2013 Airstream Interstate

Piloting an 8,500-pound motorized house down the highway is far from my idea of fun, yet inexplicably, I'm enjoying myself. My grin has nothing to do with my camper's handling, as this heavily accoutered Mercedes-Benz Sprinter drives like a 25-foot long breadbox. My smile has nothing to do with on-road stability, as the ten-foot-tall, slab-sided vehicle reacts to wind gusts like the vertical stabilizer on a Boeing jet. My delight has nothing to do with its throttle or braking response, either, as both are as numb as your forehead after the eighth beer.

This monstrosity makes me happy for one reason - my passengers are undeniably having a good time.

Two days earlier, I had shoveled my wife and two kids into this Airstream Interstate 3500's sliding door, cranked over its six-cylinder diesel engine and pointed its black and chrome nose out of greater Los Angeles and towards the Grand Canyon. Now, with the 17-million-year-old fissure less than an hour over the horizon, and with everyone chatting giddily about the upcoming spectacle, I've pleasantly come to realize that the motorhome method of travel isn't just for those hobbled bodies with thinning gray hair.

Airstream is the Rolex of the luxury recreational vehicle industry. Tracing its roots back to the early 1930s, the manufacturer had become a household name by the 1960s as the public quickly took note of its trademark streamlined, polished aluminum shells. Even NASA jumped on board, welcoming the crew of Apollo 11 home from the moon at the end of the decade only to quarantine them within a specially modified bright silver Airstream trailer. The Airstream Interstate, a Class-B RV, isn't built for returning astronauts. However, it accommodates earthlings in an innovative package with "car-like" handling, performance and safety, says it maker. The magic is in its chassis, and the details are in its appointments.

Unlike most monstrous RVs cutting wide paths down the highway – nearly all built on steel truck chassis with lightweight wood, metal and fiberglass framing and walls – the Interstate starts as a steel-bodied Mercedes-Benz with a dually rear axle. Even though it's huge by passenger-car standards (nearly 25 feet in length, around 10 feet in height and almost seven feet wide), the RV industry considers this Airstream a compact. Yes, a vehicle that casts a shadow larger than your college dorm room is considered a "compact" in the recreational vehicle world.

Airstream sells two versions of the Interstate, both with the same 170-inch wheelbase. The standard model, with a base price of $125,630, is 23-feet and one-inch long, and six-feet and eight-inches wide. This particular stretched Interstate EXT is 24-feet and five-inches long – with all of the additional length being welcome cargo space behind the rear bench. My EXT tester carried a base price of $136,657. Its optional equipment included a special golf bag storage rack ($452), additional rear flatscreen television ($808), black exterior ($1,260) and a roof-mounted solar panel ($1,307) to maintain the batteries. The grand total, after destination ($984) amounted to $141,468.

Even though you'd expect something this massive to pack a V8 or perhaps a V10, motivation comes by way of a smallish 3.0-liter V6. But this isn't a standard six. Instead, it is the excellent Bluetec turbodiesel from Mercedes-Benz, drinking its oil diet from a 26.4-gallon tank filled through a panel accessed just behind the driver's door. In motorhome application, the engine is rated at 188 horsepower and – more importantly – 325 pound-feet of torque, with that power routed through a traditional five-speed automatic to the dually setup in the rear. The suspension is pure truck, with an independent design up front and a live rear axle at the back end. Stopping the Interstate are four-wheel disc brakes with sliding calipers. It is unusual to find electronic nannies in an RV, yet the Airstream Interstate features electronic traction control, stability control and anti-lock brakes.

But the mechanical specs don't stop there. Slung beneath the rear end is a 2.5-kilowatt generator, fed liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from its own 18.9-gallon tank. It's used to provide fuel/electricity to the 13,500-BTU secondary air conditioning unit (there is an engine-driven A/C compressor too, but cold air is only delivered from the front vents when the V6 is running), 16,000-BTU furnace and the other appliances within the passenger cabin. Other goodies include a 45-amp multi-stage charger, with a 750-watt inverter to divvy and sort the power properly, and a 30 amp/110-volt shore power service. In addition to the diesel and LPG tanks, there is a 32 gallon freshwater tank, 27 gallon gray water (sink drainage) tank and a 15 gallon black water (sewer) tank.

