Crikey it’s wet

[facthunter]

I've always been like that with thunderstorms. CHICKEN man. That's one of the reasons I'm still around.  Nev

[nomadpete]

Back to topic.

 

Crikey it's wet!

 

Not.

 

Although we have had light rain and grey skies for manths, the ground is cracked open. The gum trees are dropping leaves. And today a wind sprang up, gusting 30kts.

 

I just hope no fires start up. Under these conditions we'd never stop a fire.

[spacesailor]

After ' training ' .

I ( in a convoy  ) had to cross a creek .

SO ? I popped the bonnet,  grabbed the made to measure radiator-blind .then after have water to the ' windscreen ' .

I had an audience,  looking at the " DUST " ON THE REAR BUMPER. 

Drove as taught to keep the bow wave ahead of the vehicle. 

spacesailor

 

[onetrack]

We've passed over 40 days and nights without a skerrick of any moisture falling from the sky. I'm amazed we haven't even had a thunderstorm. A half-hearted attempt at a thunderstorm about 10 days ago. And not a drop of rain in sight for weeks to come. Someone else is getting all our rain!!

[facthunter]

It seems like that, but the sea is full of potential rain. Hot dry land is not a great place to get rain from. It's RH is way down.   Nev

[red750]

Friday is predicted 31 deg and no rain. I might try to get some washing done. Rain is back on Saturday.

[willedoo]

I don't know if they've changed it, but when the first V8 diesel Landcruisers started arriving here they had very vulnerable intakes. If my memory is right it headed down from the aircleaner, then across the bottom of the radiator then up the other side toward the turbo. To make it worse, the lower part was plastic. It was just a dusted motor waiting to happen if you were working in sticky country (as in lots of sticks).

 

Those vehicles had a few problems. Very easy to roll with the narrower rear track, and not to hard to bust a front diff if bogged. The V8 had more torque than the front diff could handle.

 

In reference to crossing water, the intake would be a big problem if it hooked on something and split.

Edited January 10 by willedoo

[facthunter]

The bones of the "little Kangaroos" whatever they are called, will put holes in plenty of things.   Nev

[spacesailor]

car makers do the most ' stupid ' of designs .

Air cleaner mouth under the mudguard , in the dustiest place ever . on a 4wd .

spacesailor

[willedoo]

When the GQ Nissan Patrols first arrived in the country they had oil impregnated air filters. There were GQ's all over the country in dusty conditions that ground to a halt with clogged filters. At the time Nissan didn't have a dry filter element alternative so they shipped out containers of the oily ones and gave them to customers for free. In the desert we were changing filters twice a day until the dry ones arrived.

 

I had one totally clog up when I was half way up a sand dune. I thought I'd broken a crankshaft or something. It lost power with the engine making bad noises along with a big black smoke trail like an old steam train.

[facthunter]

As they do when they are blocked. You need a cyclonic pre filter..   Nev

[old man emu]

22 hours ago, onetrack said:

We've passed over 40 days and nights without a skerrick of any moisture falling from the sky.

Have you thought about changing your name to Haon?

[onetrack]

Why would I want to change my name to that of a South Korean rapper?? 

 

Maybe we need to find another Charles Hatfield?

 

https://daily.jstor.org/charles-hatfield-rainmaker/

[willedoo]

6 minutes ago, onetrack said:

Why would I want to change my name to that of a South Korean rapper??

You could probably get some Gangnam Style pants on eBay. Any Hammer pants would do.

[old man emu]

5 hours ago, old man emu said:

Have you thought about changing your name to Haon?

Don't you remember part of the chorus of The Hollies' King Midas in Reverse ?

 

He's King Midas with a curse
He's King Midas in reverse.

 

[willedoo]

No, this is not an EV charging station, and yes, that is my driveway. A photo of the power line contractor repairing/upgrading the line on my place after recent storm damage. He replaced the downed four bare wire line with a bundled, insulated cable which is like a big long licorice stick. In the photo they are tensioning the new cable with the vehicle. Just rearward of where it runs off the spool, they clamp it off to the trailer then drive forward. They had a temporary pulley at the top of the pole to run the cable through.

 

All the pole work was done with ladders and one of the young blokes skull dragged the cable down the steep, rocky hill to the bottom pole. It was about 100 metres of four wire cable but fairly light being aluminium and all downhill. The sag in the middle of the span ended up being four metres above ground level, so well and truly legal. If it was a trafficable area, it would have to be 4.7 above ground level. Getting well above legal height was a bonus as it saved a few thousand dollars by not having to add a third pole. That would have involved rock drilling with an excavator as there's a big slab of rock mid span.

 

It's nice to have a power line where you can rest a lot easier when it's blowing. With the old line, every time it blew a gale I was expecting the worst. Given the thick timber it runs through, it did ok to last the 30 years that it did. The biggest risk to power lines here are the Brush Box trees. They get top heavy with thick limbs and a lot of them rot out in their bases making them very unstable. Quite often big trees are only held up by a sapwood  perimeter only 2/3 of the base circumference.

