World's Smallest V-12

This is astounding! I've built lots of things "From Scratch". but nothing like this.
My Dad was a Tool and Die maker, and I know my way around a machine shop, but this just blows me away.
I can't read Italian, but looking at the video, I could tell what the captions meant by seeing what part of the engine he was working on.
Amazing testament to one man's patience.

And here's another guy who makes RUNNING scale-model engines.

70 Years Ago Today.....

We got blindsided while the politicians fiddled away.
Let us pray it never happens again.
And keep your powder dry!

New Additions to the Bookshelf

The other day as I was cleaning out an office for somebody who's no longer with the company (looong story) I happened to find a well-worn paperback called "Term Limits" by an author I'd never heard of, Vince Flynn. I read a few pages, thought it started off pretty well, and tossed it on my desk to read later.
I really enjoyed it!
Then the other night when I was picking up some prescriptions for the Mrs, I spotted a NEW Vince Flynn book in the rack by the pharmacy, so I grabbed it. It's called "American Assassin", and was an equally good read.
WELL.....one thing led to another, I cruised on over to Amazon, and now I have ALL of Vince Flynn's books, with the exception of "Kill Shot", which is due out in February.
Vince writes "political thrillers", and does them very well. His technical accuracy is second only to Tom Clancy, his characters are well-developed, the writing is fast-paced, and I'm really happy I saved that copy of "Term Limits" from going into the trash!
Check him out.....you'll probably enjoy his stories as much as I do!

You Might Be An "Occupier" If.....

1. You moved to a tent in Zucotti Park because you always wanted a nicer place to live.

2. You quit your “job” to attend the protests, but your mother continues your allowance and now does the dishes herself.

3. You are confused that you can’t find the Wal-Mart on Wall Street.

4. You are enraged that the taxpayers had to bail out Wall Street even though you’ve
never paid taxes or know anyone who has.

5. You hate capitalism but expect a capitalist to provide you a good paying job with great benefits.

6. You think Socialism has something to do with Facebook, and Capitalism has to do with Washington , DC .

7. You demand a job, forgetting that you were fired for not doing the one you had.

8. You despise the rich even though they pay your share of taxes.

9. You are very clear in your protest objectives:

“Screw the USA ”
“Save the ______ (fill in the blanks – whales, spotted owls, sturgeon)”
“Self-realization is the first step toward self-actualization”
“Down with … uh… everything!”

10. You think 99 weeks of unemployment is the least the government should give you for the
3 months you put in at McDonalds.

11. You drove a Toyota to the protest, you’re plugged in to a Sony Walkman, talk over a Samsung phone, and play a Yamaha keyboard in a punk band, but you are incensed over jobs being outsourced to other countries.

12. You demand your rights, but can’t quite recall where they are enumerated.

13. You believe you have a right to every penny earned, but the rich do not, and you base your claim on equality.

14. You believe a man is greedy if he worked his way up to CEO on 16-hour days, runs a company employing thousands, and made $10 million last year, but is not greedy if he made $50 million last year for making two motion pictures or shooting a ball through a hoop.

15. You left behind trash, feces, urine-soaked sod, discarded clothing, and used condoms after your “Save the Environment” protest.

16. You know you’re not a Socialist because you stick pretty much to yourself at parties.

17. You don’t pay taxes, but somehow that’s more than your “fair share”.

18. You hate the rich, but hope you win the lottery.

New Show Tonight on the Military Channel..."Triggers"

And I've already got our DVR set to record it.

Looks to be pretty good from the previews. Cam & Company were talking about it last night on the Sirius Patriot Channel, and it's one show I don't want to miss!

Military Channel: Triggers

"Super 8", "Frequency", and Ham Radio

We just finished watching "Super 8" tonight, and there's a town meeting scene in it where an old guy tells the Sheriff that there's been a lot of unusual interference caused by military chatter on his Ham Radio. The Sheriff has everybody bring any and all receivers they own in, and they start monitoring all the frequencies the old Ham gave them. In one scene they show a remarkably well preserved Heathkit Seneca, and they all listen to the Air Force talk about "Operation Walking Distance".
Only one problem.....the Seneca is a TRANSMITTER.
In "Frequency", the character played by James Caviezel talks to his dead father on HF (short-wave) using a Heathkit SB-301.
Only one problem....the SB-301 is a RECEIVER.
Now when my son and I saw "Frequency", I spotted it right away and mentioned it to him, and he laughed and said "Dad, only YOU would spot that!".
Tonight when I told my wife the Seneca was a transmitter, she laughed and said "Jim, only YOU would know that!".
Yeah, but if I know it, there's gotta be other people who know it.
Oh, well....what can we expect from Hollyweird.....

Home Owner Stuff.....

