Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

Ocean mind you - was the VHF aerial. the question is - does the damned
thing act as a lightning attractor as it is the highest thing there?



Yes, it will. But, that's the best place for the best VHF coverage,
unfortunately. Our main antenna got hit, so I moved both of the VHF
antennas to an L bracket in the shadow of the shrouds down the side of the
mast a ways. The VHF antennas are about 4' down the mast, out away from it
about 24 inches between the mast and the shroud, sorta centered. It's
always a compromise, but it seems to work as well there as it did on top,
exposed to the blast. VHF only has to reach to the horizon, you know, as
it's incapable of going further than that radio horizon just over the
visual one. If it meets that requirement, it's fine.



Larry
--

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 17:53:07 +0000, Larry wrote:


Again, Thanks for this Larry.
I shall do this also, tomorrow morning. It is only a matter of moving
it down.

The one that got hit just vapourised. The replacement I took off here
to paint the mast - it was one of those clamp in wire ones. Spent two
hours hunting for it and decided that it was cheaper to buy a new one.

cheers
Peter
Peter Hendra wrote in
:

Ocean mind you - was the VHF aerial. the question is - does the damned
thing act as a lightning attractor as it is the highest thing there?



Yes, it will. But, that's the best place for the best VHF coverage,
unfortunately. Our main antenna got hit, so I moved both of the VHF
antennas to an L bracket in the shadow of the shrouds down the side of the
mast a ways. The VHF antennas are about 4' down the mast, out away from it
about 24 inches between the mast and the shroud, sorta centered. It's
always a compromise, but it seems to work as well there as it did on top,
exposed to the blast. VHF only has to reach to the horizon, you know, as
it's incapable of going further than that radio horizon just over the
visual one. If it meets that requirement, it's fine.



Larry

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

I was born and raised on a dairy farm in upstate New York. My grandfather
milked 360 head of the biggest Holstein milk producers on the planet, 3
times a day. I, on the other hand, have more sense than to work 18 hours a
day like he did most of his life. I do, though, have extensive experience
running milk machines, bailing hay all summer, loading silos, unloading
silos, feeding, shoveling sh*t and spreading it across pure snow all
winter, to the delight of the crops planted in the spring....

Joining the Navy in 1964 was one good, politically-correct way out of the
dairy business.....forever....(c;

I didn't find out until I was in the Navy that you DIDN'T pour pure cream
from Grandma's precious Guernsey's onto breakfast cereal! Those idiots
were putting SUGAR on it! Very strange, city folks. They think "milk" has
only 6% butterfat in it...which, to us farm boys, is like "skim milk"...(c;

Larry

Wow! And I thought that all American kids lived in cities and didn't
realise that milk came from cows but was just another factory product
- there were/are 9 year old kids in South Auckland (N.Z.) who thought
so as well.

I too lived on several farms as a kid and did as you did but we never
milked 3 times a day. N.Z. mainly had Jerseys (high milk fat content
and lovely natured) and Fresians (similar or same as Holsteins - with
high volume). As the farms I lived on took their milk to the local
cheese/butter factory in cans, in the morning, before stirring them
up, we would skim some of the settled cream off the top of and take
it back to be heated - clotted cream. As the winters are mild in God's
own we never used silos but stored bailed hay in open sided barns,
grew feed crops for "break feeding" in the winter such as green maize,
choumolier (sp?), turnips, swedes and mangolds (the least three beet
crops). We also made ensilage - made by stacking cut undried grass or
green maize (plants and all) in a heap and excluding the air -
fermented and smelled a bit like sauerkraut. This would be fed out by
pitchfork on the back of a tractor.

No barns either so no alimentary wastes to shovel out apart from the
washdown sump in the milking shed every couple of years. We would just
use chain harrows to disintergrate and spread out the cow pats. Even
though the farm families got paid handsomely by the government for my
upkeep, I still had to work just the same as the other farm kids which
i am glad of now.

Sigh! Memories. feeding chooks (laying hens), collecting and cleaning
**** off eggs, making hay throughout the night because of impending
rain - so tired that I was found asleep in the full bath with my
overalls on, going to school on the school bus and managing to "cop a
fe--" from the early developer good time girl on the way, smell of cut
hay, training my own farm dog to fetch the cows "Get away back Flo",
going to stock sales and best of all, looking over my shoulder in the
dawn from the cow shed at the first light turning the snow cap on the
dormant volcano, Mount Taranaki a deep purple. (Google it - it is a
more perfect cone than is Fuji in Japan and doesn't have the heaps of
consumer rubbish up its flanks). Even now, when I hear the Rock group
"Deep Purple", I visualise that mountain. - I mentioned that N.Z. was
God's Own country didn't I?

You're right of course. Most of the brighter farm raised kids left for
either education or jobs elsewhere. It was the town kids who packed
the agricultural classes at high school. Tried to tell about to
dropout University friends of the Hippie era that farming, and in
particular subsistance farming, was damned hard work, but they had too
many stars in their eyes and thought they would sit back and watch
everthing grow while they lay in hammocks under a verandah smoking
good ol' Coromandel Green. Couldn't afford to drop out myself. I was
trying desperately to drop in.

