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Showing posts from March 21, 2010

Wyoming and Idaho

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We are back from a quick vacation. I managed to score three (actually several more) bucket list items in 4 days. 1.) Long Snowmobile Trip. 2.) Yellowstone Park and 3.) Wyoming. I reached my 50th State --Wyoming! And we took a 90 mile snowmobile trip in Yellowstone National Park. We went to the "Craters of the Moon--National Monument and Preserve" in Idaho and also stopped at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) where I got to see (with my own eyes) the very cool nuclear powered twin turbojet engine. It was a successful experiment in the 1950s and 1960s. https://whatisnuclear.com/safety-minutes/htre-3-meltdown.html Of course, I had my Radiacode scintillation detector with me and yes, the apparatus is "Hot". The screenshot of the readings from my three walk-arounds the artifact. I swear you could smell the radiation. There was a very un-natural burnt smell something reminiscent of burned bakelite. Although, I am quite certain the emitted radition was not the source...
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I finally have real broadband access! Through my ham radio connections I managed to get a terrestrial link using a Motorola Canopy solution (5.7 GHz) and a 15 mile (plus) path. Of course, I would have never been able to do this except for I am on a hill that faces the tower in Binghamton. It is a haul. It is safe to say I am at the far fringes. I am working to help expand the system with the installation of a new tower on my property. The dish on the roof is fairly big (nothing like the old c-band TVRO dishes though). I was hoping we were going to get 10 or more Mbps, but I have to settle for speeds just under 5 Mbps. Considering with Wildblue (satellite) I was only getting 600 kbps with 900 ms latencies; I am very pleased.
Here is a nice you tube video of a difficult landing, more difficult than Greene NY.
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I had a small ceremonial fire of logo wear this weekend. All the polyester and rayon really stunk. I took these pics when my mentor was at the controls. We flew down to Towanda (Bradford County PA) a few days ago for lunch. I have been getting quite a bit of cross-wind landing practice. The first pic is Owego NY and the second pic is the normal view of The Raymond Corporation as we turn baseleg on runway 25 in Greene.