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We got more rain in the first six months of this year than we got all of last year, and our Monsoon season is just starting. We get rain when the hurricanes push moisture into the Gulf of Mexico and across Mexico.

So far, it has been hotter than normal this summer with triple digit temps and low humidity.

I think all the early rain and plant growth is what has caused an explosion in the rodent population around here.

Weather or not
Website Operations Howto
Replies 25 Post by AC5ZO

I have been using kibble dog food and they hit it every time I bait a trap. I have non-trapping tubes that I bait also that are fakes. They have gotten used to walking into tubes to get baits and when they walk into my electrical contraption (3" PVC pipe with electrodes and switch) they start tugging on the dog food kibble and they get fried. Rock (grey) squirels would also probably get in these traps and they will go after dog food also.

I have been taking the dog food kibble and drilling a hole in my baits and running a piece of SS welding wire through it. Then the bait is wired to the trap trigger. When I have baited the traps without the electrical supply connected, they have actually chewed through the welding wire to take the bait home. Now that I seem to have them trained to really tug and pull on the baits, they hit my electrical trap pretty regularly. I have been wiring kibble to my mechanical rat traps also. It is more work to drill/wire kibble, but I have had cheese stolen from a few traps without it being triggered. (or a triggered trap with no rat) When my electrical apparatus gets hit, I definitely have a dead woodrat inside.

I like Murf's idea of the box trap. I think that these woodrats live in small colonies, so they might follow one another into a box trap. Now that I have the rats used to crawling into tubes to get baits, perhaps I should attach a shop vacuum to the closed end of the pipe. I would bet that a 16 gallon shop vac would hold quite a few woodrats.

I wish that we did have TSC out here. When I lived in the midwest, I used to go there all the time. There is nothing like that here. I will have a look online.

Pack Rats
Just For Fun Off Topic
Replies 29 Post by AC5ZO

I have had a backhoe on my compact tractor for years. I also have a front end loader. When I take the backhoe off of the tractor, the rear end can feel light as the backhoe provides adequate ballast to offset the loads in the FEL. A similar thing happens if the backhoe is used without the FEL but the front end gets light. It comes down to a matter of weight balancing on the tractor.

When I use the backhoe I pretty much lift the tractor off the ground with the FEL and backhoe stabilizers. I never use the backhoe without the FEL. My backhoe is a frame mounted unit. It is quite powerful and will move the anchored tractor around when I am in tough digging.

Jinma backhoe attachment
Jinma Farmpro Agracat Nortrac
Replies 4 Post by AC5ZO

JD855...The blue green smoke is Chlorine gas mixed with a bit of ammonia gas. That should do the trick on the hornets, alright. This mixture should not be particularly dangerous when done outside, but try not to breath the vapors. Concentrated vapors will also burn the eyes. Mixing these chemicals inside could easily send you to the hospital.

Personally I would not mix the chemicals BEFORE putting them in the hole because the evolution of the poisonous gas will be almost immediate. It might be possible to pour the two containers in together and then use one of the containers to plug the nest entrance quickly. This mixture should pose no long term soil contamination issue.

Hornet help
Just For Fun Off Topic
Replies 30 Post by AC5ZO

There are many opponents to free trade that pick the treaty of the week and present it as the Beginning of the End of the US. With respect to CAFTA, it is almost a non-issue. The US is already the biggest consumer of CA production and CA consumes much more from the US than China, Inc. and other foreign countries. Probably the only substantial change with this agreement is that sugar imports are easier for the CA producers.

I have personally been involved in cross border manufacturing as a result of NAFTA. Nobody in the US lost a single job with what my manufacturing lines did in Mexico. In fact, as a result of the "supporting activities" happening in Mexico, I was able to create 250 additional jobs in the US and create $100,000,000 in sales of new medical devices per year in a market that did not exist before 1993. I had 35 to 40 suppliers of parts in the US in addition to my own manufacturing. I would say that all together, my manufacturing activities employed over 500 people, mostly in the US. The Maquilo Doro operations in Mexico accounted for less than 1% of my manufacturing and parts. You won't hear this story on CNN, because it does not sell commercial time to report happy outcomes.

