Rush-rush-rush. Plan is to be showing within the next twenty minutes, so I can brave the terrible, awful traffic of Normal O'Clock instead of my usual banker's hours start (not that I am off work when the banker drives home, oh no, no, no).
If all goes well -- or even if it does not, but don't even think that -- I may have some interesting stories from this; it could even help me fill in some of the so-classified-real-details-are-suppressed parts of I Work On A Starship. Y'never know.
In the meantime, I leave you with this puzzle: what do a cake of beeswax, a carbide-tipped, hollow-ground planer-type circular chopsaw blade and copper tubing have in common?
That's easy... they are the raw material used to construct a Raven .25.
ReplyDeleteThey are used to construct stills deep in the hills of Tennessee.
ReplyDeleteThe wherewith to build a J-Pole. Or a copper cactus. With a suitable jewelers mill, a waveguide for millimeter waves. The stuff to do a little light plumbing work.
ReplyDeleteOr, with something to wind it on the basic material for an HF tank coil - a matching network for a Sterba curtain, or the worm for a distillery. A heater core for a water cooled motorcycle.
Or even a tunnel range for a .04 (1 mm) caliber pepperbox.
Your call.
Stranger
It was rather large copper tubing -- 3" ID and some stuff that runs a bit over an inch.
ReplyDeleteIt's how you cut the biggish rigid concentric transmission line squarely, smoothly and quickly. (The saw does spew bits of copper everywhere. Eye protection required, face shield highly recommended). I am pleased to say we got that part of the job done and it only took 11 and a half hours.
Now that would be one biiiiiig vampire tap.
ReplyDeleteThat's a PITA to work with. Nitrogen pressurized?
ReplyDeleteStranger
The outside runs have that, or dry air. The stuff I was working on was both unflanged and unpressurized, which is easier to work with but still not all that fun.
ReplyDelete