And yes, being in our own home, and NOT underwater with the mortgage, is one of the things we gave thanks for this year.
Anywhoo...We repainted the bathroom earlier this year, and the paint just hasn't been holding up. We've had some peeling, and other spots have turned 'grainy' on us. I had to pull the plastic grille off the bathroom ceiling exhaust fan today to clean it, and as long as I had it off, I dropped the motor down to clean it, too.
Then I decided to check how #1 step-son vented it when he installed it a few years ago, and found out it's NOT properly vented.
DUH!
He just mounted the motor box in the ceiling, and let it vent into the attic........
Double DUH!
He has a tendency to not do things the right way, and this time it's causing some problems. The moist air from the bathroom just goes into the attic, and raises the humidity to the point that the 'button board' (we have plaster walls and ceilings) has absorbed it. It's not "dripping wet", or even "wet" that I could tell or feel, but all that hot, humid air from 4 people taking showers can't be doing any good up there! I don't think it's a problem in the summer time, as we have both a wind-turbine and a powered ventilator on the roof to draw the hot air out, and the moisture along with it. But in the winter time, the powered ventilator is shut off, and the moist air from the bathroom just collects up there.
NOT good!
So, I went to the local Big Box home improvement place, and bought the 3.25"x10" to 6" round transition that screws on to the motor box, 8' of 6" flex duct, and an outlet to go on the side of the house.
Tomorrow I'll mark the stucco and start making the hole to mount the outlet into, and then I'll have to drop the motor box, screw the transition on, and run the flex hose to the outlet. That should vent the moist air to the outside, and after the attic dries back out, we can repaint the bathroom.

Happy Thanksgiving

I realized I should be a lot more upbeat today than the previous post implied.
I've had a great life so far, and I'm very thankful to still be here after some of the places I've been, things I've seen, and stunts I've pulled.
I'm healthy, happily married, gainfully employed, and have some wonderful friends.
So Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Thanksgiving 2022

One of my friends sent me this, and despite getting almost 200 ( ! ) emails a day, I haven't seen it before.

So, before you sit down on Thursday to give thanks, keep this little story in mind. Kind of a Twilight Zone preview of "First They Came....."

And Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. May God bless you, and keep you safe in the times ahead.

"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband. "In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered. Actually Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington . Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the rest of the world", Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting.Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another Tofu Turkey . Even though it was the best type of VeggieMeat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce, and mincemeat pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey. And ever since the government officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020, to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster. Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the Tofu Turkey look even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold. Ever since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all thermostats - which were monitored and controlled by the electric company - be kept at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter. Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the family. Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she had used up her legal allotment of life-saving medical treatment. He had had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was forced into the government health care program. And though he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. "The RHC's resources are limited", explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke with on the phone. "Your mother received all the benefits to which she was entitled. I'm sorry for your loss." Ed couldn't make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of 2021 outlawed the use of the combustion engines - for everyone but government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too far, and Ed didn't want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere between here and there. Thankfully, Winston's brother, John, and his wife were flying in. Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added "inconvenience" was an "absolute necessity" in order to stay "one step ahead of the terrorists." Winston's own body had grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling Act of 2022. That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for "unequal scrutiny," even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls, train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become almost routine. Almost. The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the law intact. "A living Constitution is extremely flexible", said the Court's eldest member, Elena Kagan. " Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their example", she added. Winston's thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him. Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got over it. His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the bird flu, terrorism, or any of a number of other calamities were "just around the corner", but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. It didn't help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5,000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of QE13. The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to "spur economic growth." This time, they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful. Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement. At least, he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before government promises to make life "fair for everyone" realized their full potential. Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn't happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them. He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2011, when all the real nonsense began. "Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if we'd just said 'enough is enough' when we had the chance," he thought. Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so.

Three Days to Straighten These Clowns Out...

Saw this over at Steven's place, and just had to share it.
Watch and enjoy....

50* and Raining...I'm Playing RADIO All Day!

And working on the antenna article I've been promising.
Got a new headset/mic last week from Arlan Communications. These have to be the MOST comfortable cans I've ever worn! The gel-filled earcups are a joy, and seal any sound9 leaks around my glasses, and the optional cotton cloth covers will wick away any sweat for those times this summer when it's hot here in the shack. When I first ordered them I'd forgotten that I need a stereo set so I can make use of the binaural output of my Flex 5000A, so I had to send them back to be reworked. The set they sell that does stereo has a one-piece boom for the microphone, and I like the "wire mount" ones as I've found them to be more durable. Since they no longer make the set I wanted in stereo with the wire mount (RS22CF), they had to make up a custom set for me.
These things aren't cheap, but the cost less than the David Clark headset/mics I've been using( and having to modify), and are much more comfy to wear.
Back to radio.....