Member postings for Samsaranda

In the news this morning, National Grid are stating that they are confident that they will be able to keep the lights on this winter in the UK. I am afraid that I don’t buy into their optimism, just recently, during the heatwave, we were in danger of running out of power so we were forced to purchase an amount of electricity from Belgium, via one of the cross channel cable links, the Belgians made us pay through the nose for the small amount that we used, the price paid per megawatt was an all time record high.

There doesn’t appear to be any policy for development of future power provision here in the UK, as usual everything appears to be a shambles. There is this vision put forward that renewables will save the day, if only that could be true. Europe is slowly being strangled by its gas supplies from Russia being gradually diminished, Europe relies heavily on gas to generate electricity, so with their supplies of gas being strangled I doubt that there will be any surplus electricity for the UK to use via the undersea cables this winter. Our power generation capabilities run at maximum quite often throughout the winter, our power generation frequently runs on a knife edge and we come close to serious power outages. If we cannot rely on surplus generation in Europe this winter we will be in serious trouble with power generation, I understand that the few remaining coal powered generators have been given more time before they are phased out, a contradiction of the recent energy statement made to the rest of world concerning our plans to combat climate change. I think the retention of the coal powered stations is certainly common sense in the times that we now find ourselves.

Looking forwards, which is something the energy industry should be doing, there is the headlong rush to bring in electric vehicles which will need a large increase in the ability to generate and distribute energy via an infrastructure that will by necessity need to be upgraded. Perhaps the need for more energy provision has become self limiting by price, the forecast is that an average household will be paying in the region of £500 for energy, that’s gas and electric, for the month of January which is of course one of the most expensive months energy wise. I fear that many families will struggle with those sort of increases, many of us are on pensions and such huge increases in costs we will struggle with.

I made the decision, about five years ago, to use some of our savings to invest in solar power, we had panels installed on our south facing roof that have the capacity to generate 4kwh. I subsequently made a decision to have batteries installed so that we could store the solar generated power that we didn’t use, we now have batteries that can store 12 kWh. On a sunny day such as those we enjoyed recently,we have generated on a good day, 26kwh which means that with the batteries we have enough stored energy to go through the night and we still have about a quarter of the batteries capacity left to start the next day. This means that for most of the days during June and July we have been self sufficient for electricity, during the month of June we drew only 19 kWh during the day time tariff and again coincidentally 19 kWh during the night time off peak tariff. Calculating the cost at the current day plus night rates we used £10.00 of electricity for the whole month, in fact our monthly standing charge was considerably more than the cost of our electricity used. Unfortunately this only works when the sun shines so winter means we will draw considerably more energy from the grid, I have the ability to charge the batteries using off peak electric, we are on an Economy 7 tariff, so throughout the dark days of winter I store 12 kWh of electricity which has cost exactly half that of the cost of daytime electricity, so every time the cost of electricity rises then the cost of installing my panels and batteries becomes even more cost effective.

At this point in time if there is a power cut then we cannot draw energy from our batteries so we are without power. The solar system has to be engineered such that in the event of a power cut the system is isolated so that power cannot be fed into the grid, a safety measure to prevent electrocution of any unsuspecting tradesman working on the grid, however it is possible with right equipment to isolate the house from the grid when there is a power outage and use the power stored in the batteries. There is a cost involved in this modification and I need to consider whether it is worth the cost for the amount of power cuts that we are likely to suffer. It looks as though we are all very likely to suffer power cuts this winter because when it gets cold it is doubtful whether National Grid will have the resources to hand to keep the lights on. Dave W

Martin,

Wet starts are not that uncommon and are spectacular at night, and as you say flames extend to the tail of the aircraft and beyond, very disconcerting the first time you see one. Dave W

PatJ,

when I was in the US some years ago I visited the Chicago Museum of Science and Technology, a very impressive place. Among their exhibits were a complete German U-Boat captured during the Second World War and in the basement of the museum building they had reconstructed a working coal mine, extremely impressive. I would definitely put that museum on an equal footing with our Science Museum located in London. There are other museums in the US that I would like to visit, particularly your aerospace museums which are among the best in the world, my interest in aerospace is because I served as a technician in our Air Force. At the age of 75 I fear that there is little prospect of returning to visit more museums although my granddaughter who is cabin crew on British Airways has offered to come with me and we could fly there using her subsidised travel, she is always taking holidays in the US, driving down Route 66 or visiting the the Country Music Festivals in Nashville, well something to think about. Dave W

When I was on Brittanias the engine tradesmen used to wash the compressors on the Proteus engines by using kerosene when the engine was dry run, one day there was an almighty flame out of the jet pipe as presumably static lit the kerosene vapour, aircraft was on jacks in the hangar at the time, not the best situation. Dave W

