Here is todays latest report - Extracted:
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Hello Dan
When I am home I will try to make regular observations of the position of the torsion arm, This morning I have been logging the data at 30 minutes intervals, which includes the directional orientation, the temp and the humidity. I will have to check online for the other data you want. Before I gave you the weird cyclic trends information, I had wondered just what force was causing the directional tendencies.
I wondered if the torsion arm could be acting somewhat like a gyroscope, partially tracking the celestrial background, or tracking the combined tidal effects of the sun and moon and the celestrial background.
It is very interesting, and if the effect presists, I should be able to gather enough data to allow us to determine its exact cause.
The max CW direction occured this morning around 7:00 AM, now at 10:30 AM, the torsion arm orientation has moved to a nearly westerly direction. Approximately 35 degrees of rotation. The arm did appear quite stable this morning around the 7:00 AM time, but once it started to move, there were some minor oscillations imposed on the larger longer term oscillations.
If this cyclic effect was present during my earlier tests (the ones I first made with the plastic cake cover UniKEF port container), then it could help to explain some of the variation which I was getting in the readings.
I would like to build a new torsion arm with the ability for the torsion arm ends to move in the vertical direction, I have been thinking of different ways to construct such a system.
Such a torsion arm could then more readily point to the true orientation of the cause of it control. I think a a simple Y yoke that straddles the torsion arm beam with knife edge bearings for the torsion arm to rest on would serve as an effective low friction verticle movement piviot point bearing. The vertical positioning of these knife edge bearings to the center of mass of the torsion arm would allow for what ever vertical movement sensitivity was needed. I should be able to make this bearing pivot point vertically adjustable for whatever sensitivity is needed. So the torsion arm would have the suspension fiber as a rotational bearing, and the knife edge bearing to allow dipping of the torsion arm ends from a horizontal plane like a teeter-todder.
From my earliest tests, I noted that the preferred direction was in a SW direction, now it is from West to Northwest, so not only does there appear to be a daily cyclic variation, there also appears to be a yearly cyclic variation.
But if it is due to gremlins as you suspected, they are sure to throw in some weird nonsense just to keep me confused.
Doug
