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Old 03-16-2024, 01:53 PM   #1401
woofa.express
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Default Re: tell a Model A related story

Recently I wrote on platinum spark plugs. This is a repeat with the addition of local Tocumwal history which you might find interesting.

I well remember when avgas was high in tetraethyl lead and sparkplugs were cleaned at each 100 hourly service. We used a plug cleaner which blasted sand at the electrode and insulated cavity. This method was not suitable for plugs with platinum electrodes as it eroded them (the electrodes) rather rapidly.
So this is how we cleaned them, that is the lead that had built up in the cavity between the ceramic insulator and the steel plug body. We took a hacksaw blade, a worn one, and ground down one edge about 2 inches which then fitted well in this cavity and we physically levered out the lead build-up. No erosion to the electrodes. Maybe that may help?
I have not seen plugs with platinum electrodes since the mid 70’s but my son has just purchased a set. (Cessna aeroplane with a Continental engine) I don’t recall the price he paid but they were hellishly expensive. He says the engine idles well (better). I must ask him if there has been a small drop in fuel consumption. End chapter 1.

War is wasteful, we all know that. The aerodrome at Tocumwal was a war time construction with a substantial American input. Some 7,000 US servicemen were stationed here. (My old friend Johnny says one had to watch the local girls closely and not leave bicycles unattended). Fifty four Liberator as well as other aeroplanes were based here. The now old timers, young kids at the time, told me the engines mounts were cut with oxy and the engines fell to the ground and the platinum from the spark plugs being very valuable, was scavenged. The engines apparently returned to America and the fuselages boiled down to ingots. Not a single aeroplane was preserved. Platinum was valuable, history or preservation apparently not.
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Old 03-21-2024, 10:18 PM   #1402
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It’s time to say goodbye

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjzJYa7tHLs

What a pitiful way to die.
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Old 03-23-2024, 01:20 AM   #1403
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I am surprised.

I am surprised no one has asked who this artist is and how he died. His name is Andrea Bocelli. An Italian tenor, very popular, operas and general. He became blind before his teens. You see in this clip his co-singer leading him out and you also see his eyes are closed for almost the duration of his performance. He died by falling down the stairs. That’s what I meant by dying a pitiful death. His co-star is Sarah Brightman who made her name in the musical ‘Phantom of the Opera’.

Tomorrow. You will know of the northern lights, well I will write on the equivalent of the southern lights and other phenomena’s which I believe you will find interesting.
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Old 03-23-2024, 08:10 PM   #1404
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It’s a welcome change.

A cool change that is. At the end of our summer we have had heat to the extreme, extreme for us that is. High 30’s and it reached 40 at times. That changed this week with temps dropping to the low and mid 20’s. We do get expeditious changes in temp, it depends from which direction the wind blows from. From the south it has flowed over the southern ocean which is cool and welcomed in our summer but not winter, and conversely from the north which is overland and over much desert, which is hot in summer but welcome in winter.
Southern coastal residence can experience up to a 15C in 10 or 15 minutes, like rather rapidly. In Sydney this is known as a “Southerly Buster” and in Perth “The Freemantle Doctor”. Here we simply know it as a garden variety name, “a cool change”.
After easter we know for sure that hot weather won’t be experienced again until next summer. Autumn is the popular season with great weather. Warm, still, dry and clear skies. We get a town full of tourists, mainly from Melbourne. These people come with their urban attitude and leave us with gafetti over walls and vertical surfaces. Winter is not loved. It can be overcast for several days at a time and we get the occasional frost. It can rain, which is welcome as long as it’s not enduring.
I have mentioned Easter. For those who do not know how easter is determined here it is. And we won’t know until someone tells us, or we read - it is the first Sunday which follows the first full moon, which in turn follows the equinox.

A winter phenomena is the southern Aurora Australias although more likely during the equinox. It is commonly known as the Southern Lights. Likewise in the northern hemisphere folk will see the Aurora Borealis, commonly known as the Northern Lights. I understand from the I internet both are more likely during the equinox and also exist during daylight hours but like stars can be seen only in the dark. I have only once seen the southern light and that was when I was a kid. Only once because I don’t get out of bed to check. I have never seen the northern lights because I haven’t been in the north at the appropriate time. I don’t plan on it either. I do like to see the snow but only in a glossy magazine.
From the internet I have copied a shot of the southern lights, shot in Tasmania, and here it is. Whilst this is quite spectacular it is not a daily event.


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Old Today, 12:51 PM   #1405
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Default Re: tell a Model A related story

James Magee.

The Pilliga is an area of scrub (native trees and bushes) in north central NSW. The Newell Highway runs through the Pilliga from Coonabarabran to Narrabri (north bound), a distance of 70 miles. It is undulating and sometimes steep. It is dry unless there has been good rain in the most recent time, i.e. creeks are simply dry sand. End of chapter 1.

It was in 1994 I was driving north bound through the Pilliga to Narrabri when I came across an elderly gentleman pushing his bicycle up a moderately steep incline. I stopped and offered him a ride saying he could put his bike on the tray of my ute (Pickup). A man in his 70’s declined saying in a broad American speech accent, “I promised myself I’d ride the whole way”. I asked where to? And he replied to Cairns having arrived at Melbourne. Now that’s some 1,800 miles and that's if he takes the shortest route. His name was James McGee, from Vidor, Texas.
I asked James if he wanted anything and he said yes, water. He hadn’t realised it was so far between services or running creeks. I gave him water and when returning that evening I bought him both water and food. He slept on the stony/sandy ground in a swag which provided only a thin ground cover. He said he had no difficulty sleeping following a hard day’s pedalling. James did make it to Cairns, I know because he called me to tell me so. He had made other long bicycle journeys, one I remember him speaking of was Mexico to Canada. He also wrote and invited me to Oshkosh for the airshow. We would drive in his campervan, the drive from Vidor which is only 30 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico to Oshkosh which is 250 miles south of the Canadian Border. A distance of 1,800 miles the most direct way. I declined that and later regretted it.
James had told me he fought in the “Battle of the Coral Sea” which is off the north east coast of Australia and thus stopped the Japanese invasion of Australia. To come to Australia he required a visa and that was valid for only 3 months. I suggested he disregard that imposition, just overstay like others do. He explained to get this visa he had to sign a document, in front of a judge to say he would neither overstay nor apply for and extension. A bloke who saved Australia was treated like that made me embarrassed, even annoyed. The law can be an ass but those who administer it can be real donkeys. Case right here.

An interesting story of Vidor and I’ll try to make it a bit shorter than how James told it to me. Well Vidor is an all-white town and roadside signage saying “Niggers not Welcome”. I checked the internet and it says similar- “Nigger, don’t let the sun set on you”. This signage apparently appears in many towns in USA.
Well the Feds built houses for the homeless in Vidor. Inmates being released from prison are homeless too and some of these people were black. They came. Shortly followed by the KKK. The negros were off and went to a neighbouring town by the name of Beaumont where one was murdered by a random drive by shooting. The reason James mentioned this to me was because of the KKK the town of Vidor appeared on TV’s all around the world. Did I see it he asked, but no I didn’t.
In Australia we are not permitted to speak with racial discrimination. We are supposedly a nation of free speech but we are not. It’s becoming more restrictive with woke folk and the sexually abnormal becoming influential. So where are we heading, I hate to think.
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