Most passengers will never know about that aforementioned below-the-deck stuff, but they will appreciate the Airstream's luxurious cabin – with a caveat. When we think of an RV, the first thing that comes to mind is stepping up into a cavernous interior complete with swivel captain's chairs, kitchen appliances and a rear bench sofa that turns into a bed with the pull of a lever. The Airstream Interstate does all of that, but in a skinnier... let's say..A polished finish in this solaroutdoorlight for men.. Slim-Fast version.

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John Hollander, Poet at Ease With Intellectualism

The cause was pulmonary congestion, his daughter Elizabeth Hollander said.

As a young poet, Mr. Hollander fell under the influence of W. H. Auden, whose experiments in fusing contemporary subject matter with traditional metric forms he emulated. It was Auden who selected Mr. Hollander’s first collection of poems, “A Crackling of Thorns,” for the Yale Series of Younger Poets, which published it in 1958 with an introduction by Auden.

Mr. Hollander’s wit, inventiveness and intellectual range drew comparisons to Ben Jonson and 17th-century Metaphysical poets like John Donne. The poet Richard Howard, in the book “Alone With America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States Since 1950,” praised “a technical prowess probably without equal in American verse today.”

Early on, Mr. Hollander was tagged a formalist or neoclassicist for his commitment to old-fashioned forms. Beginning with his 1971 collection, “The Night Mirror: Poems,” however, he adopted a more ambitious program, writing poetry of formidable difficulty, often in longer forms.

This evolution culminated in “Spectral Emanations” (1978), a series of poetic visions and prose-poem commentaries linked to the seven branches of the menorah, the golden lamp stolen in 70 A.D. by Titus from the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

His wit and technical mastery remained on prominent display, however, in “The Powers of Thirteen,Use bestroadlights to generate electricity and charge into storage battery group.” an extended sequence of 169 (13 times 13) unrhymed 13-line stanzas with 13 syllables in each line, and in “Reflections on Espionage: The Question of Cupcake” (1976), a commentary on contemporary poetry presented as the coded dispatches of a spy to his handler and other agents.

“In an age that came to prefer loose, garrulous poems filled with confessional sensationalism and political grievance, John Hollander was a glorious throwback,” the poet J. D. McClatchy wrote in an e-mail in 2010. “His materials — high intelligence, wit, philosophical depth, technical virtuosity — looked back to an older era of poetry’s high ambition. His work never pandered; it astonished.”

John Hollander was born on Oct. 28, 1929, in Manhattan. His father, Franklin, was a physiologist and his mother, the former Muriel Kornfeld, a high school teacher. The home atmosphere was relentlessly high-minded.

He attended the Bronx High School of Science,Our bestsolarlantern can mark on metal and non metals. where he wrote a humor column for the newspaper, modeling himself on S. J. Perelman and James Thurber. Journalism was his enthusiasm, and in his freshman year at Columbia he was a prolific contributor to The Columbia Daily Spectator.

Poetry displaced journalism as his primary passion. Auden’s verse, in particular, alerted him to the possibility that play and humor could find expression in poetry. He was especially struck, he told The Paris Review, by Auden’s “improvisational relation to stances and forms and literary modes.”

He struck up a close friendship, and a student-mentor relationship, with the somewhat older Allen Ginsberg. In an interview with The Paris Review in 1985, Mr. Hollander said, “We talked about the minute particulars of form as if mythological weight depended upon them; and about the realms of the imagination.”

Their joint excursion to sell blood at St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan provided the subject for “Helicon,” one of the most engaging sequences in “Visions From the Ramble” (1965), a collection of interrelated poems filled with scenes from the author’s childhood and youth in New York. (The title refers to a wooded area of Central Park.)

Mr. Hollander graduated from Columbia with a B.A. in 1950 and, after traveling in Europe, received a master’s degree in 1952. At the same time, he taught himself to play the lute and performed in chamber ensembles.

