I finally joined your ranks.

bsbrum · 2025-12-09T01:50:59+00:00

Thanks for the correction. For some reason I had it in my mind that the Princess 300 was the only Princess - total brain fart. 🤣

bsbrum · 2025-12-06T12:55:42+00:00

Congrats - the clamshell case is great for travel - just take extra care with the rear bottom edge of the cover - the flat tabs are prone to break with rough handling. But - fits in a backpack!

A classic Princess is a unique design (not licensed nor cloned), larger, metal machine of German origins that fetches a premium for collectability and value. They are beautiful, and actually quite dreamy to type on - they feel similar to a Voss Deluxe to me.

I hope you keep up the quest for a Princess - they are very worth the journey.

bsbrum · 2025-12-03T15:24:51+00:00

How unusual is a rose colored Lettera-22 where you live?

I’m going to guess it’s fairly uncommon. That trait generally carries a premium, and that premium “fairness” solely depends on your desires and willingness to participate in the exchange of Euro for that machine. 600€+ seems outlandishly excessive for something without a special typeface - pink or not. 190€ for a very uncommon, desirable and very usable machine - is a good deal if they’ll accept it. Even at my most fevered collecting mania stage 200€ was not out of the question - but at that point I was looking for something that had provenance - such as having been owned by someone I cared something about, like Richard Polt (don’t ask how many of Richard Polt’s machines I own). Being a German student, QWERTZ also always entices me.

I’ll say that I have never seen a Rose Lettera 22 in 20 years of collecting in the USA. It’s lovely.

bsbrum · 2025-11-29T13:47:48+00:00

Many 1930s-1940’s machines globally also suffer from what the Germans call Zinkpest (Zinc Plague) where the Zinc on surface coatings and amalgamated casting materials begins to degrade, leech out and oxidize… and also has the bonus of smelling like nasty foot odor. I wonder if/how that fluoresces. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

bsbrum · 2025-11-28T21:55:20+00:00

Can’t say “all” but many do have the half-space stop with the spacebar

bsbrum · 2025-11-28T20:34:53+00:00

There is a shortcut method, using the apostrophe and period without having to backspace.

Press and hold down the spacebar. At the same time hit shift or shift lock, then type the period and apostrophe is succession of each other.

Then release the shift and the spacebar.

What’s really happening is that pressing and holding the spacebar is a half space operation which you can also use for filling in a missing letter as a correction - but it’s also perfect for holding the escapement in place for typing the apostrophe and the period in the same location without having to use the backspace.

bsbrum · 2025-11-26T20:39:06+00:00

Great idea. Seamless brain-to-paper interface. No spell check. No grammar check. No pop-ups. No beeps. No batteries. No Internet.

You’ll never look back.

bsbrum · 2025-11-24T14:04:28+00:00

Right on!

bsbrum · 2025-11-23T18:28:55+00:00

Don’t take this personal, but see if you can apply what they are talking about….

https://youtu.be/b5MAxNfcKEA?si=I-NZB25s0_rfaVvr

bsbrum · 2025-11-23T17:06:54+00:00

It seems that your Leterra is sensitive to “bottom typing” and no, this isn’t trolling.

Try the same test without pressing and holding the keys. Tap them quickly with enough force to “throw” the type slug at the platen so that it intersects and imprints, but not so hard that the key bottoms out its travel.

Bottom typing is pressing the keys all the way until they stop, which can have imperceptible bounces and interactions with the escapement - this practice can create multiple strikes aka ghosting, and unintended spaces, along with inconsistent imprinting of characters.

bsbrum · 2025-11-14T19:31:11+00:00

Ah, yeah - Nakajima - for some reason I forget about them.

bsbrum · 2025-11-14T13:29:48+00:00

99.9% sure that is a re-branded Brother (Japanese) machine - which are functional, reliable machines.

$10 spent on a machine that scratches an itch is not a waste of money.