Jon, I served in the Air Force from 64 till 86 and during that time I remember using from barrels clearly marked WD 40, my understanding was that the formula was first used in the 50’s on the Thor rockets which were located outside in all weathers and the WD40 was for protecting it from the effects of weather, I think I remember it was originally called Rocket WD 40 but the “Rocket” was dropped. There was of course the full range of PX’s in the Services used for protection, one that springs to mind was PX 3, if I remember rightly, and that was used on wire rope slings and made them really mucky to handle and was a red colour. Probably find that all the old formulations used were found to be carcinogenic, so many products that I came into contact with during my service turned out that way. Dave W

The Armed Services use WD40 and purchase it in 50 gallon drums, one use is on helicopters which are literally drenched in it I presume to ward off moisture particularly sea water and inhibit corrosion. It must have proved it’s worth for the Armed Services to purchase so much. Dave W

John, your comment about aircon in an outside shopping mall in Dubai doesn’t surprise me, I was out there 55 years ago, before it was the Emirates and was known as Trucial Oman, it was completely undeveloped at that time. Our accommodation on Sharjah airbase was air conditioned to 72F which when you have been working outside in temperatures well over 100F was like walking into deep freeze, it felt as though the sweat froze on your body. Our highest recorded temperature at that time was 128F, I can see where they are coming from with the air on at an outside mall, just think what that does to carbon levels, makes you think why we should sacrifice in our country when others are being so flippant about their carbon emissions. Dave W

Peter, sorry to hear about your hearing problems, my comment about asymmetric hearing was somewhat flippant, to lose your hearing when you are a choir member must be extremely frustrating. My hearing loss is also somewhat asymmetric for two different causes, when I was 21 was posted to the Middle East and for 12 months worked with very noisy jet engined aircraft with no hearing protection provided, so from that time have had a moderate to severe loss of high frequency hearing, some years later a pressurisation accident further damaged the hearing in my left ear, since then further age deterioration has required ever stronger hearing aids.
My wife has lost all her hearing and is now profoundly deaf through having meningitis in her 20’s, this left her with epilepsy and progressively deteriorating hearing, she finally lost all her hearing about 12 years ago. She was referred to St. Thomas’s Hospital in London and was fitted with a cochlear implant which is so successful that she continually tells me to turn down the sound on our tv because I have it too loud for her. For those who are not familiar with cochlear implants it is inserted under the skin behind the ear and an electrode is routed to the inner workings of the ear and bypasses the cochlear and delivers electrical impulses directly to the auditory nerve and so to the hearing part of the brain. The sound is converted to electrical impulses by a microprocessor worn on the ear like a hearing aid and impulses are transmitted through the skin to the receiver that is accommodated by a recess formed in the bone of the skull. Cochlear implants are so expensive to the NHS that adults are only fitted with one whereas children will receive two, the implant for my wife was truly life changing.
To keep the theme of deafness in the family going we have a Turkish Angora cat, who is one of four cats that we have, who is totally deaf, he is always with me following me around like a dog, when I am in my workshop he comes and lays on the bench next to my lathe, he is perfectly content to just be with me, and he is intelligent enough to understand signs that we use when we need him to do things. Deafness can be a curse but it is a challenge that you just have to accept and get on with life. Dave W

Peter, asymmetric hearing aids, new one for me. Dave W

Clive the hearing aids that I have, made by Phonak but supplied by the NHS, the only way to switch them off is as you are doing and that is just open the battery case. I find that my new aids, had them a fortnight now, eat batteries, they last about a week and they are new to me they are 312 as against the old ones which were 13, differentiated by different colour. Dave W

David, I have worn hearing aids for about 25 years now and I have never taken any notice of the instruction, it doesn’t seem to have any effect on the batteries performance as the aid fires up as soon as you insert the battery. Never done any harm to my hearing aids. Dave W

Mike , thanks for posting your Dad’s photos of Sharjah, not many people have heard of it let alone been there, the mountains that are in the photos will be the high mountain range that divides Sharjah State from Oman. The mountains play a significant part in the climate of the area, the prevailing winds blow in from the Indian Ocean and consequently all their moisture falls as rain on the Omani side of the mountains, the Sharjah side is dry as a bone, in the twelve months that I spent in Sharjah it rained on one day only, fairly typical. Muharraq Island (Bahrain) although only 200 miles from Sharjah has a very different climate, in the winter months the Air Force there went into standard blue uniforms whereas at Sharjah we stayed in Kakhi uniforms all year round because it was much hotter. Out of the two stations I much preferred Sharjah to Muharraq but when I arrived in Sharjah there were only two hundred of us there and it was just a desert airfield, we used to get wild camels wandering along the runway and they had to be chased off sometimes when aircraft wanted to land. It was certainly an experience living on a desert airfield for twelve months. Dave W

