How much longer?

On Apr 8, 5:59 am, Dylan Smith wrote:
On 2008-04-07, Mike Isaksen wrote:



"Alan" wrote ...
Bertie the Bunyip writes:
I will fly as long as there is air. Gasoline be damned.
I started without it and I'll finish withour if needs be.

You say you started without - how?
Even gliders seem to need tows.

Maybe he'll build an electric motor rope launch skid powered by wind
turbines.

You don't even need a winch. Just find a suitable hill and bungee launch
off it - it's *people* giving the initial run of energy for the glider.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6-EeuEi-KY

In any case, a winch is quite frugal, our Jaguar 4.2L based winch uses less
than 1/3rd gallon to launch a glider (in comparison, an aerotow to 2000'
uses about 2 gal). An electric winch would be even better - electric
motors have ideal characteristics for winch launching since they have
huge amounts of torque at low RPM, so it would give a really good pull
from a standing start. The challenge in building an electric winch is
the cost. Building a gasoline powered winch is cheap - a 6 or 8 cylinder
engine out of a scrapped car costs very little and works very well. The
batteries for an electric winch would be expensive however you cut it,
without getting on to obtaining a suitable traction motor.

Finally, there's always hang gliding. Find a suitable slope, and run
into the wind. Of course this demands a certain level of fitness that
seems to be absent from a large proportion of the population.

--
From the sunny Isle of Man.
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.

And if not a fitness issue then a wing loading one!
Richard

On Apr 8, 2:13 am, Nomen Nescio wrote:
[...]

What a great idea.
I'll bet Jay has never even thought of that or done any type of a cost/benefit
analysis.

Interesting cost/benefit for one case. ~7 year to pay for it.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/solar/house.html

Obviously it's a stretch to apply it to all houses. Interesting show,
nonetheless.

Entire show is he http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/solar/program.html

Thinking of checking out one of the houses that's featured in the show
(Somerville is one town over from where I work).
===============

I remember playing around Freshman year in college ('80). I was a tech
theatre major and 'borrowed' one of the Fresnel lenses. Found a beat
up old car radiator in the garage. Cut a 55 gal. drum in half, painted
the inside black, filled up the radiator with water, and proceeded to
set the el-cheapo experiment into motion.

Took about a minute, and the pressure built up enough that you could
hear the metal stressing out. The tranny lines, which were cut and
bent, began to straighten out. We took a few steps back. 30 seconds
or so later, and what little tranny juice had remained, shot out
fairly rapidly. We took a few more steps back.

Finally, the radiator just failed completely, as steam shot at high
pressure from whatever new orifices were being created.

We concluded: Stupid solar, might as well abandon this. Damn old
rusted cheap, sitting in the garage for 10+ years, radiator. Waste of
time... let's go do something constructive, like take the dirt bikes
out again...

Yeah, we were down a few quarts, so had to be properly oiled (heh)
beforehand, to ensure an nice uncontrolled experiment :P


Regards,
Jon

Finally, the radiator just failed completely, as steam shot at high
pressure from whatever new orifices were being created.

Uh oh -- thread creep. Good story, though.

Back during the LAST "energy crisis" in the 1970s, solar collectors sprouted
on rooftops like daisies. Everyone wanted to harness all that "free"
energy.

What we soon discovered, however, is that it was far from free. The thermal
stress on all that black plastic soon reduced the collectors to cracked and
leaky junk -- and it was all ABOVE YOUR HOUSE so that the leaks did the most
harm to your home. Within just a few years, they were gone from the
rooftops, and lots of contractors had prospered fleecing lots of "green"
home owners.

Now, you say, could these not be made more durable today? You bet they
could, but at a cost that would amaze you. And, no matter what you make
plumbing out of, no matter how much money you spend on it, there is one
truism that every long-term property owner knows to be true: Eventually, it
WILL leak.

One day these problems may be overcome. Until then, the natural gas
furnaces and water heaters will continue to be the most efficient choices.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:07:11 +0000, Jay Honeck sayeth:

If
anyone has any pictures they'd like to submit of, oh, say, a bunyip, I'd
be glad to add them.

Found one:

http://www2.badtux.net/uploaded_imag...man-733339.jpg

"Nomen Nescio" wrote:

You might appreciate this speech, given at the Heritage Foundation,
entitled "How Modern Liberals Think".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaE98w1KZ-c

Standard right wing polemics occasionally verging on outright paranoia. I
can get that virtually any time I want on Fox News or talk radio.

But thanks, anyway.

"Jay Honeck" wrote:
It's time we got off the oil tit. If you think it's expensive now,
wait till China, and then India, surpass the U. S. as petroleum
consumers.

As much as I agree, this is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
What's the alternative? We're going to need oil for the foreseeable
future, and hand-wringing isn't going to change that.

Who's advocating hand-wringing?



I, for one, am not willing to see my kids grow up in a world that has been
reduced to economic squalor simply to benefit a "green agenda".

Puh-leeze.


At some point, probably when food and transportation costs are
unaffordable due to unreasonable environmentalist restrictions on
research, the electorate will rise up and overthrow the politicians who
have created this mess. Only then will we see fuel prices stabilize.

How do you imagine petroleum prices will stabilize? The demand keeps
skyrocketing while oil gets harder and harder to extract. How's that going
to work?


