Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2015 i Popular Mechanics South Africa

IT’S A PRIVILEGE TO BE ABLE TO VISIT FARAWAY PLACES and experience other cultures and sights, as we often have to do in our line of work. Case in point: I have just returned from South Korea as a guest of LG on its 2015 Home Appliance and Air Solutions press tour. Having been to the country before, I couldn’t resist, on occasion, stepping back to note the reactions of my fellow travellers, all of whom were first-timers. It’s safe to say that they were bowled over by this Asian Tiger’s bustle and restless innovation. Yet at the same time there’s a conscious effort not to let go of traditions and history. So, in the space of one day the visitors were given insights into how we’ll be managing tomorrow’s…

THE UKRAINIAN ARMY’S 24th Mechanised Brigade had just passed through the village of Zelenopillya at 4 AM last July when the sky detonated. Dozens of 122 mm rockets fell on the convoy in an area claimed by Russian-backed separatists, each rocket carrying about 20 kg of explosives in warheads built to fragment into shrapnel. Within moments 19 soldiers lay dead and scores more wounded. Vehicles were shredded. The rebels likely used a BM-21 Grad, a six-wheeled vehicle with 40 launch tubes that can all fire within seconds (grad means hail in Russian). These attacks haunt Ukrainian troops: a Brookings Institution field report said the bombardments account for 70 per cent of their casualties. In fact, multiplelaunch rocket systems (MLRS) are now so common that more than 80 nations, including Syria…

Do you have unusual questions about the world and how it works and why stuff happens? This is the place to ask them. Don’t be afraid. Nobody will laugh at you here. Email popularmechanics@ramsaymedia.co.za Questions will be selected based on quality or at our whim. A IT’S NOT JUST science-fiction writers. If you’d asked me in high school what I’d be doing right now, the answer would have involved far more jacuzzi time with Icelandic supermodels and far less answering questions in magazine columns. We all have fantasies, in other words, and few of us, whether we’re sci-fi writers or hardware-store managers, see them come true in every particular. But let’s look specifically at the sci-fi genre: while every writer has his or her own process, a common creative approach…

What is load shedding? When there is not enough electricity available to meet demand, supply to certain areas is interrupted. Why loadshedding? Rotating and shedding the load in a controlled way helps keep the system stable to avoid collapse of the electricity supply grid (a national black-out). If this occurs, it could take more than a week to restore power to the entire country. What are the alternatives? Certain large customers in mining and industry are asked to reduce their demand. Who is affected? Eskom’s National Control Centre instructs its Distribution Regional Control Centres, 126 Municipalities and Eskom’s key Industrial Customers on the amount of Megawatts to be shed . When is it most likely? The national power system is particularly strained during the evening peak between 5 pm and…

The Discovery Sport is the first fruits of Land Rover’s decision to split its product line into three distinct “ranges”. From now on, the Defender represents utility, the Range Rover represents the pinnacle of refinement and the Discovery will be the flagbearer for design and engineering versatility. The Discovery Sport differs markedly from the current Discovery. Visually it's a lot closer to the Range Rover Evoque than the current Discovery and conceptually leans more towards the Freelander. The Freelander? No, the Discovery Sport is not a replacement. The Freelander has served its time, says Land Rover, although clearly the new vehicle fits into the gap left by the old one’s departure. Whether future Discovery Sports – or whatever they are called – will be more their own vehicle remains to…

WE HAVE SQUARED UP TO THE DOUBLE UNBROKEN YELLOW LINES that separate the taxiway from runway 28 at Caldwell Airport in Fairfield, New Jersey. It is my second flight lesson inside Six-Two Romeo. My instructor is Tom Fischer: shaved head, tinted specs, a fresh company Polo every day. Between lessons, Tom puts out fires set by regulators, mechanics, staff instructors, student pilots, calls of Nature, and the demands of lunch. And that’s just what I know about. Circling his head, who knows: forecasts, fuel costs, dreams of franchises. On the ground he can seem beleaguered. He can seem harried and curt. But put him inside a plane and the man transforms into an angel of patience and calm. We have run through the pre-takeoff checklist, which includes making sure the…

Bowers & Wilkins CM Series Speakers, from R12 000 A good frequency response (which frequencies the speaker can play) for a centre speaker is 70 to 22 000 hertz. An ideal sensitivity (how loud it can play on one watt) is about 87 decibels. The Centre S2 (shown) can go from 70 to 28 000 hertz with a sensitivity of 87 decibels. Marantz UD5007 Universal Disc Player, R11 000 A high-end record player and pristine records will give you great sound, but according to our expert, audio-video consultant Mike Olson, CDs are more reliable. And if you want to watch movies, a disc player is an integral part of the set-up. Sonos Connect, R7 800 Wirelessly integrates anything on your computer or mobile device, as well as preloaded radio stations…

The Church AN INTRODUCTION I WASN’T LOOKING FOR A CHURCH. It just came into my path. I think it was 1978. Could’ve been ’79. The door hadn’t been opened since the mid-sixties, but when I first saw it, it knocked my socks off. I said, why not? I could make use of this place. Sure! The building was what you might call exposed to the elements, but the interior was intact and the structure was sound. The pews remained, so you had a sense of what it felt like in that congregation. It was just this vast space, a structure that still retained its history, so that when you walked through the doors you knew there had been some life in this space, and that things happened here. I just…

