Ted Raguso has been on my case for a while, to go for lap swim after church. I did a few times last year, and it was great... but then again at that time I was driving to church. These days, I tend to cycle - but I took my swimming suit this morning, and figured I'd drop by the pool after service.
It's a bit of a trek - something like 35 km (21.8 mi) according to the Google!
Right from the get-go, I felt tired this morning, not sure why. But I got onto the bike and got rolling in decent time. The service was fine, although, yikes, that last hymn - the Americans went and changed the tune for a familiar hymn, we sounded rather thin!
After he service, I cycled over to the aquatic centre and had a nice swim in the pool - outdoor lap swim pool - I need to get some polarized swimming goggles or something! I was only able to do 1/2 of my regular 60 lengths / 1500 metre swim - 30 lengths / 750 metre total. I was tired when I got into the pool. and you know that I was even more tired when I got out.
I left my swimming trunks on, put on my shoes and my cycling shirt, and headed for home. Oof, I could not believe that I had no reserve, couldn't kick it up when coming up on traffic lights.... and that hill at 13th Street, about 4 km (2.5 mi) from home, which is always a tough slug on the way home, was almost impossible! I had to stop at the top for a minute, down a bunch of water, breathe deeply and let my heart rate recover :-) But, I made it!
It took 1/2 hour at home before I could get up to shower. I was going to jump in the pool, but it's still a bit chilly - 24.2 C - I really want 25 C before I even think of going in. After my shower, I was so whipped that I slept on & off for another hour. Zounds, that's not like me, to sleep in the afternoon. Oh well.
According to my weather station, the temperature peaked at about 35 C around the time that I got home (2 PM). No wonder I was a little zoofed after the ride :-)
I'm still fighting to avoid turning on the air conditioning, save energy, save money, and all that stuff. I bought a couple of box fans on Thursday, and put them in the windows all night, blasting away. At the peak of the heat outside, it was 25 C inside, which is OK if you aren't exerting yourself - with little to no humidity, 25C feels just nice.
23 April 2016
SRP Perkins Substation Installation
This was interesting. A 500 kV substation. Everything overhead is humming and buzzing, 24 hours a day. Only our little section of the substation is powered off, the rest is still working. We installed some equipment in an outdoor cabinet, and also in a rack indoors. We're doing a bit of a joint demonstration of digital substation technology.
One of the challenging things about this kind of work is that the guys start soooo early. They generally arrive at 5:30 AM. We'd show up 6:30 or 7 AM, just as the sun was coming up. I understand why they do it, of course - there's no shade out there, and the sun is unrelenting & hot! Hard to believe it until you feel it!
One of the challenging things about this kind of work is that the guys start soooo early. They generally arrive at 5:30 AM. We'd show up 6:30 or 7 AM, just as the sun was coming up. I understand why they do it, of course - there's no shade out there, and the sun is unrelenting & hot! Hard to believe it until you feel it!
01-03 April: Trip to New Mexico
I've been repeatedly invited to Albuquerque by Don Bartrip, president of Winmer Technology Innovators, a former customer of ours when Jason & I were at Norscan Instruments. The Trinity Site, where the world's first nuclear bomb was tested, in the middle of White Sands Missile Range, is only open two Saturdays a year - once in April, and once in October.. and the NRAO Very Large Array radio-telescope site has guided tours on certain Saturdays. They coincided (probably not a coincidence), so I went for a drive to visit Don and see them both.
I took Friday off, so I could have lunch with Norbert Wegner of ERLPhase (visiting family here from back home), then make a leisurely drive up to Albuquerque, but alas, it was not to be. We were in the middle of an installation at SRP's Perkins Substation, and my part wasn't functional yet - so I had to drive up and do a couple of hours' work on my day off. I had to make a 70 minute drive in about 45 minutes, and still ended up being 15 minutes late. Sorry, Norbert! We had a good chat anyway.
Then, off through Peyson, onto Interstate 40, and going east. And east. And east. Just as I crested the plateau northeast of Peyson, my car threw a "service engine soon" indication. ARGH! If you know me, you know that I can't stand a SES light on my dashboard.
