Evolv-ing Thread

[cigatron]

You know this got me thinking. When I take a shower, I know the water temperature is in the 90's degrees Fahrenheit (just the way I like my showers). And water can't turn into steam until 100°C, but still it gets steamy in there. So how is all of that steam created when the temperatures are so low?

Water as well as vg and pg will begin to vaporize long before they reach their boiling points. How does snow and ice disappear from your yard even though the temps outside never climb above freezing? Same way, water is in a constant state of evaporation, a form of vaporization. The more heat you add the faster it evaporates (up to 100°c).

 

[Alexander Mundy]

Sublimation (freeze drying)

 

[mikepetro]

My Mother was from North Carolina so tobacco was grown by a lot of the family. Fond memories of the fields and curing. They also grew a lot of corn so I would hazard a guess wherever corn grows good so would tobacco? One of my uncles went to jail for growing a little "extra" crop in the mountains on his land.

Here is Southern Virginia you see old tobacco barns all over the place. It was THEE major (legal) cash crop in these parts for many years. Of course I also live near Patrick County - Moonshine capital of the world, but that was a different crop.

 

[awsum140]

Our friend's farm is in Patrick County. They've gone from tobaccy to corn to pigs and now cattle. How long that will last is a big question, farming isn't a way to get rich, at least not on the scale of a single owner, 500 acre farm. It's starting to cost more to raise the beef than the cattle are worth when sold. I never knew Patrick County was the Moonshine Capitol though. Hmmm, next time we visit....

 

[BillW50]

Water as well as vg and pg will begin to vaporize long before they reach their boiling points. How does snow and ice disappear from your yard even though the temps outside never climb above freezing? Same way, water is in a constant state of evaporation, a form of vaporization. The more heat you add the faster it evaporates (up to 100°c).

Okay that makes sense. But living in AR, what do you know about snow and ice? Up here in the far north it sounds funny when you get a tiny bit of ice or an inch or two of snow and everything shuts down. As it is just a minor annoyance up here. But we do have snow plows and salt trucks too. So I guess we would be screwed without them (or travel by snowmobiles).

 

[mikepetro]

Our friend's farm is in Patrick County. They've gone from tobaccy to corn to pigs and now cattle. How long that will last is a big question, farming isn't a way to get rich, at least not on the scale of a single owner, 500 acre farm. It's starting to cost more to raise the beef than the cattle are worth when sold. I never knew Patrick County was the Moonshine Capitol though. Hmmm, next time we visit....

Sorry, I meant "Franklin" county. Though Patrick had their fair share.

Moonshine Makes A Comeback in Virginia. And This Time, It's Legal

 

[stylemessiah]

Here is Southern Virginia you see old tobacco barns all over the place. It was THEE major (legal) cash crop in these parts for many years. Of course I also live near Patrick County - Moonshine capital of the world, but that was a different crop.

I still cant believe i hate the smell of tobacco now...its freaky after 35 years of smoking and loving the smell of a good cigarette...ahh the old Dunhills, not the crap they have been for the past 15-20 years, the real good ones, had a lovely smell (non girly way of saying perfume). Oh and now im thinking of Rothmans, Marlboros and Winstons - I once had a single Winston that lasted me the 10-11 hour train journey from Sydney to Melbourne, because you can only smoke during rare stops, and Winstons used to burn so slow...

Having said all that, and reminiscing, ill never have another smoke as long as i live...

Talking of crops, i hope your tea sale went well the other day!

Our friend's farm is in Patrick County. They've gone from tobaccy to corn to pigs and now cattle. How long that will last is a big question, farming isn't a way to get rich, at least not on the scale of a single owner, 500 acre farm. It's starting to cost more to raise the beef than the cattle are worth when sold. I never knew Patrick County was the Moonshine Capitol though. Hmmm, next time we visit....

