Survived the Long Haul! Been traveling like crazy since July...now I'm off the road for a couple of weeks, then travel resumes at a moderately sane pace.
Have to say working with Gabe Suarez was both an honor and a learning experience! Zero-To-Hero is going to be great this year. Our 2 "zeroes" Kevin Creighton from Misfires & Light Strikes blog and Alf Sauve from our own DRTV Forums were just super to work with. I had a great time, and I hope everybody else did as well. And heck, I decided to put a Docter red dot on a G26 because...well, because!
Am doing some work on the Ruger Africa rifle in anticipation of a return to Namibia next June (with Marshal and Teresa and maybe a very special guest!). Cylinder & Slide Shop is adding a Timney trigger and some action work to get the pull down to a crisp 2 pounds; then it's going to Falcon Gun Finishing for cerakoting.
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8 comments:
Welcome back home. Speaking of home, I know you've been talking about the new secret bunker on your podcasts. Have you mentioned what state it is in?
Told you so....
I would be interested to hear a podcast about the new secret hidden bunker. Keep your secrets, but anything you would be willing to share about design and construction.
rhymin' simon bane
SO. MUCH. FUN.
Thanks again to you and your production team. Couldn't have had more fun if I had a squirrel in my shorts the whole time..
We're still negotiating/arguing about the power systems. When we sign the paper, I'll post a list of our choices and the rationale behind them. Still being built as a passive solar house with underfloor heating from a boiler preheated by solar, backed up with propane. Electricity is active solar batter system backed up by a propane generator. Future plans include a wind turbine and a back-up back-up diesel generator. Well will eventually have its own solar powered pump. No grid available, so no tie-in.
They finished the blasting yesterday on the site...
mb
I had designs on doing much as you are when I bought my little compound in the wilds of central TX. Down here in the Lone Star state where heating is at best an afterthought and air conditioning in August is a necessity, I had to do some long hard thinking about how to manage photovoltaics.
The price on PV cells is still too high despite all the new thin film panels hitting the market at under $1/watt. The Europeans are buying them up for utility scale implementations and for offsetting carbon credits, plus the dollar isn't faring that well. This means PV panels are gonna stay at a price where ROI times exceed my remaining natural lifespan for a bit. That being said, ROI is irrelevant in a grid down scenario when you just want power at any price.
Seeing as how a no-compromises (no fancy DC lights or appliances) off-grid PV/inverter/battery bank setup that would still handle the peak startup spikes of even modest mini-split air conditioners STARTS at 10KW, the capital necessary to build such a system (correctly) was out of my reach. Plus, in my part of TX, average wind speeds are barely over 10mph most of the year so efficient wind power was out of the question as well. Don't even think about mini-hydro as we are in the middle of the worst drought since the 1950s. We opted for staying on grid for now, but getting a 23KW propane genset with a 1k gallon underground tank and have a solar backup for our well. As time and funds permit, we will slowly retrofit to a more sustainable off-grid scenario. I do have modest solar lighting in the covered shooting bay on my private 200m range, though. A man's gotta have priorities.
As it happens, I live not too far from one of the most active oil/gas fields in the state and I wondered what it would take to drill down to the gas bearing shale and tap it for my own private use: run a set of redundant CNG gensets all day long for my own power and sell my reserves back through net metering. I've heard of filthy rich old ranchers working out such deals with oil companies for powering their remote barns and workshops around here.
Good to here you are working with Gabe Suarez! I have taken several classes from him and he is an exceptional instructor.
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