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Subject |
Author |
Date Posted |
Forum
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RE: Hwys closed and wild fires in BC & Alberta
Did you get good rain last night? Did it help with the fires. Starting North on Sunday.
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thomas201
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05/23/23 06:58am |
RVing in Canada and Alaska
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RE: Firearm storage in maine before Canada
OH, the dogs. They need a rabies vax certificate from the vet. Maybe you already know.
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thomas201
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04/09/23 05:21am |
Fifth-Wheels
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RE: Firearm storage in maine before Canada
If you have pistols, and are not a Maine resident, drop them off at a gunsmith for an inspection and cleaning. This will deal with the problem of pistols can only be transfered to a in state resident. Usually they will store for about a buck a day, after 30 days. I would think most gunsmiths will help you out, for a price. Just google gunsmith and add the town.
If you have only Canada compliant arms, the $25 Canadian (haven't checked prices since a moose hunt 2 years ago) charge for the permit is pretty reasonable. It used to cover all arms that you bring in. On my trip neither Canadian or US customs checked the serial numbers. They didn't care about the dead moose either. However, "Do you have any fruits or veggies?" is a concern.
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thomas201
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04/09/23 05:13am |
Fifth-Wheels
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RE: New Super Duty on order
I have the club cab short bed, so the 30 gallon gas tank. Does the crew cab short bed give you the 48 gallon tank? I want to tow 500 miles between fill ups, so either way you are short in range. To make life easy (I am so old I remember gas pumps at truck islands) I only want to fill up once a day. My only big change was adding a 41 gallon aux tank to the bed. That gave me the range I required. The most painful part was cutting into the filler neck to install the spool piece. DW would have been very disappointed if I messed up the new truck!!
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thomas201
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02/25/23 07:14am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Cassiar Highway
I am surprised that the Spot is on the no no list. The In Reach Explorer I carry has been through many countries, but always on airplanes. When asked I say it is a GPS, which is true. I don't even think about its sat texting and emergency beacon features, although when on a trip I also send at least one text a day. Thinking though, it has been on the Newfoundland ferry a couple of times.
Also, if you are headed for the bush before or after your trip, it would stink not to be able to bring your Spot.
Maybe ask again, and ask why? Perhaps it can be left with the Purser.
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thomas201
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01/27/23 05:34am |
RVing in Canada and Alaska
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RE: DISCUSSION: 8 ft + crew cab vs. SUV
You will give up a row of seats. Is that a problem?
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thomas201
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01/23/23 01:53pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: EV alternative for light/medium duty trucks
Easy, we build about 80 million vehicles a year, but far and away they are internal combustion. Your task is to convert every facility in the world to EV production right now. It will take a long time, remember production heck, when Tesla started production?
Ideas are great, but real genius is putting something is every home on the planet, at a reasonable price. Large parts of Africa still do not have electricity. Maybe Asia? I haven't traveled there, but you can get a Hilux fixed by a mechanic in a mud hut in Africa.
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thomas201
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01/23/23 09:20am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: EV alternative for light/medium duty trucks
GM spending $854 million on V-8, and $64 million on EV.
GM investment
Next there are almost 1.5 billion motor vehicles in the world, Tesla made 1.37 million last year. So, just over 1,000 years to go. So, if dropping carbon dioxide is your goal, then you will not achieve it by producing cars, that front load the carbon dioxide. Numbers range from 5 to 8 years to pay out an EV on carbon dioxide. Not to mention the greenhouse gas production from the infrastructure.
Just an engineer playing with the numbers. You must look at the entire system, not just one part (car). Better to make a fuel from atmospheric or industrial waste carbon dioxide, with renewable energy, than build a billion cars/trucks, plus powerlines and power plants and charging stations. Just an estimated opinion. Replacing the existing thing is really a monumental job, underestimated by most who discuss the subject.
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thomas201
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01/22/23 04:58pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: EV alternative for light/medium duty trucks
I am the OP. I just read through the entire thread again. You still haven't convinced me that you can replace all vehicles with electric or hydrogen, then rebuild the entire infrastructure system converting natural gas to hydrogen or building the new electric transmission lines for less money than onsite production of hydrocarbons as a refinery feedstock at renewable energy facilities.
I think with both hydrogen and EV's, the cost of fleet replacement and building the support infrastructure are vastly under estimated. My way, you pay as you go. It is invisible to the consumer.
