Hey, remembered to get a fresh pot going tonight.
54 degrees out.
Not trapping license or permit needed since it is on property I manage and they are destroying trees.
Not worth the bother for the fur. Animal rights folks ruined the fur market.
Off to bed. Real busy week ahead.
Hope all are well.
Go drink from the new pot.
God bless TCA 05-58541 Benefactor Member of the NRA, Member of the American Legion, Retired Boss Hog of Roseyville , KC&D Qualified
Busy lately. The company sent me to Mexico last week, right after I drove to Michigan and back to get my wife home the week before. That was about 1700 mile drive, one day of rest, then onto the airplane to go out of the country. Looks like they are going to send me to Brazil in the not too distant future, too.
Didn't get much done this weekend. Spent a lot of time being a couch potato.
I've also been working as a mentor with the local high school's robot team. This is a world wide competition. Each year the F.I.R.S.T. organization publishes a set of specifications and rules that describe what the robot will have to do in compition. That started Jan. 9. The robot for compition needs to be completed at the end of the third week in February. It needs to operate on its own for 15 seconds in the beginning of each match, then is controlled by the drive team for the remaining 2 minutes and 15 seconds of the match. This is eating up most of my evenings, and a big chunk of Saturdays. Worthwhile, though.
About 45 kids are involved. They are doing publicity, programming, controls programming, mechanical design, part fabrication, and assembly. The school has an impressive shop. Several manual mills and lathes, a CNC mill, a CNC lathe, and a CNC router, table saw, band saw, sanders, hand tools, etc., etc. Good mix of kids too. The group includes mechanical types, programming types, artistic types, and tactial/gaming types.
So far, we've mocked up and tested about all of the sub systems and have the fully functioning prototype robot about 40% done. The prototype robot will get the drive team practicing while the compition robot is built. It will also tell us how well the sub systems work together.
All for now.
Evenin' FellasWill hopefully find out what is going on with insurance tomorrow...Last spring TheQ decided she no longer liked the color the previous owners painted the foyer, so we found a nice color at Home Depot, got the foyer painted over 2 days and she hated it. It turned out this hideous pinkish purple, nearly neon. Well we lived with it, always hating it. Then yesterday rolls around... keep in mind I have to touch up the walls in Christina's old room since we swapped her room and the spare room, and I now have to replace the drawer slides on 5 dresser drawers... well she has decided the foyer needs a repaint, I told her no problem we could do it over a couple weekends between now and when we have family over for her Father's birthday the weekend after Valentines Day... well we stopped at Home Depot during our weekly shopping trip and bought two gallons of Behr Marquee ($85 for 2 gallons of paint!!!!), this morning I painted a wall to check coverage and color. Looked awesome, paint dried to the touch in < 1 hour! So I kept going... and going... and going... I now have the entire first floor painted and the walls at the stair landing. Now just have to do the upstairs hall and the second story of the foyer. Should be about 1 more day worth of painting... oh and I only used 1/2 - 2/3 gallon of paint... not bad... and it covered in one coat. Impressive.Oh - and guess who did all the painting......
https://brentsandsusanspicutures.shutterfly.com/
Hello all
Very windy on the mountain tonight. We closed up just as I came on shift. Expecting snow later.
Kev - yeah, I was thinking that beavers might have their own deal. I never hunted so I wouldn't know. My first truck and 4x4 was a '79 Chevy LUV. Was owned by Pacific Bell who drove the snot out of it. I pretty much rebuilt it stem to stern. Not a bad truck but as a 4X4 it was a bit underpowered and some of the front end parts were tricky to find. The Datsun is pretty simple and parts are out there.
RT - nice work on those cars. They are very close to the ones I have w/ the #258 except the trim is orange.
Fife - nice work on that Marx station!
Bob
Tucson, AZ (aka the Ol' Pueblo)
Home of the Mt. Graham & Arizona Eastern Boiler Shops
Hello there,
tree is gone hated to see it go but it was drooping so bad it was losing ornaments. Didn't want to break any as most are family keepsakes.
Beautiful day here. Most of last weekends snow is gone.
