March 2025 Media and Progress Notes
March 2025 Image links are below.
Sangatsu 2025 shashin rinku wa shita desu.
(Last update: 1 March 2025.)
This page is provides a collection of images captured on 28 February 2025 then posted here the next day. It's just a view of the current status of my aircraft with only a token of progress commentary. Focus quality is awful however - evidently my camera developed an auto-focus flaw. So I'll try to replace all the images later if time permits. In the meantime high quality media is widely available - DuckDuckGo.com easily finds a lot of it. (And does so sans tracking or profiling you. Which, in a Trump era, seems especially important...)
Click on a thumbnail to see the media. Some browsers might present portrait oriented media sideways, sorry... As usual all republished images from this site must be credited to AirplaneHome.com with correct medial capitalization (not Airplanehome.com nor airplanehome.com for example - use correct medial capitalization in both text and links).
Just as before: Apologies for my four year long gap since my last media and narrative update. Many events have occurred since then covering the spectrum from truly wonderful to, again, devastating class awful. I might never review or even summarize the bulk of them on AirplaneHome.com due mostly to time constraints, sorry. A great deal of focus has shifted to IshikiAI.com and more modestly LibertyLovingLoneWolf.com, and I hope to devote a lot of time to v2.0 soon as well.
As you can see in the images crude wood, foam panel, and aluminum floor panel stacks which supported the left side and tail area of my fuselage belly during the rebuild of my left landing gear support structure remain in place, awaiting fabrication of a permanent left landing gear support structure. They're ugly and visually obstructive but must remain until the permanent landing gear support structure work is complete. I don't know when that might be...
A spiritual element of that work which I described then bears repeating: Though it's merely rudimentary construction, the work required dedicated intellectual energy and focus to provide best available safety and chance of project success, and it was physically taxing, fatiguing, often harsh, and at times utterly boring. And the personal reward was mostly limited to just resolving a simple physical need and thus provided only a modest sense of human fulfilment. We perform such work because we must, not because it's significantly rewarding - no new science, technology, or other advancement is involved so the only sense of accomplishment is elimination of a practical problem. And that level of personal reward can't support a high personal investment level indefinitely - eventually our spirit rebels even if the need remains unresolved. Burnout is complex in spiritual structure but powerful, and it occasionally overwhelms personal discipline. So it must be addressed, sometimes simply by investing some time in other affairs, but occasionally by modifying or changing fundamental elements in our personal activities or goals.
v2.0 will necessarily including some boring work as well of course. But the logistics of that project are far more refined and should provide a much higher human fulfillment to bordom ratio. And while that element might seem subtle and of little consequence to elitist snobs, in the reality trenches where I live it's a massively important factor both spiritually and for the viability of the overall vision (or as detached MBAs would say, "The business model").
A major Fall 2024 outdoor project was replacement of my corroded water well down pipe with new polyethylene pipe which should last at least centuries (presumably much longer than the already 47 year old pump). It was a big, dirty, dangerous, and tough job which consumed over six weeks of labor during which no running water was available, showers and laundry washing were imposible, toilets didn't flush, and all other flowing water conveniences were unavailable. I survived the stretch with bottled or stream water and learned that a human being can grind through an extended period in an unrelenting dirty body state. But a backup well or large water storage tank would have been immensely preferable...
I accomplished this using a ladder secured against my number three engine housing to support a hand winch utilized as a crane. Hand winches should never be used to lift very heavy masses like 65 meters of 1.25" diameter steel pipe plus the pump - their cable could snap or the winch itself disassemble essentially explosively, taking fingers or faces with them. But those were the materials I had... I had to drill holes into the pipe, insert a holding bolt, then cut each pipe section off with an abrasive disk grinder to remove each of many sections of the corroded steel pipe. The first was the most difficult and dangerous of course, then the work became progressively easier and safer as mass was removed from the load being lifted. But, combined with hosting guests, it was a long difficult task.
Installation of the polyethylene pipe was a far safer and significantly easier task though still time consuming as I strove to perform all work, including wire splicing, with sufficient quality to reliably endure at least 100 years, and hopefully much longer.
The first shower was glorious...
That task was completed successfully with one exception: The backflow valve atop my water pump seems to be stuck open, a disappointment exacerbated by the fact that I did check it of course before lowering the pump back into the well. It's not a serious issue but at the moment tiny leaks in the routing plumbing atop the well allow air into the down-pipe, which then loads into the pressure tank the next time the pump runs, causing occasional toilet gysers. I'll rebuild a minor section of the very short routing pipes atop the well to resolve this soon, although the backflow valve atop the pump might shake loose eventually anyway thus restoring proper operation. (Or maybe it won't.)
The well's electrical control system functions reliably but I need to install a replacement electronic pressure detector to replace the mechanical one currently in use. The electrical controls are organized in a single plastic housing, but some elements need some refinement work. I have all the components necessary to accomplish this when time permits.
As of 2025 this well has served me superbly for about 47 years. The massively superior polyethylene down pipe should add many more decades to its life if the six inch diameter steel casing remains reasonably intact. At least until the huge earthquake this region will experience someday occurs - that might cause collapse of the well below the casing, although intact survival of the entire system is also possible.
The well work was just a modest proportion of the array of 2024 projects. I'll probably never find time to describe the other adventures though, sorry.
Copyright 1 March 2025, Howard Bruce Campbell, AirplaneHome.com.
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