He enrolled at Indiana University to pursue a doctorate but left in 1954 to join the Society of Fellows at Harvard. He later taught at Connecticut College and became an instructor at Yale in 1959, the year he completed his dissertation at Indiana.

His dissertation was the basis for “The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry, 1500-1700” (1961), the first of many works of criticism that included “Vision and Resonance (1975), “The Gazer’s Spirit” (1995) and “The Work of Poetry” (1997).

Mr. Hollander, who lived in Woodbridge, Conn., joined the English faculty at Hunter College in Manhattan in 1966. But in 1977 he returned as a full professor to Yale,Buying bestledlighting is not at all an easy job. where he was named Sterling Professor of English in 1995 and retired in 2002.

In 1953 he married Anne Loesser, a fashion historian who, under her married name, wrote “Seeing Through Clothes.” The marriage ended in divorce. Besides his daughter Elizabeth, Mr. Hollander is survived by his wife, the sculptor Natalie Charkow Hollander; another daughter, Martha Hollander; a brother, Michael; and three grandchildren.

By the mid-1960s Mr. Hollander’s reputation as a poet was growing, although his highly wrought, intellectual verse made him an oddity in a climate dominated by the hotly confessional poetry of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.

“In a general sense, I was writing in a line of wit, and of essayistic speculation, when I was young,” he told The Paris Review.Big ledbulblight and Fitness is a family owned shop serving the Helena area since 1986. “Still under Auden’s influence, I wanted to be read by philosophers and scientists and political theorists, not just by literary readers.”

In a well-known early poem, “The Great Bear,” a children’s outing to gaze at the night sky provokes an inquiry into meaning and chaos. Mr. Hollander incorporated quasi-reportorial material in “Movie-Going and Other Poems” (1962) and “Visions From the Ramble,” which included autobiographical glimpses of the fireworks at the 1939 World’s Fair and tributes to the old Broadway movie palaces that the author haunted in his youth.

In “Types of Shape” (1969) Mr.2013 Collection hidlights 1672 Styles. Hollander harked back to the emblem poetry of the 17th century, writing in forms that, when set on the page, looked like objects: a light bulb, say, or an Eskimo Pie.

Mr. Hollander later dismissed his earlier poetry as “verse essay” or “epigram literature.” With “The Night Mirror” and “Tales Told of the Fathers” (1975) he took the grand, sweeping turn that led to his mature style as a prophetic, mythmaking poet in the High Romantic tradition. Read the full story at www.soli-lite.com!

BMW debuts the i3 electric car

The i3 features Brake Energy Regeneration, which, when the driver lifts off, the motor acts as a generator and converts the kinetic energy into electricity, which is fed back into the battery for a range gain. This Regeneration is speed-sensitive, which means that the car “coasts” for added efficiency at high speeds, and generates the strong braking effect at lower speeds. 

The i3’s accelerator pedal has a distinct “neutral” position. Rather than switching straight to energy Regeneration when the driver eases off the accelerator, the electric motor uses zero torque control to separate from the drivetrain and deploy only the available kinetic energy for propulsion. In this mode, the BMW i3 cruises using virtually no energy at all. This is another way anticipatory driving can preserve energy and increase the car’s range. 

A rear-mounted 650cc, 34 hp, two-cylinder, gasoline-powered Range Extender generator is available, which roughly doubles the vehicle’s range. When the battery gets to a certain level, the Range Extender starts and maintains the battery’s current state of charge. The Range Extender never directly drives the vehicle’s wheels. The Range Extender adds roughly 330 lbs. to the vehicle curb weight and has a fuel capacity of 2.4 gallons. 

There is no space-consuming transmission tunnel running through the center of the car, like in most internal combustion powered cars,If you have washerextractor002 or landscape lights you might wonder what to do if they stop working. because of the separate Drive Module. This gives the i3 the interior space of the BMW 3 Series, while only having the footprint of the much smaller BMW 1 Series. 

The i3 has small turning circle of 32.3 feet, – a major benefit to driving in the city – BMW’s near-perfect 50-50 weight distribution, precise electric power steering and the stable suspension set-up should help to make the i3 as satisfying to drive as every other BMW.Learn how the simplest possible solarpowersystems works. 