The next chance I got, which was Holbrook just before going onto I-40, I whipped out my handy OBD-II bluetooth adapter, plugged it in, fired up my tablet, and got the code out - it appeared to be a temporary "engine too lean" indication, probably due to the change in altitude together with the push of passing on a hill, so I cleared the code and moved on. Yay!
This site is deep in the middle of the White Sands Missile Range. You turn off the main two lane highway, go down another paved 2 lane road for a couple of kilometres, until you come to a fence and gate, guarded by armed MPs. They look at your passport and wave you through. From there, you pass a group of buildings, and head out across the desert. All side roads have pylons to show they are closed. There's the odd vehicle with armed MPs, watching. You go about 8 km and turn off onto a sand road, and after another couple of km, it opens into a huge parking lot. There were probably about 1,000 vehicles there. You walk about 2 km to the actual site, which is about 1/2 km in diameter, well fenced off. In the centre is a cairn with a plaque, which is apparently at ground zero - where the tower sat on that fateful day in July 1945, that they set off the world's first nuclear bomb. They apparently didn't know how well it would work - or even if it would work - but it put out something like three times the expected energy, and vapourized some recording equipment that they weren't planning to vapourize. Great planning went into the work - multiple sets of monitoring & recording equipment at various distances from the blast. The light from the blast was like a second sunrise when seen from a great distance. People demanded to know what it was, but the government at the time (and for long time later) just waved their hands and said, "nothing to see here, move along" :-) As well they should have, I suppose!
About 4 km away from the Trinity Site is the McDonald ranch house. All this land was expropriated from ranchers during the war, and this house and its outbuildings were left behind. The military used the house as an office, a lab, and assembly building. There are artifacts and displays inside. Outside, the other outbuildings are gone, just remnants remain.
They have nasty fine sand here. I dropped my camera, and it started misbehaving. You will see later pictures where the lens didn't fully open. So sad. I had to spend the rest of the day checking each time I opened the lens, to ensure that I could get an unimpeded picture!
Next, we dashed to the other side of Interstate 25, and onto Highway 60 headed west (yes, the same highway 60 that goes through Mesa and Phoenix, and continues up to Kingman). From a ways off, you can see the little dots in formation - wow, that's a big arrangement of satellite dishes!
It turns out that there are 27 dishes, each about 25 metres across and each mounted on a large heavy tripod arrangement and having bearing & azimuth drive. There are railroad tracks going out in a "Y" formation some 34 km in each direction from the centre. At various intervals, there are small (10 m?) spurs off the track, and a site pad where a dish can sit on three foundation pads. They have a special carrier vehicle that goes down the railroad track, puts down its feet, turns 90 degrees to get onto the spur, then goes out under the telescope. They support the telescope then unbolt it from the foundation pads, pick it up, and (slowly) move back onto the railway track and down to where it needs to be. Wow.
There are four formations, "A", "B", "C" and "D" (how imaginative), where the 9 dishes in each arm are spaced at different distances from each other. They change the formation nominally every 4 months, and, depending on the distance of the change, it can take up to 2 weeks to change over!
They have a supercomputer (built by the NRC in Ottawa?) inside, that takes the signals from the 27 dishes, correlates them, removes noise, integrates over time, etc., and they come out with images that rival the best visual images from Hubble! Wow.
The radios used in these radiotelescope dishes are all built & maintained on-site. They are unique in the world. Cryogenically cooled, they are low noise and very sensitive. The signals are brought back to the central computer by low loss cable, which they know the exact characteristics of, and the exact length, so they can compensate for everything when they do their calculations. Cool.
They do observations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In pre-Internet days, researchers lived on-site during their observation period. Now there's just the bare minimum crew out there, keeping the system going.
Time slots for observations are assigned on a merit basis. You don't have to be some high end scientist to get time on the system. They schedule the observation, and then queue them up on the computer. Often they are 1 or 2 hours each, but can be more or less. The on-site supervisor makes the final call, perhaps adjusting due to weather or other circumstances.