It will be an ugly time, I fear.

It already is. We better find some good alternatives and fast.

Jay Honeck schrieb:
We're going to need oil for the foreseeable future, and
hand-wringing isn't going to change that.

is oil all you can think of? Su we can't make it _competletely_
without oil for the next time, but all you can think of is finding more
oil. You completely put away with any alternatives.

It will be an ugly time, I fear.

yes, but for other reasons, IMHO.

#m

(Alan) wrote in
:

In article Bertie the
Bunyip writes:
"Jay Honeck" wrote
Which is why we're looking at entering a six-way partnership (flying
club, actually) on a 1946 Ercoupe. 85 horses, 2 seats, 4 gph.
The Pathfinder (immediate predecessor to the Dakota) is an awesome
plane for hauling a family in style -- and we'll certainly keep it
-- but Atlas burns 25 gph at takeoff, which makes buzzing down to a
pancake breakfast something you tend to think twice about nowadays.

You are an idiot. I will fly as long as there is air. Gasoline be
damned. I started without it and I'll finish withour if needs be.

Bertie

And if stopping global warming demands that we all stop burning
fossil fuels
(i.e. stop flying)? If you believe that global warming is a real
effect of man burning fossil fuels, and that it is a problem, you
should be looking at curtaling actions that burn those fuels ---
including flying.

Replacing all the light bulbs in your house with compact flourescent
lamps
will only save a few percent of your total electrical use, which will
be swamped by the increased use of the increasing population.

You say you started without - how? Even gliders seem to need tows.

Tows don't aloways mean gasoline. In my case we used an Oldsmobile, but
you can run that on anything...

Bertie

"Mike Isaksen" wrote in news:KRwKj.1375$XC1.1247
@trndny08:


"Alan" wrote ...
Bertie the Bunyip writes:
I will fly as long as there is air. Gasoline be damned.
I started without it and I'll finish withour if needs be.

You say you started without - how?
Even gliders seem to need tows.

Maybe he'll build an electric motor rope launch skid powered by wind
turbines.



Could do. There's lots of ways you can winch launch. The current world
record distance flight was launched off the back of a car. Probably a
thirty second tow, if that.
Point is, there's a million ways to skin a cat. If neceesity dictated, a
way would be found.


Bertie

Jay Honeck schrieb:
Move the pain up sooner? Leave the oil in the ground and force the
collapse to happen sooner?
you'll die without oil?

I don't think you've thought this all the way through, Martin. The affect
on the world economy of $100/barrel oil prices is staggering. The recent
run-up in gas prices alone has thrown the U.S. into a major (if
media-enhanced) recession.

your current economic situation is not (only) due to the current oil
price. We have the same oil price, thoug, we have some advantages
because of the weak dollar.

Trillions of dollars that were being spent on, oh, say, *food*, is now being
spent on oil. The economy can't make that up instantly or fully,
translating into terrible hardship for common folks.

An example close to home: Our employees have been hit terribly hard by the
decades-old decision to not develop our domestic oil reserves.

What will you do with your reserves? You'll move a problem to a later
time (when the reserves are consumed).

Housekeepers, desk staff, and other entry-level jobs don't pay exceptionally
well in the best of times, and no one has received a raise to "make up" for
the sudden doubling of energy costs. EVERYTHING -- gasoline, heat, air
conditioning, (and, thus, rent, food, clothes, etc.) -- has gone up in cost
dramatically, causing them extreme hardship.

well, maybe your heat.
My costs haven't doubles. This winter we had heating costs of about
300EUR. For a house with 2 families and 1 single person, alltogether
maybe 250m2 (please do your own conversion into your odd values *g*).

Unfortunately, there is no way for me to raise their pay to match, because
no one is willing to pay more for a hotel room during an economic downturn.
As business drops, there is LESS money with which to pay employees, and the
downward spiral can really get wound up tightly.

recession.

And it's only just begun. Thanks to the short-sighted policies of people
who put the well-being of polar bears ahead of people, we haven't developed
our Alaskan oil reserves. Thanks to the short-sighted policies of people
who fear marring the beauty of the Rocky Mountains (as if we *could*), we
have not developed our Colorado oil reserves. And the Canadian oil shale
reserves. And the off-shore reserves.

and what will you do after that?

The list goes on and on. My father was in the energy business his whole
life, and predicted this exact scenario almost 40 years ago. He called it
the "environmentalist's energy crisis", and -- although he predicted the
collapse for the year 2000 -- he was only off by a decade or so.

I'd call it stupidity. Sorry.

You may wish to ponder this, Martin. You're well protected from a backlash,
sitting in Austria, but at some point people around the world -- stupid,

do you think that we here receive our oil from our government? or that
we fill our tanks and the government picks up the tab?

slow, and easily kept in the dark for short periods -- are going to wake up
to the fact that their economic hard times are due to people who think like
*you*.

well, I believe that I am doing OK. One of the next things (in a few
years) will be throwing out the oil out of the house and heat with wood,
combined with producing energy, this will make the house about 50%
independent of electricity prices (not calculating some ecologic values)
and 100% idenpendent of oil prices. By mid of this year I will buy a new
car powered with natural gas and save about 30 to 50% money per
kilometer. Solar power right now is too expensive, heating water with
solar is a working alternative, but it won't be a practical idea for the
house.

#m