All posts by cs

Family Hauler becomes a Money Pit

cars

Dede was complaining that her Taurus wasn’t blowing cold air. I dug out some of my old hoses and gauges for A/C diagnostic purposes and the repair manual. None of the fittings work on the newer cars. (Not to mention you can’t pick up a $2 can of R-12 at the Pep Boys anymore) So I left the car with the technician at Western(?) Auto for the afternoon. Can’t be fixed. Numerous leaks at “O” rings and the evaporator. Needs new accumulator/receiver/dryer while your at it. $800 estimate. Geez. I would hate to see what it costs to fix a MBZ or BMW these days. This is for a generic Ford here. All I wanted was a little bit of freon added. (I think what they wanted to do was change over to the new environmentally friendly refrigerant which basically implies converting the entire system for the higher pressures.) No thanks. I’ll help the environment. I’ll roll down the windows! This doesn’t fly with Dede. Okay. You can drive the Pontiac, (now age 17) that has functional AC, during the summer. Do I sound like my Dad?

You might guess who won out– the conversion was undertaken so happy wife happy life.

Dead Battery(s)

social

You may recall in the last episode where the Taurus left the girls stranded with an engine that refused to crank? This weeks story revisits the Battery Box. Seems as though the car won’t start. (this time in the garage however) I couldn’t believe it. Is this a trick? I fixed it right? I turned the key and ClickClickClickClickClick, just like before. What the… nervous nagging self doubts and paranoid insecure feelings began to invade. This can not be!

I fixed it already, didn’t I? Is the problem something else? If it is I won’t be able to solve it. I give up! The dealer is going to remember me from the last time I was there (with the aborted electric door locks repair that I refused to pay for) and really sock it to me this time. I jumped started it with my new yellow and black Western Auto 12 ft. 16 gauge cables. I probed with my Ace Hardware voltage multi-tester. Battery voltage bad. Alternator output good. What could it be? Was the exchanged old battery still good after all? Maybe the new DieHard was bad too?

Tune in next week… No I wouldn’t do that to you. Mystery solved! (I hope?!) Somebody left a map light on in the overhead. I thought I would say !’?#!*%.’ but I didn’t because I was so relieved. The vehicle had sat overnight with a lone map light burning brightly and innocently. Undetected because it is so small and is designed to illuminate by spot and not by flood it was enough to kill even a DieHard.

I drove it to the airport to make sure it was OK for Dede. When I came back two days later it was fine. Started right up. Whew! I get home safely ready to tell Dede beaming and proud that her car is good, when SMS greets me with, “Hey Dad! The Pontiac’s dead.” No! Now I know this is some sort of cruel joke. Right? Tell me this isn’t happening.

No lie. It’s completely dead. No lights at all. Oh man! Well, the problem here was that the battery cable was slightly loose. Cars from the 70’s used those ridiculous side terminal design posts which I stripped out one time by overtightening. So I was a little gun shy with this one and had torqued the cable to the battery terminal delicate like it was eggs. This allowed some room for corrosion to do its work. So when I hooked up the Jumper cables to get the other car going again the battery cable must have shifted ever so slightly so as to mate corrosion with corrosion. Electrical contact was lost and that’s what happened. I cleaned the connections and re-fastened. Voila! Mystery ends.

Even Before the WWW

computers

A letter to my best friend – Mel. This was before social media. This was before email. This would have been printed and sent by, gasp, snail mail. Personal computing in 1994.

So much to try on my PC and so little time. I FTP’d to a windows directory archive at wu.archive.wustl.edu (the INTERNET address of Washington University in St. Louis) and found gigabytes of software. The INDEX which I downloaded and printed was a 40 page list! It’s on the floppy if you want to check it out. Let me know if there is anything in it that really blows your hair back and I’ll get it for you… I retrieved a UTILITY called WINzip, which you will also find on the diskette. It’s alot like Pkzip/Pkunzip (for DOS) which you already have but is alot mo’ betah. It runs in WINDOWS so it might be easier to use. (See the attached instructions.)