At the end of the tour, we went out and stood under the closest dish. It was huuuuge! As we stood under it, an observation changeover occurred. It was wild, seeing these huge dishes moving (almost) silently, all perfectly choreographed. These dishes are no slouches - I would estimate that it takes 60 to 90 seconds for them to go 180 degrees rotation, or from full low azimuth to pointing straight up. Pretty impressive.
There were people showing up constantly to take pictures and get their picture taken. A beautiful blonde lass with an Aussie accent agreed to take my picture. We chatted briefly, she was finishing up a bit of a road trip with her (much older) lady friend, going back to Denver and from there back to Australia... Hmm, too bad that I was going west instead of east. Oh well, I've got other issues to deal with :-)
I took Friday off, so I could have lunch with Norbert Wegner of ERLPhase (visiting family here from back home), then make a leisurely drive up to Albuquerque, but alas, it was not to be. We were in the middle of an installation at SRP's Perkins Substation, and my part wasn't functional yet - so I had to drive up and do a couple of hours' work on my day off. I had to make a 70 minute drive in about 45 minutes, and still ended up being 15 minutes late. Sorry, Norbert! We had a good chat anyway.
Then, off through Peyson, onto Interstate 40, and going east. And east. And east. Just as I crested the plateau northeast of Peyson, my car threw a "service engine soon" indication. ARGH! If you know me, you know that I can't stand a SES light on my dashboard.
The next chance I got, which was Holbrook just before going onto I-40, I whipped out my handy OBD-II bluetooth adapter, plugged it in, fired up my tablet, and got the code out - it appeared to be a temporary "engine too lean" indication, probably due to the change in altitude together with the push of passing on a hill, so I cleared the code and moved on. Yay!
Trinity Test Site
This site is deep in the middle of the White Sands Missile Range. You turn off the main two lane highway, go down another paved 2 lane road for a couple of kilometres, until you come to a fence and gate, guarded by armed MPs. They look at your passport and wave you through. From there, you pass a group of buildings, and head out across the desert. All side roads have pylons to show they are closed. There's the odd vehicle with armed MPs, watching. You go about 8 km and turn off onto a sand road, and after another couple of km, it opens into a huge parking lot. There were probably about 1,000 vehicles there. You walk about 2 km to the actual site, which is about 1/2 km in diameter, well fenced off. In the centre is a cairn with a plaque, which is apparently at ground zero - where the tower sat on that fateful day in July 1945, that they set off the world's first nuclear bomb. They apparently didn't know how well it would work - or even if it would work - but it put out something like three times the expected energy, and vapourized some recording equipment that they weren't planning to vapourize. Great planning went into the work - multiple sets of monitoring & recording equipment at various distances from the blast. The light from the blast was like a second sunrise when seen from a great distance. People demanded to know what it was, but the government at the time (and for long time later) just waved their hands and said, "nothing to see here, move along" :-) As well they should have, I suppose!About 4 km away from the Trinity Site is the McDonald ranch house. All this land was expropriated from ranchers during the war, and this house and its outbuildings were left behind. The military used the house as an office, a lab, and assembly building. There are artifacts and displays inside. Outside, the other outbuildings are gone, just remnants remain.
They have nasty fine sand here. I dropped my camera, and it started misbehaving. You will see later pictures where the lens didn't fully open. So sad. I had to spend the rest of the day checking each time I opened the lens, to ensure that I could get an unimpeded picture!
NRAO Very Large Array
Next, we dashed to the other side of Interstate 25, and onto Highway 60 headed west (yes, the same highway 60 that goes through Mesa and Phoenix, and continues up to Kingman). From a ways off, you can see the little dots in formation - wow, that's a big arrangement of satellite dishes!
It turns out that there are 27 dishes, each about 25 metres across and each mounted on a large heavy tripod arrangement and having bearing & azimuth drive. There are railroad tracks going out in a "Y" formation some 34 km in each direction from the centre. At various intervals, there are small (10 m?) spurs off the track, and a site pad where a dish can sit on three foundation pads. They have a special carrier vehicle that goes down the railroad track, puts down its feet, turns 90 degrees to get onto the spur, then goes out under the telescope. They support the telescope then unbolt it from the foundation pads, pick it up, and (slowly) move back onto the railway track and down to where it needs to be. Wow.
