Pergelator

Saturday, August 15, 2026

1929 Packard Cable Special Indy Car

1929 Packard Cable Special #18 driven by Ralph Hepburn - Václav Zapadlík

Twelve of the cars in the 1929 Indianapolis 500 were front wheel drive. Of the 33 cars in the starting field only half a dozen were not Miller cars.

1929 Packard Cable Special Race Car #18, driven by Ralph Hepburn

Miller 91 Packard Cable Special race car

The engine in this car was a supercharged straight eight with dual over head camshafts. It only displaced 1.5 liters which is the same as 91 cubic inches, hence the 91 label. Pistons were only two and a half inches in diameter. Simanaitis Says has more information about the engines and the superchargers.

Leon Duray in the Miller 91 Indy Special

Report from Bingen

Silent RR Crossing

Iowa Man came to town today so we had lunch at Longbottoms. We were talking about the advantages of living in Bingen (which is across the Columbia River from Hood River) versus living in the big city. Rent, as you might expect, is cheaper. Grocery stores are few, scattered and cost a bit more.

The thing that caught my attention is the trains - 50 trains a day. There are three crossings where the train has to blow its horn, and if you are nearby those horns are loud. I've been out to Bingen a couple of times, but I don't remember the trains being a big deal. But then I was only there for a few hours. Iowa Man survives by stuffing silicon earplugs in his ears.

Anyway, Bingen is supposed to be getting a Quiet Zone. Iowa Man was telling me a silent crossing involves concrete barriers to keep cars from evading the crossing gates and probably some other requirements. Looking around for a picture, this is the only one I could find. It is the splash panel that shows up when YoiTube displays a list of videos. Play the associated video and this image is nowhere to be found. This is a screenshot that I uploaded to Google Photos to crop because my Windows image viewer won't crop images anymore. All I get is a black image. Probably need more memory. I wonder if older memory would be cheaper that the latest stuff that is costing 10x more than it was a year ago.

Hood River Bridge

The 100 year old bridge over the Columiba River is going to be replaced, or at least they are talking about replacing it. That's kind of the way it goes with people. Before anyone does anything, everyone has to discuss it and discuss it at length.

Hood River Bridge

Looking at that first picture of the bridge reminds me of just how wide the Columbia River is at that point. The bridge is almost a mile long, and remember, this isn't one of your long, lazy flatland rivers, at this point the Columbia is rolling along at two miles per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It don't stop for nobody or nuttin'.

Insitu FLARES and INTEGRATOR drones

Insitu is building drones in Bingen. It was bought out by Boeing and now it is being absorbed by ACHR, one of the air-taxi guys. Since our skies will soon be filled with flying air-taxis, does this mean that Bingen will become the Detroit of the 21st Century?

Cunningham-Hall PT-6 biplane with Mount Hood

There is a big antique car and airplane museum in Hood River - WAAAM - the Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum. The museum was founded in 2007 which might explain why I have never heard of it. I don't know how many vehicles they have on display but the list on Wikipedia takes 17 screens. The museum itself covers five acres. Iowa Man recommends riding in the cart.

Custom map of the Hood River area made for this post.

Data Centers

DRAM Spot Price

Looks like the price for computer memory chips has gone up by a factor of ten in the last year. Some people are betting heavily that the Artificial Intelligence / Data Center boom is somehow going to pay off big time.

Evergreen Substation and Constable BESS

For a long time I've been wondering about the confluence of high voltage power lines near Highway 26 and Cornelius Pass Road in Hillsboro. I kind of assumed it was because of Intel's Ronler Acres mega-fab near there. Finally asked Google for map and it turned me on to Open Infrastructure Map, and man-oh-man, it is glorious. Everything I ever wanted in a map. Well, except for railroads, but we have the OpenRailway Map for that.

Anyway, looking at the Open Infrastructure Map I see there is substation devoted to Ronler Acres, but it is kind of small, so that's not what all these power lines are for. But then a short distance away I find the Evergreen Substation (shown on the above map), and it is right in the middle of all the big box warehouse like buildings being built just north of Evergreen Road. I suspect some, if not all, are data centers.

Right next door to the Evergreen Substation is Constable BESS. And what the heck is Constable BESS? It's a 75 megawatt battery. Somebody really wanted dependable power in this area. Decision to construct the battery was made back in 2021, so somebody was planning for this explosion of data centers several years before it got started. I'm pretty sure that three years ago all that land north of Evergreen was empty farmland. 2023 was the year Constable BESS came online. Huh.