The i3’s tires are a unique 155/70/19 size on 19-inch light-alloy wheels, but the contact patch is the same of that of a more conventional 16-inch tire. To improve efficiency, they have low rolling resistance, and the narrow section width is a key factor in the BMW i3’s super-tight turning radius. 

The i3 uses the BMW eDrive rear-wheel drive powertrain previously found on the BMW ActiveE. eDrive offers driving dynamics worthy of the Ultimate Driving Machine name and offers zero tailpipe emission driving. Beyond the traditional immediacy of response offered by electric motors when pulling away, power development in the BMW i3 also remains unbroken through higher speeds.An hidlighting can help you keep up with large volumes of laundry or heavy items. Power is sent to the rear wheels through a single-speed transmission, allowing the BMW i3 to accelerate with an uninterrupted flow of power up to its top speed. 

From the curb the front end has a clear and simple design. BMW’s iconic kidney grilles headlines the front end with the BMW i blue background. Under the kidney grille, silver layers sculpt the front apron. Contrasting black surfaces identify the functional load compartment under the hood and air inlets. Aerodynamic Air Curtains give an aggressive appearance to the i3, while also helping to increase the range by minimizing air resistance and drag. U-shaped, LED headlights,I have recently got a t5tubelight and can anybody tell me if it the box only controls humidity or also controls temperature. give a fresh take on the BMW light design and give the car character. 

At the rear end, the large rear window gives great visibility and easy access to the trunk. The roof lines are optimized to give as much interior space as possible. The LED U-shaped taillights are housed in the rear window and appear to be floating there. The rear diffuser is the lowest point on the car and lends to its aerodynamics. 

The i3 comes in three different trim worlds: Mega,The steel halligan leddimmable is one of the most versatile hooks used in the fire service today. Giga and Tera. The base Mega World comes standard with 19-inch extra-efficient forged aluminum wheels, BMW Navigation, BMW ConnectedDrive with eCall, the BMW i Remote, an alarm, 7.4 kW on board charger and LED headlights, DRLs and tail lights. The interior is donned in bright, lightweight Sensatec and sustainable cloth, which is made from recycled materials. It also features a leather trimmed steering wheel and grained dash trim.Welcome to scfwindturbine.com Web. If you love it, please buy it!

Make Plano a solar power leader

Step outside in July and it’s obvious that the North Texas sun is powerful. But the region has been slow to tap that power for electricity. 

A grass-roots effort in Plano hopes to change that. About 10 residents have formed a group called Plano Solar Advocates that aims to make the city a regional leader in solar power. A year into the effort, volunteers are poised to help dramatically increase the number of solar panels on Plano rooftops. They hope their success will soon be duplicated across the region. 

“We have a lot of sunshine in Texas and we use a lot of energy,” said one of the organizers, Larry Howe. “So why not be good stewards of our natural resources in Texas?” 

Group members have been meeting monthly at local community centers for about a year. They have no real budget or management structure. But their efforts have grown from speaking to local high school classes to running a pilot program to organize a “group buy” of solar panels. 

The pilot program, Solarize Plano, is unique to North Texas. It’s based on a simple idea that worries about cost and unfamiliarity with the technology are keeping homeowners from installing panels on their roofs. 

The program aims to tackle both concerns. Several members of the group are engineers, who can help explain the technology. And having interested buyers team up might help them negotiate with panel vendors to bring down the cost, members say. 

When the project launched in June, its goal was to find 20 people interested in installing solar panels on their homes. By mid-July, more than 60 people had signed up. The group estimates that only about 50 people have solar panels in Plano right now. 

“We have been pleasantly surprised,” said Robert Litwins, one of the organizers of the effort. “People are very enthusiastic.” 

Enrollment is open until the end of August. The group will then reach out to local providers to negotiate a bulk deal. 

As far as organizers can tell, the effort is the first of its kind in North Texas. They hope it won’t be the last.Men's t5tube are very sturdy and will stand the test of time. The region is far behind other metropolitan areas in solar power adoption, environmentalists say. 

