Fah Kiew Tu

You've just confirmed my prejudice against that stuff. I'll stick to running copper water pipes through my wall cavities. FKT

It's not a fucking *MOTE*. Except in your eye, perhaps. Got any opinion on China's national security law? How about the treatment of their Uighurs? FKT

You know it just twigged who you remind me of. Friend of my GF brought her new boyfriend over for dinner. He was a young Irish lad on his first time away from his own country. After the 3rd religious slur from him, my GF brought him up sharply to the effect that he should leave his bigotry and prejudices right back in his home country, because we didn't want to know about them in Australia and his slurring one side all the time was offensive. Perhaps you might find a little food for thought there. I also note that you are assiduously ignoring the people who are critical of what China is doing an declining to address those issues. Just like that Irish lad, in fact. FKT

Don't tell two-legged though. China good, USA bad seems to be the stuck track there. Personally I think we should apply increasing taxes to Chinese held property and businesses in Australia. And get all those Confucius Institutes and payments to Australian academics out of the universities. FKT

Disagree. A friend of mine's son did exactly that. Point blank refused to follow the house rules and they weren't onerous, just basic respect for shared living spaces. In the end both husband & wife were on the same page - shape up or leave. The son chose to leave, lived in squats, shared houses etc for 3 years keeping in contact every so often. Eventually it all got too hard and he got older. Hadn't picked up a police record or an addiction. Asked if he could come home again. The answer was yes, provided you respect the place and our house rules. He returned, did his HSC and got a decent job. Voluntary homelessness does exist. It's relatively rare, I'd agree. OTOH 'van life' is a different thing... IMHO we made a big mistake closing all those mental hospitals and pushing the occupants out. But that's a big can of worms too because those places attracted abusers and exploiters amongst the staff. Anyway as usual Dog is full of shit because this is a multi-rooted problem and beyond his binary capability. FKT

Big fishing port in a 3rd World country on our borders, on a strategic strait, where in fact there are few fish and 90% of those in someone else's waters - does that proposal ring any bells? FKT

Our wiring code is different, I just use square millimeter area to size cables based on the amperage they need to carry. Usually go one size up then add a breaker to limit total current. With low voltage it's a bit more of a PITA because of the need to consider voltage drop in relatively short runs. I don't give that much of a thought when running 415V 3 phase until the distance gets over 100m or so and going up 1 wire size usually takes care of it. As a machinist I've had to painfully deal with all sorts of antique measurement systems and frankly it's a major PITA. WRT going *down* one wire size to the winch, sure, you can do that because most of the time the motor won't be drawing anything near max current anyway. As long as you use a breaker sized for the wire current capacity not the winch max demand load it'll be fine. Your winch might trip the breaker at the worst possible moment under heavy load, but your wiring will remain intact. Not a choice I'd make though. FKT

Now this statement is pure fantasy from someone half a world away. China has done *ALL* those things. When that's been pointed out to you, you deflect and attempt to change the subject to "The USA did worse!!!" Crap debating technique. And you're obviously unaware that China uses its economic muscle to other countries' detriment. They're currently doing it to us and a lot of it is due to Australia pushing back on the white-anting of our universities, covert funding of politicians and political parties, foreign influence in politics and economics. Our refusal to sell certain items of infrastructure and some agricultural assets to them. China is attempting to bend us to their will. The problem they have is, until they bring some quite expensive alternative sources of supply for iron ore on stream, they have to buy from us. And we won't let them vertically integrate as they want, from owning the mines to providing their own labour pool to owning the export ports. Meanwhile they fuck about with our other exports where they do have alternatives. Those alternatives aren't as good and/or as cheap, but they do exist. And I hear you prating on about stuff you actually have NFI about, exercising your 30+ year out of date prejudices against the quite real abuses by the USA. You remind me of the old line about the Bourbons - they forgot no injury and learned nothing new. FKT

Yeah it's yet another post-colonial shit-fight. Don't think I'm taking any sides or blaming anyone except the UK colonial masters and plantation owners. I don't know anything about how things are on the ground but it strikes me that one man-one vote breaks down badly when an imported labour force brought in by a colonial power and then abandoned comes to be able to out-vote the original inhabitants and land owners. FKT

