A volunteer falls in to the trap of getting more than he bargained for, air performance formulas have some really confusing constants (fixed numbers), and the first Alhambra expansion called The Vizier’s Favour is given a good try.

## A new food co-op volunteer

This morning at the fruit & vege food co-op someone came along the footpath while we were unloading the truck, and offered to lend a hand. This was very generous of him, and little did he know that we were going to snaffle him and encourage him to carry on volunteering for us for the entire morning.

We’ve had an ever-increasing number of packages to put together lately, today coming to 317 in total. I’ll have to improve my fitness though – for if this continues throughout the summer I’ll have to do something to improve my fitness.

## Confusing origin of formulas

The air performance things is coming along nicely, but it’s becoming more difficult to learn the origin of some of these formulas. The relations that I’ve been working on today are:

$\text{6. Zero-lift drag coefficient: }C_{D,0} = \frac{A_D}{S}$
$\text{7.1 Airspeed for minimum sink: }V_{minS} = 11.29 \frac{\sqrt{\frac{W}{b_e}}}{\sqrt{\sigma} ({A_D})^{\frac{1}{4}}}$
$\text{7.2 Minimum power required for level flight: }THP_{min} = 0.03921 {A_D}^{\frac{1}{4}}(\frac{W}{b_e})^{\frac{3}{2}}$
$\text{7.3 Minimum drag: }D_{min} = 1.128 \sqrt{A_D}\frac{W}{b_e}$
$\text{8. Minimum sink rate: }R_{S,min} = 33000 \frac{THP_{min}}{W}$
$\text{9. Maximum lift-to-drag ratio: }{(L/D)}_{max} = 0.8862 \frac{b_e}{\sqrt{A_D}}$
$\text{10. Lift coefficient at minimum sink: }C_{L,minS} = 3.07 \frac{\sqrt{A_D}}{c_e}$

My main challenge with the above formulas is in understanding how the values are arrived at. What is the origin of 11.29, or 0.03921, or 1.128, or 0.8862, or 3.07? I’ve left some notes to come back and find out more about these later.

## Alhambra expansion: The Vizier’s Favour

The board games evening consisted of Alhambra tonight, and we were trying out all parts from first expansion, The Vizier’s Favour which consists of four parts:

• The Vizier’s Favour: allowing you to use exact change to buy a building out of turn
• The Builder’s huts: that increase the scoring count of same-colored tiles beside them
• The Currency Exchange: cards that allow you to mix different currencies to buy tiles
• Bonus cards: that are dealt at the start of the game, and count as another building if they match one that you already have

The builders huts seemed to be the most beneficial part of this expansion, closely followed by the currency exchange.

The builders huts can help you to score a significant number of additional points, and also have the benefit of extending your Alhambra to other directions, resulting in more options when it comes to placing a building.

The currency exchange can be helpful too, in allowing you to more easily pay the exact amount for a building so that you can then get a bonus additional move.

The Vizier’s Favour comes in at a close third. We were playing with 3 players today, but if we were playing with more players such as 5 or 6, I can see that the Vizier’s Favour will become much more useful in allowing you to snaffle a useful building before the play of turn comes around to you again.