For more than a decade G. Malakhov has worked as the chief mechanic of the tool shop at one of Moscow’s aviation plants. But he has spent even more time (since the age of 13) on amateur technical creativity, without which he cannot imagine his present or his future at all. His record includes aerosleds, Read more…
Having become a pensioner, I took up breeding nutria (swamp beavers, or coypu) and became convinced how profitable this business is. With low costs for keeping these herbivorous and, moreover, very unpretentious animals, I get not only tasty meat (on average 2—3 kg from each animal), which is in no way inferior to rabbit meat Read more…
When building country cottages or garages on a homestead, you often need to screen bulk construction materials, soil, or garden earth. For this, a special fixture is used — a so-called vibrating screen (grizzly). Its classic version — a frame with a mesh set on trestles — is very bulky and low-productivity. I tried to Read more…
Soil cultivation with electric tillers is nothing new. Especially for owners of summer cottages, gardens and vegetable plots (see, for example, “M-K” 3’83, 11’90). And when prices keep rising, when using walk-behind tractors (not to mention scarce mini-tractors) sometimes becomes economically impractical, electric helpers on small land plots are, so to speak, beyond competition. Convenient Read more…
A small plot of land, where “serious” machinery has no room to work, can really only be cultivated properly with a walk-behind tractor. That is why a thrifty rural owner, having decided to get such a machine, will first choose its make and weigh its capabilities. And only then will he think about a cart, Read more…
Small cozy Latvian villages, half-hidden by the curly greenery of trees, are densely scattered across fields that are as flat as a table. They are sometimes only a few kilometers apart, like the villages of Rude and Nica in the Liepaja district, and their life is closely linked by such close neighborhood. Many schoolchildren from Read more…
I invite the magazine’s readers to get acquainted with an original design of a universal self-propelled vehicle built by my brother Alexander. As he claims (jokingly, of course), the idea of making such a machine came to him out of laziness. He really did not want to spend his whole life doing hard, low-productivity work, Read more…
When people want to emphasize that someone has done a great deal of work, searching for a fitting comparison, they involuntarily turn to the hard labor of digging the earth and say: “They’ve shoveled so much!” Then everything becomes clear at once, and memories of stubborn soil, an aching back, and blisters on the hands Read more…
For a long time, the designers of mini-cars could not decide in what position the racer should pass the course. There were even cars of the “bed” type: their advantages were a low center of gravity and low resistance to oncoming air flows. A mini-car with a simplified sample of steering control: the racer turned Read more…
When repairing and testing the electrical equipment of motoblocks not fitted with a battery, as well as Voskhod-3M motorcycles and mopeds, you have to start the engine each time to power the electrical system. It is troublesome and wastes fuel. Yet there is, in my opinion, a good solution: use the household mains as the Read more…
