Its 25° out and I didnt have any concrete work to do for the day, so I SHOULD be taking advantage of staying home and getting done. Instead, I've done nothing but go to the bathroom 5 times and drank 3 cups of coffee.

This is the correct way to coil a cable. I learned this many years ago from an ESPN tech, when I was working as a grip for the sideline camera at a football game. You do it like this, and you can pace the camera operator at any speed, letting cable fly out with nary a snag, and then recover it just as easily.

http://www.techno-fandom.org/~hobbit...oil/howto.html

http://www.allchurchsound.com/education/edart/awu.html



It's called the over-and-under technique. You hold a loop of cable with one hand, and add to it with the other. But you alternate successive loops- every other one gets turned around backwards (accomplished by rotating the wrist of the gathering hand as you bring the cable into the loop-holding hand). It seems odd, as you are causing the cable to cross over itself once every two loops, but it works beautifully.

This guy does it a bit differently from me (I hold the cable in my left hand and gather it with the right, and I also flip it in the opposite direction as I'm gathering) but it shows you the basic idea:




I do this with electrical cables, air hose, garden hose, just about anything that needs to be coiled without kinking.

I always do the figure 8.

Sooooooooooooooooooo, it looks like the guy that won TTB last season was doing it on an illegal tire, deemed illegal at mid season. I wonder if NASA is going to go back and reset the records to something reasonable, below TTA times? He only took home 14 tires last season, if he were running on a legal tire, 1-1.5" skinnier, I might of had a chance.
http://www.nasaforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=51952
If I can be competitive at the first race this season, I may need a set of Hoosiers so I can try to win a tire or two.

For my extension cables, I use the knot method starting at one end.

Similar to-


My guitar cables were always just a loop with a twist tokeep it from putting pressure on the insulation at the jacks (not the hand-elbow technique).

I do this:



for sheer quickness of it, and how small you make it.


the knot method, while cool, as shown isn't very compact.

While the knot technique may not be the most compact, it makes hanging easy as it folds over 2 or 4 times easily and when using said cord, you can "unravel" only what you need and leave the rest knotted and out of the way. That one you posted, while quick and tight, leave me a bit "meh" on that final loop. Looks like a pinch point, esp. if using a longer/heavier cord and hanging it up. I don't hang my cords, I store them in the bottom of my storage cabinet.

Are we really having a discussion on the various methods of wrapping up cables? :giggle:


So how long before wireless power transmission kills the need for extension cables? lol (never gonna happen)

of course. this is mt.net, we discuss the best methods for everything.

i like this discussion.

Why not?

We need to figure out how to harness power out of the static electricity in the atmopshere...unfortunately John Galt figued it out and dared not share his wisdom to the looters.

Tesla was working on it as well as an entire way to "plug in" to the Earth.
I'm sure the technology exists (look at the smart phone charging pads that are essentially wireless). I think it comes down to metering usage of power. If it can be coded/secure to track individual usage, it can be done. I don't know much, if anything about physics or electrical engineering, but can power be secured much the way satellite television transmissions are in order to allow or deny specific users?

I'm sure if man could devise a grid to take advantage of lightning, we could solve a lot of power needs.

I think one of the coolest experiments that NASA did was using the Earth's magnetic field while orbiting around in space. They strung out a long wire and it pretty much acted like a generator...until it produced too much power, got too hot and broke.

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/...on-sts-75.html

Efficiency.

Wireless transmission of power over short distances (as with inductive chargers) works ok for small loads, but even this generates a fair amount of heat for only a few watts of useful power transfer. The bigger the load, the more energy wasted as heat. This is one reason why transformer-based power supplies have gone the way of the dodo in favor of switching supplies in nearly every application you can name, despite the much greater complexity of the latter.

Transmission of large quantities of electricity over longer distances? I can't even imagine how you'd attempt it. Tesla's gadgets were useful for producing visually impressive lightning shows, but little else.

1% lifestyle

Didnt Tesla develope, or attempted to, something like that? I recall a large tower in a picture. Or I think Im thinking of his wireless power transfer method.

You missed the joke.

i like to do the cha cha

No, I got it.

A catylitic converter on my truck went out. Ever priced one lately? :vash:

I was just over 75,000 miles when it happened. :vash: :vash:

I thought I would call the dealer just to be sure the warranty did not run out higher than 75,000 miles and wouldn't you know, emissions are to 80,000 miles. Dodged a bullet.

What do you think are the chances of the other side going bad soon?

Yup, Fed. mandate that emissions equipment has to have a minimum of 80k warranty.


Dammit, I changed my sigpic to an older pic with wheels I no longer own....and now I want to buy those wheels back over my current SSRs.

Ever wonder if cars would be more reliable if the NHTSA did not require warranties and people had to really consider reliability when purchasing a $40k car, rather than a 3-year holiday to buy and sell it before the wheels fall off?