texascavers Digest 15 Jun 2013 06:52:09 -0000 Issue 1775
Topics (messages 21931 through 21940):
Re: [SWR] Climbing gear damage
21931 by: Geary Schindel
21932 by: Diana Tomchick
Digitized Turn of 20th Century maps of State of Neuvo Leon,
21933 by: caverarch
21935 by: Gill Edigar
21936 by: caverarch
Mars related
21934 by: David
bat video
21937 by: Geary Schindel
Bats in Hollywood movies
21938 by: David
a tale from the old days of Texas cavers
21939 by: Mixon Bill
An LED headlamp review
21940 by: David
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--- Begin Message ---
Nice article and evaluation.
I know that some folks think I'm paranoid (which may be true) but I've always
carried my ropes and vertical gear in protective bags. The possibility of
damage to ropes and vertical gear thrown in the back of pickup trucks is much
too great. Reminds me of a trip I was supposed to go on when I was in college.
A bunch of friends put together a trip to do the big pits in Mexico over
Christmas. I really couldn't afford to go and had to cancel. However, my
friends went. The group bought a long rope which they thought was too big to
place in a pack so they stuffed it loose in the back of the van. They did El
Sotano and everyone climbed in and out with no problem.
They then went over to Golondrinas. Two folks rappelled in with no problems.
The third person rappelled in and the rope sheath separated and jammed into the
rack, about 100 feet over the lip. So, here he was dangling about 900 feet off
the floor of the cave with the rope starting to part. He didn't want to place
his safety ascender on the rope as that was where the rope sheath separated.
The folks up top lowered down the tail of the rope and he was able to change
over and ascend out of the pit.
The top crew than pulled up the rope, threw down some notes asking what the two
guys on the bottom wanted to do. The choices were, wait about a week in the
bottom of the pit while the cavers hiked a day out to the road, drove back to
the US to get another rope and to return.
Second option was to lower the bad portion of the rope into the pit and use the
end that was in the bottom to anchor the rope and let the cavers on bottom
climb out. That is what the cavers decided to do. They climbed out without
incident.
A government chemist on the trip took the damaged part of the rope back to his
lab and did some tests and found the rope had been exposed to battery acid. The
owner of the van had said that he had carried a car battery in the back of the
van about a month before and that it must have leaked.
Tough lesson learned.
Geary
From: swr-boun...@caver.net [mailto:swr-boun...@caver.net] On Behalf Of
Jacqueline Thomas
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 9:37 PM
To: p...@caver.net; Southwest Region Region; Texascavers@texascavers.com
Subject: [SWR] Climbing gear damage
Below is a link to a Black Diamond investigation into initially inexplicable
harness failure. It's climbing gear, not caving gear, but is very interesting.
Jacqui
QC Lab: The Electric Harness Acid
Test<http://www.blackdiamondequipment.com/en/qc-lab-acid-harness.html>
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Aside from the obvious result that acids are bad for the structural integrity
of harness material (both polyester and nylon), I found it interesting that
common household chlorine bleach is also pretty bad. Of course the web site
doesn't tell you what concentration of bleach they used (I'm guessing they just
used it straight from the bottle, and that could mean 3-6% bleach, depending
upon the brand). Just remember that you should never use the bleach method to
disinfect your climbing gear, no matter how attractive the method seems due to
the cheap and easy accessibility of household bleach.
http://whitenosesyndrome.org/sites/default/files/resource/national_wns_revise_final_6.25.12.pdf
Diana
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Diana R. Tomchick
Professor
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Department of Biophysics
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Rm. ND10.136EB (until the end of July)
Dallas, TX 75390-8816, U.S.A.
Email: diana.tomch...@utsouthwestern.edu
214-645-6383 (phone)
214-645-6353 (fax)
On Jun 13, 2013, at 8:09 AM, Geary Schindel wrote:
> Nice article and evaluation.
>
> I know that some folks think I’m paranoid (which may be true) but I’ve always
> carried my ropes and vertical gear in protective bags. The possibility of
> damage to ropes and vertical gear thrown in the back of pickup trucks is much
> too great. Reminds me of a trip I was supposed to go on when I was in
> college. A bunch of friends put together a trip to do the big pits in Mexico
> over Christmas. I really couldn’t afford to go and had to cancel. However,
> my friends went. The group bought a long rope which they thought was too big
> to place in a pack so they stuffed it loose in the back of the van. They did
> El Sotano and everyone climbed in and out with no problem.