As far as CNN is concerned, I agree with Mark. But, I understand that they are now beaming FNC to the north for another viewpoint.

DR-CAFTA
Just For Fun Off Topic
Replies 13 Post by AC5ZO

I have a lot of colichi where I live and I break it up with a sub-soiler before working on it with the loader. But, I can go through it with my backhoe. With the hoe, it breaks up into big rock-like chunks. With the loader, it is hard to get a bite in colichi but the sub-soiler disturbs the layers and the bucket will work.

NH TC33DA FEL bolt-on cutting edge
New Holland Tractors
Replies 8 Post by AC5ZO

My NH TC45 is UP to engage FWD.

4 wheel drive
New Holland Tractors
Replies 9 Post by AC5ZO

I had a similar problem and I eventually gave up and moved. My problems started when I built my shop/RV garage on my property where the neighbors used to park. It seriously inconvenienced them and they would make up all sorts of charges and present them to the zoning enforcement officer. On one occasion, the zoning officer came by and asked me to take down my amateur radio antenna that had been up for more than a year. We came to an understanding and I modified it to suit the zoning laws, but the problems never ended. <br>
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My wife and I finally agreed that it was not worth the hassle to pay legal fees to fight with "neighbors" that you don't want to be around. The best thing that you can expect if you win your continued dispute is that you get to live next to a jerk that you don't like. I spent thousands of dollars on lawyers and other things to protect myself including fences and video surveilance. I even had a private detective investigate the neighbor to make sure that they were unlikely to shoot me in the back when I was outside working. (They really did act that nutty and out of touch with reality.) <br>
<br>
And, when the neighbor decided to break out the windows of the shop and the tracks in the snow led directly to their house, the local police would not even talk to them about it. They were apparently friends with someone in the local government. When I had a problem with another neighbor not cleaning up after their horse on a 1 acre lot and allow manure to run off of their property into the street and my front lawn, the authorities would not even come out to take a look. Top that off with several events of garbage and used motor oil thrown over your fence and you just want to make them pay. <br>
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It all worked out, however. I moved from a one acre to a ten acre place. I rebuilt my amateur radio antenna and none of my neighbors even cared since none of them are closer than 200 yds. I am now working on building a new shop for my machine tools. <br>
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It was tough to move, but I am happier. In the long run, I think that it might be healthier than living with the continual petty conflict. <br>
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Every now and then I think to myself that I should drive over to the old neighborhood and water the jerks's plants with Roundup, but that feeling passes quickly. It is just not worth the effort and as others have mentioned, I would be stooping to their level. If there is any such thing as karma, then they will be continually unhappy with pretty much anything that happens around them and that is just fine with me since I am not part of their world.

Out of control neighbor problem
Just For Fun Off Topic
Replies 21 Post by AC5ZO

I use a LandPride 84" on my 45 HP tractor. I have been happy with the quality of the LandPride. I think that a 60" unit would be about the right size for your tractor.

Rear blade question
Operating and Attachments
Replies 15 Post by AC5ZO

I am going to post a picture of the finished tower in my Picture Area of this website. I still have the TC45. I have been putting up another set of radio towers. These are fixed guyed towers at 95 ft and 65 ft. I dug all the foundation holes with the TC45 backhoe and moved the heavy stuff around.

Hi All
Website Operations Howto
Replies 5 Post by AC5ZO

I have not used one for many years, but ESAB used to be a very good brand. The last one I used was a robotic welding industrial application.

I think that they bought up one of the other fairly common brands a few years ago, and their consumer product line is probably from that acquisition. I would look at them if I was in the market myself.

ESAB Welders
Parts and Repair
Replies 3 Post by AC5ZO

Picture #3 is of a robot doing spine surgery.
What looks like a rump is actually the shoulder blades with the arms pulled down to open the area to provide better access.