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thomas201
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01/22/23 01:38pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: EV alternative for light/medium duty trucks
Some areas, like NE PA, are winter peak, usually on a cold NIGHT, not summer peak. I imagine the entire northern half of the US is this way.
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thomas201
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01/11/23 06:40am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: EV alternative for light/medium duty trucks
I address the design of a straight renewable system, because I was one of the engineers that studied it for my company, to support the pumping and lease custody systems on about 1,000 coalbed methane wells. The study was due to our local utility putting us at the bottom of the priority list when power was knocked out by a snowstorm for about a week. Despite the fact that we supplied the natural gas for their power plants.
First, you design for your peak load, plus about 25%, for planned and unplanned outages, along with either real hot or cold weather. The average load is meaningless. You need 99+% up time. Now if you do not want to always have a spinning fossil back up generation capacity (big money waster) you need storage. In the Mid Atlantic of the United States from research, modeling and monte carlo simulations, plus engineering judgement, then better figure about 3 days (peak usage not average). Three days is also good, because it takes about 3 days to bring a laid up, cold, utility sized steam boiler on line.
Now you see it. You will need at least three times your average usage in renewable generation capacity. Gotta plan for peaks, gotta plan for night (what is solar giving me on a 16 hour winter night), windless days and nights, something broken, a tree falls on the wrong power line and the big one, you gotta charge up your storage when you pull it down. Fossil plants were built with this stuff in mind, ditto a true renewable system. This design stuff fills books by the way. Most authors still say at the end you need a dispatchable back up, probably fossil. If it was easy, this is how we would do it.
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thomas201
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01/10/23 12:07pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: EV alternative for light/medium duty trucks
For those who don't believe look at the ice core studies.
Animals don't defecate where they eat. We are, in a sense, doing just that.
https://www.co2levels.org/
I need to point out that rabbits do poo where they eat. In fact they must eat their own poo, while living in nature. Running it through twice is part of their natural digestive process.
rabbits eat their own poo
But enough biology, back to moving our RVs down the road.
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thomas201
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01/03/23 02:34pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: EV alternative for light/medium duty trucks
Them boys at the coal plant chose a poor technology. Better to scrub it and make calcium sulfate (sheetrock). Works fine at thousands of natural gas processing plants (me) and on subs (BIL, nephew and son). You always have to pick the right technology for the problem.
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thomas201
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01/02/23 03:14pm |
Tow Vehicles
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EV alternative for light/medium duty trucks
So much wheel spinning on EVs, what if they are not the right path forward? The biggest problem with renewable power and EVs is storage, the second is storage, and the third is storage. Another path is carbon capture from the atmosphere (using amine scrubbing like nuclear subs and carbon dioxide from natural gas) then splitting hydrogen from water, followed by building whatever hydrocarbon you need.
The US Navy is hard at work on this project, since it avoids storage of large amounts of jet fuel, and the difficult job of resupply of jet fuel at sea to the carriers. After all fire kills ships. The Fords were built with a very large excess electric generation capacity for this reason and many others.
Porsche now has a pilot project running in South America, Porsche syn fuel
This will work wherever you have cheap electricity and water. The products are put right into refinery feeds. No need to rebuild the approximately 1.5 Billion cars in the world. Solves storage, no worry about hydrogen embrittlement, recycles carbon dioxide, we use the existing liquid fuel distribution system. Transparent to the car/truck owner.
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thomas201
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01/02/23 02:07pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Taking dog to alaska from NY...food questions
Depends on the dog. Ours likes change, and does not get the runs, so changing food is not a problem.
If yours is the opposite, look for a food that you can buy at home, in Canada and Alaska. Some good quality computer time should get your answer, plus a few phone calls to verify. Then, if they make you throw it out, okay, just buy it after the border crossing.
Also check to see if the rumors you heard are true. About 3 years ago my son and I killed a moose in Newfoundland and had no problems bringing it back. Nobody checked the moose at all. They also never looked at the rifles, we just did the paperwork and paid the service charges. So much depends on the agent.
I would make sure that you have the rabies vax and certificate for doggie. I carry the paperwork inserted in my passport. I have been asked, but I have never seen an agent open the paper.
Just be a polite guest and do as you are told. The Canadians seem to be nice folks. No need for a $20, $50 or $100 like parts of Africa.