Oh yes! The rules. On one farm I biult a stringers over plywood framed
and canvas and enamel paint 12 foot canoe from a magazine at school -
can't remember it but it was American - "Practical something or
other". The hardest part of building the BOAT was in the translation
of the text to English.

My God, I must be old. All of this was so long ago.

cheers
Peter

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 17:47:56 +0000, Larry wrote:

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

Gerard Diamond. The first book of his I
read was "The Third Chimpanzee"

I'll keep my eye open.....

Prof Dawkins is just a typical college professor. Our math professor used
to march into the room in the morning and announce, "Good morning,
Inferiors." They don't have much behind those grey walls, you know.....

I just think Dawkins is right. The earth IS older than 6000 years old,
like Christians are teaching some really nice kids every day, here. I
agree this stupidity taught in religious schools as fact is CHILD ABUSE.

Larry

I was lucky at university to have a developmental Zoology professor
who appeared to be all the wrong things (to callow, know it all youths
and youthesses). Pat was single, post 50 and a Presbytarian Deaconess
with a form belief in God who lived at home with her aged Mother. For
some reason she took a liking to me and we developed a friendship - no
nothing untoward. She still had that childlike entusiasm for knowledge
that people tend to lose by their late teens. We would go diving for
specimens - well, she would be in the dinghy wikth the oars whilst I
dived below and we would later pore (sp?) over them in the lab. She
was working on intelligence in mice resulting from the food they ate -
ran them through mazes and found that they performed best on their
food of preference - millet soaked in milk. Forgive me, I digree
again.

When I asked her how she conciled her belief in a divine being who
created everything with evolutionary theory she responded that the
more she learned about evolution, the more it stengthened her belief
in a divine being. It's one way of looking at it. Personally, I don't
dwell much on the question as it is patenly obvious that evolution is
progressing about us on a daily basis if we would only open our eyes.

At the risk of an vehement and irate outburst from some, I fear not
only radical Islamic fundametalism, but the Christian one as well.
This doctrinal brainwashing that poses as education that is emerging
more rampantly now is something to worry about. You should read the
last book of the New Testament - "Revelation" about the 'last days'
and the second coming of Jesus - they all do. Quite frightening
really. Galileo with his trial and house arrest until his death would
feel right at home.

cheers., and hopefully I'll be dead before they gain political
control.
Peter

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 17:47:56 +0000, Larry wrote:



I just think Dawkins is right. The earth IS older than 6000 years old,
like Christians are teaching some really nice kids every day, here. I
agree this stupidity taught in religious schools as fact is CHILD ABUSE.

Larry

I am sure that it was one of m favourite Uncles, Mark Twain, who
said that "Satan hasn't a single paid helper; the opposition employs
millions"

cheers
Peter

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

As the winters are mild in God's
own we never used silos but stored bailed hay in open sided barns,
grew feed crops for "break feeding" in the winter such as green maize,


I've spread manure across snow behind the tractor when it was -40F on a
COLD winter's morning. We had a canvas tarp on both sides of the old
John Deere's engine compartment so the "cooling" air from the fan behind
the radiator would blow in your face to keep your hands from freezing to
the steering wheel. The tractor I drove was of WW2 vintage when gasoline
was strictly rationed. It ran on kerosene, not gasoline, even though it
had spark plugs. To start it, you built a fire under the carburetter
(Did I still spell that right in Queen's English?) and boiled the
kerosene to vaporize it for consumption before the exhaust manifold was
hot enough to keep it boiling when the engine was hot. Then, you opened
both cylinder petcocks to relieve the pressure so you could rock the big
flywheel back and forth, finally building up enough momentum in the heavy
flywheel to shove it over the TDC of the piston, praying THIS time was a
charm and it would fire! After several tries, she'd come to life making
an awful racket with fire spewing out those petcocks until you got around
to quickly close them and raise the compression back up to ??
5:1??...hee hee. Once started, it would be left running all day until
you were completely done with it and parked it back INSIDE the barn with
the WARM cows to keep it from freezing solid until spring...ready to
start it at 5AM once the milking was almost done.

If the power went down, we also had a leather belt-driven alternator,
about 8KW, that would run off the old John Deere's outer clutch housing,
which spun the belt (and anything else that caught it) when you engaged
the big clutch lever, even in neutral. When the snow brought the power
lines down, that tractor powered the whole farm for a week, 24 hours a
day pulling on that belt.

I can still hear that rhythmic John Deere 2-cylinder thumping, 50 years
later....(c;

I'm pushing 62 in January. Just like the rest of the "almost
Altzheimers" patients, I can remember that tractor.....Now, if I could
just remember where the damned truck keys are located....(c;


Larry
--

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

She
was working on intelligence in mice resulting from the food they ate -
ran them through mazes and found that they performed best on their
food of preference - millet soaked in milk. Forgive me, I digree
again.