Please tell me theyre not like the farmers in a story i read out on radio once about large scale farmers feeding their livestock jelly babies to fatten them up, because it was cheaper than buying feed...i read that story out on radio about 15 years ago, i assume its prolly still happening. Fricking corn syrup at every step of the food chain and people wonder why the human race is heavier than ever

 

[mikepetro]

Talking of crops, i hope your tea sale went well the other day!

Took less than 3 days. The stuff was selling faster than I could keep up with recording the orders.

 

[awsum140]

No, she feeds her cattle hay, lets them graze and does give them supplements and such. I admire her tenacity, she's in her 60's and it's, basically, a one woman operation. Got to hand it to her, 24/7/365 with minimal outside help plus keeping up with the house, machinery and life in general. The main barn is actually a converted tobacco barn, really a large barn, too.

 

[cigatron]

But living in AR, what do you know about snow and ice?

I was stationed on the DEW Line several hundred miles North of the Arctic Circle, what do you know about ice and snow?

 

[BillW50]

I was stationed on the DEW Line several hundred miles North of the Arctic Circle, what do you know about ice and snow?

Okay you win! I am accustom to living in the far north, but not the far north living with the polar bears!

 

[cigatron]

but not the far north living with the polar bears!

No kidding! When we arrived at one DEW site we were all confined indoors until a man killing polar bear was tracked down and killed. Apparently two young Inuit Eskimo girls were killed by it the day before we arrived. Two days later we were allowed outside, not that we wanted to go outside, it was winter and veeeery cold......and dark except for 2 hrs a day.

 

[cigatron]

I worked at 3 of the 5 DEW sites in Canada and Greenland. We were there for 3 months replacing tube type radios with solid state versions. The main frequency output of the transceivers was a microwave frequency (classified) and the power output was 20 megawatts. Just think of the clouds we could make with that kind of power

The sites were fully equipped with a book library, bar with pool tables, ping pong, shuffleboard, video library, sound proof stereo/tv room, 1/2 court basketball, 1 lane bowling ally and 5 star restaurant food. Alcohol was free but setups weren't. All this 4 stories tall and suspended off the icepack on huge I-beams. I could say more but "you know who" would be knocking on my door within the hour.

As usual with the military there was a lot of hurry up and wait so I ended up with a lot of spare time to fill. Went to the library and grabbed the thickest book on the shelves. James A. Michener's "Space". Glad I did.

 

[Alexander Mundy]

Here is Southern Virginia you see old tobacco barns all over the place. It was THEE major (legal) cash crop in these parts for many years. Of course I also live near Patrick County - Moonshine capital of the world, but that was a different crop.

You are about 3 hours from the area (generally around Boone NC and South following the mountains) where my Mothers family is from. My Grandfather was working in the coal mines in the early 1900's in Virginia when he met my Grandmother. Since she was a flatlander and from Virginia that was the name (Virginia) the mountain people gave her and she went by the rest of her life. She said it took a very long time for them to accept her. I don't know if it's changed any but when I was a teen and was in the mountains a lot they were very leery of outsiders, kept to themselves, and didn't put much stock in doctors or bankers. When my Father and I were last there my Great Aunt Annie (probably around 85 at the time) excused herself after the family get together for lunch because we were visiting and said she "had to get back up the mountain and get back to hunting". My Aunt Caroline told me later that Aunt Annie must really like my Father and I to have come down off the mountain.

 

[Rossum]

I worked at 3 of the 5 DEW sites in Canada and Greenland. We were there for 3 months replacing tube type radios with solid state versions. The main frequency output of the transceivers was a microwave frequency (classified) and the power output was 20 megawatts. Just think of the clouds we could make with that kind of power

What I'm wondering is how/where you get that kind of power in such a remote place. Back-of-the envelope math says you'd need to burn roughly 1000 gallons of diesel fuel per hour to make 20 megawatts of electricity (using 0.25 lb of fuel per hp-hour), and somehow I doubt those transmitters were 100% efficient. A small nuclear reactor perhaps?

