Recent content by steelypip

Ah, drip. Yeah, folks have burnt 'drip' in vehicles for a long time. As the vehicles get more highly engineered, it gets to be a worse and worse idea. A multifuel will burn it, but do be careful - the surprises can be deadly. It's also illegal in some places. Because of the smell, it's not...

I did a test run and PMCS last month and the old 002 did its usual fine job. Today we had a little ice, Dominion Power managed to drop a tree across the megavolt feeder to 1400+ customers (maybe they should consider some ROW maintenance? Nah!) and we had no power for 6 hours. The 002 fired up...

A little thread necropost here because I just saw your reply. Everything I've ever heard/read about the B-36 was that it was barely an airplane. If you take WWII recip technology and design it to carry 2-3 Fat Man sized bombs to Europe (the design was initially an XBLR paper airplane...

It was a common procedure to put unit markings on the rear of the vehicle, just as in the army. As an example, on the SAC base where I spent most of my childhood, the maintenance squadrons all had strata blue six cylinder short wheelbase no-dually (half ton?) Chevrolet Step Vans with rear barn...

The original OXCARTS (A-12) were a lot lighter than the SR-71 - half the human support systems, and smaller lower equipment bays. It's not surprising at all that they were faster/higher fliers. Probably worth mentioning though that a) the J-58 engine works in a pretty tight 'box' of mach...

A saner choice of powerplant would probably be a Cummins 4BT. Probably doesn't weigh any more than the stock 6 cyl, is the right shape (long and narrow), and is shorter than the stock engine, so would allow some flexibility in transmission options.

Yes, Ethanol is hygroscopic. It's why the azeotrope is only about 98% pure. If you pour a pint of Everclear into a beaker during the Southern US summer, it will change from 190 proof (95%) to some lower value over the next couple of hours as it sucks water right out of the air. It'll also...

...or the Detroit diesel. The breakdown goes: First effort (M4, M4A1): the Continental-built Wright R-975 9 cylinder air cooled radial (400 HP), as seen in Stuarts. But they couldn't build them fast enough, and they weren't as peppy as the Army wanted. Even so, a lot were built 1942-44...

My MEP-002A was my introduction to owning things painted in olive drab. We still have it eight years later. It still works, and still powers the house in outages. It does exactly what it is supposed to do, and has proved incredibly stout. Congratulations on a great find.

The only theoretically higher sulfur fuel I've run across is home heating oil (#2 Fuel Oil). I would be surprised, though, if they actually ship different feedstocks through the pipelines for any fuel in this viscosity range. I suspect HHO is the same #2 diesel you get at the pump with or...

Back when I was working as a lab chemist on government contracts (including a US Army one), I had to do exactly the same thing - manage my lab carefully for 10 months, and then carefully spend all the money I had saved in the last two. I called it 'end of the year mad money,' and after the...

That was exactly the conclusion I reached. The MEP-002A doesn't move. It sits on rubber pads on the corner of the parking pad. Some day it will have a shelter to live under. Right now it has a tarp. Portable generation needs are handled by a MEP-016B (actually an MEP-701A) if I need 240V...

Smart phone navigation software is getting crankier and crankier about leaning on the cell network for triangulation versus GPS. I'm sure that in cities this is a win (concrete canyons make it difficult to get a GPS lock), but if you're out in the weeds, the failure modes aren't always benign...

I've observed that my panel % Load meter indicates quite close to the as-configured standard. A purely resistive load (space heaters) does indeed indicate 80% load at 5KW. That said, I know that if I run my air compressor on the generator, the gauge will be a little more honest. My bigger...

TO AN 1-3-49 seems like the answer to most of your questions about the unit itself, and the other manuals explain how to use what to actually feed your aircrews. Very interesting reading about something of which I knew very little. Amusing that USAAF went through the aluminum ==> stainless...