Member postings for Samsaranda

I wish that I could be that organised, my wife is fed up with me forgetting my passwords so she now demands that I tell her the passwords when I change them, she keeps them written down in her Filofax. I am just as chaotic in my workshop, always keeping hold of something because it might come in useful some time, every so often she decides that it is time to sort the workshop and we spend a day reorganising it, I am sure that she gets some sort of perverse pleasure from being in control, but I suppose that is a wife thing. Dave W

Mike we had success with a hedgehog taking up residence in a hedgehog house that I built. The hedgehog came to us from our local vets, it had been injured and taken to the vets who patched her up and were looking for somewhere reasonably sheltered to release her. We released her in the garden and it was Autumn time so we kept leaving feed out for her every night by the house that I had built, the food disappeared every day so we assumed that she was still around. As the weather got colder we put out handfuls of hay by her food every night in front of the hedgehog house, each morning the food was gone and the hay had been dragged into the house, this carried on until midwinter when we stopped putting out hay as the house was full by then. Anyway the story resumes in the Spring and one day she was outside of the hedgehog house with 5 baby hoglets, almost as if she was showing them off to us. We didn’t have any cameras to record nocturnal activities but I am sure that we would have some amazing shots if we had. Dave W

In the 60’s I was in the Air Force and a stone bottle containing mercury, part of a freight consignment, got smashed in the freight bay of one of our Brittania aircraft. The mercury very quickly found its way out through the aircraft lower pressure skin, there were a serious of holes where it swiftly made an amalgam, dissolving the alloy of the aircraft skin. The underside of the aircraft required an amount of repairs to remove the damage caused. Mercury can cause a lot of problems. Dave W

Bill, I stand corrected, it seems that I believed the myth. It still stinks though. Dave W

I think the reason that WD 40 doesn’t smell too pleasant is that one of its constituents is fish oil. Dave W

Just renewed my car insurance with as quoted by the insurer “a five star defaqto expert rated” insurer. Last year the premium was £244, this year £257, I have no complaints and am perfectly happy with cost which includes a discount for 13 years no claim discount, the prices are very much dependent on the area in which you live, the nearer to large city conurbations the higher premiums generally become. A strange anomaly that I have come across with some insurers, my own included, is that as a 75 year old if I insure for myself as the sole driver then the premium is higher than if my wife is also on the policy as another named driver, she is also the same age as myself. My wife still has a current driving licence but prefers to be a passenger nowadays which suits me, can anyone explain why insurance companies reduce the premium if there are two named drivers on a policy as opposed to a single driver, it doesn’t seem logical to me.

In respect of Chris and his penalty for a non claim it appears that most insurers follow the same process so it appears that if you have the misfortune to scrape your car and fund the repairs out of your own pocket telling your insurer will cost you dearly even though they are not required to fund any repairs. If not telling them then that contravenes the contract that you have taken out with your insurer depends in all probability how you interpret the complex insurance document they have given you. It is so easy with the way insurance terms are written to find yourself being accused of insurance fraud. Dave W

Nick, you have highlighted the problem of parallel earths where a potential can build up, historically people have died from the lethal potential built up between parallel earths, it has happened in the aviation world where ground power units and mains electricity are used on the same aircraft. I have witnessed big fat blue sparks passing across gaps between two separate equipments connected to separate earth systems.

in respect of new fibre cable systems, my local town Eastbourne is currently undergoing a complete system install, the contractors who are digging the trenches are leaving behind many problems, they backfill the trench then top it off with tarmac, unfortunately where there were nice level slabbed pavements they end up with a continuous ribbon of soft uneven tarmac and the roads now have many more potholes where the inadequate backfill and tarmac is sagging. I think that we should be careful what we wish for. Dave W

Grandson is a Fireman and they have special procedures to deal with electric vehicle battery fires, they can be nasty and certainly not easy to control or extinguish. Many years ago at work we had a Nicad battery for our test equipment suddenly burst into flames on the charging bench, plenty of acrid fumes. The fault turned out to be one of the connecting wires linking the cells had chafed on the metal case and shorted out, when it went there was no stopping it. It must be a nightmare to be involved in an accident with an electric vehicle and potentially the battery pack could ignite, I have a number of Lithium batteries connected to my solar panels for storage of unused electricity, I can store 12 kWh of power, I am aware of their unpredictability for spontaneously igniting so they are located outside of the main house in a corner of our conservatory. Dave W

Have found that recent purchases of “Pyrex” oven dishes develops chips very easily and is no comparison to older traditional Pyrex oven ware. I assume that the chips are probably the first stage of the process whereby the item lets go by exploding! Dave W

Original drawings for Allchin 1 1/2” scale traction engine list 3/32 thread, assumed they meant 3/32 x 48 whit, this thread is used on the oil delivery to the front wheel hubs, this is very small and at 48 tpi is very delicate. Dave W

Definitely use an instrument to find buried cables in your walls, about 30 years ago I was refitting our kitchen and believed that I knew where all the buried cables and pipes were, Sods Law I found a cable buried where there was no reason to suspect one, I was drilling with a mains powered drill and suddenly there was an almighty bang and flash of light, I had hit a ring main cable. With luck the drill had penetrated dead centre on the twin and earth cable thereby sending most of the current straight to earth, the blow was powerful enough to destroy the main input fuse, requiring the electricity company to attend for the renewal. My masonary bit that I was using had vaporised, I considered myself extremely lucky to have not suffered any injury, the wife was out when it happened, you can imagine what transpired when she came home!!! Dave W

