I just had a very eye opening experience. I just discovered that I don’t know how to get in touch with any of my biodiesel buddies on the Infopop biodiesel forum. Also all the Yahoo groups are gone. I am a little stunned at how much info is simply gone. No wonder we continually have to reinvent the wheel, it was only twenty years ago I was learning how to desulphate batteries, build BD reactors, and saw my first MEN gas producer.
I would hope that Chris & Wayne would tell us if this forum’s up keep is too taxing. I would hate to lose this resource.
I see Field Lines is still around. So is microgen/Somrad.
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Hello Bruce .
Thanks much for your concern but as far as I know everything is A-OK on the forum 
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Thanks for the reassurence Wayne. I don’t mean to be a worrywort. I guess the realization was a big shock.
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Valid concern BruceJ.
I miss the Holts Gibt Gas forum. Gone bye-bye.
I miss a Russian/Ukrainian languages woodgas forum too. Gone bye-bye.
Looking back at different wood-for-shaft-power era’s and the information is carried forward in published, distributed books.
Most of those have been put up here in the DOW library section. Previously saved and brought forward by others. Many who have aged out gone now.
Belt and suspenders man me; I’ve only been satisfied when I’ve had my own personal copies in real-by-god paper.
The current crop of modern books being VesaM’s Woodgas for Mobile Applications; BenP’s Builders Bible; and Wayne and Chris’s Have Wood will Travel.
The next wave of interest can carry forward off of these.
Sigh. We must face that the majority of live forums talking is experimental, most always edge of possibilities exploring. With social hazards for the rewards. Much more challenging that just the Blogging you see with the youtube woodgas presenters.
Forums exchanging is not for everyone. Can be feathers ruffling.
You mentioned the MicroCoGen/SOMRAD.
No matter how I pushed, pulled woodgas presented there. Nothing.
And in the meantime a certain fellow we’ve talked about making diesel drop-in from plastics simply ponied up for a WhisperPower M-SQ Pro 15 generator for a quiet diesel gen-set for his off-grid fuels proofing. He welds.
Sometimes a commercial offering will demands evolve making DIY efforts kinda’ futile when the powers-that-be cut off any possibility of new fresh iron to work with.
Me, I’d go with either their Piccolo 4 Marine 3.0 kW AC variable speed;
or their W-GV1 Scalino 3.0 kW DC variable speed unit. If I was a diesel man instead of a wooden head.
Steve Unruh
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I belong to a closed to the public homesteading/prepping site. You have to be invited and vetted to become a member. I think that’s stupid mostly because there is nothing you can post or say on-line or on a phone that is not accessible to the NSA or other alphabet agencies. Anyway because we are a close knit group we decided it would be a good plan to share addresses and phone numbers in case the grid and internet went down. I’m seeing that folks on this site also have long term, caring relationships that could vanish in the blink of an eye. I’d recommend considering setting up a way to do that not accessible to the general public I suppose in the premium membership. Probably many here already have exchanged contact info.
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Steve,
Cheap gasoline/diesel, a Dodge minivan from California, and a Honda eu3000i, have been my excuses. Things have been so easy the last few years, for those reasons, that I moved on to other concerns.
I built a road… didn’t need a forum for that. Just a permit from the county road commission. I got married…she definitely has me preoccupied…lol.
I got my ham radio license.
I started working with the HS First Robotics team. This has been very encouraging. I have been following what the kids want to do. They are brilliant. Their tech (canbus, machine vision, interactive machine language assemblers, data harvesting networks) is the most advanced on the planet. The robots are largely autonomous.
It is hard to get back into making fuel and energy again…but I feel disconnected from things when I am dependent on pump.
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Sounds like Life has intervened for you in many good ways. Good, to the Good.
To financially support this Forum you Premium sign up. The Store button above.
Hey you do get a book out of it.
And access to the DOer WK based system side. Vehicles and tractors mobile usages. What you see public side is good for stationary and others.
The work-around the EU restriction is someone US/Canada doing the direct paying and “gifting” the book. Sending used 2nd hand thru the postal systems.
Only get done to real public side proven contributors.
S.U.
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Yerp, I did buy the book. I will re-up the premium side in 5months or so.
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Hi Bruce, thanks for the support. For you and anyone else wanting to know, DOW costs around $50/mo to keep online. Our running costs outside that are pretty minimal, I print up small batches of books and mail them out from home. We’re not actively working on new stuff, so the time invested is minimal as well. It’s a stable holding pattern.
We sell enough books/memberships still to cover costs. If book sales ever dropped off to zero, we’d set up some type of contribution page. I don’t see that coming anytime soon though.
Thanks again all for your support!
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The Infopop biodiesel forum is down? Bummer! Like you, I learned a TON over there. I’m still close to guys in the “real world” who I met on that forum. Yes, lots of learning available on the “interweb”. I appreciate how most of the folks on this forum are legit learners and not just pontificators.
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