-

It is Saturday. I am in Foz de Iquazu on the Brazil/Paraguay/Argentina border. I took a hard hat tour of one of the largest hydro plants in the world. There are a few left for me to visit worldwide. There are of course some interesting aspects of this power plant. There are 20 turbines, half are 60 Hz (Brazilian) the other half are 50 Hz (Paraguayan). Since Brazil buys most of the juice they have to convert the 50Hz to 60Hz in a converter 8 km away from the power plant. I wonder how efficient that is. Even if it is 98 percent that is a significant cost at those wholesale levels. Also, the area surrounding the dam is called Itaipu Binational area. The treaty area was specifically created for the powerplant. Now the area is becoming an area of intercountry cooperation for Latin America and they are building a university in the binational area. Clearly, beside the technology and engineering there is considerable political acheivement to be considered here just as at the Moses plant in Niagara Falls. Argentina is involved with the deal exactly zero percent.

I managed to get a pic of a model of a Marcopolo bus I am very familiar with. I daydream about converting one of these to an RV. Doesn't it look like something Rodney Dangerfield would drive in the movie Caddy Shack? It is by far the coolest bus in the world.

I managed to sneak a photo of a portion of the falls when we were on final approach into IGU. The airport is small. There are no taxiways. So even with a large Embraer 175 jet we had to do a 180 degree turn on the wide spot of the runway and do a back-taxi to the terminal.

It is raining, so my adventures have been slightly dampened for today. I am still expecting to get my helicopter ride.

It is also my Birthday.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Job, New Car and Always New Experiences

-
Image
We took the new Tesla Model Y up to Tugaloo State park on the border of Georgia and South Carolina. I bought non-OEM cross bars for the canoe. The install was a bit tricky since the mounting is in exact places under the roof glass. The test was successful since I was driving up to 80 mph with 50 mph winds. No issues whatsoever. I did put a line from the bow down to the truck for some additional piece of mind. We did some canoeing, but not as much as hoped due to strong currents in the Tugaloo river. Cooking and eating out in the woods always makes food taste better.
Read more
-
Image
STC Awards Woo Hoo! The folks in my department won the top awards at the Regional STC conference Friday. You can't ask for better than that. The PDF link above shows some of the awards we won. We are still sorting out the significance of some of the awards, including overall best of show! I don't think I could be more proud. All sorts of folks were scrutinitizing the books and we let a Technical Communications professor from RIT borrow them for some work she is doing. Friday was a good day. Saturday, the weather was fantastic. I don't know how warm it got, but I was lying in the grass next to the llama pen for quite a while. I did some farm work and relaxed. Now I have to pay for it. I have a lot of home work (at least 10 hours) to get done on this great day (possibly even nicer than yesterday). It takes a lot of discipline to concentrate and work through homework on a weekend like this one. I will do it. If someone, someday, ever asks, "How did you manage to
Read more
-
SU School of Architecture - Contact Main Page I am looking to work with a student architect on our property redesign. Some things are obvious, some are not. Since the house is basically a box sticking out of the ground it is like a white canvas. The old house dictated a lot of how we could proceed. This one is all open. The elements we are looking at incorporating are: Two or three car garage, preferably connected Large porch for valley view, roofed Deck for sunrise and coffee Outside brickoven, incinerator Carport Some kind of circular driveway Optimized valley view New bath down stairs Fireplace New septic system location Ponds Outdoor water cistern Improved drainage Barn attachment, equipment shed Curb appeal Larger window in computer room, bay window Improved plumbing and heating Barn electrification New roof New southern elevation Veneer rear existing chimney, or remove
Read more
-
South Pacific travel - Fiji, Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa, Cooks We are planning our next vacation. It appears we may meet up with Nostril and his family in Australia. They can get there pretty cheap from Japan. I was astounded when I looked and saw that the round trip from JFK to Tokyo is only about $550.00 US. Cheap. It looks like we can get to Australia for about a grand. We will probably rent a house on the coast somewhere. Of course, we will have to see Sydney since I haven't been there before. It is about 10 below zero outside right now. The coal stove cannot keep the house warm alone. The furnace has come on a couple of times this evening. I am trying to figure out how to get more heat out of the stove. I am thinking that some of the air vents are partially filled with ash. It is way too hot to dismantle those parts now, however. I hope the llamas are ok. I turned up their heater, and gave them more straw. It is cold out there though, even for them.
Read more