openspaceman

Sorry I don't know, I have used the old 150DHB but never been involved with maintenance, @aspenarb does his own so he may know. PS I have just looked back and see yours is a mini chipper with gravity feed so Bob probably has not dealt with one either.

What normally happens is at the end of a job there is a pile of rakings up to dispose of, sometimes on the nice pea shingle drive at the front of the house where the job was. It should be kept separate and on the truck but... Dirty wood will do less damage than pea shingle but still blunt is blunt. A sharp chipper with the anvil set correctly and not worn will deal with hydrangea, raspberries, hops, bramble etc, but have a sacrificial pusher stick available.

How far back? I drove a FV432 the other day and that seemed quite manageable. The owner of an estate I worked on, a non driver, was conscripted into a tank regiment in 1940. He was the least mechanically minded person, a law graduate never called to the bar. He obviously had not understood how the matilda drove as on his first outing he went down a steep hill and wanted to turn left, so he declutched the left track, presumably didn't apply the brake and was more than surprised when the left track sped up under gravity and the whole plot rolled over. He never said if anyone was killed but he ended up in the infantry at Tobruk and the rest of the war in various prison camps.

The radiotir was of it's time, the main feature was the way if managed with just one radio signal, with modern comms there is no need to be stuck with just one function and indeed the motor could be auto started and throttle modulated to control speed. The double capstan does offer more utility that a normal drum winch. I still like 2t engines for this sort of application in case they get flipped over. At work today while I was stripping several lawsons cypress and our glamorous assistant was dragging and feeding the chipper I was mulling this thread over and thinking about that reciprocating strap with the logs travelling down on it. Back at my last job I had to dispose of a wire cored flip line by DMS that failed a loler inspection, I have used the clutch to pull 13mm steel pins out of the ground for which it excelled. I reckon if the roped was always taught from the bungee the DMS would act as a one way clutch on that system.

Chap I worked with had one in Margam and said were fast for a crawler. I never managed to get a drive in one.

No that's well blunt and power mate rims go on a long time after you'd want to change them 🙂

I'm glad you posted that so I could be on an earner. I rushed home and searched my bookshelf with old advertising bumph I had picked up at shows but became rather dejected when I couldn't find it. I may still have it somewhere but it may have gone in a fit of tidying up.

I have three 30 year old Husky 262s, one of them is always fine, the other two will play up after very hard use logging up in the heat. Worst is if I let them run out of fuel then they will often not fire up readily. I put this down to vapour/air locks in the carburettor somewhere. With more modern saws you can use that bulb to run cool petroil through the carb. When the huskys get difficult to warm start I find I need to use the choke for one pull to suck fresh fuel through and then several pulls on half throttle lock. I keep meaning to the strip the carbs but never enough time so I just pick up another saw.

It was a radio controlled ~15kN (nearly 30cwt pull) winch in a sled. The FC imported about three under a special licence from the GPO to operate them. At the time it was strictly verboten to use unauthorised radio transmitters (we used american CBs to let the lady operating the skyline when to pull. Every now and then, the lads said as I was only there in margam a very short time,, a voice would come in threatening prosecution and to cease and desist cluttering up the airwaves used by the emergency services). lack of allowed frequencies was I think why the FC did not continue with them. Basically it was a 10hp 2t powered double capstan winch enclosed in a fibreglass sled. The take up reel had a very long wire rope, maybe 300 metres. The thing was fuelled up and put on an extraction ride with the operator walking off with the hook till he was level with the rack the produce was to come down or up. He then put a strop around a suitable tree and press the remote control to winch in. The sled then pulled itself to him. The sled was then anchored to a tree and the operator walked up to the poles and extracted them to the winch or its redirect pulley as new racks were extracted. The interesting thing about it was it stayed ticking over most of the time but when the winch-in signal was received the engine speeded up and a centrifugal clutch engaged the capstans and the take up spool. The wire pulled in at constant speed and maximum force was available all the time. When release it slowed to tick over, the clutch disengaged but the capstans went into reverse, so when the operator pulled the wire the capstans pulled the wire off the spool and paid it out all the time the operator tensioned the wire.

Here's a picture of a log flume Leykam FVE-IF.COM The other toy that I was impressed with that didn't take off was the radiotir and I still have the leaflet for that.

Well to be legitimate the egg, and hence chick, would have DNA of both parents, if a non licensed bird was one parent it would show up as unknown DNA. First use of DNA profiling in a paternity case was about 1985.

Sorry no and I have googled a few search terms with no luck either. I attended every APF show from1974 to about 2000 so if anyone has a collection of show programmes...

There probably is but a back when DNA testing was in its infancy one of my customer's daughter was establishing a database of the DNA of every licensed bird just to thwart any attempt to pass off a wild bird or its progeny as legally owned.

I made a decision and ordered a 6kWh battery today, now need to find about 25 days work to pay for it.