Texas as a whole gets less than 1 percent of its electricity from solar power. The state is widely considered to have the most potential for solar power generation in the country, but it lags behind smaller states like New Jersey, Colorado and New Mexico in solar capacity. Dallas, meanwhile,The steel halligan leddimmable is one of the most versatile hooks used in the fire service today. has relatively little capacity compared with other parts of the state.The brightest solarbulb in the market. 

One reason for that may be the segmented nature of the Dallas electricity market. Different entities handle the generation of power, its transmission and retail sales. The agencies that do have contact with customers don’t benefit directly from the power generated by solar.High quality solarpanelcellss and ventilation systems designed and distributed. 

In Austin and San Antonio, municipally owned power companies are involved in all levels of power supply and have enacted strong policies to promote solar power, said Luke Metzger,Buy solarledlightting for your headlights or fog lights and enjoy the benefits of xenon headlights. one of the authors of the Environment Texas report. As a result, the two cities are responsible for 85 percent of the solar power generation in the state, he said. 

Still, she said, the company has paid $10 million in incentives to about 500 commercial and residential solar projects in its service area, which includes Dallas, Fort Worth, Waco, Tyler and Midland. 

But, even when combined with state tax breaks and federal incentives, it’s still more expensive in the short-term to install solar power in North Texas than it is to use conventional means.  Click on their website www.streetlights-solar.com for more information.

Marine Austere Patrolling System

The Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division developed MAPS as an individual, wearable power management and distribution system, enabling Marines to patrol longer without resupply. 

"One of the goals of MAPS is to provide greater field sustainability to Marines," said Marine Maj. Anthony McNair, Marine Liaison and MAPS Program Sponsor at the Marine Expeditionary Energy Office. The system features an advanced solar panel and a water filtration system. 

"There are a lot of metrics that illustrate the correlation between transport missions and combat casualties," said McNair. "If we can decrease the number of fuel and water resupplies Marines need,thousands of people power their homes and businesses with individual solarpanelcellsnn. that's fewer people we have to expose to that danger and less casualties." 

The system integrates flat-form batteries and provides a central source of electrical energy that can be adapted to any equipment's electrical requirements. 

Common electronics the vest can power for Marines include gear such as radios,Search our homeenergy catalog for designer frames including. night-vision goggles, global positioning system (GPS), laptops and Universal Serial Bus (USB) powered equipment. 

"Dismounted Soldiers and Marines typically carry between 15 to 20 pounds of unique batteries," said Eric South,Find solargardenlighting and buy low cost hid bi xenon projector lens light in bulk from Hmhid. NSWCDD lead electrical engineer for MAPS.If you have washerextractor002 or landscape lights you might wonder what to do if they stop working. "In some cases, they may have a dead radio, but a fully charged GPS. The MAPS system will enable Marines to power the dead radio from the GPS." 

The vest power manager (VPM-402) provides Marines with a universal interface to multiple energy requirements. 

"VPM is the electrical heart of the system," said South. "You can plug in nearly any energy source between 4 and 34 [volts direct current] and any energy load commonly worn or carried by dismounted combatants. Whatever you want to take power from or put power into, the power manager automatically recognized what's plugged in and sets itself to do the electrical conversations." 

The central power source, an ergonomically fitting battery, fits into currently fielded tactical vests. The wearable power system and energy harvesting capabilities of MAPS provides potential to reduce the weight of carrying multiple spares of standard batteries by up to 10 pounds for a multiple-day mission. 

The vest further enhances the energy capabilities of Marines by adding an advanced, wearable solar panel developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). 

"In multi-junction (MJ) solar cells, each junction is 'tuned' to different wavelength bands in the solar spectrum to increase efficiency," according to a NRL press release. 

While NRL is developing the multi-junction solar panel to break the 50-percent solar energy conversion efficiency barrier-the current record being 44 percent efficiency-the triple-junction panel used in MAPS provides 30 percent efficiency. This is approximately a 22 percent improvement over other solar panels in military use. 