I grew up in Malaysia in the 50’s, temperature there was 90F every day, so close to the equator seasons didn’t vary much unless it was Monsoon and then it would rain every day about four o’clock in the afternoon, and boy did it rain, absolutely torrential but soon dried up afterwards, could be quite humid though. Learnt how to cope with high temperatures then because life just carried on, no closing schools cause it got too hot, we just got on with life. Dave W

I spent 12 months in what used to be Trucial Oman but is now United Arab Emirates, stationed at a place called Sharjah, was there in 67, one day in August we recorded a temperature of 128 F which converts to 53.3 C. Looking back now I can’t believe that I worked outside all day in those temperatures servicing aircraft, we only wore a pair of shorts and desert boots, probably accounts for the skin cancer that I suffered. Temperature here on the Sussex Coast yesterday was 35 C outside and in the house we registered 28C, house faces due south so in the sun all day, my solar panels also face due south so generating about 26 kWh a day and with 12 kWh battery storage in this heatwave we are actually self sufficient on electricity not having to draw any from the Grid whilst the sun shines, wish the sun shone all year round like this and my energy bills would be zero, wouldn’t be able to stand the heat for that long though. Dave W

Oil leaks seem to be a thing with Warco geared headstock lathes, I have a BV 20 and if I fill the headstock more than halfway up the sight glass then oil seems to work its way out I suspect from the spindle seals but it’s difficult to find precisely where, good luck trying to sort your leak. Dave W

Lee, nowadays Japanese engineering, particularly in motor vehicles is held up as the standard to aim for in production, mainly due to their focus on quality in engineering production. Dave W

I used a device on my car in the 60’s it was called the GM Manifold Modifier, ( developed by a gentleman called George Mangoletsi if I remember correctly ) it consisted of a plate shaped to fit between the carburettor and the inlet manifold, it incorporated an annular groove that formed an undercut of a small protrusion that extended into the inlet manifold, this annular groove was connected by a small drilling which admitted air from outside into the inlet manifold. The purpose of the device was to supposedly mix air from the groove with any neat fuel that was running down the walls of the carburettor into the inlet manifold, carburettors on standard cars were notoriously inefficient in those days in producing a homogeneous mixture, if you wanted an efficient carburettor then you threw away the standard device and graduated to such as Weber or Dell Orto for better performance. The GM device actually weakened the fuel air mixture by the introduction of the air from outside and in the process produced a more homogeneous mixture which smoothed the running of the engine. I had one fitted on a side valve engined 1954 Ford Popular and later another on a 1970 Ford Cortina 1300, I remember that on both cars the engines ran smoother with the device fitted and there was a small increase in overall fuel economy so in my case I was convinced that there was some engineering reason for the device and it wasn’t Snake Oil. Dave W

I am with Peter on buying known and trusted brands of goods, for example look at the Hotpoint saga with tumble dryers bursting into flames, a significant proportion of their product had fires due to poor design. We have a Bosch washing machine and Bosch tumble drier, to date I haven’t heard of any fires with that brand, there may well have been some but statistically the number is probably zero or so low as to be insignifican, there are many more examples of similar problems with cheaper makes. I find Dave’s comments to be very cynical, I am now in my mid seventies and my life experiences have drawn me towards spending my money on quality items and products, like Peter. In respect of shunning all things Chinese because they started Covid, my eldest daughter suffered extreme effects with the virus, it gave her Encaphalitis, Pneumonia and a Stroke along with heart damage, she is still affected and receives constant hospital treatment, the senior consultants that treat her have on more than one occasion stated that they now realise that Covid was created in a laboratory, take from that what you will, I am also very minded to avoid Chinese products whenever I can, but nowadays becoming increasingly difficult to do so. In respect of the comments about rebadging products this is by no means a new phenomenon, I dabble with Stationary engines and within the brands as long ago as 1900 companies were buying engines from a supplier and selling them with their own brand name. Dave W

Tim, I remember bathtime when I was youngster back in the 50’s, my abiding memory is of having to sit on undissolved washing soda crystals when getting into the bath, funny what memories we have stored away in our brains. Dave W

What did I do yesterday, I set about restoring the surface finish on a bracket that holds the filter unit used when replenishing the water in my Koi pond. The bracket has been outside for about three years now and has started to corrode badly from the edges. The bracket was obviously finished with a powder coated paint process and anywhere there was a change in section of the metal, ie a sharp corner, then corrosion was forming. Why do manufacturers use powder coating finishes when they obviously cannot contend with weather outside. In the photos, the first one shows the bracket before I stripped the finish off, the second shows the bracket with the finish stripped and shows the extent of the corrosion. The finish was removed using Nitromors paint remover, a horrible process especially when the Nitromors has a tendency to penetrate through Nitrile gloves. Todays job is to neutralise the corrosion as best I can and then etch prime ready for a finish topcoat. My personal opinion is that powder coating should be banned and we should revert to decent spray applied finishing processes.