>
> They then went over to Golondrinas. Two folks rappelled in with no problems.
> The third person rappelled in and the rope sheath separated and jammed into
> the rack, about 100 feet over the lip. So, here he was dangling about 900
> feet off the floor of the cave with the rope starting to part. He didn’t want
> to place his safety ascender on the rope as that was where the rope sheath
> separated. The folks up top lowered down the tail of the rope and he was able
> to change over and ascend out of the pit.
>
> The top crew than pulled up the rope, threw down some notes asking what the
> two guys on the bottom wanted to do. The choices were, wait about a week in
> the bottom of the pit while the cavers hiked a day out to the road, drove
> back to the US to get another rope and to return.
>
> Second option was to lower the bad portion of the rope into the pit and use
> the end that was in the bottom to anchor the rope and let the cavers on
> bottom climb out. That is what the cavers decided to do. They climbed out
> without incident.
>
> A government chemist on the trip took the damaged part of the rope back to
> his lab and did some tests and found the rope had been exposed to battery
> acid. The owner of the van had said that he had carried a car battery in the
> back of the van about a month before and that it must have leaked.
>
> Tough lesson learned.
>
> Geary
>
> From: swr-boun...@caver.net [mailto:swr-boun...@caver.net] On Behalf Of
> Jacqueline Thomas
> Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 9:37 PM
> To: p...@caver.net; Southwest Region Region; Texascavers@texascavers.com
> Subject: [SWR] Climbing gear damage
>
> Below is a link to a Black Diamond investigation into initially inexplicable
> harness failure. It's climbing gear, not caving gear, but is very
> interesting. Jacqui
>
> QC Lab: The Electric Harness Acid Test
________________________________
UT Southwestern Medical Center
The future of medicine, today.
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Including plates of 1:100,000 scale topo-like maps
Título: [Planos del Estado de Nuevo León de 1894, 1903, 1904, 1907 y 1908] ,
[Mapa]
Pie de imprenta: [s.l. : s.n.], 1894-1908.
Materia: Nuevo León -- Mapas.
Número de control (Bibid): 982314
Ver documento
And a map of the fortifications of the City of Monterrey in 1847 for the
historically minded.
Roger G. Moore
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Excellent, Roger, just excellent.
--Ediger
On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 3:39 PM, caverarch <cavera...@aol.com> wrote:
> Including plates of 1:100,000 scale topo-like maps
>
> Título: *[Planos del Estado de Nuevo León de 1894, 1903, 1904, 1907 y
> 1908] , [Mapa]*<http://cdigital.dgb.uanl.mx/la/1080048648/1080048648.html>
> Pie de imprenta: [s.l. : s.n.], 1894-1908.
> Materia: Nuevo León -- Mapas.
> Número de control (Bibid): 982314
> Ver documento <http://cdigital.dgb.uanl.mx/la/1080048648/1080048648.PDF>
>
> And a map of the fortifications of the City of Monterrey in 1847 for the
> historically minded.
>
> Roger G. Moore
>
>
>
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Thanks, Gill. I found this in the digital collection of the Autonomous
University of Nuevo Leon. I'm curious, of course, if this was a one-off effort
for the State of Nuevo Leon, or whether similar publications of about the same
date might exist for other Mexican states.
Roger G. Moore
-----Original Message-----
From: Gill Edigar <gi...@att.net>
To: caverarch <cavera...@aol.com>
Cc: Cavers Texas <Texascavers@texascavers.com>
Sent: Fri, Jun 14, 2013 8:35 am
Subject: Re: [Texascavers] Digitized Turn of 20th Century maps of State of
Neuvo Leon,
Excellent, Roger, just excellent.
--Ediger
On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 3:39 PM, caverarch <cavera...@aol.com> wrote:
Including plates of 1:100,000 scale topo-like maps
Título: [Planos del Estado de Nuevo León de 1894, 1903, 1904, 1907 y 1908] ,
[Mapa]
Pie de imprenta: [s.l. : s.n.], 1894-1908.
Materia: Nuevo León -- Mapas.
Número de control (Bibid): 982314
Ver documento
And a map of the fortifications of the City of Monterrey in 1847 for the
historically minded.
Roger G. Moore
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It has been a while since the rover, Curiosity, has published any new
pictures of the landscape.
Here is the latest:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA17071_fig1.jpg
If you click on that it will enlarge.