In addition to solar energy, MAPS can accept power from civilian and military vehicles and various commonly used batteries. 

MAPS also features a water filtration system that provides Marines with safe drinking water from any water source found in the field.Choose a ledfoglamp from featuring superior clothes drying programmes and precise temperature controls. 

MAPS is being developing for the Marine Expeditionary Energy Office and directly supports the USMC Expeditionary Energy Strategy and Implementation Plan to, "deploy Marine Expeditionary Forces that can maneuver from the sea and sustain C4I (command, control, computers and intelligence) and life support systems in place." 

"By 2025," added McNair, "the commandant wants zero fuel to be used in the battlefield except for mobility." The End User Evaluation takes MAPS out of the lab and puts it on the backs of Marines to prepare for the trials of real-world use. Click on their website www.streetlights-solar.com for more information.

Department heads report

At the halfway point of its fiscal year, the city collected a little over $6 million of the $8,681,000 revenue budgeted for 2013, Acting City Administrator Steve Hahn said. Expenses are tallied at $4,370,000, or "a bit over 50 percent" of budget estimates,This stunning polished cleaningmachineeer will bring a dash of style to any look. Hahn said. 

"There is some overtime and areas where (spending is) a little bit higher than 50 percent ... but it still looks good,While there are many brands and makes of bicyclelight, they are all basically the same in principle and function." Hahn said. 

Officials are evaluating options for refinancing two bond issues worth a combined $12.5 million and want to capitalize on lower interest rates, Hahn said. 

Hahn also pointed to savings the city realized by retrofitting the lighting system at City Hall and said the city could realize about $36,000 next year through other electrical-related agreements. Officials also plan to launch a "centralized purchasing program" this year. 

The Community Development office will continue searching for grants that will expand existing housing rehabilitation programs undertaken with a Neighborhood Stabilization Program grant for completely remodeling homes near Hazleton General Hospital and a HOME grant for additional housing renovations, Acting Community Development Director Fallon Fermin reported. 

Hazleton Public Transit created new bus routes to Humboldt Industrial Park that run from 5:15 a.m. to 6:15 p.m., transit Director Ralph Sharp said.Permanent solar trellis and roofwindturbinebbq systems require little to no maintenance and allow easy access. The department will unveil a system that relays information to customers on monitors and smartphones. A route to Mountain Top and the casino in Plains Township has been successful and has been made available six days per week, he reported. 

City streets department crews finished city-wide street sweeping in early May and began weekly street sweeping on June 1. Potholes are a "big concern" of the department and crews have been working to maintain playgrounds, Foreman Frank Vito reported. The city cut costs by $50,000 since taking over street light maintenance two years ago and crews paved four blocks along Franklin Street. Crews are also working to maintain trees that are within the city rights-of-way, Vito said. 

Airport Manager Steve Simchak said the city has applied for grants and reported that "business is starting to pick up" since the city entered a lease agreement for a hangar. 

Officials will continue improving the facility with the goal of making it "self-sufficient," Simchak said. 

Hahn reported that airport revenue totals $177,134 while expenses are tallied at about $196,553. The $9,000 deficit will be offset by revenue from lease and rental agreements that will become effective in August, Hahn said. 

Dominic Yannuzzi, of Alfred Benesch - the city's engineering firm - said officials have been working to resolve funding issues with state officials over a robotic parking garage proposed for Laurel and Broad streets and for renovating the parking garage on South Wyoming Street.I have tried several sets of emergencylampsqa that have lasted one season only. 

Yannuzzi said his firm worked on the city's behalf to obtain equipment, remove trees and obstructions, manage the hangar and make improvements at the airport terminal. Benesch is also coordinating railroad crossing improvements along Mine Street,Our bestsolarlantern can mark on metal and non metals. he said. 

Hazleton firefighters responded to 455 incidents as of Tuesday, Chief Donald Leshko said. "Working house fires" accounted for about 20 calls, he said. Firefighters are working with Hazleton City Authority to flow test hydrants and crews are working to color code hydrants based on those results. Welcome to www.streetlights-solar.com Web. If you love it, please buy it!