Thanks Dave. Your quote
"if 'the system' were ever to totally collapse, you are holding the best assets."
you have that exactly right . Our families could live off the land to provide food and warmth and water as needed. The worry is if thousands (millions) of people come from the city looking for something to eat. Can't feed them all. Scarry thought.
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Ed (rotoplane) First time I heard about Joseph Papp .... I found a link which talks about his 1968 private pilot article
http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue51/papp.html .Interesting.
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I have no opinion on the Papp engine but it brought to mind a promotional video I was invited to watch for a few friends who wanted to invest in a miracle gas powered engine. If I remember it was Browns Gas which is a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. Anyway he did some snazzy experiments showing how when burned it produced only water as exhaust. (that is what hydrogen does by the way , nothing new there)
But he saved his best experiment till last. He had a 454 Chev big block engine on a stand , removed the sparkplugs , and then hooked up a line from one sparkplug hole direct to the steel tank of Browns Gas and gave a very convincing demonstration of the power of the gas
without even igniting it !!
He had a convincing display. He attached a large Sears Craftsman torque wrench to the front crank bolt with the handle resting on the bench. To give the audience (investors) an example of the torque his "magic gas" could produce , he let some of the gas into the piston and the torque wrench went to its maximum of 400 foot pounds and then broke.
Another clever part of his display was a pile of similar broken wrenches from previous tests. He said Sears quit replacing them on lifetime warranty because they said he was abusing the tools. He even produced a copy of the letter from Sears head office. It was a pretty clever sales aid for snake oil. Everybody was amazed and ready to pull their wallets out.
My freinds wanted to invest too . But had asked my opinion. These were intelligent guys so I asked them how much air was in the tires of their car. (30 psi.) I said pretend you hooked a hose from one tire to the sparkplug hole of a 454 engine that had a piston surface area of 10 square inches ..... how much pressure would it exert? . They did the calculation. Then I said you have a 4" lever arm on the crankshaft ... how much torque on the crankshaft bolt and torque wrench?. They did the calculation and were catching on to the snake oil.
Having some fun I had them calculate using a 2000 psi welders oxy tank instead of a spare tire. Breaking torque wrenches never looked so easy .....
But I saved the best part for last. I said for REAL power you have to lubricate the piston with genuine snake oil .
I love these topics
Arnie