There was a system similar to a zipline that used a webbing strap with studs in it, This was reciprocated by pulling it about 6 metres, it then returned by a thick rubber bungee, the tag lines attached to the logs had sliders which had a one way ratchet so the logs moved down about 6 metres at a time with several attached at once. I only saw it at a APF show. Similarly one of the small woods charities used a log flume like those you see on building sites to load skips. It's surprising how big a pole you can pull downhill with tongs , problem is walking back up the hill.

Oh go on, I'm sitting comfortably. Yes I knew there was a difference but not sure what it was the old Oxford transformers had a further coil to cause a droop as the arc struck. I manage nearly everything with the stick welder, it will do TIG for stainless but while manually turning on the gas and scratch start is doable having to break the arc by withdrawing the gun is no good as the hot weld pool becomes exposed. I like the little TIG I have done because it is similar to the Oxy-Acetylene which I first used. Not a fan of cheap MIG as the wire feed always gives trouble. A friend has used a stick welder to deal with some electrolytically corroded aluminium welds in a thick hull and I was surprised at that. I think he now has an all singing and dancing MIG and TIG inverter with HF start and ramp up and down for TIG but AFAIK bno foot pedal.

Could it have been that the "fatigue" crack you point out was because the machine had been used with the bolt under tightened and had flexed too much?

I've always thought it a terrible job, sat at the wheel for hours getting little exercise, not great pay either (although being on gritter standby seems a good number). My guess would be there's a high turnover of new drivers and there are no tests being done for new drivers to replace them as well as above.

AFAICS only two suppliers offer it atm and most PV systems are limited to exporting 3.6kW after that the DNO gets involved. for the last 10 years I have been paid on "deemed" export of 50% of my generation @3p/kWh now I have the smart meter they can measure what actually goes out but as I say I do not believe their sampling rate is fast enough for this to be accurate, of course that may just be the reporting software in the smart meter and the electricity company may have finer granularity of measurement.

Yes fatal in the recent weather and very difficult to remove once baked on, particularly straight OSR oil. I have had to take the dremel to fins in the past.

Only two near septuagenarians here, LED lights, TV does 150W in evenings, this PC the same when I am home and as I said the refrigeration seems to be a lot when it is hot. I'm being quoted £2400 to add the battery but that involves removing a perfectly good inverter for a new battery-inverter package and that is for a 2kWh LiPo battery which I think is inadequate and a 5-8kWh is probably needed. Once that investment is committed and given the PV is next to useless in winter then you see why importing cheap (sometimes negative) electricity at night and then selling it between 1630 and 1830 may help with the finance. With pension fund stagnating and the possibility of rampant inflation increasing... Also our FIT has only 8 years to run. To set against that this house will be ripped apart and trebled in size when we are ash so payback is... The plan was for younger daughter to take the place on but mousey mousey...

There are so many different systems to choose, puredrive, givenergy, victron, huawei etc, and they all obfuscate what is actually happening in the PV-battery system to some extent. Installation costs are about the same as wholesale hardware costs. Only Givenergy and Huawei seem to have the ability to import and export with "agile" tariffs. Personally I'm only interested in maximising my own use of what I generate but the ROI may dictate being a bit cleverer. One thing is clear that is the latency of the systems are not able to deal well with cloud cover passing on a sunny day.

Yearly, we generate about 3MWh with the vast bulk of that being in May to October. My direct debit for electricity and gas is £53/month. What with the drive to electric cars and loss of revenue from petrol and oil plus the big difference in VAT something has to give to keep the simple serpents and their masters in the comfort to which they are accustomed so it's either road charging or more expensive electricity on fixed tariffs or both. Also the drive to get people to give up gas boilers in favour of insulation and (very expensive) heat pumps means gas will be getting expensive, I'm paying 1/3 more than last year.

I'm in one of the warmer sunnier parts of the country in a poorly insulated 2.5 ish bedroom semi and pay 250 quid for electricity and 400 for gas including standing charges plus burn about 4 solid m3 of wood. With the battery added to the solar my electricity bill would have been reduced by £100 but I have just been moved to a far less favourable tariff so I guess electricity prices are moving up. That's also why I'm considering the battery and an agile tariff.

I thought they were always 39 and 2/5 inches whether smart or shabby 😉 The issue is that they actually reduce the maximum current into the house, no problem for most, and can be switched off remotely if their sim is in reception. I know know a village locally where they fitted longer antenna and still they don't log on. I also worry that they measure reactive loads accurately. I think only the moving disc ones did this properly but not at all sure. Ours has flagged up that the fridge freezer comes on a lot (150W) and I now switch of my PC when I go out (another 150W). I haven't looked at accrued data as ours was only fitted last week. It has made me consider getting a 5kWh battery as we plainly export a lot during the summer but I'd need to find a tariff that would allow me to top up at night in the winter to give a payback.