It looks like there will be plenty of building material to build a house,
presuming you can make mortar at freezing temperatures.
I don't see where they have added any new photos in a week.
David Locklear
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http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2013/06/14/dnt-bats-infest-downtown-sacramento.kcra#/video/us/2013/06/14/dnt-bats-infest-downtown-sacramento.kcra
Interesting video on bats on www.cnn.com<http://www.cnn.com>.
Geary
Geary M. Schindel, P.G.
Director - Chief Technical Officer
Aquifer Science
[cid:image001.jpg@01CE690A.73897220]
900 E. Quincy Street
San Antonio, TX 78215
210.222.2204
gschin...@edwardsaquifer.org
[cid:image002.png@01CE690A.73897220]<http://www.facebook.com/edwards.aquifer.education>[cid:image003.png@01CE690A.73897220]<http://www.youtube.com/eaatx>
[cid:image004.png@01CE690A.73897220] <http://www.edwardsaquifer.org/rss.php>
[cid:image005.png@01CE690A.73897220] <http://twitter.com/#!/EdwardsAquifer>
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The new animated movie, "Epic," has a few bat scenes.
This was probably one of the few movies worth watching this year, so far.
Unfortunately, bats were members of the evil side of the forest, and actually
enemies to the flower.
And they did get in the scientist hair who was trying to prove that they didn't
get in your hair.
This was more of a Dr. Seuss style forest, with an Avatar like war going on
between the green and colorful forces of the forest growth battling the grey
and black forces of forest decay.
The 3D was ok, but we saw it in one of the fancy 4k theaters.
The plot is aimed at 11 year old kids.
David Locklear
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Posted by permission of the author by Mixon:
A long time ago in Fredericksburg, Texas, they held the Luckenbach
World’s Fair, the brainchild of Hondo Crouch and Guich Koock, who
bought the little town in the Texas Hill Country. They made it a
favorite hangout for Waylon and Willie and the boys, and lots of lawng-
hurred country folks from Austin and other parts. Later they sold the
whole thang again. Why was the fair held in Fredericksburg? Well,
Luckenbach was charmin’ to visit, but not big enough to hold a couple
of thousand beer drunks all at once, and Fredericksburg had a stadium
for rent
I thank it wuz June 1975. I went thur from Lubbock on the weekend out
of boredom, just to git away from my grad stoodent studies at Texas
Tech. I mean, how many millipede gonopods can you measure while
staring through a microscope? I was goin’ cross-eyed, and my wife
wasn’t much interested in going, so I went. Had I a friend who hadda
been interested I woulda taken him along. That reminds me of this
example of Texanese that my Dad used to quote, “Well, if I’d a knowd
you’d a goed, I’d a let you a’rode, leastwise I’d seen you had a way
to went.” That was how I felt about it too.
So, I drove my old Chevy 4x4 down there and when I arrived I
immediately bumped into cavers from Austin—Charlie Loving, Gil Ediger,
Don Broussard, and lots of others. We wandered around, drank beer, and
sampled the food at the booths on the grounds. Eventually I moseyed up
into the bleachers, which wuz shady.
They wuz hostin’ various events, and pretty soon they announced a
Laughing Contest. A no-holds-barred-make-it-up-as-you-go Laughing
Contest, with some vague trophy being offered. By this time I was half
full of beer and feelin’ pretty jovial, so I joined up. I went down
front to the stage, where they had notables like Slim Pickens, Hondo,
Guich, and Frank X. Tolbert as judges. Also Sarah somebody, a famous
Texas politician whose last name I can’t recall, but she was good-
lookin’.
I asked about rules, and they didn’t have any. So, the first man gets
up to the mike and he tells some cornball joke and slaps his thigh and
laughs. The crowd sort of laughs, and we’re off to a start. Then the
second man takes the mike and tells some long windy joke and they sort
of laugh, but not too much. I’m thinkin’, “Man, this is pretty lame. I
can do better than this.” I think I was third, or maybe fifth—I didn’t
really care at this point. So, I decided to do something unusual.
There I was already sort of lookin’ weird. I had lawng hurr stickin’
out all around from my dark blue denim engineer’s cap, a big mustash,
jeans, cowboy boots, and a t-shirt that said, “Lucky Me! I live in
Lubbock!” with a cartoon of a dood clingin’ to a road sign while a
tornado has him blowed out sideways with his pants comin’ off.
