Doo-Hickey Express.

   The smoke is still heavy in the valley, and theres no getting away from the smell, inside or out, and fine ash is still falling. Although any forest fire is far from me here, I worry lots about the crews that go out and fight them, and I worry about the forest critters out there too. 

I worry lots about one starting around here as well.

But today I had business to attend to, and take my mind off the ominous presence of the smoke.

   I've been having some on-going issue with my power system. It had taken me awhile to narrow down, and probably just as long to locate the part on-line.

It was sitting at the small Mount Currie store where I pick up my mail so I blasted in this morning on a motorcycle that was sitting around here. You can bet after he reads this post, buddy Josh will be more careful in the future about leaving his bike around here with the key in it!

I didn't need anything else from 'town', so the bike was perfect to get in and get back out quick.

   I dusted off an old helmet from my racing days, put a good jacket on and my stylish deer skin gloves, and made sure I had the mail key. I took along the two-way radio, not to monitor traffic as I can't hear it over the bike, but just in case, you never know what you are going to see between here and town. Especially when the country is this volatile. 

The smoke never cleared all the way in. 

   I signed for my part at the counter, paid a whole pile of Canadian import duties, threw the box in the trash, stuck the part in my jacket pocket and arrived back home an hour and fifteen minutes later. 

I had filled up the bike before I left, then topped up again in 'town' for just under $5, so it was a pretty economical trip in and back. 

The much anticipated regulator came with a trio of adjustment screws and quite a few instructions.

 I hate things like this.
One wrong move and poof!, and theres about 300 bucks up in smoke.

Although it is going in my generator, I sourced the part less expensive believe it or not, from an aircraft supplier, used in large aircraft of some sort.
I was a little nervous at this point, theres always the one wrong move and poof! factor and have 300 bucks go up in smoke, but theres always the other worry, that you install the part only to find it didn't fix the problem, and 300 bucks on the old charge card may as well have gone up in smoke.

One thing was for certain, if it wasn't this part..., it was probably some other doo-hickey someplace, and I still wasn't 100 percent positive it wasn't some other doo-hickey some place causing the problem.

Before I went over to turn the power off to work on it, I rode down to the campsite to let the kids down there know. Robbie and Josy are some volunteers out from England spending a little time  there during their world travels helping out around the hot spring facility.

I asked Robbie if the country ever caught on fire and made smoke like this back home in Norfolk.
He shook his head and said, "I've never seen anything like this before in my life!"

I changed motorcycles and headed over to the power shack and turned off the water.

To make a long story short, I pulled the panels off the generator and wired in the doo-hickey and turned on the water to the pelton-wheel and spun her up to speed. After some fiddling with the voltage screws etc. and about 10 trips on the little bike back and forth to the lodge to check the control panel it looks like I have solved my problem.

Now, if we can only have some wind to blow the smoke away, and some moisture to help the fire-crews and critters out.