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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Tomorrow I am supposed to got up on top of Mt. Bird. The helo schedule comes out in the early evening. We are headed out to Mt. Bird because there are large penguin rookeries around this area. We are setting up a repeater system on Mt Terror, Mt. Erebus and Mt. Bird for scientists studying the birds. My co-workers are going up on the other two mountains that tie this system together. Just about everybody in my shop will be on a mountain tomorrow. I spent most of today trying to get some NASA equipment working, scrounging parts from other broken gear and looking and digging through specs to see if components will work. You have to work with what you have. Getting parts is too far off. Our deadline for getting material to Port Huneme CA is Dec. 1. Those materials will then come down by vessel (ship) in January. It is going to be so weird seeing ships at the ice pier. It is all ice now. Generally 3 meters thick. We land C-17s and LC-130s on the ice as well as have D8 dozers out there and all that. The big hope is that the sound may break up totally of ice this year. It hasn't happened in something like 5 or 6 years. There was a huge iceburg called B-15 preventing the sea ice breakup and a combination of weather prevented a open sea with floe ice. The Coast Guard cutter has had to work to keep the channel free. We can only hope. Folks are looking forward to the possibility of seeing a liquid McMurdo Sound. It doesn't happen that often.

These pictures are a repeater system on what we call a "Lunar Lander" and a nice shot of one of the glaciers in the dry valleys.

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Anonymous said…
Hey you can see the scratch marks from the glaciers, neat!
GM
9:12 PM
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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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