I stepped up to the mike, which was on a stand and connected to a big
sound system. I said real low, “lucky me…I live in Lubbock.” Then I
started to laugh in a real low register, then I went up the scale
gradually in a sustained crescendo, culminating in a foghorn, hootin’,
exhalin’, inhalin’ drug-crazed ape virtuoso hollerin’ extravaganza,
while I staggered about the stage draggin’ the mike stand with me. It
was almost scary. I didn’t know where it came from. I didn’t know I
had it in me. Gawd, the crowd went wild!
OK, so maybe one or two more performed, but they were a mere shadow to
my virtuoso hootin’ performance. The judges huddled together, then
they said the crowd wanted me to do it again. So, I did it all again,
but even longer and better this time. I thank the laugh I did reached
mebbe 100 decibels, and that’s just at the mike. In the bleachers all
them beer drunks musta heard it louder, and they all went apeshit at
my apeshit laugh. They cheered and stomped and jumped up and down, and
I was awarded the grand prize. It was a trophy made by Charlie Loving
out of a copper toilet float, glued to a little basket with sticks and
strings and mounted on a 2x4 to look like a hot-air balloon. And on
top it had a plastic Indian chief holdin’ a tomahawk, but his other
arm was bad, missin’ a hand. It was colorful, just like I felt and
everyone felt that day.
Later on Charlie came lookin’ for me, said that CBS News wanted to
talk to me. I never did see them. I camped out with my caver friends
that night, and next day I drove fast back to Lubbock, which we called
Buttock, the Hub, the new metro city of the south plains.
I have a Kodachrome slide of this event, showing Slim Pickens awarding
me my trophy. That’s for all you naysayers out there!
I had such fond memories of this event that I put it in my resumé, or
CV. There it remains today. The only trouble I ever had over that was
when I was testifying as an expert witness in a lawsuit in Austin. I
was recounting in court some technical work I did while employed at
the Texas Department of Health, sort of on behalf of the plaintiff,
who was injured working in the gas sterilizer area of a hospital. I
used to troubleshoot gas sterilizers and anesthesia equipment for the
health department using a special gas detector, a large infrared
spectrometer. The defendant’s lawyer, representing a big manufacturer
of hospital equipment, thought he had found a way to discredit me as
an expert witness. He said, “Well, MISTER Elliott,” (ignoring my Ph.D.
and my accomplishments), “I see here that you were the World Champion
Laugher at the 1975 Luckenbach World’s Fair! Would you like to tell us
about that?!” I just looked at the jury, and said, “Yes, Slim Pickens
awarded me that trophy. I am very proud of that!” I grinned, and the
jury all laughed—they loved it! And the big company lost the lawsuit,
I think based more on my technical work than my laughing contest
story. But who knows?
William R. “Bill” Elliott
Jefferson City, Missouri
13 June 2013
----------------------------------------
Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more.
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It is has been a long time since I mentioned anything about
new LED headlamps.
The lamp I am about to describe was found yesterday at
AutoZone for a cost of $ 14.99 plus tax.
http://contentinfo.autozone.com/znetcs/product-info/en/US/lbm/31077/image/4/
It has a large lens diameter by today's LED standards,
at over 2 inches in diameter. I have seen similar headlamps on
Chinese web-sites for many years, but never seen one sold
here in the U.S. in a retail store.
It has 53 five millimeter white LED's. It switches from 10, to 27
to 53 LED's. The 10 setting is typical of your really cheap LED
headlamps.
The 27 was far brighter, and the 53 appeared to be
only slightly brighter than the 27. It has a flashing mode, that seemed
brighter.
The plastic materials of this headlamp are really cheaply built. But the
circuit board looks pretty cool. But the headlamp is lightweight.
This headlamp is not water resistant. But maybe with a dab of silicone
sealant, it can be upgraded to be water-resistant, but never water-proof,
unless you sealed it permanently for just one use.
It uses 3 AA size batteries, that are included.
I would like to take this to a machine shop and reverse engineer it,
to make more durable headlamp.
Hopefully, it will survive a couple of trips to Kiwi Sink. The switch
seems
sturdy enough for that purpose.
Ref:
http://www.autozone.com/autozone/accessories/Police-Security-53-LED-headlamp/_/N-25dr?itemIdentifier=554758_0_0_
The brand name is Police Security.
David Locklear
P.S. There are quite a few new LED headlamps out there if anybody
wants to post something about them. There is one sold at Northern
Tool Company for $ 45 that I have been wanting to try.
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