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thomas201
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12/22/22 07:25am |
RVing in Canada and Alaska
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Icefields Parkway first week in June
Other than the road itself, will the area around the parkway be pretty much snow covered during the first week in June? Will we be able to do anything other than just drive through?
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thomas201
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12/18/22 05:59am |
RVing in Canada and Alaska
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RE: Re question from Thomas201 re EV charging with a trailer.
Thank you from me also. Sorry, I just got back from my childhood home (now a vacation get away), not much in modern communication there. It does have electric and indoor plumbing. I also cheat, and bring satellite TV.
I will read your post a couple more times. Thanks again from a former coal miner and petroleum engineer, got to look at the new (or is that old) stuff before making decisions.
Two quick stories, in the late 1970's early 80's I drove an underground electric shuttle car hauling coal. Good tech for the application.
Second story, I spent a day on a drilling rig in the 1980's, that used what is now called regenerative braking to lower pipe into the hole. We had no use for the electric that was generated, so we just dumped it through a resistor bank as heat into the mud system. That heated up the mud so much, it was too hot to cool the drill bit. Oh well, that was a long time ago.
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thomas201
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10/11/22 08:31pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: TFLEV gets disinformation from Cyber Truck fan bois.
We rented a truck camper in Alaska for two weeks. Just the wife, the dog (12 pounds) and me. So, yep we can live in a lot less room.
Not sure I can give up the 4WD pickup. We spend a lot of time driving back roads, thus the truck camper rental.
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thomas201
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10/08/22 06:54am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: TFLEV gets disinformation from Cyber Truck fan bois.
I'll make a request to Reisender, if no response in public, I'll pm.
You have to be our most experienced EV towing expert. Could you, even if you wait till you trip is completed, write us a short book? I know you have put out a lot of info in several posts, but could you bring it all together in one?
Give us your weights, towing experiences, range in rain, snow and wind. Campground charging? Would you do it again? Buy a different TV or trailer? Do you back in and out at chargers? Drop your trailer? How about at an island charger, is it proper to block an unused charger with you trailer? Have you had to wait when all charger bays are full, very often?
I don't think I want to part with the F250 and fifth wheel, but you never know. I can be sold, and shame on me, if I don't look at alternatives.
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thomas201
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10/07/22 06:34am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: How many folks want an EV
Well give me 450 miles with the heater or A/C running, and a competitive total cost of ownership and yes. For the past 5 years, I make two 424 round trip mile journeys to NJ each month to visit my MIL. The nursing home does not have a charger, and it is my only stop for more than 5 minutes. The Honda CRV and the F250 (with aux tank) can get the job done. I will keep making the trip until I or my MIL pass. Sometimes I miss a trip, but not often.
I am the one that thinks EV's are a dead end. The path forward is stripping CO2 using amines from the air (just like subs, or cleaning CO2 from natural gas), then use U of Pittsburgh catalyst to make carbon monoxide, split hydrogen out of water, and use the Fischer–Tropsch process to make gasoline and diesel. Look for it to come to a Ford class carrier near you. After all, a gallon of jet fuel delivered to a carrier at sea has gotta be expensive. The fuel produced, will just blend in with the rest.
This is also a storage scheme for renewable power from solar and wind. I think the cost of this method will make it work.
There seems to be a dearth of Superchargers between WV and NJ so it would be a little premature for you to get a Tesla yet. I don't know how mountainous WV is where you are driving but in the western parts regeneration would save you a lot of brake wear and tear when going down hills and then a lot of fuel going up the next one.
I really like the idea of synthetic gasoline but I have been reading stories about it being on the verge of practicality for 30 or 40 years. A lot longer than we have been waiting for the Tesla Semi or Cybertruck. I will believe it when I can buy it. But it would be nice to have a clean fuel for the engines that I already own.
Actually Germany produced a lot of their liquid fuel from coal in WWII and South Africa still uses the facilities to produce liquid fuel from coal, that started up in the sanctions era. It all depends on the oil price. The breakthrough is in the catalyst to split CO2 to CO. Once you have CO and Hydrogen, you can make any fuel, plus methanol and ammonia. Chemical plants intentionally make CO by burning hydrocarbons without enough Oxygen. Google syngas. In other words all of the fertilizer used by farmers is made by the same process. It is used today.
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thomas201
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09/16/22 05:56am |
Tow Vehicles
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