WINNING LETTER I just wanted to thank you for the inspiration provided by your “Tool Restoration Project” article in the April issue. The segment focusing on corroded hand tools got me up into the rafters of my fatherin-law’s garage, from where I secretly took his old air rifle that had been decaying up there for the past 30-odd years. Despite the condition in which it ended up, he’s clearly sentimental about it. He often talks fondly of how he bought it at an auction with his own pocket money at the age of just 10. (And once killing a little mossie with it and crying for days/never shooting at another living thing again.) By following most of the advice in the article I managed to restore it (below) to –…

There’s a scary Internet that most of us have never seen. It’s called the Darknet – a free-for-all marketplace of drugs, sex, guns and everything else your parents warned you about. Darknet sites won’t show up on Google, but they will show up on Memex, a new search engine designed by Darpa that reaches every corner of the Web. Originally created to combat human trafficking, Memex is now used to fight the Islamic State group. Many ISIS supporters use Darknet to funnel money, often Bitcoin, to terrorist cells. Memex searches, indexes and cross-references forums, advertisements and chats, identifying patterns that point law enforcement to the payment sources – where ideally they can be stopped.…

IN ONE OF MY RESTAURANTS, a cook once came up to me and announced in disgust that he couldn’t possibly work in a kitchen that used frozen peas. It didn’t bother me that he had challenged my authority. It did bother me that he was dead wrong about frozen peas. Many people think of frozen food as a cheap shortcut, a last resort. All of them need to get off their high horse and make a batch of pea soup, immediately. Almost every good cook’s epiphany about frozen food comes while making pea soup. First, frozen peas eliminate the gruelling task of shucking. Second, a soup made of frozen peas will be substantially sweeter and better tasting than a soup made of fresh peas. Fergus Henderson, the chef of St…

THE TERM LOAD SHEDDING reminds me of a black Border Collie we looked after while his mistress went overseas for a month. It shed hair prodigiously (the dog, that is). This became very apparent when, on day two, we came home and Mr Collie did not greet us as usual. He had, instead, found a much more cosy place: inside our bed. Naturally, there was a layer of stinking, wet black dog hair everywhere. He was clearly looking for someplace warm after his swim, poor thing. But I digress. In the past, we have had the occasional power failure. That’s when you realise how useless candles are at providing meaningful light for anything except 19th-century pursuits such as knitting and playing cards. Even a bank of 10 candles hardly makes…

1 Choose your method THERE ISN’T ONE welding process suitable for all applications, so you need to consider these factors: the type and thickness of the metal you’re welding, how big the job is, whether you’re welding indoors or outdoors, what you want the welds to look like and your budget. The most widely used form of welding today is electric arc welding, in which an electric arc melts an electrode (welding wire, for instance) and partially melts the base metal. When the molten metals cool, the parts fuse together. There are different types of arc welding, but we’re going to concentrate on MIG (metal inert gas). A form of wire-feed welding, it’s the easiest type to master, especially if you’re teaching yourself. THE PRIMER: WIRE-FEED WELDING METAL INERT GAS…

DISASSEMBLY REPOR T: BLENDER MODEL: WARING PBB212 PRODUCED: McCONNELLSBURG, PA. DISASSEMBLED: TORONTO NUMBER OF PARTS: 87 TIME TO DISASSEMBLE: 1 HOUR, 12 MINUTES, 2 SECONDS NOTES: Fred Waring was a big band conductor whose band, Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians, was the first to electronically record a song. When an inventor approached Waring to invest in his early blender, the Miracle Mixer, Waring tweaked and renamed the product. The Waring Blendor debuted in 1937. Odd spelling aside, it looked pretty much like what you see here. HOW TO MAKE AN UNEMBARRASSING BLENDER DRINK If it’s hot enough outside for ice cream, it’s hot enough for a frozen beverage. But no one wants to be caught at the backyard braai drinking something pink and frothy out of a coconut. Yael Vengroff, beverage director…

My tools are in constant disarray. I often can’t find what I need, and when I take my tools somewhere, I usually misplace something. Can you help? I’ve been there. I have tools for carpentry, finish carpentry, furniture-making, plumbing, electrical, masonry (concrete, brick, and stone), basic tile work, drywall, painting, general metalwork, welding, and demolition. That’s a lot of tools to keep track of. To make sure I know where everything is, I separate my tools by task and write the contents of a toolbox on the end of it in marker pen. The box may be marked as generally as “plumbing” or it may be marked more specifically as “drills and taps”. When I bring tools for a specific task, I bring the correct box and treat it like…

SLIP-FREE SCREWDRIVING Everyone who has had to screw in slotted screws with an electric drill knows the feeling when the flat head slips and your bit gets rammed into the wood, leaving a nasty dent. My solution to this problem is to cut a small plastic tube that fits around the bit. The length must be almost as long as the bit, to allow for countersinking. Slip this over your screw and you can drive it all the way down without it slipping and damaging the wood. If you don’t have the right diameter piping, you can make a temporary sleeve by wrapping a long strip of paper around the bit and taping it with some masking tape. The pictures show my invention being successfully used by my dad when…

1963 Perhaps now they’ll believe you that those voices were real, after all. These “guns” mounted on the door of a US Air Force transport aircraft were actually loudspeakers used to broadcast messages to enemy troops. Part of psychological warfare, the messages were sent over planes’ air-toground public address systems in low-level missions. 1968 PM’s prediction success rate improved markedly between ’63 and ’68: in our pick of the new inventions, we predicted man-made waves (“surfing in a swimming pool miles from any ocean”) and interchangeable truck bodies, both of which made it into reality. Not so successful were a helmet-mounted shower for firemen, hanging cabins for ocean travellers and multipurpose pillows. 1963 It didn’t turn out quite as envisaged after our intrepid roving editor soared aloft in a new…