 

[cigatron]

What I'm wondering is how/where you get that kind of power in such a remote place. Back-of-the envelope math says you'd need to burn roughly 1000 gallons of diesel fuel per hour to make 20 megawatts of electricity (using 0.25 lb of fuel per hp-hour), and somehow I doubt those transmitters were 100% efficient. A small nuclear reactor perhaps?

They took us to the generator room, biggest diesel engines I've ever seen in real life, 4 of them. Probably 12' or so in length and 7' tall. The billboard antennas were about 80' long and 40' tall. We never ran them up to 20M watts, I can't remember what the system check output power was. I do remember tuning the copper waveguide SWR though, the tech orders called for using a spectrum analyzer and a ball peen hammer, not kidding. As I said, I don't remember what power level we were broadcasting at to test our installs but at one of the more southern DEW sites it was enough to smoke the ravens on the catwalk railing when we keyed the mic.

The building had huge electric motors that climbed its I-beams. The motors raised the entire building up 5 ft per year to keep up with the accumulation of ice and snow. Every 5 years a squadron of C130's would bring in 25' lengths of I-beams which were added to the top of the building's existing I-beams so the building could continue on its upward journey. Pretty cool stuff.

Looking back on those 3 months in the Arctic seems so surreal now. Those sites were truly amazing to a 21 yr old A1C.

 

[Alexander Mundy]

A guy I know that is now a retired broadcast engineer here has talked not so fondly about setting up equipment at some of those stations in the mid 50's. Sounded like a horrible experience from his perspective.

 

[stylemessiah]

I had to perform some surgery on my poor ePetite this morning

I thought id finally get around to supergluing the bloody magnets back into the case for the 2nd time, that went well, but of course things are never that easy, so i was not surprised that when i pulled off the cover the next time one bloody corner of the battery panel disintegrated. To be fair id noticed it had been wonky for a while...but yeah, this was now dead

Now its not that grim, because due to a shortage of ePetites with wood panels when i bought mine, i had to buy one with fake black kevlar sides on it out of the box, and separately bought some wooden panels from a site in the UK (a bit expensive, but well, its wood). So you guessed it, theres no way i was not going to put fricking fake kevlar on my ePetite, so a transplant was required. I peeled the wood panel off the plastic on the dead one..pretty easy as the glue had obviously been compromised by the juice leaking under it...eeek. Any tank that weeps on an ePetite will send juice down the gaps around the edge of the mod...and under the panels it goes..apparently

Next out came the original fake kevlar panels it came with, and after a short time in front of the heater (its winter here, so it was already on and i dont own a hair dryer), and carefully flexing the panel on the non magnet corner/side i got a tiny flat screwdriver under the fake kevlar and went around all four sides very carefully (re heating when needed), until i got the kevlar off, then removed the sticky backing form the panel...it was now obvious why the corner failed...the corner magnet is only held in by flimsy bits of plastic...combine that with recessed magnets in the case, which are constantly pulling the panel magnet towards the recessed void and its easy to see why it failed - albeit it did take 8+ months...

A bit of superglue and careful placement, plus 2 cans of heavy soup stuck on top for an hour later...

Bliss returns

Added bonus for not sticking myself to everything with superglue

 

[tiburonfirst]

 

[classwife]

I worked at 3 of the 5 DEW sites in Canada and Greenland. We were there for 3 months replacing tube type radios with solid state versions. The main frequency output of the transceivers was a microwave frequency (classified) and the power output was 20 megawatts. Just think of the clouds we could make with that kind of power

The sites were fully equipped with a book library, bar with pool tables, ping pong, shuffleboard, video library, sound proof stereo/tv room, 1/2 court basketball, 1 lane bowling ally and 5 star restaurant food. Alcohol was free but setups weren't. All this 4 stories tall and suspended off the icepack on huge I-beams. I could say more but "you know who" would be knocking on my door within the hour.

As usual with the military there was a lot of hurry up and wait so I ended up with a lot of spare time to fill. Went to the library and grabbed the thickest book on the shelves. James A. Michener's "Space". Glad I did.

Good book !