I am an inventor and the robot in the picture is one of those inventions. I built many of the parts for the robot in my shop at home. I have been working on medical devices used in surgery for over twenty five years.

AC5ZO MIA
Website Operations Howto
Replies 9 Post by AC5ZO

I have been riding motorcycles for about 35 years. It started out when I got a 100 cc Yamaha dirt bike. It was so handy for herding and moving cattle, that it was quickly upgraded to a Yamaha 360cc DT3.

I have ridden a lot of two stroke bikes, including the Kawasaki three cylinder bikes from the 70s. But my main bike for college and everyday use was the Yamaha 360. That 360 Yamaha eventually made its way to California with me and became the first bike that I raced in the Mojave Desert.

There were also enough street riding opportunities for me that I also owned a Suzuki 750 cc rice rocket. That sucker was fast and handled like a dream for its day. It would corner so well that the center stand would occasionally drag on the pavement and it was beveled off on both sides. (Perhaps the Japanese engineers had not considered a street bike turning so tightly. :-))

The Yamaha DT360 was too heavy and eventually was replaced by a Suzuki RM370 that was lightened and tweaked for Unlimited Class Desert racing. That bike would do nearly 100 MPH on a dry lakebed. When the tree huggers started shutting down the mostly treeless Mojave desert to motor vehicle traffic, many of us started moving our racing activities to Baja Mexico. Four stroke bikes are king in Baja due to the better gas milage, changes in altitude and variance in the fuel quality that is available locally. A Honda XR350R suited that purpose very well, and I still have it. Even at age 20, it still does well in the desert and even in the forest. (better than I can do anymore, at least.)

When I moved to NM in 1998, I gave away all my old motorcycles to charity and only kept the Honda XR. I sometimes get the itch to have another street bike, but drunk driving is a problem here, and motorcycle riders always end up as the loser in that contest.

Motorcycles
Just For Fun Off Topic
Replies 42 Post by AC5ZO

Green,
MIG will do fine on Aluminum. As you say, training and practice are the keys. Nobody should expect that welding is only about the equipment. You need a spool gun to do a lot of aluminum welding on a MIG system. Otherwise you will spend too much time sorting out kinked wire around the feed rolls when the friction exceeds the column strength of the MIG wire.

I just cannot agree that TIG is the only way to weld aluminum as you said. In some ways, it may be easier to learn, but the proper handling of the filler rod and torch is not as easy as some think. Whichever technique that you choose, MIG or TIG, you have to practice to become an accomplished welder and proper training can shorten the time till you make your first good weld.

Learning to weld
Parts and Repair
Replies 62 Post by AC5ZO

I went a step further. I have a connection to the US patent database, so I took a look at the patent on the website that you linked to. The patent is for a torturous flow path mixing sytem. It does not have anything to do with water softening.

Water softening
Home Improvement
Replies 10 Post by AC5ZO

A load test is the best method to test a lead-acid battery. If the battery will take a charge and come up to full voltage, then you did not lose a cell. If the multiple deep discharges caused some chemical damage to the plates, the damage will show up during the load test as reduced capacity. (I am talking about a battery load tester that puts about a 100 ampere load on the battery and then measures the voltage. You can read the residual capacity and battery condition directly off of the meter.)

Optima batteries are pretty rugged, but I would suggest that you connect a good fully automatic charger to the battery and forget about the failing internal charger. I use one of these chargers from Century on my ham radio batteries and they stay in top shape. This charger is labeled as fully automatic and will taper down to zero but you can keep it on the batteries all the time. If the battery drops below full charge, the charger will spring into action and charge at up to 10 amps or so. Trickle chargers are OK for keeping a charged battery at full capacity (in storage, for example) but cannot address a variable load condition very well.

