power invertor

[Clay Moore]

Most American's are so fat I doubt they could bend over far enough to change a tire.

Most would just have a pizza delivered to their car and pay the delivery guy $50 to change the tire.

[clare]

the cheap 2 strokes don't have roller bearings or cast sleaves, so loose rod bearings and low compression means worn out. and at 10 hours yours is about average - total runtime before experiencing problems likely varies from 1 to 100 hours. The old military DC gensets running iron horse 2 strokes were good for a lot longer (you've likely seen them at HamFests, Stormy.) They were used to run field radios, mainly.

[HerHusband]

Having to string a cable to a lighter and plug it in, seems a lot less convenient than just cranking a hand crank. Whatever works for you though.

Every 2 to 3 years? Wow, you either buy really cheap tires, or you have some bad road conditions.

I had one flat several years ago when I drove over a nail without knowing it. The nail punctured the tire, and a few blocks later it was flat.

I also had a tire blow out on my utility trailer several years ago. They're not the greatest tires to start with, and they tend to dry out and get brittle just sitting around unused.

Those are the only two times I can think of that I've needed to use a jack on the side of the road.

I did have one of those hand crank jacks blow apart here at home. I don't remember why I was jacking up the car, but when I got the car jacked up the bearing in the jack blew apart. The bearing went flying across the yard and the car came crashing to the ground. Scary, but thankfully I wasn't hurt and there was no damage to the vehicle. I'm a lot more cautious with car jacks now. :)

Anthony Watson

[HerHusband]

Lithium batteries will hold their charge a long time. You shouldn't need to charge it more than once or twice a year.

You can also keep extra batteries on hand.

Of course, in theory, you would be using the drill for other tasks on a regular basis so it wouldn't just be sitting around draining the battery.

Anthony Watson

[Stormin Mormon]

I did save the old blower, for use as a carpet drier. It's under some other clutter, and not worth the bother to dig it out. Half HP sounds about right, maybe 1/3. In either case, that's a lot of draw of 12 volts to get it going. Maybe if my inverter had bigger cables. Or wired in parallel with car battery.

[Stormin Mormon]

Meant inverter, not generator. Perhaps we can find out what we needed to do better. Well, perhaps. In my case I bought a gasoline generator.

You, gas logs. I like the gas logs. Less dragging them out doors and pouring gasoline into them.

[Stormin Mormon]

When I got the ETQ, it started on second or third pull. amazingly quiet, and it did make electricity. Aparently, running it dry was a big mistake.

I've seen military generators, but not at hamfests. I've not been to a hamfest. Yet. One day soon, perhaps.

[clare]

I thought ALL hams went to Hamfests!!!

[DerbyDad03]

Back quite a few years ago (70's) my brother kept hearing a tick-tick-tick as he was driving. When he got home he checked his tires and saw the head of hex-head bolt embedded in the tread. He swapped on the spare and took the fully inflated tire over to a local repair shop.

The mechanic grabbed the head of the bolt with a big pair of pliers and started pulling it out...and out...and out...Holy Crap! he said...and out.

6" later he proudly held up a 3/8" hex head bolt. My brother somehow hit it at the exact angle required to drive the blunt end of the bolt straight through the tire, where it seated itself in such a way that the tire sealed right around it. Six inches! I have no clue how you hit a 6" bolt while driving and not send it flying in one direction or another.

He kept it in his glove compartment for a few years just to show people.

[Stormin Mormon]

I've had my license (Technician) for less than a year. Today, I tested and passed General, which is the middle of the three available levels. In a couple weeks, I'll be training for my part, as a volunteer working at a hamfest. I'll get there early enough to do some walking around, seeing the sights. And that will be the first of many hamfests over the years. But, for the most part, we all do go to hamfests. As many as we can.

[clare]

That's better than a 3/4" combination wrench. With that one the tire went flat real fast!!!

[DerbyDad03]

Can you say "jagged". That must have required a weirdly shaped plug! ;-)

[dilbert firestorm]

[Robert Green]

It did, FWIW

Inspection by comparing it to known good 12ga wiring. Nowhere near enough strands to be 12ga. Ebay refunded my money without comment, either, as others complained as well. I think I still have the pictures. One glance and you would have been able to determine that it wasn't 12ga wire.

From Ebay? (-: That's where the difference lies. Your vendors probably want to continue their relationship with your company. Fraudsters on Ebay probably realize that one-off purchases of speaker wire will not morph into repeat customers.

Both Amazon and Ebay continue to sell counterfeit USB drives that report

128Gb but are actually 8 or 16Gb units with doctored firmware. Again, it's one-off fraudsters running that scam as well and they change their names often to evade responsibility. They wouldn't change their names so often if they were hoping for *legitimate* repeat business.

[Ralph Mowery]

Guess I was lucky as some wire I bought off ebay was actually the correct size. I used a micrometer to measure the strands diameter and then conted the number of strands. The sellers did have a large number sales and over 99% reviews.

I thought someone called out wire extention cords they got from Lowes or Home Depot for too small of wire.

[Robert Green]

I didn't mean to imply all Ebay wire was under spec but the stuff I got certainly was. Once I compared it to real 12ga wire it was obvious that although the OD was the same, the insides were quite different. If for some reason I needed 16ga or so with a very heavy outer plastic jacket, it would have been great. (-:

I mentioned the phony 128GB USB sticks both sell. Sadly, some of the sellers had good reviews because the devices only failed when you went beyond 8 or 16GB depending on the *actual* size of the chip they doctored to show much greater capacity.

So if you were storing pictures, adding just one more that exceeded the limit wiped EVERYTHING out. And yet both Amazon and Ebay continue to sell the phony capacity sticks. Lots of people write reviews, it seems, without ever having testing the product. Many take the hit because they don't want to send a stick back to the fraudster where they may be able to recover personal data.

[Robert Green]

...that's 4 in a row...I hope you're done thinking out loud? ?\_(???)_/?

What's your problem? If you don't like Micky's post, use your filter.