The Muir HR1600 I have on order says max amperage draw is 120. Normal use-case would be a lot less one would expect, but need to allow for the worst case. Well, that's how I think anyway. I really don't want to have to run (or pay for) 14m of 50mm^2 cable which is my guesstimate for the round trip. OTOH I have a lot of 25mm^2 silicon rubber high temp insulated tinned cable I can use for shorter runs. Adequate supply of short lengths of 35mm^2 tinned cable which is what I'd likely use. 6mm^2 cable should be adequate for a max of 30A from the DC-DC charger setup and that's a lot easier to run. More likely I'd run 10mm^2. When I was going to use a 24V motor on my spare manual winch I assembled all the bits to run 240V AC from my inverter forward to a 60A 240AC-24V DC box. That would have kept all the cable runs nice and short. And introduced another failure point. If I was going to do something like that I'd be more tempted to fit a fractional HP 3 phase motor with worm reduction g/box and a 240V single phase to 240V 3 phase VFD. I've a fair bit of that sort of gear lying about the place. Too complicated. Spending money on the Muir winch seemed a better option. For me the extra battery forward substitutes for some trimming ballast so the weight is a wash and I avoid running heavy cables through my shallow bilge area. The lighter gauge cable can be run along the existing cable way under the side decks where it's high, dry and out of the way. Your situation is likely totally different. FKT

And, with that comment, you perfectly encapsulate the problem that comes from using antique measurement systems. FKT

Because come Jan 21 2021, Trump can't pardon him. FKT

My boat has a keel. FKT

Thanks - so #2 is approx 34mm^2. FKT

Well that one you can lay fairly & squarely at the feet of the colonial masters - the UK. The Fijians were way too bright to perform basically unpaid labour in the cane fields, so the Brits brought in Indians to do it. And now that egg is truly scrambled as well. FKT

Out of curiosity, what is the actual conductor diameter of #2 cable in measurements that the majority of the planet uses for conductors? That is, square millimeters... FKT

I still want to know if this is a blanket rule and if so, how anyone regardless of how well qualified they are is going to go about inspecting my keel bolts. FKT

Well, if you want simple, you already have it, as do I, so any change to using a powered winch is a slippery slope... It depends on your use-case and comfort level I guess. My current battery system is set up as a dedicated start battery and 2 135AH AGM house batteries. They get charged via either a DC-DC charger or PV panels; there's a relay that switches between the sources when the engine is running. Standard RV charging system, I don't have my master switch set up with a 'BOTH' option to combine start and house batteries. So when adding a winch I could hook it to the start battery because I'd rarely to never be using the winch without the engine running. Or I could hook it to my house bank. Or I could add a dedicated battery and then figure out how to charge it. I prefer option 3 because it avoids a long run of heavy cable and the consequent voltage drop while giving me a big reserve of power close to where it's needed. I plan to charge off of my house bank because I have 500W of PV panels most of which is currently wasted because we really don't use a lot of juice. I'm pretty rusty on electrical stuff but I'm confident that even if you went to 50mm^2 cable you'd see enough voltage drop for a forward battery to be less than the main bank over that run length, were you to combine them. So IMO it's better to charge the fwd battery separately - once you've made the decision to have one that is. Keep in mind that I already have 80+ kg of lead blocks for trimming ballast up forward so removing some and replacing it with something useful doesn't alter my weight balance at all. This does indeed introduce another layer of complexity and another potential failure point. My attitude is, I've lost my purity by going to a powered winch so - shrug. If I had my first choice I'd have a hydraulic winch operated via a electromagnetic clutched engine-driven hydraulic pump. I thought long and hard about that while building the boat. In the end I decided not to. It's possible that one day I may revisit that decision too. FKT

The problem with that is, the further you extend it the bigger the lever arm and the stiffer/stronger the extension needs to be. Before long you're designing a bowsprit with whisker stays and bobstay. No comment on rig mods, not my field, NFI what's best. FKT

I've thought about it for at least 15 seconds, and it still makes no fucking sense at all. FWIW I've a more than nodding familiarity with various grades of stainless steel and their behaviour. FKT

Lake Pedder. It's been going on for years. Good arguments for not damming it back then but it's a done deal now, has been for decades, and we need more power without burning fossil fuels not less. Well, Tasmania doesn't as yet but the plan is to use our hydro systems as a supply for the mainland. Lot of locals think you all can FOAD but that's a bit short sighted. Anyway, point is, there's still a big element of 'you can have any system you want as long as it's totally green, has zero environmental impact and you don't actually build it' and that's just annoyingly selfish and thoughtless. FKT

Which of course is why the local Greens here in Tasmania want to de-commission one of our hydropower dams.... FKT

SEM needed to even see them? FKT

I got paid to provide certification that the software would work without problems :-) Given the tools it was built on, that was dead easy money. FKT

Provided you accept that you're going to get maybe 35% of the nominal output, on a time basis that you can't predict, the power from wind is a lot cheaper. But you really need to factor in all the standby costs for when the wind isn't blowing. Hydro, thermal coal and nuke don't have those constraints. I prefer hydro power but it is of course site specific. And impossible to build without changing something in the environment which nowadays is a no-no. FKT