One little goodie I got was a macro to use in AmiPro called workshet.smm which builds a math worksheet for kids. It’s kind of like homework. It is homework! It puts math problems (up to 50) on a page using random numbers which I then print and say: “Here kids do these.” This keeps them busy for awhile.

SMS, who is a whiz at MathBlaster, can add numbers already (without using his little fingers in most cases). So it was pretty funny the other day when I handed him the paper with the problems on it and he looks at me says: ” Dad! I can’t do these!” “Why not?”, says I. “Because, I can’t write the answers yet, Dad! Sheeze!” Well excuse Meeee. Seems I taught him how to push the correct keys on the computer but forgot that other stuff…

I tried a new feature available on-line called teleconferencing. Basically this allows you to send messages back and forth in real time. It is not as fast or efficient as a voice phone line connection where two people can have a rapid dialog exchange. You only have space for one line of typed thought so its difficult to say anything really intellectual but it is a fun way to communicate. For a social defective like me it’s great therapy. You can join in and chat with many people much like you would on CB or HAM Radio. I felt really awkward at first. Many people use strange and anonymous sounding handles like DarkStar and SleepySquirrel and I felt kind of naked with my REAL name out there for the world to gawk at. Not only that but when I signed on the topics of conversation seemed to be about school and I thought “Oh, great…”. Here I am with a bunch of High School kids (who probably know more about PC’s than I do) talking about the girls/boys in class and generally just hanging out on-line. Would they accept me, a newbe, a novice? I watched for awhile but you are instantly sucked in. When you log on

your name automatically displays on screen to every other user present, with something like: “ClintonS just walked in!” and immediately you start seeing responses like: “Hi Clinton” or “Hello Mr. President”. You can’t help but answer. I took a safe tack and confessed to the others that I really didn’t know what I was doing in here. I saw stuff like “Just type naturally” and “Hey everybody, let’s help ClintonS!”. Which they did. One with the handle SlockAmy held my hand so to speak (type) and answered my queries about various command options displayed at the bottom of the screen. “What does the action button do?”…”Try it!” So I did. A menu popped up that described a list of actions such as “Smile” or “Secretly hug Susan”. With a simple singular key stroke, then, the larger macro of the desired event takes place. I chose smile. The message “ClintonS is smiling” went merrily off into cyber-space. It was exciting. It was kind of a rush. After I said good-by and thanks for all the fish, I checked the on-line member directory. I was curious to know who I had been talking to. Turns out these virtual folks, who were chattering about school, weren’t kids at all but teachers!

Dede has discovered all of this including the SOAPS Forums and can now be found typing like mad to virtual people in cyberspace after the kids have gone to bed! I had to get her, her own E-Mail address on the INTERNET (Dede@nando.net). I couldn’t have MY name floating about the General Hospital discussion groups!  🙂 Dede must send messages to her sister in Phoenix twice a day. This is great! I expect my phone bill to be cut in half.

Hey Mel! You want to go with America Online when you get your modem. They are super easy to use and have the best gateway to Internet E-Mail.

I was experimenting with PINE, my Internet E-Mail text editor from hell, and figured out how to upload a document from AmiPro, Write, NotePad, or any other word processor to include with my messages. Now I can compose off-line and send this entire letter, for instance. The only thing is all of the fancy formatting and graphics etc., get stripped away during the export process. Only plain ASCII text can be transmitted. There are ways around this, sort of. I can use a utility called uudecode/uuencode which convert graphics to text and then the receiving party can reassemble it all using same. Oh well, that’s a project for another day.

I’m learning a few other things. TURN OFF THE SCREEN SAVER. I had been having difficulty downloading large files from on-line. Some of them can take over 30 minutes. I would launch my communications software from windows This comm. software is actually a DOS program so windows would shell to DOS but continue to run in the background but unseen. I would start the download but after a few minutes the download would abort. “Incoming garbage”, the message would say. “Too many errors. No more retries.” It finally dawned on me what was happening. With the lack of activity in windows the screen saver was coming on and messing everything up.