 

[nomadpete]

Nice driveway. Just wish I could keep mine that nice. We have quite a few big gums but the biggest hazard is the old wattles. They average 60' high and 2' across at ground level. Like all wattles, they have a short life and fall over when the ground gets wet.

We paid the extra to get our power cable buried.

[onetrack]

We had a monstrous line of thunderstorm sweep down from the Northern Wheatbelt on Wednesday, which slammed into the Hills area East of Perth, and they then roared out into the Eastern Wheatbelt, causing a huge amount of damage to infrastructure and power generation. 

Entire streets had all their lines and poles flattened. Lightning strikes caused more damage, and heavy hail added to the woes. Patios and roofs were lost everywhere.

 

The amount of trees brought down and powerlines wiped out from the storms is mind-boggling. Stepdaughter was hard-hit, she said it was like a mini-tornado when it hit.

Despite clearing trees well back from the house, they had their (almost new, $40,000) patio damaged by falling limbs. The winds picked up a 10-seat patio table and threw it 10 metres and flipped it.

All the chairs from the patio table were thrown 40 or 50 metres. The amount of fallen limbs and trees down makes the place look like bulldozers have been through it.

 

It's now Sunday and they still don't have any power. They already had a generator, but it struggled to give them enough power, so they went and bought a second one.

Every shop selling small generators in W.A. has been cleaned out. You can't buy a small generator for love nor money here.

 

The main 132Kv power line taking power from Collie (Muja power station) to the W.A. Goldfields was hammered, with 5 major transmission line pylons wiped out. These pylons are 50 metres high.

So Kalgoorlie has a couple of big gas turbines as power generation backup - and they went to crank them up, and they wouldn't start up! It took them another 2 days to find the gas turbines fault.

 

Even now, out of an original 30,000 homes without power across the State, there are still several thousand homes without power. Now, the Govt is going to have a big inquiry into why the systems were so unprepared for major storm damage.

 

https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/look-out-for-each-other-third-night-without-power-for-thousands-across-wa-20240119-p5eykm.html

[facthunter]

There's always going to be storm damage. Underground power for long distances will never be. Normal houses are not built to take it either. The universe is generally a HOSTILE place. There are not many places we could exist, so we'd better look after this one.  Nev

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, onetrack said:

So Kalgoorlie has a couple of big gas turbines as power generation backup - and they went to crank them up, and they wouldn't start up! It took them another 2 days to find the gas turbines fault.

I wonder what turbines they use. Some older types of turbojet are still in use for power generation. In the U.K. the good old RR Avon is commonly used on off shore rigs and emergency backup plants, and in the U.S. and Canada the General Electric J79 (Starfighter & F-4 Phantom engine) is often converted for power generation.

[facthunter]

Thay should start easily if they are serviced and checked. They'd just drink fuel.  Nev

[onetrack]

Willie, I can't find anything about the West Kalgoorlie gas turbines, apart from statements that they're "open cycle" gas turbines, they run on distillate, and they have a capacity of 57MW.

It appears they were initially able to get the turbines cranked up when the Muja line went down, but they then tripped out, and refused to come online.

 

It turned out they were set up for operation only if there was residual voltage in the Muja-Kalgoorlie line. However, the Muja line failed completely with the 5 towers being flattened, and as a result, there was zero voltage around the Goldfields region that's serviced by the Muja line.

 

Western Power set to and diverted power from the lower section of the Muja line into an alternative circuit network through the wheatbelt, and then back into the line to Kalgoorlie that was further on from the damaged section.

This enabled the Kalgoorlie gas turbines to come on stream. However, this other section of the electrical distribution network has major capacity restraints, so Western Power pleaded for people to keep their power use to a minimum to prevent tripping of the lower capacity section, that was being used as the "electrical power detour".

 

Edited January 21 by onetrack

[nomadpete]

If memory serves me (sometimes erratically), the GT at Toowooma was a RR Avon. As was the GT at Swanbank (Ipswich).

 

Not that it means W.A. had same.

 

Edited January 21 by nomadpete

[onetrack]

I did a little more digging and found out the West Kalgoorlie gas turbines are a dedicated genset, GE Frame 6, type turbine. The GE Frame 6 uses a 17 stage axial compressor with 10 combustion chambers, and it can run on a huge range of fuel types, from natural gas, to distillate, to heavy oil.

 

https://www.bakerhughes.com/sites/bakerhughes/files/2021-06/BakerHughes_Frame61B_Overview-060121.pdf

[old man emu]

Queensland, wet today, stinking hot tomorrow.

 

The Queensland Premier is asking people to turn off non-essential electric devices so that the system can meet the demand of air conditioners as temperatures and humidity rise over the southeast corner.