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On Mon, 31 Oct 2005 14:33:10 GMT, "NOYB" wrote:

Thank you for setting things straight. Harry thought that I was making it
up.

I was always suspicious of the coverage of Katrina. When Jon Stewart
showed the clip from the network folks standing in knee deep water and
then showed the same shot from 50 feet farther back it confirmed my
suspicion. They were taking turns standing in a puddle, surrounded by
dry ground, boom trucks and guys in suits.

There was a lot of the same hype here. News crews drove around looking
for some destruction to put on TV. The fact is, new construction homes
did very well in the Cat 3 landfall. The east coast took such a hit
because they haven't had a storm there in years and a lot of ****
housing has been waiting for a puff of wind to blow it over. FPL also
had plenty of rotten poles that should have been replaced years ago.
My buddy lives across the street from the trailer in Tahiti that "was
hit by a tornado". Bull****. That trailer was a termite infested piece
of crap. The units on both sides (about 4 feet away) did just fine!
Some selective "tornado" huh?
It really looks like most trailer damage is caused by the cabanas and
car ports they hang on them in the first place. The owners and their
handy man hang a 200 square foot sail on the side of the trailer. When
the wind catches it, the car port goes for a ride and takes the side
of the trailer with it.

BTW on your screen cage. It is the cables failing that makes the cage
come apart. If you strengthen the cable anchors and perhaps run a few
extras your cage will last in a storm. The problem is they have bridge
engineers designing screen cages.

I'm not sure it's even real engineers doing the design. Probably more like
pseudo-engineer CAD guys like basskisser sketching them out on a computer
screen.


They should be using guys who design
biplanes. That is a better description of the loads. The aluminum is
stronger than it has to be. I have never seen a failed cage that
didn't have ripped out cable anchors. (I looked at dozens of them
after Charley) Once the cables go you lose the triangles that give it
rigidity. It starts to "rack". That is what causes the joints to fail.

That is precisely why mine almost failed. When I got home to assess the
damage, the cage was leaning about 10 degrees to the east. I got a new
cable, and a turnbuckle. I tightened the turnbuckle until the cage was
upright, and the cage looked fine once again.

I plan on putting a second cable up in each direction to serve as a
redundancy should the first cable fail next time.


I was lucky this time.