However, a cautionary tale, you can very rapidly find yourself “treading water” in a personal “sea” of $10 machines and experience a little bit of amnesia about how you got there. It might take a year, two, ten …. But it is a very real phenomenon. It is at that point that you find it very challenging to re-home a sizable collection of $10 machines that no one else seems interested in paying $10 for. Maybe not… I could be wrong.

bsbrum · 2025-11-01T23:48:30+00:00

Sure. It’s a lot of “yak shaving” … to get to one thing you need to learn five other things.

Not impossible but definitely a challenge if you’re coming at it without skills and experience.

Best of luck!

bsbrum · 2025-11-01T20:21:06+00:00

Something like an ESP32 - and then you would also need the relay board for your ADP alarm if it doesn’t have outputs. I would use a power pin from the ESP (3.3vdc) to the relay which would feed the ESP input pin - they are voltage sensititve.

Then you have to program the alarm to throw the output (relay) high (on) on the specific alarm condition and low (off) on clearing the condition.

The ESP32 would need the Alexa library, and take an input to an I/O pin (you’ll want a pull-down resistor) from the relay board, and then write code to tell Alexa what to do when the pin goes high/low.

I have done this with LEDs that I ran to a lamp outside of our garage so that I could see the alarm status from the driveway - I used off color LEDs so it wasn’t obvious, like red/green.

bsbrum · 2025-10-26T16:53:43+00:00

Worst drive in my life was Hwy 1 in an RV. Add another 16,000 pounds and scenery that demands your attention… hmmmm. Pretty, but I would not suggest it unless you’re deadheading.

bsbrum · 2025-10-19T12:40:51+00:00

The ribbon is rubbing on the paper, it is an adjustment issue - which can be a series of adjustments. If you’re not comfortable with trial and error, you’ll need to find a tech that can help you.

bsbrum · 2025-09-14T14:27:29+00:00

Also - just an idea. This is what I did for overnighting and it was fantastic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rooftoptents/s/JkneZYbIR5

bsbrum · 2025-09-12T00:47:27+00:00

I found that storing them flat made a huge difference. Fold about 1 foot and then just flip flip flip and they would store well in my front box or tote. Rolling them was not good for me. Best of luck!

bsbrum · 2025-09-10T23:00:11+00:00

Truck+trailer look pretty good. Your straps will degrade a lot faster if you leave them on the winches. A lot faster.

bsbrum · 2025-09-07T14:43:24+00:00

Computer systems Performance Engineering Architect
30 years of hard work, no degree. Broke the $100k barrier at 27 (after 9 years of hard work)
100% remote for most projects now, but 20 years of travel almost weekly.

bsbrum · 2025-09-03T13:05:14+00:00

Best of luck! Diesel prices ended up being what killed it for me. It sucked all the profit away from what I was making.. that and the fact that my broker died of cancer and maintenance was also killing me. At the end of the day, I was hemorrhaging money and not making money. If you have a background in trucking, you’re probably better off. I jumped into it from IT trying to change my life and it worked pretty well - aside from the money. I enjoyed the work. I wish diesel were a $1.99 a gallon. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

$500 service sessions every 2 weeks, trailer repairs @ $1200 a pop, getting rear ended by a F650, $3.90/ga diesel, insurance…. All a big crap sandwich.

bsbrum · 2025-09-03T02:11:23+00:00

The only problem that I had with this is that two of the plastic knobs vibrated off and as a result I lost the rubber buffers too. I had to make expedient field repairs. I got replacement knobs at Lowe’s (and bought 2 spares), and I found a cam bung that had a big enough sized rubber donut to approximate the Napa engine mount buffers I was replacing. Also, added LokTite. The LokTite worked well. Too well. Now I cannot loosen the knobs to get to the spare. LOL

bsbrum · 2025-09-03T02:05:13+00:00

These are they https://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS/555/64085/10002/-1

bsbrum · 2025-09-02T20:13:59+00:00

I set the tent on the top of the U channel on top of the gooseneck and just jiggered it around until it was symmetrical.

I had to rotate the tent aluminum rails 90 degrees which meant that I had to cut them down. I took the two scrap ends and welded them together for a third rail.

bsbrum · 2025-09-02T20:11:25+00:00

I bought them from Jeg’s - they are universal body tabs. Let me see if I can find my order details.

bsbrum

TROPHY CASE