12 more inches of global warming

Screw Al Gore and the horse he rode in on . . . where is that confounded global warming when we need it. Weatherman promised 2 inches of rain instead we got 12 inches of this miserable garbage.

3 hours of labor on Thursday afternoon I manged to get the driveway, deck and patio cleared.

 

The lower fence I installed this summer between the house and the garage makes snow blowing over it a bit easier.

Clearing a path down the driveway to the garbage cans the darn machine keeps o quitting as a small trickle of snow from the cracked plastic chute lands on the hot exhaust creating clouds of steam and shorts out the ignition. I wound up putting a sheet of aluminum over the engine to shield it from the snow.

Trash cans cemented in by the snow plow

Friday afternoon I managed to waste an other three hours of back breaking labor clearing the roof and the resulting rock hard piles on the back deck.

Multiple repairs to the snow blower were needed and I will have to figure out how to make a new chute for it as the plastic finally gave out where it attaches to the cogged ring.

3 foot snow banks on what was clear grass on Tuesday

To cap the day off I ran out of my usual cheap Name Tag beer so I splurged for the special medicine.

OK, I've put it off as long as I could....

Merry Christmas

A lovely evening for a Fly

Never one to pass up an offer for a Sunday flight.
We depart Portland runway 29 around 4 pm

Heading north-east over Cousins Island power plant

We do a touch and go in Brunswick landing long to miss a Cessna 172 with a flat on the displaced thresh hold.

And fly over the Androscoggin river where it empties out on to Merrymeeting bay.

then we buzz Bowdoinham

and as we cross the Little River headed for Wiscasset you can see the December ice growing on the mudflats.

And the sun sets over our right wing

After we refuel at Wiscasset we head back south west towards Casco bay and Portland.

For practice we shoot a couple of instrument approaches to runway 29 with the sky turning dark the camera slows to get enough light for an exposure and produces a rather neat shot looking out the copilot window at the West End in Portland.

short final runway 29 as we hit ILS minimums of 274 ft

Touchdown.

Spanish shotgun markings

Here is what we have so far.

Unknown elements and meanings.
Nautilus in center?
620 K 2 ( Kcs?) possibly proof pressure?
3 on the web between the 2 barrels ?
B with the star or * on top ?
P 1322 Gs  Barrel weight in grams?

There also appears to be a 18,2 mark on the barrels that I suspect may be choke, as well as a small highly worn oval with a couple illegible of characters that may be the makers mark and a W or M possibly a P in a diamond on the left barrel. Yet to confirm what it is.

Also not sure as to the meaning of the O on the receiver flats. If it is  year code it would correspond with 1944 and this is in conflict with L = 1939 on the barrel.

Old Spanish guns

My friend Alejandro Zapata in Badajoz Spain recently acquired a few old guns. The first of which is an old shotgun inherited from his grandfather. He knows little to nothing about it. I have asked for further detailed photos of the breech markings to possibly help figure out what it is.

Anyone with pointers as to what it may be or how to proceed do chime in.

somewhat worse for wear

 

obviously it has seen better days

 

As he is a police officer in Spain, guns often come his way from friends and family seeking to dispose of firearms. He has amassed a nice collection. An other recent acquisition of his is this little Star DKL in 9mm short (.380 ACP) a gift from a friend.

And then there is also the Charola y Anitua, a civil war relic family heirloom again recently inherited from his grandfather.

Caliber is an oddball bottleneck type cartridge in 7x18 mm

It will be a struggle to find or make the correct ammunition for it.

The Charola-Anitua is an early Spanish semi-auto pistol dating from 1898 and produced only until 1905. A derivative of the Belgian Bergman, the mechanism of the Charola is similar in principle to the Mauser C96.

The Charola was manufactured in several calibers, including 5mm Clement and 7mm. A total of about 3,000 guns made in 5mm and 2,000 in 7mm. The 5mm used a six-round fixed magazine with stripper clips, while the 7mm was made in both fixed and detachable magazine variants.

The "best shooting pistol" inscription reveals this to be a Belgian late production Charola Y Anitua.

ammunition looks like this.

A minor success....

Went to the junkyard today and though the place was looking a bit empty,  I was fortunate to spot a 4Runner with a 3VZE engine like mine and  scored a pair of camshaft sprockets to replace the one I broke wile disassembling the engine. Amazing how easy they come off with the right tool. The first one came so easy I had to take the other one off just for yucks. Figured I might as well take them both and have a matching pair.

As mine were looking a bit worse for wear I also got some fuel injectors and an brand new set of plug wires while I was at it. Got the whole lot for $20, a whole lot better than $150 for the sprocket and 70$ for the wires from Toyota.. no telling what Toyota gets for the injectors, but I am sure its a pile of money.

Truck saga continues.

This morning my friend Marty came over from New Hampshire to look at the carnage in the truck. I needed a more experienced eye to look at things and determine if the bottom end of the engine is worth saving and what the next step should be. Marty's experienced opinion is that the cylinders look good enough and we can expect a reasonable degree of success if we have the heads rebuilt and put it all back together. A phone conversation with his friend Mike who can rebuild the heads proved fruitful and he agreed to do the job at a very reasonable price. So We removed the driver's side head as well and Marty took them both with him for Mike to do the rebuild job.