Possum Holler Blog – Bob's Ruminations & Other Mindless Wanderings

In Memory – Veterans Day 2017

Never had the honor of meeting Nonnie. So may stories…

In September, PG and I spent 2 days with some wonderful new friends in Wheelersburg Ohio. We met Gary & Brenda on our Holy Land tour in 2014 in Egypt. (Sounds a little funny to say that we met friends from Ohio in Cairo, Egypt). PG & Brenda became friends and visited throughout Egypt, Jordon and Israel and then stayed in touch via Facebook. PG contacted Brenda and asked if we could stop by and take them to dinner on our way back to Iowa towards the end of our 2 week vacation. It’s funny, they said No – but we could come stay a couple of days. They love having company as much we do.

The reason that Gary & Brenda come to mind with the pictures of Nonnie is that Gary served in Vietnam; he was severely wounded by an explosion and also shot. His description of his 5 ½ months in Vietnam struck me at a personal level and I thought of the Randolph / Krell families. Nonnie didn’t get to come home to tell his story, but Gary’s description gave a vivid idea of what Nonnie must have gone through. I’m never comfortable re-telling such stories, or even writing about them on this personal blog. Perhaps I’ll get Gary’s permission someday because Gary’s dad gave him a small 8mm movie camera to take to Vietnam and I have digital copies of the images to burn to DVD for Gary. It’s about 30 minutes of video. I hope someday to share them, but again, I don’t have Gary’s permission and I haven’t asked. Somethings are just too close to home.

So for Vernon C. Randolph – with gratitude from a grateful Nation.

Thank you

Galactic Rose

This HST photo took my breath away.

For the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA released this mesmerizing picture of 2 galaxies colliding called ARP 273, nicknamed The Galactic Rose. This photo shows the 2 galaxies individually named UGC 1810, the larger galaxy, and its companion UGC 1813. Millions of years ago the smaller galaxy, UGC 1813, passed through UGC 1810 causing the distortion that you can see. The larger companion has 5 times the mass of the smaller and probably stripped out much of its baryonic matter. We don’t know yet about the volume of Dark energy or matter. UGC 1810 was a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way, but now has the lopsided appearance that gives them the rose shape that we see today.

Arp 273 lies in the constellation Andromeda and is roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth. That’s 1.76 septillion miles or 1,762,376,745,600,000,000,000,000 miles away or 1 septillion,762 sextillion, 376 quintillion, 745 quadrillion, 600 trillion miles or a long far ways.

Notice the blue clusters around the edge? These are star clusters of very large stars (many times bigger than our sun) that collected matter from the collision forming super-giant and super-hot stars. The brightest spots that have the diffraction spikes are stars from our Milky Way in front of the camera as viewed from earth orbit. If you look at the fuzzies in the background – those are other galaxies that are much farther away.

As I said – Breathtaking.

bob

I’ll Never Throw Anything Away Again

The pictures below show the house, old barn (38 x 28) and the 3 car garage. What you can’t see behind the old barn is an attached pole barn that is 56′ x 48′. Storage I could only dream about in Arizona, almost 2,700 square feet. Hopefully the business will take off that I can eventually fill it up with inventory. It has a limestone floor which is fine for storage.

The old barn has concrete floor and is perfect to set up the actual repair shop (almost 1100 square feet). The loft (another 1100 square feet) has a basketball goal for the kids in case of rain or winter and could eventually be used for parts storage.

Did I mention there is an additional building. One long narrow building that is divided into 3 horse stalls that can be enclosed for more storage.

All total – close to 5000 square feet. Yee Haw

So who cares about the house.

AZ bob

Our New Home in Walcott Iowa

Here are some pictures or our new home showing the House, Barn and Garage.

AZ bob

One Small Step For (a) Man

Since July 21 1969 the landing sites of the Apollo missions had not been seen until the LRO, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, photographed them earlier this year. Launched earlier this year the LRO’s mission was to take the highest resolution photographs ever of the surface in preparation for future moon landings. Here is a photo released in July for the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. This photo and the original photos of the other landing sites were taken before LRO settled into its close orbit. Here is Apollo 12, ClickThePic to visit the LRO website and see the high resolution versions.

Now that LRO has settled into its permanent orbit the resolution is much better. Depending on lighting and angle it is able to capture as little as 20 inches per pixel. So what do we see with better resolution? Check out the Apollo 11 landing site.

Remember the story of how Neil Armstrong saw that the computer was going to land them in a boulder field near West Crater. If you look closely to the left of West Crater you can actually see some of the larger boulders strewn out towards Little West Crater.

Here’s a closeup of the Lunar Module Descent Stage.

That darker line over the unmarked arrow towards Little West Crater are Neil Armstrong’s footprints, the brightest spot in the center is the descent stage. The small crater to the left near the descent stage was photographed by Armstrong. Here’s the picture from the Nasa Gallery.

Apollo 11 Little Crater

I don’t believe that anything captures my imagination more than these incredible images.

AZ bob

Rare And Beautiful Emeralds

I wish I could have shared this sooner, but the week leading up to Oct. 16 was John, my brother, and my Elk Hunt so I was busy getting ready to go.

