Evolv-ing Thread

[cigatron]

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.

Yeah, we heard stories about the og equipment installers, they had it rougher than we did. All of our work was indoors, all we had to do was get inside from the airplane and at one site in particular that little walk was something I'll never forget.

THE FLIGHT and the WALK:
6 of us travelled to the northernmost DEW site in a Twin Otter turboprop at night. The closer we got to the site the more turbulence we had. The plane aborted two landings due to winds and each time we came around all we could see was what appeared to be flares all set up in a straight line. The pilot brought the plane around for final approach and the aircraft was side slipping so bad in the wind that I could see the flares coming straight at me at times. The pilot was a little late at throwing in right rudder for touchdown so we came down hard on the right ski. The plane lurched to the left and we could hear the right wingtip drag on the ice, then the plane lurched to the right and so on until he finally got it leveled out. Scared the bejesus out of us all. While taxiing to the site the plot says "Not too bad this time, huh fellas?" What?! I thought I was dead for sure.

The plane pulls up alongside the building, too dark for us to see well but looked like a hundred ft. or so and the Sarge says "Suit up for extreme cold weather". So we're all suited up with wool long johns, fatigues, extreme cold weather suits, parkas with fox fur snorkel hoods, mittens, mukluks and our backbpacks and the Sarge says "When exiting the plane hook your right arm around the tether rope and close your snorkel hood opening with your left hand", "Do not for any reason try to see out", "Just keep walking blind until someone at the building stairway grabs you". I'm thinking, come on, this seems like some serious overkill......until I step off the plane in -70°f temps and the 40 knot winds hit my side. I might as well have been naked!!! I felt like someone ran a frozen saber through my ribcage, every muscle in my body cringed. -120°f-ish is evil cold.

Once in the building I was greeted by a man named Fritz who was missing his left nostril and earlobe from exposure, 10 seconds of exposure according to his story. For some reason I had a sudden change of attitude and a newfound respect for the men and women who built and maintained those sites so we would have warning in the event of an ICBM launch from Russia.

 

[SlickWilly]

All that time, money, manpower and risk to set up all that in the Arctic, one of the worst environments for man on this planet and we should believe, "nothing to see here folks, move along."

 

[tiburonfirst]

 

[dwcraig1]

 

[dwcraig1]

 

[SlickWilly]

Couple of interesting reads...

NSA Can Reportedly Track Phones Even When They're Turned Off

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nsa-deletion-of-more-than-685-million-call-records-raises-questions/ (The timing is interesting. "Do you believe in consequences?")

Buckle up

 

[awsum140]

I do have to wonder if they will actually delete all that data, and I would assume that they have multiple backups of all their data. Wonder if they're going to delete those as well? Can we all say snow job (no puns intended) together? Given what's going on in DC, I'd rather they wait a bit, that data could, and I stress "could", contain some critical information.

 

[SlickWilly]

I do have to wonder if they will actually delete all that data, and I would assume that they have multiple backups of all their data. Wonder if they're going to delete those as well? Can we all say snow job (no puns intended) together? Given what's going on in DC, I'd rather they wait a bit, that data could, and I stress "could", contain some critical information.

I think those who needed any info have already taken or are in control of what they need, some pretty smart people are in the right places and I believe, have been careful how they proceeded long ago. I'm sure there is a lot of "shredding" going on but I don't think it will help much at this point, at least not for the big fish. I think a lot of people haven't been sleeping well lately.

Trust the plan.

ETA: And I just read this, there you go.

"You delete what you no longer need.
You save what you do need."

 

[SlickWilly]

Looking forward to the 4th, and the 5th.

​

 

[mikepetro]

 

[SlickWilly]

That's the way I feel this morning

 

[awsum140]

Me, too, but I've got to go out and harvest the weeds in the back 40 this morning before it gets too darn hot.

 

[tiburonfirst]

 

[SlickWilly]

Me, too, but I've got to go out and harvest the weeds in the back 40 this morning before it gets too darn hot.

Same here, got to get it done today, it's showing rain for the next few days. Problem is the grass will be wet until after it gets hot so there's no avoiding the heat. We have all the doors and windows open right now letting in some "cooler" 79F deg air, I'll have to close them within the next half hour and turn the AC on. There's a thick haze out there, looks like a London fog, it's going to be a very hot and muggy day, I should find the "sweating to the oldies" tunes and ear buds. Summer's here, think of this and it won't seem so bad.

​

 

[dwcraig1]

 

[dwcraig1]

10 of the 20 My Blu starter kits that I ordered arrive today, my TGT v4 "styled" finally hit LA customs.
I will try to make some converts (not with the TGT)

 

[dwcraig1]

Silo 250c

It took a lot of cutting with the dremel to make it fit.
I used a source 510 & a Fully Max

I'm finally thinking about getting a 250C but this is the only one that I've seen that meets my criteria.
Must be 3 cell LiPo and small.

 

[Rossum]

I've got to go out and harvest the weeds in the back 40 this morning

 

[Steamer861]

I'm finally thinking about getting a 250C but this is the only one that I've seen that meets my criteria.
Must be 3 cell LiPo and small.

I mite have the only one in existence?
The good news is Proto has Black & Grey colour Silo 75c's in stock
Silo DNA 75C billet aluminum DNA mod case

Cutting it out with a dremel was a hassle

One of these & a good drill press would probably make the job easier
Not as easy as a Mill, but not everyone has access to one of those.

 

[awsum140]

I have one of those and a marginal drill press. My take on it is that the "float" in the chuck of a drill press makes it really hard to be accurate. Yeah you can work fairly close, but there's still a lot of Dremel and file work to get things right. Reality is a Dremel, a vice and work slow is probably just as fast.

Got the weed crop harvested. It was 78 when I went out at about 7:45 and 91 when I came in at 9:45. The crop in the front will have to wait for tomorrow.

On another, heat related, note, as you can see in my sig line I am into folding@home. Let's just say I have a vested interest in the science being done. Anyhow, to get the level of "points" I do takes some serious processing power and that's best accomplished by using rather powerful video cards, the current popular generation outperforms a top end i7 processor by a factor of 100 or more. The result is lots of heat, and I mean lots.

I've got a ceiling fan running on high in the office where the machine is and another small fan forcing some hot air out. Even with that it gets into the 90's in there. It dawned on me that just moving hot air around won't do much so I've added a vent fan to the outside. My theory being to vent the hot air out and get cooler air from the house to replace it.

My first "experiment" is with a 4", inline, duct fan and it just doesn't move enough air. It moves about 100cfm but that isn't enough. So I've got an 8" model coming tomorrow that moves about 400cfm, the max rating of 4" duct. I'll have to kludge an adapter to reduce it to 4" but I'm hoping it will help even if it doesn't move 400cfm due to the size reduction.