Video of Hydraulic Oscillator

Just uploaded a video on hydraulic reciprocation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL63PhantE8
to my YouTube site. This video features one of the experiments my students do in the Hydraulics Lab that I teach.

This particular experiment uses a pilot control valve - a device which uses pressure applied to a control port to switch the valve's direction.

My other videos appear here: http://www.youtube.com/user/KarlsLabReport
Please bookmark and check back periodically, as I have other videos in the works.

Enjoy.

Latest example of Why We Need MESH networks, Amateur Radio, and Shortwave

There has been something of a news blackout in the Mainstream Media this week. The story involves a rancher in Bunkerville, Nevada; a little ways outside of Las Vegas, besieged by 200 ARMED Federal Government agents over a disagreement on land use. I'm NOT going to discuss the merits of either side's case; that's for another blog and another post. There is a far more serious issue here. And that is the nearly complete lockdown over information in this country.

During this week's crisis in Southern Nevada, cell phone and data services to the area were cut off. The mainstream media were virtually silent on this incident, which could EASILY have blown up into another "Waco" type scenario. That is, they were silent until an alternative media source exposed the apparent link between this attempt to remove a rancher from his land, a certain politician and foreign corporate interests. The report went "viral" within the last 24 hours; only then did the mainstream media see fit to cover the story at all. Prior to this exposure, amateur radio was about the only reliable connection between this scene and the outside world once cellular and data services were cut off.

Regular readers of this blog will remember what I published about MESH networks, shortwave and amateur (ham) radio and why these things are of critical imnportance to citizens wanting to stay informed of important events. I discussed all this shortly after the events in Egypt a year or so ago. More recently I have discussed amateur radio and shortwave in more detail. THIS sort of thing, folks, is WHY I built the TenTec shortwave radio I wrote about a couple years ago.

Here's the deal in a nutshell: Wherever you have secrecy, and no open communication, you have the perfect petri dish for tyranny to flourish. Wherever you have a media that's more interested in "entertaining" the masses with lurid stories of celebrities and their sordid sex lives than actually reporting news, you run the risk of NOT getting information - information YOU MAY NEED to deal with potentially life-altering events. A couple years ago, there was a NEAR "Fukushima" style mess near Omaha, Nebraska at the Fort Calhoun generating station. The Missouri River had flooded, and nearly caused a mishap at the plant. Had the waters risen more than another foot, the equipment in the control room could have been shorted out. NONE of the media in the United States covered it, that I'm aware of. I first read about it on an obscure foreign website; later some bloggers picked up the story, and confirmed it. Had that plant melted down, 1/4 of the country could well have been in the path of a large radiation plume.

For those of you who ARE interested in REAL NEWS and want to take charge of your own destiney, I invite you to read what I have written about MESH networks, then do your own research on the 'Net and on YouTube to determine what fits your needs. YouTube users such as "Commprepper" offer great advice on amateur radio and other communications systems. If I were you I'd get this information NOW while it is still available.

FWIW.