Good morning!!!!

[daugen]

looks like a traditional rain maker headed North, sucking water out of the Gulf and sending
it north on a 45 degree angle
or so it appears
rain coming in at noon
going to leave car outside since it's not going to freeze and I'll take
any free car washing I can get with all the salt dust everywhere.

I turned my outside hose back on two days ago and did a quick wash on the car.
Really wanted to get salt off as much as possible.
I did remember to turn the outside water off in the basement, and take the nozzle off.
wrecked a few forgetting to do that.
But that old fashioned Goodyear black rubber garden hose has now been half buried and left outside for five years, and
seems to be just fine. Good stuff. Maybe being sentimental because Goodyear Rubber used to have a plant here locally in Trenton NJ. So it's gone through at least a dozen freeze thaw cycles and still seems ok.
As the guy on the tool testing show says
that's impressive

I would have thought some high tech plastic hose would last longer, but usually their cheap fittings fail.

there is only one outside spigot on this cottage so I have to improvise by running a hose around to rear of house.
only thing good about one spigot is it's better than none.

 

[Thomas]

30F partly cloudy day mid 30's for high,ice snow mix arriving around 7pm weather station showing up 2" ending by daybreak tomorrow.

Pans for today...remove couple cement pads from walkway,first time ever ice push the pads up pads rock when step on bad tripping issue,not else plan might watch evening NFL playoff game.

Enjoy your day all.

 

[riptides]

50 outside right now, the high for the day. Raining, or drizzling, grey outside.

Debating on getting the wood stove fired back up. An indoor day for us today. Too bad the playoffs don't start early.

Hope all have a great day and .....be safe.

 

[WinterDeere]

I wonder how many feet of antenna you need for ultra low frequency
so you can talk to the submarines.
now if you could eavesdrop on the whales...

Half wavelength is ideal for a simple wire antenna, which way down at their 76 Hz data comm frequency, would be 1225 miles in air.

One cool thing about sea water is that, despite it being very lossy (semi-conductive), it also has a very high dielectric constant (i.e. optical index), which really shrinks wavelengths by a good amount. I think most sea water has a dielectric constant around εr = 70, and wavelength shrinks by sqr(εr), so that'd bring ideal antenna length down from 1225 miles to "just" 146 miles. Those guys tow some long antennae, but probably nowhere near that long, so obviously their simple wire antenna is never going to be "ideal" at 76 Hz.

There are antenna designs that can reach ideal match with much less length, but I imagine anything real complex would be difficult to deploy and retract underway, a simple wire seems preferable from the standpoint of just dangling it out there while cruising along. So I suspect they just deal with a shorter and very "non-ideal" antenna, by pushing way more power thru the transmitter than would normally be required with an ideal antenna.

It makes the transmitter design much more complicated and expensive, but the Navy has money. It also makes the transmitter and subsequent increased cooling requirements consume a lot more power, but they probably have cooling water and power to spare on today's nuclear sub's.

 

[daugen]

76hz in music is low bass
apples and oranges?

 

[WinterDeere]

76hz in music is low bass
apples and oranges?

Nope. Oranges and clementines. Basically the same idea, but in electric and magnetic field, rather than modulating air pressure via a speaker diaphragm.

In fact, the 76 Hz tone traveling thru your speaker wire from the amplifier to the speaker, is the same exact type of signal that's being pushed from a transmitter into an antenna. Ratio of voltage and current is a bit higher on antenna (higher impedance), and modulation of the signal is different (data versus musical attack/sustain/decay), but otherwise the same.

 

[m7040]

good morning, 42 high of 48 and rain on the way

Did not need to fire up this morning but did it anyway, the wood heat feels so much better

Had a car hauled off that one of the kids had left on our property. It had been sitting there for years waiting to get the title

Cut another load of firewood and brought it over. Keeping the spare set of batteries charged. Need to look into file sharpener for the Makita 16 inch

GD was shocked that the school noticed her with, no pay no school. What we have been telling her all along.
Deciding to quit her winter break jobs and go on a cruise. We will help but she has to do her part and keep up the grades.
We will see if she learned a lesson

 

[Happy in NC]

Good morning TBN!!
59 this morning.

looks like a traditional rain maker headed North, sucking water out of the Gulf and sending
it north on a 45 degree angle

We are on the leading edge of the first wave. Second wave this afternoon during the Panthers game is supposed to be T'storms. They are concerned with lightning possibility.

Finally got the compressor up and running. Perfect in pretty much all ways right until the end putting it back. Hauled it to its shed with the tractor and got it set un the ground. Walking it the last few feet and it got away from me and went down. No damage except to me. Oil leaking out so I went to pick it up. Mistake! Felt it in my back right away so I'll be taking it easy. Shoulda lifted with my legs but I was in a hurry. Ended up getting it back up with the tractor. It sure is a lot more top heavy with the 2 stage pump on it. Got it in and ran it awhile to break it in. I'm happy with it. Leaks down enough to kick on @120psi after a little over an hour then takes less the a minute to get back to 160 psi. I have 7 "outlets plumbed in so leaks are expected. I'll be going through the shop today with soap spray and see if I can find any leaks. Probably the only thing that gets done as back is pretty painful!

Already had a second cup.
Everyone have a great and safe day!!