There are four formations, "A", "B", "C" and "D" (how imaginative), where the 9 dishes in each arm are spaced at different distances from each other. They change the formation nominally every 4 months, and, depending on the distance of the change, it can take up to 2 weeks to change over!
They have a supercomputer (built by the NRC in Ottawa?) inside, that takes the signals from the 27 dishes, correlates them, removes noise, integrates over time, etc., and they come out with images that rival the best visual images from Hubble! Wow.
The radios used in these radiotelescope dishes are all built & maintained on-site. They are unique in the world. Cryogenically cooled, they are low noise and very sensitive. The signals are brought back to the central computer by low loss cable, which they know the exact characteristics of, and the exact length, so they can compensate for everything when they do their calculations. Cool.
They do observations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In pre-Internet days, researchers lived on-site during their observation period. Now there's just the bare minimum crew out there, keeping the system going.
Time slots for observations are assigned on a merit basis. You don't have to be some high end scientist to get time on the system. They schedule the observation, and then queue them up on the computer. Often they are 1 or 2 hours each, but can be more or less. The on-site supervisor makes the final call, perhaps adjusting due to weather or other circumstances.
At the end of the tour, we went out and stood under the closest dish. It was huuuuge! As we stood under it, an observation changeover occurred. It was wild, seeing these huge dishes moving (almost) silently, all perfectly choreographed. These dishes are no slouches - I would estimate that it takes 60 to 90 seconds for them to go 180 degrees rotation, or from full low azimuth to pointing straight up. Pretty impressive.
Visiting Winmer
On Sunday morning, Don and I did lunch at Hello Deli, a one-of-a-kind nice little breakfast & lunch spot. Then we dropped by his office, Winmer, which brought back memories of the last time I was here, I think it was 2009.
The Drive Home
I stopped a few times :-)Airway Beacon
Don told me about the airway beacon system from the 1920s, and that there was one at the air museum at Grants Airport. So, I stopped by! Cool. The museum was closed (Sunday afternoon, after all - and actually it's open once a week), but I wandered around and stood at the base of the replica tower.
Standin' on a Corner in Winslow Arizona...
Yes, it is interesting how a pop song, itself a product of culture, can influence culture in a feedback loop... oh wait, that's the engineer in me prattling on again :-)
There were people showing up constantly to take pictures and get their picture taken. A beautiful blonde lass with an Aussie accent agreed to take my picture. We chatted briefly, she was finishing up a bit of a road trip with her (much older) lady friend, going back to Denver and from there back to Australia... Hmm, too bad that I was going west instead of east. Oh well, I've got other issues to deal with :-)
Winslow Crater
Yes, there's a meteor crater not far west of Winslow. I knew that it had closed at 5 PM, but I figured that I'd stop by and see it anyway. Nope. I went about 8 km sound on a narrow 2 lane paved road through a cow pasture (yes had Texas gate to enter). Had to stop to let some cattle cross the road. Then I crested a hill... and saw the crater's rim standing tall in the desert. It was obvious that it was laid out in such a way that I wouldn't see anything without being there when it was open. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of the crater rim from the outside - should have :-)And then home...
Then headed west toward Flagstaff, and south to home.
27 March: Visit to the Commemorative Air Force Museum in Mesa
Right after church, Ted Raguso asked if I wanted to go to an air museum. Now, I don't know much about planes, but you know little boys always like planes, trains and cars. So we went. It was pretty interesting.
It turns out that they used to call themselves the Confederate Air Force, but here in the USA, the word "Confederate" has some meanings that many do not like - too many people lost in the war, still fresh in their minds, even though it was long ago. So, they changed their name.
They were having a military flea market inside the hangar, and a military vehicle show outside that day. The vehicle show was interesting too. One was a perfectly restored WW II jeep - a real jeep, not an imitation or postwar commercial one. I didn't realize that Kaizer was made to share the prints with Ford, who made identical machines. But, Henry Ford being the guy he was (or was it his son? no matter), they put a little "F" on all the parts. So, restoring a Ford WW II Jeep is more challenging, because you have to track down all the parts with "F" on them. Heh, heh, maybe that's why they did it - to make their vehicles more collectible????