Kev that should do a good job .
Roy.......
Being the cheapskate I am I may run a piece of RG6 across the driveway and add a splitter at mom's house
Think I'm gonna head to bed
Prayers for those in need
Banks, Proud member of the OTTS TCA 12-67310
Good evening all,
Was very tired last night so did not post. Did 5 miles in 1:25:44 which was a little more than 17 minutes per mile. Leg really hurt for a long time afterward. Saturday was spent meeting Lucas' family again. They did haul a bunch of stuff away for us to Lucas' house. We do have a wedding place set for them, which is good. Other details to be taken care of. I hope everyone has a good day.
Keep on training,
Mike C. from Indiana
[quote user="submmbob"]
Made another vehicle acquisition last Sunday. Found a '79 Datsun 620 p/u across from basecamp in Safford. Runs and drives for $1K. Decided I wanted something utilitarian that I could just keep running rather than restore. It's kind of hard to do major work on a car when you are using it for a daily driver. The 4dr Corvair will be sold soon and I will keep the Corvan and the '63 Coupe.
[/quote]
WOW Bob, That brings back some good old memories. I had several of those LUVs Light Utility Vehicle and one was the same as what you just got.. After my first old lady split she took a new Vega I got her so I figured since I had paid for that least I could do was give myself something new as well.. So I bought an brand new 1978 Chevy LUV. Drove the snot out of that truck. But in the after math I got a few other LUVs to flip, one like what you just got. It had a bad engine and a friend of mine and I pulled out the engine by hand. Nice light duty trucks. Enjoy it.
Joined 1-21-2011 TCA 13-68614
Kev, From The North Bluff Above Marseilles IL.
I think the warm weather has everyone outdoors enjoying it.
It hit 75 here today and should be about the same tomorrow. Tues a big cold front hits knocking temps down below normal and then back to mid-50's for rest of the week.
Have a nice evening all!
Regards, Roy
"IT's GOOD TO BE THE KING",by Mel Brooks
Charter Member- Tardis Train Crew (TTC) - Detroit3railers- Detroit Historical society Glancy Modular trains- Charter member BTTS
Good morning,
47 heading to 50 this afternoon then rain. I will take it for the last day of January.Got the twin motor B-unit running last night and will finish it off today. RT glad you finally got closed on the house.Bob, The clamp comes with the cylinder. Several years ago I built a third valve and lines down to the end of the loader to swing my snow plow blade. I will be using them to run the Grapple clamp. Bob, It is against the law in Illinois to hunt Beaver. You can’t even take road kill without a trapping license and state habitat stamp. They are considered furbearers.
Well better start something to eat.
Morning all up and wondering why lol. 43* suppose to be going to 66* today. I'll take it. May try Painting the roofs for the 607's & the 608 prewar Passenger cars today when it warms up some more. Would like to get them back on.
Need to get some yard work done here also will see how my arm is feeling will start and go from there. Still have leaves from the fall every-time we would start to get them it would either rain or they where to wet to deal with or we had DR. appointments for me or I was in the Hospital or recouping. Been a strange fall/winter that's for sure some good some not so good but in the end all turning out okay so far. Well time to get moving hello pills and then some breakfast.
Life's hard, even harder if your stupid John Wayne
http://rtssite.shutterfly.com/
Nice attachment for the tractor will make work easier for you Kevin
Another long week on the mountain. We are expecting some weather tomorrow. May get some more snow.
The antenna discussion has been very interesting for someone who works in radio astronomy and dabbles in amateur radio. I use an indoor antenna in the trailer w/ a dTV and it seems to work fine. I once lived in a mountainous area east of Phoenix and there were two guys in the park right next to each other w/ very different reception. One had 3 yagi antennas and got nothing. The other had a straight wire and got Phoenix and Tucson stations. The one guy joked that the other was 'stealing' his reception. As was mentioned, at these high frequecies it is about distance and line of sight, so location is everything. We have similar issues w/ our mobile units here on the mountain.
Kev - that looks to be a right handy attachment to the tractor. Will you need to add another hydraulic cylinder?