 

[Popgadget]

Good Morning
39° with a high that might top 50 and rain is what we have to look forward to today.
In other words, not much will get accomplished outside today.

Yesterday actually followed the plan. Service call, lunch at Mission BBQ, Costco, etc.

I got a new 3D printing task, steering wheel hub cap for vintage Bolens tractors. I have the logo digitized, just waiting on dimensions.

Great show last night, Dale Watson is a great entertainer as well as a great musician.

He had a show at the Kennedy Center the night before, we are lucky to have a venue like the Sellersville Theater that attracts such great talent to a small (~300 seat) venue. There is not a bad seat in the house, and we had excellent ones at that.

Not sure what today will bring to keep me entertained, but I hope it’s inside…

 

[WinterDeere]

I got a new 3D printing task, steering wheel hub cap for vintage Bolens tractors. I have the logo digitized, just waiting on dimensions.

Local? We had three old Bolens tractors, two of them at the farm on Lurgan Rd. in New Hope, and a little garden tractor down in Morrisville. Always wondered what happened to those old machines, after they were sold.

There was also an old Oliver at Lurgan.

Me on the little Bolens:

https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachments/197707-bolens-1050-tractor-jpg.4125007/

 

[txdon]

Good morning! 42˚F heading to the mid 50s with a N wind and clear skies. This cold front did not help our drought conditions out as the spotty rains missed us by 50 miles.

BIL one continues to improve and BIL two will soon have surgery followed by chemo treatments.

FireWise will be starting up again, holiday break is over. I ended up in 7th place in cards this quarter.

Tonight will be cold so the heater will be set to come on at 68˚. The house has stayed in the 70s this past week with the unseasonably warm temps.

 

[Thomas]

Me on the little Bolens:

https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachments/197707-bolens-1050-tractor-jpg.4125007/

Also had 1050 years back,good set rear tire chains just about unstoppable,like the 2 speed transmission for haul plowing snow.

 

[Popgadget]

Local? We had three old Bolens tractors

Just up the road from me near 611 &113.
He has at least a dozen of them.

 

[kenmbz]

Morning all, 40 going to 42 and rain.

In Europe they use 50hz and on fluorescent lights the flicker drives me nuts.

More Christmas decorations down, rain may slow the process.

Ron - tree on wires is so common here. Sorry you had so many things fry. We had outages yesterday on internet as down the street a tree was resting on the wires.

For subs we used a long cable hanging from a plane back in the late 80's. I would hope they have something better now.

We had to design for 400Hz for all our plane bound tech, I think either 28 or 48 volts.

Be well,

 

[ponytug]

Ron, sounds like you got a good electrical surge there. Any idea what caused it?
I'm surprised that modern building codes don't require some form of electrical suppression built in.
As in an easy to remove big MOV, like the disconnects on your outside a/c compressor.
of course a big surge will just blow through the MOV at times.

folks would bring in a lot of crazy burned up electronics to my Radio Shack, and I quickly learned it was worth
me handing out a free 3 dollar single receptacle surge protector with every new tv I sold.
And I got almost none of those tvs, computers or stereos back. Surge protectors work, except for the "big one".

With value of appliances and electronics in most homes these days, I think a whole house surge protector and several high quality surge protector strips are table stakes for pretty much everyone, but you are right, not yet code.

Good Tractor Morning Fuddy,

Tesla was so ahead of his time, what a fascinating man, absolutely brilliant, and smarter than Edison IMHO.

I completely agree. Have you ever seen his design for a check valve with no moving parts?

Tesla valve - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I wonder how many feet of antenna you need for ultra low frequency
so you can talk to the submarines.
now if you could eavesdrop on the whales...

One of the transmitter antennas is over a large part of northern Wisconsin, so, yes huge. The submarine side designs were classified last time I looked, which I admit was some time ago. But yes, the towed sonar arrays can be very long. This paper quotes them as being up to over three and a half miles, so make your own estimates on the actual lengths.
https://princetel.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/towed_array.pdf

Whales have been monitored globally and individually for decades. Easy in the Pacific, harder in the North Atlantic, but important.
There are other ways to communicate with submarines that don't involve surfacing, and methods of tracking them that don't involve RF or sonar. All very Spy vs. Spy.

@kenmbz I'm with you on 50Hz flicker being a problem and at 60Hz some bulbs are "can't be in the same room" bothersome to me. Back in the day, there were some CRT monitors that were 60Hz +/- and I had to forage around to find one that was on the high end of the spectrum for me to use them. There's also a couple of cars (Cadillac?) That have a flicker in their brake/running lights that I can't be around as I find it so distracting. I can't imagine how bad it must be for athletes like baseball players who have really fast vision.

 

[daugen]

local lawn mower place called C.A Magill's (near the current Magill's Hill sledding area)
growing up where we bought our Cub Cadets, and then wanting something bigger and heavier, graduated
up to a full size Bolens. That green and white paint sure was pretty but I don't remember it being particularly
super reliable due to belts. We graduated from the Bolens to a Gravely. Never wore that out.

Bolens larger models were really nice, they even did a small diesel model.
and then they were no longer, didn't make the jump to zero turns apparently
Their early diesels were made by Ducati under the Wisconsin name, but likely that had issues
so they switched to Iseki, a brand well known in tractors. I think those Iseki garden tractors would be a nice
collectors item