July 28 2010 by Darrin.

I’ve tried really hard to keep the politics off my blog.  There are enough idiots out there commenting in the “sphere” and I just don’t need to participate in it.  That said, here goes my two cents on something that’s really been bothering me lately.  I’m a politics/news junkie, and what I’m seeing is driving me nuts - yes, even from my trusted source, Fox News.

I don’t understand why the anchors and guests keep saying that “the Bush tax cuts for the rich” will expire December 31st.  These cuts were NOT just for the rich.  If the cuts are allowed to expire, the LOWEST BRACKET at 10% will go up to 15%.  For a person or family making $40K in taxable income, their taxes will go from $4K to $6K.  That’s not a 5% increase (as I heard yesterday), it’s a 50% increase.  On the LOWEST BRACKET!!! (Read this article from Investors Business Daily if this is “news” to you.)

Sure the top bracket goes up too - from 35% to 39.6%, but that’s only an 11.6% increase.   Yes, it’s a lot of actual dollars for those rich folk, BUT the percentage is what you feel - and the lowest income earners WILL feel the most pain where it hurts.

To “the rich” with that 11.6% tax increase, they’ll forgo additional investments and savings, or a new Lexus, or maybe a few spa days - but not the staples of life.

To that family making a taxable $40K, the lost $2k in additional income tax will amount to Christmas, or vacation, or groceries, or IRA/401(k) retirement savings when they really need to be saving it.  It’s really going to hurt them, while the high-earners will simply complain about needing a fresh coat of bottom paint on the yacht. (I’m not knockin’ the wealthy - just putting it in perspective.)

Why doesn’t anyone talk about that?  Maybe it’s because just a few years ago, over half of our high school students failed to correctly answer the following question…  “Is 50% of 10:  a) more than 10, b) less than 10, c) equal to 10, or d) you can’t tell from the question?”

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June 18 2010 by Darrin.

It’s almost 22:00 on Friday night, and my friend Pete and I have been mostly “on the go” since Tuesday at 17:30.  During that time, we logged around 1030 miles traveling from Wyoming through Colorado and back home.  Pete had some medical tests to take care of in Denver, and then we went to see some other Wyoming friends now living back in Colorado between Florissant and Cripple Creek [below, green square “1″].  For those unfamiliar, this is just west of Pike’s Peak, and about an hour and a quarter west of Colorado Springs [red square “2″].

Our friends, Rod and Getta, were originally from Colorado, moved to Wyoming for the employment opportunities, and headed back to Colorado six or seven years ago to be near their kids again.  They both found new jobs at the Cripple Creek & Victor Mine - a South African-owned gold mining operation.   Originally, the area was underground stope-mined and boomed in the early 1900s. Old derricks and huge winches like you see here are all over the hills.  Rumor has it they lowered foals down these shafts with the winches, and the young horses were put into service, never to see the light of day again.  They grew to be too large to ever lift out.  (This particular example was electric, and the photo on the right shows some early braking resistors.)

 There are still a few ‘mom and pop’ mines in the area, but CC&V is the Big Dog.  It’s now surface (leach) mined by crushing rock and soaking it with a solution of sodium cyanide and some other “good stuff”. In the following photos, you can see the surface mining process as the rock is blasted out (left) and hauled to the leach pit on top of a rubber liner (the black in the center photo).  The aurocyanide solution drips through the crushed rock, runs down the liner, and is then pumped up to the refinement building by the pumps at the bottom of the pit (right).

Things are still pretty low key, and Rod gave us an incredible tour of the business, even though he officially retired as a CC&V electrician less than a week ago!  Here’s he is (right) with Pete (left) as we’re about to go inside the building that processes the aurocyanide solution and refines it into gold…

 It’s too late for me to Google it and figure it all out, but the solution runs down these little “pools”, all the while becoming more concentrated.  Here are some photos from inside.  Naturally, DON’T drink the water (or lick the soles of your shoes after you leave).

 The solution is refined and refined some more, and then eventually makes its way into some electrolysis tanks where electrical current deposits the leached metals onto a steel wool type material.  This stuff is then eventually thrown into a 3,000,000 BTU furnace where it melts and is poured into a little cone called a button (right, covered in slag)…

Once cooled, it’s sampled, weighed, and put into a safe.  Here’s Pete with the button we just watched pour out of the crucible…

And another shot of Pete, Rod, and me as we stand on front of the safe door…

So, what’s in that button?  Well, this one weighed 940 Troy ounces (~64.5 lbs).  It was 82% gold, 17% silver, and 1% copper.  We won’t worry about the silver or copper; 82% of 940 oz is 771 oz of gold.  And on that day, gold was $1245/oz.  That’s around $960,000 in gold.  In one lump.  And they produce 4,000 to 5,000 oz per week, 52 weeks per year.