I found out something else: My FAX software and COMM. software definitely don’t get along and can not co-exist. They both fight for access to the modem and will not share. This one took me the longest time to figure out. I could send faxes but everytime after I had received one my comm. program refused to work. This was baffling because there were no error messages. The modem would dial. I could hear it over the PC speaker but the computer on the other end would not pick up. I could only get back in business again by somehow reconfiguring the modem with the self test routine included with the installation. This is a pain in the butt so I have to pull the plug on the FAX. “Hal, open the pod door.” “Hal?”….”I can’t do that Dave..” The elegant solution is to buy an integrated comm/fax package like the new ProCommPus for Windows. ($179.95) instead of using the mix mash that they threw in for free with the modem purchase. Anywho, until I can come up with a new initialization script language for my comm. software, I won’t be accepting any incoming. I will post the problem on-line for some of the experts hanging out there to solve for me.

Have you heard of PagePlus, desk top publishing software from Serif? I ordered their “intro.” version for the price of the $6.95 shipping & handling fee. I don’t think it is as good as AldusPageMaker but I just got it in the mail and am going to load it and try it out.

One Summer Day Challenge

flying

It was a typical hot San Joaquin Valley early afternoon. My airline flew a number of routes which crisscrossed that dry flat plain which was supposed to be dryed grass and sage and treeless. It was mostly without trees but, due to ground water pumping, artificial irrigation allowed a covering patch work of rich cotton, vineyards, and alfalfa. It was late summer and the vineyards had by now produced their crop. Many of these grapes found their way onto trays layered into rows to bake in the dry hot climate. This is kind of how I felt as I climbed into the cockpit of the machine I was assigned to fly to Los Angeles on this day.

The Embraer EMB 110 Bandirante was without ground cooling of any sort. Those in the cockpit suffered heavily from the greenhouse effect. The weak cabin recirculation fan spit hot air through tiny portals called gasper vents. (The English aircraft manufactures call them Punka Louvers; named for the palm fond or strip of cloth hung from the ceiling and moved by the East Indian servants charged with fanning .) There was no relief until the aircraft climbed into the higher and much cooler atmospherics at which time the Brazilian designed air-conditioning became adequate.

Having been born and raised in this environment I was prepared to face the day. After 4 months with the company, I was a relatively seasoned First Officer. My current task, preparatory to departure, was to copy the clearance and the official weather from the aircraft radio. This was all quite routine. I calculated the aircraft performance data and made the initial remarks on the Weight & Balance form. The 100+ degree air wafting in through my open 3 X 4 inch storm window actually felt cool.

The passengers were marshaled from the climate controlled terminal across the baked black top ramp to our hot box airplane. There were 12 of them, mostly businessmen, some leisure travelers, and a woman with an infant.

A big fat yellow hose conduit with an evaporative swamp cooler on the outside end snaked in through the aft cargo hold and blew moist air forward. This was removed all to soon as the final loading process was completed. Sportcoats and other articles of clothing would begin to peel off at this point and pained expressions would begin to appear. Normally our customers would endure 5 minutes of this mistreatment before we made our timely take off. (Sometimes, if we suffered an ATC ground delay this could extend to 15 or even 20 minutes. We pilots would position the aircraft for maximum crosswind through our still open storm windows while we waited. I would sneak a look aft at our nearly wilted business men and remember thinking: “They will have to change clothes before they can go to their appointments and meetings! Our competitors may have more new business, the next time.”)

At last the control tower cleared us for take off. It was the captain’s leg. I was the PNF (pilot not flying) so it was my job to run checklists, the radios, and to navigate. I acknowledged the clearance and completed the lengthy pretakeoff check. As we rolled down the runway gaining momentum, I made final tweaks to the power levers achieving the desired torque target and called out the relevant airspeeds. “V1…Rotate,” was my last call as we broke ground and flew into the wind.

