[geeks] Why?

[Michael A. Turner]

> > http://www.plustech.fi/Walking1.html
> > 
> > Very cool looking, but what in the world is the commercial
> > justification for a product like this?  
> 
>   Well, rolling vehicles in forests crush large amounts of
> ground...destroying low plants, young trees, root systems, etc.
> 
>      -Dave
> 
> -- 
> Dave McGuire                  "Needing a calculator indicates that
> St. Petersburg, FL              your .emacs file is 
> incomplete." -Joshua Boyd

	Unfortunatly de nile is more than a river in egypt. It's all well
and good that this machine is low impact, but the skidders, stippers, loader
, 18 wheeler trucks and the bulldozer (what I drove) coming along behind are
not going to be forest friendly. With this fact it is a bit silly to go to
all that effort to put legs on the machines when good old tracks will get
the job done just as well, also they leave a nive trail for the followup
equipment to use.
	I worked for a logging company for a month in montana. It was a
great experience. The work I was doing shut down for a month so I headed out
their to work for my uncle. I drove a bulldozer to do site cleaning plus I
got a chance at the other equipment. 
	It is amazing how quickly 6 men can deforest a hill with the right
equipment. We where putting out a goal of 10 truckloads a day with 80,000lb
of logs on each truck. Most days we made it. Unfortunatly at the speed we
worked trying to get the land cleared things suffered. We did not strip the
hillsides. But with the trees gone it often became a muddy or dusty
(depended on when it had last rained) mess. Here is the geeky bit that
always amazed me when I saw this particular peice of equipment working. That
yellow bit on the boom arm, that is for cutting trees. It reaches over and
grabs a tree with that peice and then a large blade in the machine lops it
off. It then places the trees gently in a pile (that is what the pile in the
background of one picture is). mazing to watch these things grabbing fifty
year old trees, lopping them off in a second and easily makinmg a pile of
them.
	A further note that I must add to people who think logging is wrong.
I would like to point out that trees are a RENEWABLE resource. Point in
fact, the land we were clearing, this was the third time it had been clear
cut. It had been previously cleared in 1940 for the war and in 1880 to build
the railroads. The land heals rather quickly as long as you don't build
houses on the cleared land or dump chemicals on it. also it makes things
safer becuase it is a lot less prone to burn afterwords.


Michael A. Turner
Systems Engineer WHRO
michael.turner at whro.org
http://www.whro.org