Hello all, here I am back again after 13 days off line. Most of that I was away, but then had a string of stuff to do & only now have got around to clearing my 2,500+ e-mails, 250 of which needed reading.
Done that now.
The Military Odyssey show at Detling has a militaria background and is now the largest show of its kind in the world - I believe ..... There was a lot of military vehicle stuff there and plenty of continental folk selling stuff from Germany and points east. I found no less than three inverted DKW two stroke Wermacht generators, none of which had their generators, just the engine. I'd really like one of they, having British and American engines from that period. But at £100 for the best of them (in its box, all complete apart from the electrikery bit), I decided he could pack it up and take it home again, which was exactly what he was doing when I appeared and offered him thirty quid - but no joy.
Ah well.
However, I did find a stall selling all sorts of bits and bobs & bought four ex WD rotary converters of various sizes (all now checked and working) , an aircraft gyro test set complete with cable that plugs into my Smiths Autopilot, a boxed 8" voltmeter that measures between 6 and 18.50 kv, a twee little avionics gyro (that needed some delicate work on the slip ring brush knives) that might be 1960's ballistic missile equipment, an instrument panel mounted gyro compass, complete with internal gyro and a very complete (including instruction book) 1954 Geiger counter. All for less than forty quid the lot.
Anyone have any suggestions how I might go about finding out what voltage the gyro motors run at? I know 28 volts is nominal, but I'd hate to find out the hard way that they are a lot lower than that ;o((
I have a long term plan for running the ex-B17 Homelite APU generator to produce 28 volts and using the current to drive a gyro attached to a pivoted plank. The idea is to develop a safe inter-reactive public display item to demonstrate how an aircraft gyro compass works.
For cheap work clothes "Drop Zone" was selling a HUGE pile of stuff at three quid a go. I ended up buying three jackets (one summer weight, one winter weight with fleecy liner and one for the Son), a fleece, sweater, rubberised poncho, scruffy leather jacket and two enormous kit bags to shove it all in.
A visit to B&Q in Canterbury earlier in the week discovered that they were selling 1,200 watt circular saws, 800 watt pendulum jig saws and 1,200 watt mitre saws for thirty quid each. I promptly bought one of each and the circular and mitre saws were in pretty constant use for three days, being well used and occasionally abused. They showed no sign of strain, heat or smell of hot insulation. How someone can make even the nicely machined bed of the mitre saw, let alone the whole thing for thirty quid is beyond me - and all three have sighting lasers that are a bit dim in bright sunlight - but hey, watta you want? If you have a handy B&Q, I'd nip down there this weekend and see if there's any left!
Whilst tidying the outhouse today, I found a small SV lawn mower type engine (perhaps 1970's) that I thought I'd lost. In view of recent comments in this and other forums, I thought I'd get it going, paint it black, mount it on a bit of plank and run up a hugely detailed and entirely spurious sign defining it as an ex SBS APU as used to drive the compressors used in inflating the fast attack boats. Gosh, I could even fix it up with a BTH compressor ..........
Gotta take yer fun where you can find it these days ;o))
Regards,
Kim Siddorn,