I spotted a vehicle with a Canadian military insignia, flying the New Brunswick provincial flag, and numbered with a "CZ" on the side. What gives? It was an all-purpose military truck, and yes it's originally from Canada. Ha ha, can't get away from those Canadians, can you?
One of the tracked vehicles was some kind of gun carrier - eek, the armament on that thing! Kind of a propos in gun-happy Arizona, let me tell you... but that's a story for another time.
It turns out that they used to call themselves the Confederate Air Force, but here in the USA, the word "Confederate" has some meanings that many do not like - too many people lost in the war, still fresh in their minds, even though it was long ago. So, they changed their name.
They were having a military flea market inside the hangar, and a military vehicle show outside that day. The vehicle show was interesting too. One was a perfectly restored WW II jeep - a real jeep, not an imitation or postwar commercial one. I didn't realize that Kaizer was made to share the prints with Ford, who made identical machines. But, Henry Ford being the guy he was (or was it his son? no matter), they put a little "F" on all the parts. So, restoring a Ford WW II Jeep is more challenging, because you have to track down all the parts with "F" on them. Heh, heh, maybe that's why they did it - to make their vehicles more collectible????
I spotted a vehicle with a Canadian military insignia, flying the New Brunswick provincial flag, and numbered with a "CZ" on the side. What gives? It was an all-purpose military truck, and yes it's originally from Canada. Ha ha, can't get away from those Canadians, can you?
One of the tracked vehicles was some kind of gun carrier - eek, the armament on that thing! Kind of a propos in gun-happy Arizona, let me tell you... but that's a story for another time.
March & April: Backyard Flaura & Fauna!
Oranges
In early March, I had the first orange blossoms on my little orange tree :-) Other folks' trees have been blooming for several weeks, such a sweet smell... and now my tree smells nice too. Maybe this year I'll get more than one orange from it :-)
So... just before he left, Eric helped me put a screen cover over my orange tree. The idea is, if it's birds (and we do have a lot of birds clattering around here in the spring), then it will stop them from accosting the tree 'til the fruit gets larger, when it seems they might be safe.
It's a clunky contraption, but I hope it works.
Roses
It turns out that I have two rosebushes in the backyard, along the fence. Had I known that, I'd likely have put the shed somewhere else! Oh well. The one on the south wall, is beautiful pink, smells lovely, came out with at least half a dozen blossoms. The one on the east wall, is beautiful orange, came out with only three or four, Both were lovely while they lasted!The red rosebush appears to have been attacked by caterpillars or bugs. I've sprayed to prevent further damage.
Here's an update from early April. Again, still lovely :-) I will have to spray them earlier next year.
And here's from a week or so later. They just kept coming :-)
And a few days later.
Creeping Vines
Those who've been here know that I have a patio area covered in vines. These vines appear to originate from my neighbours' house - their whole south side, and half the west side, is covered with them! I shudder to think of the damage that they've done to their house's structure. Oh well.Anyway, these vines periodically get these big, beautiful, yellow blossoms on them, so beautiful. Also, good hummingbird attraction as well - I've seen them a few times, but never fast enough on shutter to catch a picture.
Here's what it looked like this year.
Honeybees!
One Saturday in March, my neighbour told me by text, that the bee's nest on his house would be taken down Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, in the middle of the night. What bee's nest? Oh the big one facing my kitchen window. Hmm, never saw it.
I don't know how I missed it! It was over a metre across, it was crazy! Constant activity around that hive. I was wondering how I always had bees around my outside lights at night, and I'm sure that's why.
 |
| Before relocation - about a metre (3 ft) across! |
The guys didn't show up on the appointed night, but about a week later, while falling to sleep, I heard something and looked out front. Sure enough, a couple of white vans marked with the name of the bee keeper's farm, and saying "Bee Relocation Service", and they were readying their suits & ladders. Now the eaves are empty.
There are still a few forlorn honeybees flying about.
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| After relocation - just a few forlorn honeybees buzzing about |
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