Chief - I guess since beavers are a rodent they are covered under your normal hunting license? Do you have to have a separate license to trap them? Time to make a nice felt hat I think.
Dennis - saw an 80's vintage GM R/S at a used car dealer near me recently and thought of you. Nce looking car.
BANKS!!
Here you go, will work for me and it is built to order for my bucket height. Me and Jim next door ordered them today. $340. each. We will mount them. Nice guy with a CAD system running a cutting table. Neat stuff. Could not do anything this nice on my own.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/182007901214?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuNFckWxuog
Good afternoon from beautiful sunny and warm (mid 60's) southern Ohio,
I took a long walk at work today checking out all the various buildings that I am ultimatly responsible for and it was so nice out. Would have been nice to be home and get the last of the lights off the house, but I'll be off monday for a bit and we'll see if I can get on the roof. Metal roofs are great, but get very slick with just a little moisture.
Roy- Your posts on antennas is really interesting, thanks for sharing
Banks-The market for bever pelts is down right now. For several years the big market was in China where the middle class was starting to get money and like the outward appearances of wealth so they were buying furs. As the China economy is slowing so is the market for the "trappings" (sorry couldn't resist the pun,) of wealth.
Rich-Some really great Mopars are at BJ
Joe-Let me know what you think of the bible study, it sounds good.
Doug-I'll call Menards and see what they have in stock.
About time for my relief to show up.
May God bless
Jim
Banks, in my opinion a new DTV is a better option and will be less frustrating than the converters. Any of the converters I had when they first came out, were higher quality, and were plentiful were a compromise at best. Now the DTVs are so cheap you will be a lot happier with it. The converters are very cheap but can be annoying. If you have an old amplifier and it still works you do not need to replace it. You only need the amplifier if you are a long ways from the transmit tower or lack line-of-site to the tower. A long way is over 50 miles.
Dennis, you are correct. You can get a new "old style" antenna but they can cost over $100 since they do not make as many of them anymore with so many folks on cable or satellite. If your old one is working do not replace it. If it has been decades like Doug M's and you have a signal problem and you do not see any physical damage to the antennas and all the mounts for the elements and where the elements are connected for the signal taps, replace the cable first. Cable in the weather can degrade over the years.
The larger the antenna the higher the "gain" of the antenna and the more focused the aperture of the antenna. Like having an amplifier.
Hello here,
Quick check in while undoing the tree...........
Fife.......The tree was fresh cut the week before Christmas. we are a tree exporting area and often see truckloads leaving before halloween. That makes them cut two months by Christmas. I use the old C-6 series lights(connected to a dimmer) and the tree is never left unattended with the lights on. This is the time of year that we have time to relax and enjoy the decorations in the evening. Wednesday evening the two littlest grandkids enjoyed running the trains. To busy in December getting ready.
Roy.............thanks for the info. I need to buy a digital converter as I have no digital TV. Even when we used antennas the signal was weak. I use an amplifier in the camper and it makes a world of difference. Any recomendations??
Best get moving.
Prayers forthose in need.
Mornin' boys. Sunny & 26 here in the Mid-Atlantic region. Laundry day. Gonna take it easy this weekend after busting my tail all week. SIL headed for classes at Harley's mother-ship, so that means I'll have the 4 year old for 4 straight, long days. We've been having fun with legos and a battery operated CAT train (toystate.com), but I'll probably throw some fastrack down on the carpet this week to entertain us.
Banks - P*L*E*A*S*E take that tree down. Only bad things can happen this long after Christmas.
On the subject of TVs, Why do we buy big screen TVs and the networks send us a half screen picture? Another example of someone else deciding what we want.
S.J.
