So apart from the interesting helicopter news…. with Joel in Sudbury we visited Mt Ramsey, saw Jaws 3D and finally tried the Apollo restaurant (which was very nice). I will try and post some pictures of Mt Ramsey. Joel was the only one who carried a camera the whole walk- through snow and muddy bog type areas. It was worth the wet feet when we got to the top. Who knew Sudbury had a mountain?! Jurassic Park 3D was brilliant and still managed to make me jump. Much better seeing it on the big screen – which Brendan had when it was first released in 1993 but I was only 6 so it was too old for me! We went to the 10 o’clock viewing which made me wonder which of us would fall asleep first but we all stayed awake – it must be the sign of a good […]
I started to mend the helicopter skis, both were broken. I was surprised to find that one leg is now broken in three (3) places!! I knew that it was broken at the lower end, but the upper end of the leg is part of the battery tray, as shown best in the 2nd and 3rd pictures below. They are all mended in these pictures.
Joel visited the Sudbury office last week and the week before I was in Mississauga with Drew staying at the Golder apartment. So we’ve not been up to a great deal out of the ordinary. I am still trying to fly helicopters as much as I can, I am learning about the programmable remote and settings etc, so I crashed the 120 heli yesterday, breaking a gear wheel that drives the tail rotor. This took a while to fix as I had to take apart much of the tail rotor assembly, having done this I found it hard to push the new gear onto the shaft, and in pushing, pushed the shaft through the gear which is mounted on the far end of the shaft, in the body of the helicopter. With no way to hold the shaft while pushing the new gear on I was forced to disassemble the bottom end of the main […]
So I have bought yet another Helicopter, this time it is a 6 channel, fully collective pitch and 3D capable beast. It’s the next step in my quest. I have had to de-tune the controls to make it flyable, but it’s providing me with a steep learning curve. The new one is slightly larger the Genious FP and a lot more powerful. There is only one motor, the tail is driven by a shaft, which means that the speed of the tail rotor is kept relative to the main rotor. I am going to have to wait for some good weather to fly it outside. Today we have had some very wet soggy snow, it’s floating around zero at the moment, -8 yesterday and meant to be 9 today, but I can’t see that happening. Yesterday Hannah and I fancied a full English breakfast, so short of black pudding we made it for brunch. […]
WE’VE SEEN IT!! So I discovered (Hannah has known for ages) recently that it would be possible to see the Aurora from Sudbury. The Aurora occurs directly over the magnetic poles, logically when the earths northern pole is tilted furthest towards the sun the Aurora appears at it’s strongest in this hemisphere. Thus the best time to see the Aurora Borialis is around the Spring equinox, which has just past. I spotted this afternoon that the Aurora had a rating of 3 out of 10 and was forecast as being “strong” for this evening: Also I checked the cloud cover forecast for the evening: so Hannah and I invited Craig to come with us on our drive out of Sudbury and away from the light pollution that might obscure our view. We went as far as Crab Lake and waited, eventually we saw some strange lights in the sky, my camera struggled to get an reasonable pictures of […]
Tuesday afternoon Hannah and I took a trip out to Powassan to Mathew’s Maple Syrup Farm. It’s about a 2 hour drive from us, as we approached the farm we were able to see loads of blue pipe, about 10mm in diameter going from tree to tree. Brendan joked that this was for cider, and Hannah being gullible believed him! Te he he. They drill a hole into the tree, then drive in the tap, which the pipe connects to. The pipe then joins into a main line which returns to the distillery come refinery. Hannah is stood next to the mainlines below in the pictures. The tree produces about 20psi of pressure to push the sap up, a vacuum is used to help draw the sap along pipes. Reverse osmosis removes the first 20% water, then they heat the sap to remove yet more water until it is 60% sugar. The syrup is filtered to […]
I broke the tail fin which protects the tail rotor from contacting with the ground. I ordered a replacement part, but being a little tight, I thought I would spend less than $3 on only the part rather than more than $12 on the full assembly, figuring that regardless I would save a little. However I had to buy a soldering iron to complete the job, on which I spent almost $25. Now way over budget, I returned home and started the procedure of stripping all of the tail apart. I had to press the motor from the broken tail fin, in doing so the back came off the motor. I successfully un-soldered the connector as required, and re-assembled and soldered the joints. I tried to replace the back of the motor which houses the brushes, which being so tiny was not easy. Needless say this didn’t go well, I […]
Last week Hannah got some pictures of Tigger hiding out around our apartment: I think I forgot to mention that on our way back from Chutes we saw two transport trucks, with a tank on each and behind that a Land Rover each! This weekend has been cold with a high of -14 today I believe, though the sky is clear and blue, the sun is busy melting the snow. Ramsey Lake has very little snow left on it, the ice is showing through now. There are still ice fishing huts and people driving their trucks on the lake today, so we took a stroll out towards to island. Hannah was very concerned that we might fall through. If we had fallen through we have about one minuet to get out of the water before one is unable to move.. Luckily for us the ice is very thick, easily able to support a 2 tonne truck, and probably […]
This past week has been “warm” in terms of Canadian winter. It rained on Sunday all day and didn’t stop until mid week. Much of the snow and ice melted. The parking lot (Carpark) is now clear of snow and ice, the roads are all clear, it’s just the snow banks and snow mountains that remain. There is road grit everywhere now, the snow melts and runs away leaving the grit behind, up to half an inch thick in places, enough to cover the lines in the road and parking lots. I moved cube today, I am now one the other side and at the far end of the row, it’s a dark spot, as noted by Terry Pratchett; light thought it was the fastest thing in the universe. But no matter how fast it travels it finds that darkness got there first and is waiting for it. Sure enough this […]
Recent Comments