I have a boating friend, Kay, the other half of a friend who used to own
a Hatteras 56 FBMY they lived on when I met them. Kay is paid big money
by the Medical University of SC, Department of Alcoholism (I think it's
called) to make hamsters drunk on booze to see what happens to them.
Dan, her husband, is Head of Oncology Research and has 5 PhDs. They are
two of the sweetest people I know. Tired of toting their lives down the
dock, they sold the Hat...dammit, right after I almost got everything
working...and moved to a mansion in Mt Pleasant across the new bridge.
After a series of custom Corvettes, Cadillac Escalades (that wouldn't fit
under the roof of the MUSC parking garage), and an incredible 1800cc
Honda customized motorcycle, they bought a massive diesel pusher
motorhome. Last year they ordered a custom-made bigger motorhome to
their personal taste. I haven't seen it, yet. The "old motorhome" was a
palace on wheels....however, I don't know where you park a motorhome
that's BIGGER than a Greyhound Super Scenic Cruiser intercity bus....???

Kay's job has always caused me to chuckle.....especially after Dan and I
have had a few beers down in the big Hatteras' engine rooms....hee hee.

After they sold the boat, she told him and I she was going to buy us a
Detroit Diesel 8V92TA twin turbocharger engine on a stand to run in the
garage so we wouldn't look so forlorn on Saturdays with nothing to tear
apart....and make horrendous noises....(c; I'm not sure his rich
neighbors would understand. They certainly didn't like the MUFFLERLESS
Honda 1800CC twin beast roaring around... I didn't think it made any
more noise than the Langenfelder Corvette he had just because G Gordon
Liddy, of Watergate fame, had one.


Larry
--

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

I am sure that it was one of m favourite Uncles, Mark Twain, who
said that "Satan hasn't a single paid helper; the opposition employs
millions"

cheers
Peter



I have a picture of Mark Twain, one of Nikola Tesla's favorite friends,
holding a lit flourescent tube in his hand in Tesla's workshop with no
wires....(c; The picture is on the net.

Larry
--

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Hi Jeff,

I've enjoyed his books also. (Its Jared Diamond)

Yes, I stand corrected - honestly, sometimes I cannot remember my
wife's first name when I introduce her to people - I never address her
by it myelf.

Perhaps it is because my formal
education was in Zoology that I find him interesting but I admit to
being disappointed that he made no mention that North Americans have
only descended from the trees more recently than the population in the
Antipodes.

??? Are you claiming that Aborigines are an earlier branch of
primates and not the same species as Homo Sapiens? (I'm sure you're
joking here.)

I was indeed jesting. I intended to portray that we (all peoples of
the Antipodes) were higher, more developed and more sophisticated
forms of being due to our greater familiarity with espresso coffee.
Neither the Australian Aborigines nor the New Zealand Maori crossed my
mind. If they had perchance attempted to do so, they would have become
hopelessly lost as I myself do sometimes during thought.

A century ago people throughout the US home roasted and thus drank
quality coffee. Then the large companies started "improving" it,
first with pre-ground, then percolators, and as the final insult,
instant coffee. Instant was developed for the soldiers in WWII, where
anything warm was appreciated. It unfortunately created a generation
of Americans for whom percolator coffee is a step up. Then we
suffered through a wave of flavored "gourmet" coffee, and now
over-roasted, over-priced, milk based concoctions are in vogue.

As a general statement, during my childhood, only we Greeks in New
Zealand drank coffee - not espresso but the heat and wait for the mud
to settle type. But we were Wogs and had wierd dining habits such as
the eating of squid and octopus, eating rotten milk (yoghurt), cooking
in olive oil instead of beef fat and prefering wine to beer. Everyone
else, being of English origin, drank tea - brewed/ stewed in a
teapot. The reason for the popularity of espresso coffee machines in
Australia - the cities especially, was due to the huge influx of
Italian migrants after WWII. as Australia could not get enough of the
prefered northern Europeans to come.


However, that said, there has been for the last 30 years a small but
growing cadre of true coffee lovers in the US. In every area of the
country there is a high quality roaster, producing coffee that is the
equal of any in the world. Every city has several cafes that serve
high quality coffee and European style espresso.

Here's a roaster local to me:

http://www.terroircoffee.com/

George Howell was the founder of Coffee Connection years ago, and more
recently created the Cup of Excellence program, where small farmers
are encouraged to produce the highest quality beans with country wide
competitions and small lot auctions based on the results.

Thanks. An interesting site.
I had heard of programmes like this in countries such as Costa Rica
where small famers are resisting growing Cocaine crops. They are being
encouraged to grow high quality, high value specialist coffee crops.
I know that I would pay extra if I knew that it was in a good cause.

Most of Jared Diamond's works are still in print and available at
Amazon, etc. I found "The Third Chimp..." interesting, but a warmup
from "Guns, Germs, and Steel" which goes into great detail in the
question of why Western civilization evolved on a different track from
Native American, and ultimately dominated.

Yes, I enjoyed that book also.

cheers
Peter

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

"Larry" wrote in message
...


I've spread manure across snow behind the tractor when it was -40F on a
COLD winter's morning. We had a canvas tarp on both sides of the old
John Deere's engine compartment so the "cooling" air from the fan behind
the radiator would blow in your face to keep your hands from freezing to
the steering wheel.
snip.............
Larry
--


Yeah, yeah...and you walked 20 miles to school...uphill both ways!