Banks,
Most new TVs have an antenna connector on the back. Just hook your old antenna to it (assuming the cable from the roof is still ok) and select "antenna" on the TV "source" and then do a channel scan (Required - this is stupid but for some reason the tv needs to "see" each channel before accepting it"). Most all the stations still use the same transmit tower(s)/location so if the old antenna was pointed to get best reception for all local stations then you will not have to move it. There are some exceptions to this. The new DTV standards allow multiple stations (up to 6 I recall) to share the same frequency, yet still be independent. That is why you have channels 5.1, 5.2, etc. Multiple TV channels on what used to be just the one channel 5. I hooked my big antennas back up as we kept having cable outages and I was tired of not getting the news, etc. So now when the cable is on the fritz I just change the "source" to "antenna." Sometimes the picture from the antenna is better than what the cable company is retransmitting and all over the air signals are HD and have been since the switch some years back.
You should not need an amplifier if it worked before.
BTW. Something I have learned is when a channel after a scan on the antenna one day disappears, it is one of two things. The station had a problem and so they borrow a channel from a competitor (I.e. Channel 25.1 disappears and it was a common local channel - do a rescan and you may find the station over on channel 45.3 - but you have to rescan to find it.). The second is the stupid tv regularly loses some of its channel memory for some reason. So regularly re-scanning your antenna solves the problem. Here in the DFW region most of the stations share the same transmit tower so their transmit equipment is all next door to each other.
The FCC is preparing in the next year or so to start a process to auction unused or underused TV spectrum and then they will "repack" (rearrange) all the TV channels to get rid of all the unused TV spectrum (notice the huge gaps between all the stations, particularly in the old UHF bands). The new DTV standards allow the stations to be closer together or to share channels. The auctioned spectrum will be used for new mobile phone and data services, free/unlicensed (I.e. Where your home WIFI works today) and licensed (Cellular service).
Thus in the next few years you will/may see local/familiar antenna TV stations move the channel they operate on. Stations in the large metropolitan ares of the US have estimated sell-back values (profit to the channel owner) to the FCC of $200M to over $1B+ (NYC) and the station can still operate by sharing a channel with another station. Recent FCC spectrum auctions of spectrum for mobile use brought in over $45B to the US Treasury and that spectrum was not as good as TV stations spectrum.
As predicted, today was an extremely busy day. Fortunately, nothing kept me at work longer than usual and the wife and I had a nice night out together. We went to a British Pub; had some shepherd's pie and a nice porter beer. I hope you all are ready for the weekend.
Doug M. - I hae a DTV antenna that works great. I get all the big channels: ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX; four PBS stations; MeTV, GRIT, Laugh TV; Comet; five religious channels; and two local networks. There might be one or two more I am forgetting, but it is certainly more than I expected to get. I bought a Roku stick which gets me more due to us already having Hulu and Amazon Prime.
Good night,
Joe
Spent the day with the grandson after we picked him up from school. Weather was nice. Doug M, it would be nice to go to the wedding, but airfare and hotel expenses would be exorbitant. She will get a nice gift. I hope everyone has a good day.
Been working on the twin motor ALCO B-Unit tonight. See the work here.
http://cs.trains.com/ctt/f/95/t/254106.aspx
Banks, I am going to be building a grapple thumb to the bucket on the John Deere 3203 to help with moving logs and brush. Got fed up with the BS on all of the ones on the market and decided Jim from next door and I could do it for a lot less. He wants one to. Let me know if you want to know how it turns out. I think it will suit my needs just fine. Old back you know needs some help these days.
We talked to a guy about an hour south that has a CNC CAD driven machine and will make Jim and I thumbs for our buckets. So we are going to take a ride down to see him on Saturday AM and see what the deal is. Looks like I can add the thumb with all it needs for under $400. Hope so.
TGIF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Watching Undercover Boss and enjoying Tree for the final time this year. It is drooping and losing ornaments. Taking it down after breakfast tomorrow so it won't make Valentines day.
Buckeye......................Great Deal. How'd the talk with the boss turn out?
88..........I think health care is going to get worse before it gets better.
Kev..........whatcha gonna grapple?
Roy........interesting on the tv antennas. Cut the cable at our house since we're staying wih mom but would like to watch local news while I soak my aching bone in the hot tub. Never took the antenna down after we got cable about 35 years ago. Can you recomend an amplifier and digital converter?
Chief.......them furs worth anything????????
Gonna head t bed soon
Prayers for those in need.
