Posts by cobaltduck
What you are looking at is a vintage/ antique style of smudge pot. Although the top part held a wick which would be lit, the bottom part held slow-burning oil, not explosives, so you can relax. T...
Welcome back to good old chemistry class! Apologies if this gives you nightmares. First, the tablets used for water purification are not elemental iodine, but a crystal form called Tetraglycine H...
Had the same problem. Sprayed some "pepper wax" around the area. Problem disappeared. There are many brands available, as a web search for "pepper wax spray" will reveal. I've used whatever br...
There is a of type navigational aid that partially provides some bearing information, and that is a range marker. Such markers occur in pairs, positioned close enough together to both be seen at t...
It's all about weight. Water has a density of 1kg/L. Thus 3L is 3kg or about 6.6 pounds. That's equivalent to a brick on each shoulder when placed inside your pack. That's really not that much,...
Fold each handle into itself and treat each as a single strand. Then just tie those two strands together in an ordinary square knot. Here is an example showing a similar bag, although much smalle...
Inspired by several questions and answers here and also one at Biology SE, I have been looking around to try to find out whether this idea I heard constantly as a youth has any merit, or it just fo...
There are many, many articles and web sites that will tell you what to do if you develop a hot spot or blister while on the trail, and need to perform some field treatment to allow you to get back ...
Allow me to turn your question on its head a bit. Making yourself more visible to large vessels is a good idea, not being where they need you to be visible is a great idea. Stay away from channel...
It took a while to find, partly because I was sure this would turn out to be an owl. Also, it seems like you already had your own answer before this. However, to complete the loop here, I do see ...
Between the comments, continued observation of the Falcon-Cams, a little wiki-reading, and information on the site of the sponsor of the cams, I think I can confidently give myself the answer. Fir...
There's a mnemonic: Can Dead Men Vote Twice At Elections? The first letters in this sentence indicate the meaning: Compass +/- Deviation = Magnetic +/- Variation = True (Adding Easterly). This me...
It has become a bit of a fad in the last few days at my current workplace to open a browser tab to either http://www.lbwl.com/falcon.htm or http://www.lbwl.com/falcon2.htm , take a quick look now a...
I'm not 100%, but I am going to call that a yellow striped armyworm, Spodoptera ornithogalli. These things seem to be widely distributed and very common; I've seen them frequently in my travels bu...
After a brief exchange of comments, I think I have enough to take a stab at an answer, with the caveat that this will be mostly informed-guessing on my part. After all, every animal has its persni...
The new labeling system gives each PFD not one type, but three attributes ranked on a spectrum: buoyancy, turning power, and size. The label adds a fourth attribute listing suggested activities fo...
In this question a couple years ago: What do life jacket ratings mean (Type I, Type II, etc)?, we see the traditional types many of us learned about in Boating Safety courses, or in Scout/ Youth ca...
Try to slice a piece of paper. A good sharp knife makes a clean cut. A dull knife makes either a ragged cut, or worse, just pushes the paper to the side. I like this article: https://www.fieldan...
I honestly do not know for which individual species this method has been used, and in particular whether it has been used for Puma concolor, but a general method that is frequently used for populat...
I agree with the prior answer that a rope should not be your permanent solution here, given that it will ultimately damage the tree. However, I think you can mitigate this for short-term use of ro...
First, I would like to give a definition of a smaller term, that of just "light." For this, I turn to the U.S. Coast Guard. In this brief PDF of the Aids to Navigation System, we get a couple hel...
Let's start with the terms lift and header. Suppose I want to go that way, whichever direction that happens to be. If the wind is coming from that way, then I can't do it, at least not on wind po...
This is difficult, since every boat/ vehicle combination is unique and so there is no one "silver bullet" method for rigging that will work for all. However, there is one principle that I apply to...
As one of the minority of the population that cannot use DEET (it makes my skin burn!) I use plant-based solutions. There are several options on the market that use either citronella or geraniol o...
This knot appears to be one referred to as the tarbuck knot, named for its inventor, see for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarbuck_knot or http://www.craigmarine.info/accessories/fishing_e...
