At Pot of Gold Coffee Roasting Company on Thetis Island, I found their coffee roasting machines, fascinating. And sentences aren’t good when there is a preposition to end a sentence with.
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Land clearing on Hudson Island – day 1 with tractor
With the new John Deere landscaping tractor, I had SO MUCH FUN on my holiday, starting to make roads and clear a way into Lot 2. ( It was virtually impenetrable to walking due to tangled branches.)
Here’s a short youtube video of me on the tractor.
June 28 update. I’m very happy! I made a road.
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Landing in slow flight mode, short field landing on wet grass
On my trip to Hudson Island for a week of holidays, I encountered rainy drizzle on the final 5 minutes prior to arrival, and I knew that the short grass airstrip would be slippery. So I spent extra time slowing the plane down gradually, adding full flaps gradually, and approaching the runway at the edge of stall speed, which is was about 57 Knots. A video shows me coming in for a landing, seemingly too low, but this is what I wanted.
I wanted to be in level flight at stable airspeed over the ocean, and then as I cross the threshold of the runway, pull the nose up a bit, add some power, which puts the plane into slower-than- stall speed, but the added power makes the plane enter “slow flight” mode. I then cut the power, and the plane drops a few feet, truly drops, a few feet, (truly stalls) and does a bounce on the runway.
I couldn’t actually see the grass of the runway doing this landing, which is a nervous feeling. But I had practiced this sort of landing in Camrose, to prepare for a rainy day like today. See the video Wet grass slow flight landing.
At 1:00 the plane’s tail stalls first and drops a bit. Then hear the power added. At 1:10 the inner part of the big wings are stalled but the other wings are still flying, and the plane sinks to the ground.
Anyway, Also, here are a few pictures from the trip.
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Sword making blacksmithing
I attended a fabulous course this weekend at NAIT,
Helped by Edmonton based Blacksmith Shawn Cunningham of Front Step Forge, the teacher of Japanese sword blade forging was David Goldberg of Gold Mountain Forge.
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Landscaping Lot 2 begins in earnest
Dan and Janet have begun some serious work toward the goal of clearing and landscaping lot 2 on Hudson Island (which currently is un-walkable due to scruffy brush and fallen logs). They found and bought this John Deer landscaping tractor, with a lot of attachments, and a load of cedar lumber to build a shed for it.
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Anonymous BitCoin usage tips
March 27, 2014 update. Mish recommended Netagio (affiliated with GoldMoney) as a good bitcoin storage facility.
August 28, 2013 update.
I learned about QuickBT, which has Canada’s FinTRAC approval to operate! It allows Canadians (like me) to use their interac debit cards and buy $50CAD per day worth of BitCoin. That’s not much: $350 per week, $1500 per month, $18,250 per year. Maybe I should start doing that, to have a little backup plan nestegg in BitCoin. ( oh, and they charge 6% as their fee for this service).
June 13, 2013. I received an email from internationalman.com, containing an article by Paul Rosenberg of FreemansPerspective.com, about using BitCoin anonymously. It showed me BitLaundry and bitcoin-otc.com and localbitcoins.com. It discussed Tor, TrueCrypt, Cryptohippie.
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Metal Casting
I became curious about foundry furnaces to melt and pour metal into molds. I don’t own a furnace or crucibles, but I googled and found Backyard Metal Casting . com. There’s always cool people doing cool things!
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Mystery of high power usage on Hudson Island
I just got a huge power bill from BC Hydro, for my Hudson Island log home. The bill comes every 2 months, which unfortunately is a long time for a problem to go undetected. $1288 for two months electricity at a log cabin?
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Flying a spitfire…
Did you know, it costs $6,500 per hour to fly a spitfire. Deanna and I have registered for a $9,000 two day course, ending with 30 minutes of spitfire flying time. ( $90,000 for a longer course giving 15.5 hours of spitfire flying time, which is hopefully enough to qualify for insurance if I ever owned one. )
Brief article about Boutlbee flight academy, Better pictures of it here. The Boultbee Flight Academy offical course page.
I’m going to England in July, with a week of unscheduled time. I couldn’t pass up the chance to fly a spitfire!
I just gave the Talking Moose, my daughter’s eye color.
This is a cross-post from the Talking Moose development blog. Something I’ve wanted to do for several years, I finally got around to it. Using photos of my daughters eyes, and photoshop, I put
her Iris pattern into the Talking Moose’s eyes.
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