In the morning sky at daybreak, 3 planets were in clear view. The dimmest and closest to the dawn sun was Mercury. The brightest was Venus and the third was Saturn. You could see all 3 planets throughout the first 2 weeks of October if you were up before dawn and on the 16th a special appearance was made by a crescent moon. John was able to share this view with me from 6700 feet up in the mountains on my friend John Toner’s property. Clear skies, unseasonably warm weather, 15% humidity and no light pollution made for great observing and camping – but lousy elk hunting.

Oh well, at least we enjoyed the night sky even though the daytime was a bust.

Lucky elk.

AZ bob

Oh How I Wish I Could Brag, But I Can’t

Unfortunately it’s not me, it’s the equipment.

I was fine tuning my rifles to get ready for my elk hunk this Friday, Oct. 16 at the Ben Avery Range. I was something of an interest to some of the other shooters. 8 other shooters stopped to watch me and ask questions about my rifle. Apparently they were watching my target through their spotting scopes, curious that I was shooting a muzzleloader at 200 yards. Many thought I was just messing around but were stunned that a smokepole (muzzleloader) could shoot accurately and consistently at that range. Granted this is not a traditional muzzloader. My muzzleloader is a Thompson Center Encore Endeavor, which is modern in-line, but still a muzzleloader.

I was shooting 126 grains of FF Pyrodex Triple 7 with Barnes TMZ 250 grain bullets. These are solid copper 45 caliber bullets in 50 caliber sabots. Check out my last target. It’ll get better because the gun is brand new, not yet seasoned. By spring I should be able to cut the size of this group in half.

50 caliber

Again, Unfortunately it’s not me, it’s the equipment: I was shooting from a bench.

But you want to see something really amazing? I checked the zero on the same target with my new Thompson Center Icon in 30 TC caliber 165 grain. You can’t see the group because it is under my ring finger in the above photo. Last five rounds from the second box – that would be shot numbers 36,37,38,39 and 40. My Sako, Ruger or Browning can’t come anywhere near this with factory or custom ammo. My Sako AII in 308 with a custom trigger and target crown can get close, but only with custom handloads and a lot of patience waitng for the barrel to cool. The Icon is right out of the box and the rounds off the shelf at Cabela’s and shot bang, bang, bang with the barrel heated up after 27 rounds.

30 TC 200 Yards

As I said, I wish I could brag. But shooting from a solid benchrest makes it a lot easier. Remember, this is Hornady factory ammo, not custom reloads. The powder for these rounds is not yet available to the public for handloads. The 30 TC round is a little smaller than a 308 Winchester but 75 to 100 feet per second faster than a 30-06. Also remember this is a lightweight sporting rifle, not a heavy barrel target rifle. Can’t wait to reload this round someday.

Something else that is unfortunate is that the Icon is not selling well. Thompson Center is not one of the big names like Remington or Ruger. But this little company developed the Icon with a short, compact action, adjustable trigger, 3 lug bolt (most bolt actions are 2 lug), recessed target style crown, button rifled with 5R rifling and receiver integrated picatinny rail. AND the rifle comes factory bedded wiht an aluminum integrated bedding block. All this for around a $1,000.00 retail. Shooters used to spend in excess of $3,000 to get these same features without the 5R rifling.

If I find the elk herds this weekend, it’ll be all the steak I can eat the rest of the year.

Can I brag a little?

I know, I know, only IF I find the elk.

bob

Check Out Jupiter Near The Moon

Have you been watching that bright star near the moon the last few nights? That’s Jupiter. Get out your binoculars and look for the 4 Galilean moons, those bright pin pricks of light near the planet. Left to right will be Ganymede first, then Europa second and Io right next to the planet. If you ambitious look for Io’s shadow on Jupiter through your telescope. On the right will be Callisto.

On October 2nd all 4 moons will be on the right side of Jupiter.

bob

Wha, Wha, What Happened?

OK, so I’ve been gone for a while. Between selling the house, the move to the apartment, problems over the money I spent setting up the blog and other life issues, I decided taking the time to do a blog was a bad idea.

OK, so I was wrong. Possum Holler is back with a vengeance.

The first few articles are designed to be fun; I especially like the one titled “Excited Thallium”. See if you spot the name of the invention talked about in the post.

Ready or not, here we go…

Excited Thallium

Who are those remarkable individuals that had ideas that changed the world?

One individual is a man named Gordon Gould. Ever heard of him? His genius that profoundly impacts your daily life came from an idea of energy levels from “exited thallium”. Initial uses were planned for spectrometry, interferometry, radar, and nuclear fusion.

But now virtually everything used in modern electronics uses his invention. Do you listen to CD’s? Have you had surgery lately? Do you know the most accurate way to measure something? Copied something? Leveled something? Printed something?

Gordon Gould called it Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Basically his idea was to take electromagnetic radiation (energy – or more commonly known as “light”) and separate the combined energy using an open resonator into individual wavelengths which are measured in nanometers.

I hope you caught the name of this remarkable invention from above. If you missed it I’ll give you the name again:

Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

Did you see it that time?

AZ bob