There was an additional flurry of challenge and response as we completed the after takeoff checklist and then mostly just the hot silence as we relaxed a little and put our feet up to settle in. Fairly soon we would be at our final cruising altitude where it would be cooler and we would do other pilot stuff like talk about cars, boats, planes, and girls (not necessarily in that order). For now it was still sterile cockpit (non essential conversation forbidden) so we scanned the sky for conflicting traffic and I handled the more mundane chores of company required paperwork and communication.

At 4,200 feet and climbing: BAAM!!…?? What the hell was that? The aircraft yawed violently left and then again but more gently to the right as we both scrambled to get our feet back onto the rudder pedals to cancel the oscillation. It must have been only an instant, but seemed longer, that we sat there stunned in disbelief that this was happening to us. A quick look at torque and Turbine interstage temps confirmed that #1 engine was dead. In fact, it had failed violently with sudden stoppage. I suggested that the captain look out his side window and verify that the offending powerplant and wing were in one piece (or even still there for that matter!) Back to important matters at hand. The airspeed was naturally beginning to deteriorate and the PF (pilot flying) relaxed the aircraft climb slightly as we began the emergency drill that we had practiced so many times in training but only simulated. It was first necessary to secure the free wheeling propeller which was acting as a massive aerodynamic speed brake. Without such response we would surely plummet. Quickly now, from memory and without a dangerous mistake or omission, we ran the drill:

  • PF-confirm left engine fail PNF-yes fail
  • PF-left power lever PNF-confirm
  • PF-flight idle PNF-performs
  • PF-left propeller lever PNF-confirm
  • PF-feather PNF-performs
  • PF-left condition lever PNF-confirm
  • PF-fuel cutoff PNF-performs
  • PF-left firewall shutoff PNF-confirm etc..etc…

The propeller obligingly feathered and the immediate danger was passed. A slew of duties remained, however, which would keep us at 100% until we had safely diverted to our original departure point. Apart from the written emergency, descent, approach and landing checklists that were still to be run, there was a great deal of communicating to be done. ATC had to be notified. The company had to be informed and not least the passengers had to be briefed.

Ah…the poor passengers. By now they were probably ready to come out of their skins, and it was my job to calm and reassure them over the cabin P.A. So, in my steadiest, most comforting voice possible I said: “Ladies and gentlemen as you are probably aware, we are experiencing some difficulties with our aircraft…there is little cause for concern …we will be returning to the airport shortly…”

The PF was in a big hurry to get back. I only had just enough time to get everything done. The crash and rescue trucks were ready for us but the landing was without further incident. We limped back to the gate with our one remaining engine.

The passengers were deplaned and ushered inside while we did a post flight walk around. There was no evidence of external damage, fortunately, because turbine blades (at 40,000 rpm) have been known to exit protective casings during catastrophic failure and pierce aircraft cabins and fuel tanks like shrapnel. In our situation, the explosion was fully contained. When you turned the propeller by hand, though, you could hear the metallic garbage inside like some giant coffee grinder.

The adrenaline was beginning to subside and we were able to laugh a little and tell our wide eyed story to the ground crew and mechanics who had assembled there. Privately, I had begun thinking that we would probably get debriefed and released to go home soon. Right? We were heroes weren’t we?

That’s when the message from operations arrived. “Walk over to GA and preflight the spare Bandit that’s over there and taxi it over. Finish your trip.” I was astonished! Back to reality. I was so pleased with the successful outcome of the last attempt that I hadn’t concerned myself with the matter of the unfinished LAX flight. Or, with how hot it still was. Our spare airplane had been parked in the blazing sun all day with all openings sealed. It was the definition of heat soaked. Euphoria was soon replaced with more sweat.

More astonishing, when we reboarded our flight, all the passengers (save for the mother and baby) had returned! I guess people can put up with a lot! But it’s a dry heat…Maybe it’s the frequent flyer miles…I just don’t know…

1988