Hi Guys, thanks for the support. We got through the night OK and the wind has died down. The road is still closed and I have never seen it so busy, a continuous stream of fire fighting equipment heading to Buccarumbi.

Gives me the shits that this fire was lit by the rural fire service as part of a hazard reduction burn and now covers 3000 acres of forest and is destroying peoples homes, livestock and property.

I do have a very powerful fire fighting pump (petrol) sadly I lent it to my neighbor when her pump failed. That was nine months ago and she`s still got it. Don`t feel right going and asking for it back as she is a pensioner living on her own.

I always keep the gutters clean as all our potable tank water comes off the roof of the house or shed. Thankfully the weather forecast is giving rain coming in on Friday so we just have to hope the wind stays calm till then.

I do have a plan to build another dam in the valley behind the house. It will flood the boundary fence so I will need to discus it with my next door neighbor but in light of the drought and fires I think he will probably agree, especially if I pay for it and he gets access to several mega liters of water. I might even put some fish in it. Nothing better than a free feed now and then.

I do have plans for putting a water main around the house paddock, this would be great for fire suppression and also for irrigating the fruit trees and vegetable patch. I`m not going to try digging a half kilometer trench until we get some rain, the ground is just too hard at the moment.

Bob

Hey Glort, the wind hit you first, it`s working its way north up the east coast. We have had the Nymboida camp oven festival this weekend, completely surrounded by bush fires. Very frightening when the helicopters starts flying over trying to water bomb the fires.

Thankfully the RFS appear to have been successful in tackling the bush fires and the thousand visitors/campers at the canoe center are all leaving in the morning.

Can`t wait for the rain predicted for this next weekend.

Bob

Wow Bruce, looks like you are really pushing the boundaries on this. have you tried cutting the toroid with a four inch grinder? Should do the job but the heat generated might damage the ceramic coating.

Does cutting the toroid have a significant effect on its performance as a choke? I can certainly see that trying to wind that much wire onto an intact toroid would be impossible.

I am looking out for a cheap second hand grid tied inverter to play with. I intend to try rectifying the output from a 5 Kva generator to drive it. Solar by day, Lister at night.

Finding it very difficult to get any information on how much ripple an inverter will tolerate, I guess they are intended to run off PV or batteries so no one has tested them with rectified/smoothed AC.

Bob

Check the valve clearances and then adjust the decompression levers as per the manual. Could be the pistons are coming into contact with the valves or that you are trying to overcome compression while cranking.

The SOM drawing I posted  requires 24 volts for an ST2, 12 volts for ST1

If it has stood for a long time without an air filter or exhaust there is quite likely some surface rust in the bores. Just behind the decompressor levers there are two nylon plungers, lift these out and fill the two small cylinders with engine oil. Replace the plungers and push them all the way down. This will pump oil into the combustion chambers, lubricate the pistons and increase compression for cold starting.

Are you cranking it the right way? Some cranking handles can work in either direction. If you are cranking the wrong way the engine will blow air out of the air intake and suck through the exhaust.

Bob
 

Don`t panic, most of this stuff can be replaced with modern equivalents at a reasonable price. I will be talking to Rob at Old Timer Engines in the near future and I will ask him if he has any second hand SOM components in stock. You could also contact Gary at DES he sometimes scraps old equipment and keeps the good bits.

Bob

Hi BruceM, I am struggling to understand your set up. I know that your health issues make you very susceptible to EMI. Why do you have any AC (shielded or not) in, or near, your home?

DC is more dangerous but produces so much less EMI. You write that you have some 300 m of underground cabling, which suggests that you require both in your home space. Why?

Some domestic equipment runs only on AC, while some runs an AC but then transform it and rectifie it to DC at various voltages.

Can you not  keep it simple and put all AC appliances, generators, invertors and etc at a safe distance from your home, with remote start switching. Build a Faraday cage (preferably in the ground) closer to the house and fill it with the transformers and etc to run everything else on DC.

There is a very lazy man living near me who worked out that he would expend a lot less personal effort if his washing machine was next to his rotary washing line. He put up a small shed and ran an extension lead and hose pipe. He now lifts the wet washing out of the washer straight onto the line. I can only admire his inventiveness, sadly I expect the time he saves himself is spent sat on his arse in front of the TV.

I know I have come late to this conversation and apologise as you have probably answered most, if not all, of these questions in previous posts. (I`m too lazy to read the last 1500 posts)

Fiber is the future of all terrestrial communication and data control, it is very difficult to hack and immune to EMP from solar flares or nuclear blasts( the routing systems are not). It is however fragile, I suspect that this is why the military rely so heavily on satellite communications and why the US, the former Soviet Union and China are investing so heavily in space defense capabilities.

Keep well,
Bob

Hi Lastlaugh, good on you for posting the photos. Please photograph every aspect of every step, not for our benefit but for your own, in three months from now, when you have found spares, you will have a visual record of how it all goes back together.

I am a little concerned that a single 12 volt battery will not have enough grunt to start an ST2. My ST2 requires 24 volts (two batteries) to get it fired up. You could probably overcome this by fitting two solenoids with a timer to drop the decompression levers (start one cylinder and use that to start the second). It may be that the starter built in to your generator head is a more powerful unit and all you will need is a high output 12 volt battery.

Keep us posted.

Bob

Hey BruceM, sorry to here you have had such a rough time with your mental/physical health and the Medical professionals that are supposed to help.

I have had similar experiences and wonder at the way pills are randomly trialed on the sick. My doctor tried to prescribed a drug called lyrica, for nerve pain. I declined his kind offer as I knew that this product can cause heart attacks and I`ve already had one. He then put me on an antidepressant called Sertraline which put me back in hospital with blood pressure issues.

I went to see the cardiologist today for a check up, told him what had happened and he was appalled that my GP had tried these medications on me without consulting him.

There are some very smart doctors out there who can help, the difficulty is finding them and then having the courage to tell the mediocre medics to take a running jump.

The best news today is that I have been taken off the blood thinners. I will no longer bleed for a week from an insect bite or develop a haematoma instead of a bruise. Happy days 

Keep up the good work, chin up,

Bob