Hi all, my name is Derek, originally from Blyth Northumberland I now have lived in spain for some 30 years. Retired from the sea due to health, mostly deep sea fishing and some oilrig work i spent the last 17 years at sea as Captain in the fishing industry.

2 years ago at 60 i decided to buy a lathe so as to fix a few thing i needed to do to my tractors. In my days at school i learnt the basics of using a metalworking lathe and strangely enough some 45 years not having touched one took to it like a duck to water mostly fixing things broken, new pins for neighbours tractors and the general things you can do on a lathe.

Watching lots of videos on youtube about turning and making things in metal(instead of wood that i'm pretty good at) I saw that most had a mill to compliment the lathe so I decided to buy a small milling machine. Doing searches on internet looking for problems i came up against time and time again i came across this website so over the past months have spent many hours reading and here i am, I don't expect to be of much help to the majority here but one never knows and hopefully i can chime in now and again.

Regards to All

Derek

Thanks all, unfortunately i live in the north west part of Spain and it getts wetter than UK, we are the first landmass of anything comming in from the Atlantic, I will say the summers are nice though getting to 40°C every year and the overall temperatures are higher than back home.

My Mill is a small benchtop with an HBM label, the HBM bf28 vario, almost identical to the PM25mv, it has an 1100w 2 range variable drive that is Morse 3 unlike the PM25 that is R8, no idea which is better but it was the only option.

I have 2 tractors, an Ebro A30L which is a small 30hp 4×4 articulated tractor and a John Deere 2035 72hp. Both are used round the home which is very rural, we plant potatoes, maiz and various other small vegetables for home use and also to look after a few tree plantations we have for firewood, mostly Eucoliptus.

When i figure out the score on photos I'll add some to the thread, i had lots on photobucket but they locked them as they said i was using too much bandwidth and had to pay so i have downloaded them and i'm studying other options for hosting photos, it gets expensive after a while.

Having spent many years at sea i have an interest in the weather so i set up a multi language website here I need to do some repair on my davis weather station but its 14m up a pole, the temperature/humidity sensor needs replacing as the humidity reads what it wants and my rainguage was blocked, but thats ok now(fingers crossed) I have the new sensor to put in but i need to make time to do it.

Derek

Edited By Derek Greenhalgh on 30/12/2019 09:20:36

Hi Bill, I could not be happier with my Davis, its the Wireless Vantage pro2 with FARS(fan assisted radiation shield) it has both the radiation and uv sensors, it has the american frequency as a pilot friend picked it up for me in the states for $500. It has been up and running for about 7 years if i remember correctly. In that time i have done absolutely nothing other than clean out the rain bucket, not even change the battery.

Where i live in very rural spain at times the air is thick with polen, that coupled to the morning dew causes the small hole to clog frequently and thats my only gripe, i have tried different types of filters and anti leaf plugs etc but so far nothing works. Its not such a big dear normally as you just undo the bucket and it comes off easy, but mine is 14 meters up a 2" mast and is hard to get to.

As i said i could not be happier, before that the previous 2 did not last long, maybe 2 years, mainly due to the plastic failing or cracking due to heat and uv light, the davis is in another class, relativly expensive yes but very well built and built to last. I have a new temp/humidity sensor to go in that cost me 50€ including postage, not bad, some of the other parts are not quit as cheap. I am also thinking of putting on the new rain bucket(to see if it clogs less) as mine still has the older type fitted but at the moment if its not broke i will not try to fix it.

If you want any mor info just let me know.

Derek

Edited By Derek Greenhalgh on 30/12/2019 11:30:56

Which program do you use for saving and viewing data, the davis program is not very good, almost all use weather display you can download a free 30 day trial and then $60 for lifetime registration and updates it will feed a website too if your interested in that. It has loads of different configurations if you want to go deep and also a more simplified view if not, if i remember rightly you can set the wind speed and direction to average over different times to smooth out your graphs anyware from realtime to an hour or more.

Derek