Now if you think you’re about to get into this “easy money”, consider that it takes about 350 dump trucks to make one of these buttons.  And these dump trucks haul 300 TONS of rock at a whack.  (That’s 105,000 tons, or 210 MILLION pounds of rock.)  This mine burns 25,000 gallons of diesel per week.  (Pete points out that his coal mine in our beloved Wyoming burns up 600,000 gallons of #2 diesel per week.  Yeah, SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND GALLONS per week.  And they use 400 TON trucks.  They ship a hundred million TONS of coal per year.  Now THAT’S mining.)

So what’s a 300-ton capacity gold-minin’ haul truck look like?  Check it out, and BE SURE to stop at the stop signs when you cross the haul road…

Of the 350 loads per button, about 250 of them are overburden and other rock that doesn’t contain the good ore.  It’s dumped elsewhere.

Oh, one final note: The crucibles from the furnace last about 30 buttons.  They’ll do a few more, but it’s pushing it.  The bottoms start to burn out, and the gold can leak out onto the floor.  Shaun, the final production manager (red shirt, standing by the crucible) said, “Yeah, we don’t use ‘em for more than about 30 pours.  The boss gets kinda pissed when you spill a million dollars of gold into the concrete below the furnace.”

 For what it’s worth, the crucibles (made in Germany) run about $1500 each, and after 30 pours, they’re crushed and also smelted off-site, where they yield 5 or 6 ounces of gold.  (~$6,800)

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June 15 2010 by Darrin.

June’s been “Spring Cleaning” month, and in between a bunch of old DOS software, I found this photo of the Troopy sporting her Hi-Rail gear.  Just some cool old nostalgia.  I have no idea if this is here or Down Under…

Posted in HJ-75 Restoration | 1 Comment »

June 2 2010 by Darrin.

Item one…  Anna called me over from the shop last night to see a good looking storm begin to roll in.  We captured 36 minutes of HD video, then condensed it into a 13 second time-lapse MP4, with sound effects from freesound.org (a great place for royalty-free sound effects).  You can watch it as an MP4 off of our website by clicking the thumbnail below, or if that doesn’t work, try the YouTube link (below the thumbnail) to watch it there…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHExryPLfMY

Item two…  I forgot to mention last month that all the Hawaii 2009 movies are finished and available (in WMV format) on our personal website.  Just click the thumbnail below to go to the Hawaii 2009 video collection…

Item three…  After almost three years of editing with Avid’s “prosumer” editing software, Liquid 7 (v7.2), I’ll be moving to a new system.  Avid has finally ended development for Liquid, to focus more on the consumer and professional ends of the non-linear editing (NLE) spectrum. That middle niche pro-sumer market was just too small, I guess.

As a way of saying thanks for using Liquid (and “sorry we stopped supporting it”), they’ve made existing customers an extremely attractive offer.  I’ll be moving to Media Composer 4, which includes many other pieces of software as well, for compression, DVD/BR authoring, effects, graphics, and titling.  Total value if bought individually is over $6,000!  The offer?  US$495.  As you can imagine, I went for it, as did most Liquid users worldwide.  There will be a tremendous learning curve, but that’s what winter in Wyoming is for.  I’m lookin’ forward to it!

For the record, MC4 is used extensively in professional production.  It was recently used for editing 24, the newest Star Trek, The Hurt Locker, and Slumdog Millionaire - just to name a few.  Very cool!

Posted in Hawaii, 2009, Scenery, Weather | No Comments »

May 29 2010 by Darrin.

Things are sure green around here!  We’ve had lots of rain, and even some snow last Monday, May 24th.  Gotta enjoy it; it only lasts a few weeks or so before some of the grasses head out and turn yellow.  Last month, I decided my 1991 Kawasaki KLR 650 had been dormant in the garage for far too many years.  She got a little “freshening-up”, with a new battery, tires, chain/sprockets, cables, a clean carb, etc.  Here’s the bike, AND the green.

Before I forget, thanks to all who gave their lives to keep America safe and free.  Really.  I cherish what we have here.  A while back, I posted a video on my website.  What’s our flag mean?  Check it out if you like…

So what else is new?  My friend Michael and I were supposed to go to the Netherlands in April, but the volcano in Iceland shut that down.  We rescheduled for four weeks later, but wound up canceling again.

I did get to Maryland just before we were supposed to go to Holland.  I went to get Mom, do some chores, and drive back to Wyoming.  29 hours total time en route, covering ~1849 miles.  That’s almost 64 mph of average speed!  Amazing for her older Ford Expedition with 150,000 miles on the clock.  And we never went over 4 miles above the limit! It was an excellent run.

In the shop, work on the Land Cruiser continues.  The chassis is ready to get painted, but first I have to fabricate and install a custom fuel tank.  In the photos below, you can see the beginning of it.  It’ll hold just over 30 gallons, and will be located behind the rear axle in the factory spare tire location…

Finally, here’s the rebuilt rear differential, now with an ARB Air-Locker.  So long as it works, it’s a “best of both worlds” device, providing an open diff for normal use that can be pneumatically locked for maximum traction.

It’s a great concept if it doesn’t leak!  I’ve had mechanical, pneumatic, and electric lockers over the years, and by far, the older mechanical Unimog lockers are my favorite!  Not much to break.  We’ll see how this goes a few years down the line!

