Machinery Infatuation

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I bought my first NEW piece of farm machinery. I am not sure if this is a failure or a success, but it is different. I picked up a NEW Rotary Cutter (bush hog, brush hog, mower, etc) from a dealer. It cost me almost as much as the tractor did with its bits of hardware and options. It seems to work well on the CNH Boomer 33. I planned on getting up to NY in the next couple of days, but Gracie has been sick.. she has been up and down. The steroid treatment and a change in diet seem to be helping at this point. Besides hauling the tractor and mower up to NY I have numerous events planned over the next month. I will be in Charlotte for a conference as well as Tucson Arizona and of course other events and activities. I started installing radio equipment in the Humvee. It now has a telescoping 30 foot antenna, a 24 volt to 12 volt converter, a removable SDR radio and some other stuff to be sure. I'd like to get it to the Stone Mountain Hamfest -- thats what i am shooting for. I thr...
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It is Thursday night. It is American night over at Scott Base (the New Zealand base). It is a couple miles away. I didn't much feel like going so I didn't. My ankle is a lot better. Today a co-worker and installed a radio with a battery/solar charger in a fuel pump house. Of course that was just a small fraction of what was done today.

I received a satellite call from the folks out at Taylor Dome. They said I can slept in a heated module or with some of others who are camping outside. They said it was cold. That means (it takes a while to figure what cold means with all the unspoken context) it is between 25 and 50 below. I told them I will decide when I get there. I have to help them decide whether to dig up an antenna they see 5 feet of. The rest is buried in the snow. I am pretty sure it is a minimum of 35 feet tall which means 30 feet is under snow since 1996 (when it was supposedly installed).

It does not snow a lot here but it did today. The snow really gets moved around a lot. In McMurdo, snow and volcanic ash get blown around interchangablely and snow banks are a parfait of ash and ice. The ash isn't dirt. There is nothing growing in it. It is powdered rock. It gets in your eyes sometimes since the wind is almost always blowing.

Here is a picture I borrowed from the public domain drive on our intranet. This penguin was just below town last Saturday. Here they come. They will be coming right into town here pretty soon.

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Machinery Infatuation

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Image
I bought my first NEW piece of farm machinery. I am not sure if this is a failure or a success, but it is different. I picked up a NEW Rotary Cutter (bush hog, brush hog, mower, etc) from a dealer. It cost me almost as much as the tractor did with its bits of hardware and options. It seems to work well on the CNH Boomer 33. I planned on getting up to NY in the next couple of days, but Gracie has been sick.. she has been up and down. The steroid treatment and a change in diet seem to be helping at this point. Besides hauling the tractor and mower up to NY I have numerous events planned over the next month. I will be in Charlotte for a conference as well as Tucson Arizona and of course other events and activities. I started installing radio equipment in the Humvee. It now has a telescoping 30 foot antenna, a 24 volt to 12 volt converter, a removable SDR radio and some other stuff to be sure. I'd like to get it to the Stone Mountain Hamfest -- thats what i am shooting for. I thr...
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