Friday, March 30, 2018

Easter Weekend, Late Snow, Another "End Of An Era" Picture

And since we're the  most "centrally located", we'll be hosting "The Family's" Easter Sunday dinner. The Kids will be bringing over their BBQ grill, and will prepare Carne Asada. The family's Easter dinner is a pot luck affair, and since we're hosting it, we're not expected to provide anything. We have the little fridge stocked with beer and soda anyway, as all who come here are welcomed with beverages and/or food.

Wednesday morning, we woke up to this.





Started as itty-bitty flakes and progressed to large, wet flakes over the course of 90 minutes or so. It was a good day to stay in and just tinker on stuff, and do some general house cleaning in preparation for Easter Sunday.

I went through every box in the garage, and sorted Supra parts by where they go on the car. One big box has all the rear suspension bits and the new braided stainless brake lines for the rear of the car; another big box has "Front of the car" stuff, like all the belts and hoses, the new flow-tested and matched fuel injectors, all the fiddly bits to replace the injectors, the new timing belt and tensioner, the new water pump, fuel filter, upper ("air box") and lower ("ram tubes") intake manifold gaskets, and so on. A third big box is reserved for stuff I'll be shortly taking off the car to attend to, like the wiper arms, window trim, and various interior pieces. Besides the unknown history of some of the items on the car, I have a YUGE amount of cosmetic items to take care of.

My "End Of An Era" pix represent a permanent dismantling of a section of my Field Day equipment. These were the lines we used to guy the tent we operated out of. If you didn't have your tent up by 1000, you'd better start looking for extra people to help, as once the winds come up it could easily double the amount of time required to set up your tent, AND severely try your patience.


I was cleaning and organizing that corner of the garage, and took a side trip to pull the stakes out of their disintegrating storage bag and unwind the line.



The orange colored bits are a type of DayGlo caution tape.

This is about half the number of stakes I have on hand. Not too long ago this would have been about one-quarter of my inventory, but these things get lost, grow legs, get given away, loaned away, or don't get pulled out of the ground where you last "Put Down Stakes". These particular stakes are listed as an antenna guying anchors, and I used to be able to get them dirt cheap. Literally "$10 per Dozen", and sometimes twice that when they were on sale. Now they go for $70 for 76 stakes, almost a buck each.



These things are indestructible! They made out of some unknown aluminum alloy, and heat treated to fairly high hardness, and I've never seen one break, even when concreted in to the ground, they'll just bend, not snap.

As far as the line goes, it was 5~20 years old, each line was multi-section, it had been soaked in both salt and fresh water while under tension, rubbed across rocks and other sharp pointy stuff, and in general treated like doo-doo.



Bye-bye, line, and thank you for your 20 years of faithful service. Some of the stakes will get used to anchor the far end of my ground radials, and the rest will patiently wait until called again.

Hope you all have a joyous Easter.

14 comments:

  1. It is hard to let the past go. But I have purging is good for moving onto the next step.
    Have a great holiday!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not really "purging" anything....just repurposing because they'll never be used for their original purpose again....

      Delete
  2. I guess all good things come to an end, eventually. You never know what the future holds though, maybe some day you'll be doing that kind of thing again....

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm sure I'll operate Field Day again, just not with my son in the old tent we used. If I don't operate Field Day this year with the Northern Colorado Amateur Radio Club, then I'll operate just satellite from the backyard, and put DN70 on the birds!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Times change, and so do we... And I'd change that line out... LOL

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 20 year old nylon/dacron line of questionable integrity goes right in the trash!

      And I've always been big on reusing equipment that no longer fills it's original purpose.

      Besides, these things are the COOLEST "tent stakes" I've ever seen. Drive them in at the correct angle, and they will NOT pull out.

      Delete
  5. We chased that storm for two days but didn't catch it until the Great Smokey Mtns in NC. Hoping for good weather when we start back tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Happy Easter Jim.
    It was 82 here yesterday and forcast to be the same today. The skeeters and wasps are out in full force.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Happy Easter, Brig. It's been 50's/60's here during the day and 20's at night.

      The BBQ is going, my stepson is blazing away with his World Class Carne Asada, and our daughter-in-law is flying the rest of the kitchen.

      Family should be arriving momentarily.....

      Delete
  7. Replies
    1. Thank you, Parson. I hope your Easter was happy and joyous.

      It wasn't cold enough for that snow to stay around more than a couple of days. All our in-laws and the locals I've met say that's the way it is here. We'll get 2"~5" of snow, and it's gone in less than a week. Huge snowstorms and weeks of below zero weather can happen here, but it's even more unusual than the warm dry winter we just had.

      Delete

Keep it civil, please....

Gloomy, Gritty, Grey Day

 At 1700 local it's as described in the headline; 30*F, 88% RH, completely overcast, snowing like crazy (small flakes, but lots of them)...