Lev said he doesn't read the web because he'd just find himself wishing he could tell the posters they're wrong when they are. But he is kept up to date by others, obviously, as he seems to be aware of the stuff that goes on. For example, he said the stories about a stock split are wrong - there have been no discussions at the company about splitting the stock at this time (sorry HC). And all this posted anticipation about PO announcements just prior to CC's or the SM are also wrong - he will not time PR's to any events of this kind, he will announce things as they materialize, plain and simple.
Well, I'm way too long winded here, so I'll sign off for today. Oh, my only regret is that we didn't have a digital camera along at the dinner, so we could have put a group picture on the web! Maybe next year.
- T - |