Is my Optima generator battery ruined
Shop Tools
Replies 5 Post by AC5ZO

What you are seeing is a natural variance between battery cells. It should not cause you a problem in most applications, but for very critical applications it is important to "balance" the batteries for voltage and discharge capacity. The only way to do this is to discharge the battery to measure it directly. For the critical applications you match the cells with similar performance.

You might see a problem ONLY if you run these slightly mismatched batteries completely flat. In that case, the battery with the lowest AH capacity will go flat first while the others still supply power and that can reverse charge and damage the flat (0.0 VDC)cell. This should not be a problem if the UPS stops working at something on the order of 40 VDC and that will make sure that none of the cells are reverse charged. But, if the UPS can run until the batteries quit, then battery damage is a possiblility.

BTW, a fully discharged cell does not mean 0 VDC, it means something on the order of 1.65 volts per cell. Each 12 V battery has 6 cells and should not go below about 9.8 VDC at full discharge. If you take a battery below this voltage it can be damaged. Using balanced batteries will assure that you don't damage one battery of the four you have in series if you do a full discharge on occasion.

Running batteries in parallel to get more AH capacity is generally not a problem. The parallel batteries will accept or discharge current based on their voltages and will tend to balance each other out. So, if you have two batteries in parallel and battery 1 has a higher voltage than battery 2, it will provide the most current when required and take the least current upon charging until the other cell (battery 2) catches up. This process will automatically go back and forth during charge and discharge and you don't have to monitor it. Any imbalance will also correct itself as the higher voltage battery (1) charges the lower voltage battery (#2) until they are the same voltage and current stops flowing between the two.

Power Inverters
Shop Tools
Replies 17 Post by AC5ZO

The perforated pipe is designed to have the holes pointing down to allow water to seep into or out of the pipe and still keep the flow area open. You can use this pipe to pick up water from wet areas and to distribute it into areas of high percolation.

I have never seen a drain pipe "float" out of the ground. I have put in a number of these so-called French Drains over the years using a combination of perforated and solid pipe. When I only wanted to convey water from one point to another, I used the solid pipe as you are planning to do.

It is possible for the soil over a shallow perforated pipe to erode and expose the pipe if it is very shallow because the covering soil can be washed away with the draining water. I always use as much rock as I can over the perforated section and they have stayed covered. Solid pipe sections have never been a problem whether they have been shallow or deep.

Installing Drainage Pipe for Lawn
Garden and Landscape
Replies 18 Post by AC5ZO

As I said earlier in this thread, annealing means more than one thing. It means one thing to a heat treater, another thing to a welder, and something else to an engineer.

In the most general sense, annealing and softening can be used interchangably. But, I know that if I go to a heat treater and say "Anneal" we are talking about a specific process of elevated temperature for a definite minimum period of time.

Beagle, I agree with most of your post, but the HAZ can have soft (annealed) areas, brittle areas, and a number of other characteristics depending on the base metal, welding electrode, and welding process used. I also agree that weld embrittlement is a more serious problem.

Bent Front End Loader From Bucket Hooks
Parts and Repair
Replies 70 Post by AC5ZO

Beagle,
I missed your original question when I mentioned spray arc MIG. It is not really like submerged arc. It is definitely a MIG process using the same wire as with the more common short arc welding. You only get to spray are with high current and special gas mixes. You cannot do spray arc welding with CO2 shielding gas. Gas mixtures must contain mostly Argon with a very small amount of O2 or CO2.

The heat that a MIG system puts into a weld is directly related to the wire feed rate. You only adjust the voltage to control weld appearance and to properly burn off the wire at a certain feed rate. So, if you want to weld thicker stuff, you turn up the wire speed. As you turn up the speed, the current used will go up to the limit of the welder. With spray arc, the wire feed rate can easily exceed one foot per second.

On a stick welder, we are used to turning up the current, but MIG is different. I like my MIG a lot and use it more than any other welder in my shop, but if I want maximum penetration on thick material, there is no question that I will use stick instead of the MIG.

views on lincoln 135-plus
Parts and Repair
Replies 21 Post by AC5ZO