Buckeye Riveter Jim, Yes, I'm getting my stamina back, but when I hit the hotel rooms I fall asleep fast. Still have some soreness in the kidney area but it is minor.
Jim,
Yes, I'm getting my stamina back, but when I hit the hotel rooms I fall asleep fast. Still have some soreness in the kidney area but it is minor.
That happens to most folks that are drunk.
Buckeye Riveter TGIF.............. Had a little talk with the boss today. I can't believe it, but the sun is shining in Buckeyland today and it is still January. Where are the grey clouds and the cold rains?
TGIF..............
Had a little talk with the boss today.
I can't believe it, but the sun is shining in Buckeyland today and it is still January. Where are the grey clouds and the cold rains?
That is because it is snowing all the time.
Roy, beavers are back. Some are not there anymore.
Trapped Wednesday [during the night or morning b4 light].
Trapped today. [well, during the night]
Both massive females with super long teeth.
Been busy for days and some nights. Tomorrow too. Maybe Sunday off. Next week is horrible except Tuesday.
Everyone hold it in the road.
Evening all!
Hit 70+ today. Blue skies. Supposed to continue through the weekend.
Glad the week is over. Relaxing with some train stuff/cleanup this weekend.
anjd - I have had a bout of vertigo. It is not pleasant.
DougM - go find an old TV antenna, as big as possible, and make sure it is a UHF and VHF antenna (long elements in a "V" and a lot of separate short elements in a line down the middle with a small "v" shaped element at one end) at a yard sale, junk store, or trash and put that up. Radio waves like the ones for HD TV do not care what the antenna looks like. Put it in your attic as high up as possible. As you have found, those new (even the powered ones) little DTV antennas do not work (I have tried and I am in the Dallas area where you used to deal with too much signal before they converted). You will have to pick up a small cylindrical transformer (75 ohms RG59 coax to the 300 ohm twin lead) like you used to have on the back of your TV to connect a cable to the antenna lead screws (if it does not already have one on it). I have done this twice now and it works great. The new DTV signals are much weaker than the old signals for some stupid reason. So that is why you need a big antenna.
Have a great evening all!
TGIF.....indeed!!
Off today....just got back from Trenton...had lunch with a close dear friend, hadn't had lunch with her since December 2014...ahhh what could've been...
After fighting a vertigo bout on Sunday and Monday, back at it....if it isn't rocks and crystals.....what the heck.....?????
Back home lubricating my Lionel UP 9100 diesel, C&O Berkshire and my Lionel 742 J Class N&W while watching the Barrett Jackson auction...maybe time for a nap...gotta clean up the living room and bed room later...
I am the monster in your head...And I thought you'd learn by now, It seems you haven't yet.I am the venom in your skin --- Breaking Benjamin
Celebrating 18 years on the CTT Forum.
Buckeye Riveter......... OTTS Charter Member, a Roseyville Raider and a member of the CTT Forum since 2004..
Jelloway Creek, OH - ELV 1,100 - Home of the Baltimore, Ohio & Wabash RR
TCA 09-64284
Aloha. Sunny today! Wasabi peas for lunch today - will clear my sinuses. But it's still cold. I love those finds, Buckeye (glad you are feeling better). Jim, Kev is right about Menards' stock though the one in my town carries 'everything' - the mgr. must be a train buff. They are always well-stocked it seems. Hope you get invited to the wedding, MikeC! Wow, Doug, that roundup would've been something to see! DJ, if that sort of snow clearance was here, heads would roll. Usually, even after a giant storm, the main roads are clear within a few hours...
I've had similar adventures in insurance, Brent. Latest'pre-approved' claim: denied, appealed, denied, escalated, reviewed, approved, rejected because it was in a former fiscal year - that sort of hilarity.
I've spent the past week experimenting with just about every DTV antenna I could find locally. None of them work well. I might get one channel or two. Guess I will try to creep up on the roof and check out the 'dead' antenna and see if it is resurrectable. Don't really want to though because it would be a long way down if I fell off. This might be worth paying someone else to check out...
Doug Murphy 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...' Henry V.
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