I think the points raised by PatJ point to a society that is in some ways more motivated by financial gain than ours, the provision of the mental health services to which he refers are a great burden on taxation if provided by the state, unfortunately where they went many years ago our society has gone some way down that same path, fortunately guns are not freely in circulation in our society so we do not have the mix of mental health problems with guns, our stringent gun regs are intended to prevent those with mental health issues being in control of any firearms, doesn’t always work as recent events have demonstrated. Dave W

We used tungham pipe as well as stainless steel on aircraft hydraulic systems, as far as I can remember our pipes all used flared couplings, don’t remember making any hydraulic pipes with olives, our system pressures were mainly 4,000 psi. Dave W

It seems that conditions in the US cities have got a lot worse than when I was last there in the 90’s, glad that I no longer have to go there for the company that I worked for. Hopper’s reference to bullet-proof backpacks took me back to my own schooldays, I spent a lot of my childhood in what was then Malaya but now called Malaysia, it was in the 50’s and during the Malayan Emergency, our version of a Vietnam war, we used to be ferried to school in specially prepared 3 tonners provided by the army and with military personnel providing guards. It was a bit different to what exists in the US it was a war between the British Army and communist insurgents, thankfully the British Army won eventually. It’s good to hear how other folks have to live and realise how good our country really is and also that there are good people wherever you end up living. Dave W

I think the olive causes a uniform compression of the pipe under the circumference of the olive, the term “bite into the pipe” is probably a little misleading and describes a brutal action. Because the copper is malleable then it is easily compressed by the olive, because the pipe can only distort inwards which ensures that it will seal against the olive once the olive has been tightened by the coupling nut. Dave W

PatJ, I sympathise with the situation that you are in, the only two cities in the US that I have visited where I felt really threatened were Chicago, particularly the south side, and New Orleans. In New Orleans we did the tourist bit and visited Bourbon Street at night, I felt that the racial tension was so strong that you could cut it with a knife, it was a long time ago I visited there back in the 1970’s. My understanding of the origins of the second amendment to your constitution that allows you all to carry guns dates back to immediately after the war of independence and the fear of the government at the time that your country was vulnerable because it didn’t have a large strong army. Their solution was to amend the constitution to allow arms to be freely available so that the government could if necessary raise armed militias to supplement the army if the need arose. It seems that the thinking behind that has got totally lost, here in the UK we have very strict gun laws, I have shotguns that I use for clay pigeons shooting, I do not shoot anything living, I have to keep my guns locked away so that only I have access to them and there are strict regulations when transporting them in public places. Thankfully gun crime is very low here and very few people die in shootings. I can’t imagine what it is like being able to hear gunfire fairly regularly when you are in your own home. Glad to see that you have got your escape plan in place with a place to go when you retire. I must admit that during my visits to the US I found some cities that felt a lot safer than others, Madison in Wisconsin, Sacramento in California, I found the rural areas that I visited very friendly and I always felt safe and relaxed.

Don’t know where PatJ lives but I am glad our village is nowhere like it. I guess it’s the other side of the Pond, been to the States a couple of times and I can vouch for the fact that cities like Chicago make me worry for my safety but in the small towns people are totally different ,really friendly especially when they find out you are from England. Dave W

Glad my experience with Chinese retailers is reinforced by others experiences. Dave W

In our area we are currently into the 6th week of a bin strike and have been without our bins being emptied for the duration. My wife and I are not physically able to take our bins to the kerbside collection point as we live in a cul de sac along a 50 metre path so we get what is termed an assisted collection, that means the binmen come to the front of our property and collect the bins. The Strike has now been extended until the 25 th June. Today the District Council announced via their website that their would be a Pop Up Waste Collection in the next village but residents would have to bring their waste to the site and it would function from 8.00 am till 4.00 pm. There was no way that I could manage to get our waste to the next village so was resigned to the fact that we would soldier on with storing our waste, but at 8.30 there was a knock at the door and it was a neighbour from three houses down, they are a young couple who have lived there for about 8 years, he had taken his wheelie bin to the collection point in his estate car and had come to ask if we would like him to take ours there for emptying. We don’t know the couple that well, we speak when passing but that’s all, I was surprised that they thought about us and was very glad to accept his offer. I suppose that it’s not surprising really because we live in a relatively small village and their is a village spirit, in the past I have served as a Parish Councillor, School Governor and Chaired our Village Hall Charity for 30 years. Anyway my faith in Human Kindness is now reinforced by my neighbours kind action, surprising how people pull together when there are adverse conditions.

David, reimbursement from PayPal is not foolproof, I was scammed by a Chinese seller for an item that cost about £20, the seller sent an item that was worthless and not even related to what was advertised, PayPal sided with the seller and refused a refund. The seller had advertised the item on Facebook, learnt my lesson and do not respond to any adverts placed on Facebook, treat them all as if they are scams. Dave W