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Adam Pilbeam

Restoring the Icom IC-T81A

Restoring the Icom IC-T81A

Years, ago, when I was young, I studied for and was awarded an amateur radio (ham) license. Call sign KC2GQP was on the air. As a reward for this achievement, my Dad bought me my first ham radio - an Icom handi-talkie. I was so proud to have my radio,

The Wagon Planter

The Wagon Planter

The completed planterSeveral years ago, Sarah picked up a small wagon planter at a local greenhouse. The rough-cut wood weathered beautifully, and it was host to many flowering plants over the years. The old wagon finally rotted out, sadly, so I thought it might be fun to work up a

First Photos From the FED-2

I was really excited to receive back the digital scans from the first roll of film shot through the FED-2 camera. I use North Coast Photo [https://northcoastphoto.com/] for film developing and scanning. Since this was an unknown camera to me, I chose to use their budget scanning option.

Welcome To The FED-2

Welcome To The FED-2

In an earlier post, I described how I was migrating away from the Canon SLR that has been with me for a long time to, hopefully, a rangefinder. Rangefinders are smaller, more compact cameras (typically) that are fairly unique in that focusing and composing are done with separate optics from

Maple Syrup On The New Boiler

Maple Syrup On The New Boiler

For the past couple of years, I have been blessed to try my hand at making Maple syrup. We have several Maple trees on the property, and some of them are quite large. Due to supplies and unpreparedness, I usually run about 10 taps. This year I was able to

Farewell To The Canon AE-1 Program

Farewell To The Canon AE-1 Program

For awhile, I’ve been considering my film photography gear and thinking about making a change. With the new year, it seemed like a good time to execute. To start with, I wanted to clear out my existing equipment in order to make room and free up some budget for

The Kawai Reed Organ

The Kawai Reed Organ

I have always had a love for the organ as a musical instrument. When I was young, we had a 1950s vintage Lowery organ that I played quite often. When it died, I had a solid state Wurlitzer – which, while neat, lacked the same unique tone of the Lowery. Over

The Grundig Yacht Boy 400

The Grundig Yacht Boy 400

Even before my teenage years, I had always a fascination with electronics. In the ’90s, Radio Shack was still in full swing, the Internet was mostly text, and computers were ungainly things that weren’t terribly interesting to a 12 year old (aside from the games). For me, looking at

Auction Finds

I’ve been an eBayer for a long time, but only recently discovered the fun of local online auctions. Due especially to the Coronavirus crisis, many local auction houses are turning to the Internet to sell things. Since the winnings must still be picked up locally, it lessens to competition

Spring is Gone, But Whither The Rain?

It has been a dry one so far! We are having our first rain today in two weeks, and these past two weeks have been scorchers. The lawn looks rather like a brown carpet, but we are thanking the Lord that our garden is flourishing.Aside from some weedy grass,

Will Spring Come?

We have had fun getting ready for spring here on the homestead. Though it has been a cold start, we’ve already done our spring cleaning, wardrobe changes, furniture rearranging, and putting away of the wood stove accessories. And yet – today we had a fair amount of snow and the

Early Spring Projects

I am always anxious to get the springtime operations started here on the homestead. Once the Maple syrup operation is done, in mid-March I was out preparing some 5×10′ garden beds. Once these were done up, I needed some more manual labor. We have planned a bathroom renovation for

1940 Farmall A Split Part 2

While this post is going up in August, everything recounted below happened in July. I’m just really bad about posting it! To recap: The Farmall developed a coolant leak in the clutch housing. The coolant would drip out slowly and drain the engine of water over a couple of

1940 Farmall A Split Part 1

I’ve had a fair number of issues with the radiator and cooling on the tractor over the past couple of years. Bad fan bearings, cracked solder in the radiator, and general sludge in the system have made for leaks, steam, and general overheating. I had repaired the radiator early

Kodak Ektar 100

While I’ve recently got my hands on some Fuji Superia 400 to run through the new (to us) 35mm point and shoots we’ve picked up at thrift stores, I have been a bit behind in getting film developed. I had a roll of Kodak Ektar 100 that I

Vintage Computing Pt. 3: Epson Equity I+

The Epson Equity I+ is an 8088 based business workstation from the 1980s. It sported a 20MB internal hard drive, along with a 5.25” floppy drive. The hard drive was toast, so I removed it. It’s also harder to make or get bootable 5.25” disks, I swapped

Vintage Computing Pt. 2 - Trying Things Out

In my last post, I have a brief inventory of the five 1980s class workstations I’ve come into. In this post, I’ll outline the issues that are currently occurring with each and what I hope to be able to do with them. IBM PC XT 5150: This machine

Vintage Computing Pt. 1

Last year, I came into a bunch of old computer gear from the 1980s. The inventory is: IBM PC XT (5150): The one that started it all. This machine sports an Intel 8088 CPU running at 4.77MHz, no coprocessor, dual 5.25” floppy drives and a very lightweight power

Springtime is Here

We have crocuses in full bloom! They’re not lilies…but I’m sure Solomon would be jealous of these delicate little beauties (Luke 12:27). Happy Spring!

Maple Sugar 2019

Sap Sacks Make A Return This YearWe’ve started our maple sugar operation again this year. Last year, I had five taps going – one per tree. This year, I’ve paid closer attention to the best Maple varieties to tap, and have put in ten taps! I feel so blessed

Red Currant Syrup or Jelly

I set out to make currant jelly last year, to preserve the beautiful currants we were blessed with in our first season after planting. Due to a lack of patience on my part, we wound up with a little over a pint of currant syrup! This happy accident has resulted

Watch Out! - The HMT Pilot Review

HMT was an Indian watch manufacture with factories in Bangalore, Kochi, Hyderabad, Pinjore, and Ajmer. At one time, the company was the country’s largest supplier of wrist watches. HMT also dealt in several other areas, making equipment for metal processing, tractors, printing presses, etc. The majority of the company

Book Review - Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans

[https://www.amazon.com/Andrew-Jackson-Miracle-New-Orleans-ebook/dp/B06VXGQ1PQ?SubscriptionId=AKIAIA3UEVTLIG7AIKFA&tag=pilbeaengine-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B06VXGQ1PQ] Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans: The Battle That Shaped America’s Destiny [https://www.amazon.com/Andrew-Jackson-Miracle-New-Orleans-ebook/dp/B06VXGQ1PQ?SubscriptionId=AKIAIA3UEVTLIG7AIKFA&tag=pilbeaengine-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=

The Kohler Sink - 1 Year Later

It’s a cold day here at the homestead! Roughly 12 degrees or less on the thermometer, lots of wind and snow. I realized the other day, we are coming up on a 1 year anniversary with our new Kohler kitchen sink. Last year, Sarah brought up the idea of

Playing With Drones

A couple of months ago, we ventured to a ‘surplus store’ where they sell returned products at dramatically reduced prices. It was a lot of fun to peruse the aisles and see the random items that were available; a lot of the items may have come from WalMart or other