Posted in HJ-75 Restoration, Scenery, Weather | 1 Comment »

April 3 2010 by Darrin.

Finally, only a few months late, I’ve got the chassis out from under the Land Cruiser Troopy and in another shop bay for restoration.  I only managed a few hours a week in 2010 so far, but I hope I can spend some more time on the project now.  I have to keep reminding myself - “Alaska 2011, Alaska 2011″.  Motivation is good to have…

Fortunately, the chassis restoration is the fun part of the project.  (I hate bodywork and painting.)  I’ve got the newer 12H-T turbo-diesel to go in, complete new suspension on the way, new brake parts, steering linkage, and virtually everything I need to rebuild the axles. I also want to weld up another fuel tank to go behind the rear axle.  There’s plenty of room available - enough to easily build in a 1,000+ mile highway range.

I’d like to think I can have the chassis ready to go back under the body by June, and get the bodywork completed while it’s still plenty warm here in Wyoming.  Here are a few photos of the body removal process.  I used 4 x 1-ton camper jacks (the same ones I use to build the AATREC and Unimog campers) to raise the body about 20 inches so the chassis could roll out…

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March 30 2010 by Darrin.

This post brought to you by the wind and sun!  75 MPH wind in WY last night, no sleep, and this morning no grid power - so we’re on the solar backup system.  And wouldn’t you know it, it’s getting too windy for the turbine, and the clouds are rolling in!

 Five months after going to Big Island, Hawaii, I finally started messing with our video.  Here’s a 3-minute “promo” video of the “Makalani Oceanview Cottage” where we stayed last November.  The owner didn’t have trouble renting it out, but I promised him I’d make something for him to use in the future.  It was a very nice place, secluded, with great views.  Click the link below to see the video on YouTube…

Makalani Oceanview Cottage Video

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January 4 2010 by Darrin.

I needed a place I could throw a couple photos “in public” and the blog is the handiest site.  I’m about to cut the frame back down to a factory length (it used to hold Hi-Rail gear) and I’m hoping some Land Cruiser forum members will have a look and tell me how long it’s supposed to be…

Pretty boring, huh?

Posted in HJ-75 Restoration | 1 Comment »

December 21 2009 by Darrin.

Finally, after 4 months back at home, I’ve started our Alaska 2009 movie.  It was originally going to have voice-over narration and all the bells and whistles (it may still..) but I was really disappointed with not making our anticipated Arctic destination.

Added to my despair were some technical issues with my home-built Avid Liquid 7 video editing computer.  The largest problem was a glitch with her ability to render high definition MPEG files.  I was so looking forward to making “Alaska 2009″ for Blu-Ray, and the thought of creating “just another DVD” made me consider giving up!  But problems got solved, and the show must go on.

Click the photo below for Chapter 01 - Introduction, in WMV format…

While this streaming sample is not hi-def, our computer is digesting HD footage well now, after updating the software.  A Blu-Ray “feature presentation” is on the way!

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December 15 2009 by Darrin.

After sitting in the front of the shop while we were in Hawaii and Baltimore, the old Cruiser finally rolled off the trailer and into the shop on Saturday…

Now the whole room smells like rats!  They’ve sure enjoyed themselves for the decade+ the HJ was in storage…

Time to tear it apart and start stocking up on rebuild parts.  Since selling the big AATREC-FM204, I want to build a mini-AATREC.  This vehicle will likely become an “AATREC-HJ” camper, with the troop compartment converted into a camper.  It’ll mostly be a bed, fridge and small counter with diesel stove and sink, all over an elevated floor.  Under the floor, I suspect you’ll find 25 gallons of water, a small water heater, two AGM betteries, and rear pull-out drawers for storage of food and cooking supplies. Just dreaming at this point, but it’ll eventually come to fruition.  Right now, it looks like this…

 One nice thing about the old HJ is the straight and rust-free body.  It was shipped to Wyoming from Port Hedland, Western Australia in 1987, and it’s been in this 17% no-salt climate ever since.  At least there won’t be too much body work!

I still have a number of projects to get to here before going hog-wild with the Cruiser project.   Our Fiat tractor decided to start leaking fuel from three different places at once.  (???)  I’ve got a fuel suction leak on our firetruck (Unimog U1300L) that’s keeping her from running.  The stuff never ends.  Fix one thing, something else breaks.  Oh well…  That’s the fun of it, right?

Recently, I fought a situation with our 1970 Unimog fouling spark plugs in just a few minutes running.  I rebuilt the carb multiple times, completely rebuilt the ignition system, and then (and only then) did I figure out that it was old gasoline.  It was so dark, it looked like dyed diesel fuel.  Now she’s ready for winter with a rebuilt carb, new ignition, and decent fuel…

This is really good news, because the old Swiss 404 is our go-to winter machine.  Her skinny tires and tremendous ground clearance get us through the biggest snow drifts at the worst times, and we were really worrying about blizzards without the Unimog in our vehicular arsenal.

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