- Alex McKenzie
- Personal
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Autobiographical Anecdotes
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- Breakfast - 1940s & 50s
- Those Were the Days - 1950s
- Building Underwater Gear, 1950's
- Can't Let Go - 1953
- The Turning Point, 1957
- Mexico, October 1965
- Bilbo Baggins 1971
- A brush with death? 1977
- What I didn't do, 1979
- Brazil 1996
- Family Dinner Time
- Forbidden Fruit
- Solo Sailing Incident, ca 2000
- Joel Nichols - 2013
- Manatees, January 2014
- Motorcycle Incident, June 2014
- Time is a Thief, 2015
- Never Too Old to Learn, 2015
- Two Weeks in Rockport MA 2015
- A Fork in the Road - 2016
- The Winos
- Smooth Stones
- Change
- No One Would Have Guessed ... - 2017
- What I Discovered ...
- At This Time of Year ... 2017
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AMC Trail Crew
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The Trail Crew in Appalachia
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- With the Trail Gang
- Recovery of the Old Bridle Path on Mt. Lafayette
- The Trail Spree of 1929
- Webster Cliff Trail 1912-1914
- Trail Bridges
- The Story of the Mahoosuc
- 1939 trail report
- June 1940 trail report
- Dec 1940 trail report
- 1941 trail plan
- A Vacation With Pay
- 25 Years of the AMC Trail Crew
- Five Thousand Trail Signs
- The AMC Trail System
- The Pace of the Grub-Hoe
- 1953 trails report
- 1954 trails report
- trail report - call for volunteers
- Trail Erosion
- Ethan Pond Shelter
- An Early AMC Trail Crew
- Great Gulf Shelter
- The AMC Trail Crew 1919-1964
- The Evolution of a Trailman
- Trail Crew Thoughts
- Trail Design. Construction & Maintenance
- Of Mules, Mice, and Madison
- The Green Plate Special
- 1980-81 trails report
- Trail Blazers
- White Mountain Trail Crew - 75 Years
- 1960 Trail Crew Resignation
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The Trail Crew in Appalachia
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- 2017 Summer Trip
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Autobiographical Anecdotes
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- Professional
- INWG Documents
- Family
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Alexander A. McKenzie II
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- Mount Washington >
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LORAN
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- Crusing the Labrador
- Acquisition of Canadian sites for Long-Range-Navigation Stations
- Sites #1 and #2: Loran Memo #108
- LRN Site No. 3
- Report of Construction at L.R.N. Site #3, 8/10-11/5 1942
- LRN Site No. 4 (Bonavista Point, Newfoundland)
- Supplies for Site 4
- Drawings Left at Site #4 by A.A. McKenzie
- Site 4 Letter of March 24, 1943
- LRN Site No. 5
- LRN Site No. 8
- LRN Site No. 9
- Test Plan - Eastern US
- LORAN - Part 1
- LORAN - Part 2
- LORAN - Part 3
- End of LORAN
- Genealogy >
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Alexander A. McKenzie II
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- Photos
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Europe 2015 -first half
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- Barcelona April 2015
- Pont du Gard France - April 24, 2015
- Nimes France - April 27, 2015
- Aix-en Provence - April 28, 2015
- Cote d'Azur - April 29, 2015
- Vence to Gourdon - April 30, 2015
- Eze France - May 1, 2015
- Milano - May 3, 2015
- Parco Burchina - May 6, 2015
- Ivrea & Aosta Valley - May 7, 2015
- Torino - May 9, 2015
- Europe 2015 - second half >
- Indianapolis Art Museum - July 2015
- Ringling Estate
- Oak Park 2017
- Frank Lloyd Wright in Florida
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Europe 2015 -first half
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- Edit Website
Building Underwater Gear
At about the age of 12 I became very interested in submarines. There were lots of books in our local library about submarines, but most of them were accounts of disasters in which deep-sea divers played a major role in rescuing trapped submarine crews. After reading a number of these accounts my interest transferred from submarining to deep-sea diving, and I decided to build my own diving equipment.
The first thing I worked on was a helmet. I had a very limited budget at that age, and decided my best starting point would be a discarded hot water heater. Eventually I found one left out for trash collection and dragged it home. It took a lot of work with a dull hacksaw to cut off one end and cut out side flaps to sit on my shoulders. I used a threaded pipe fitting on the side to install a porthole with a plexiglas window, only big enough for one eye. I used one pipe fitting at the end to install an input valve and connection for an air hose. A second pipe fitting was used for an exhaust valve. Of course the helmet floated – it needed a lot of added
The first thing I worked on was a helmet. I had a very limited budget at that age, and decided my best starting point would be a discarded hot water heater. Eventually I found one left out for trash collection and dragged it home. It took a lot of work with a dull hacksaw to cut off one end and cut out side flaps to sit on my shoulders. I used a threaded pipe fitting on the side to install a porthole with a plexiglas window, only big enough for one eye. I used one pipe fitting at the end to install an input valve and connection for an air hose. A second pipe fitting was used for an exhaust valve. Of course the helmet floated – it needed a lot of added
weight to counteract its buoyancy. I gathered over half a dozen flatirons and tied them all over the outside of the helmet. Not very pretty but now it sank.
Now I needed an air supply. In Popular Science magazine I found plans for an air pump which would supply enough air for a person to breathe normally. The pump had a handle which rocked back and forth, driving pistons in two cylinders, each made from a “common” tin can used for canned food. Naturally, after building most of the pump I had a great deal of trouble finding these “common” cans. In fact, in the entire supermarket near my home I found only one product packed in the specified cans – Anna Myers Kosher Dill Pickles. Each can cost me more than a week's allowance, and I certainly didn't want to just throw away the contents. Eating those 2 full cans left me with a lifetime dislike of pickles!
The pump, the helmet, and 50 feet of air hose went from our home in New Jersey to the cabin in New Hampshire where we spent our summers, 5 miles from a lake where the family kept an old wooden rowboat. I was ready to start diving, but who could I get to do the pumping. After much begging and pleading my sainted mother agreed to do it just once. It all worked, but the pumping was hard and Mom soon signaled me that she had to stop. A lot of preparation for a very short time under water.
The disadvantage of this mode of diving was now clear. I was constrained by the need to find someone to do hard unpleasant work on the surface while I enjoyed myself in the water. But during World War II Jacques Cousteau had invented the Aqua-lung, and by the early 1950's there was beginning to be a community of enthusiasts. Just as I was confronted with the problem of finding pump operators, Popular Science published an article describing how to build an Aqua-lung from Army Air Force surplus parts designed for high altitude bomber crews. The magazine also carried ads from many mail-order companies that offered this surplus. That became my next building project.
The mechanical part of the project involved building a backpack to hold the air tank and pressure regulator. The article stressed the importance of being able to release the unit with a single quick lever pull. Toward the end of WW II the army built a huge fleet of gliders to transport lots of soldiers quickly across enemy lines. Gliders were used in the D-Day invasion of France and during the Battle of the Bulge. The gliders were intended to be transported to the war zone on ships, and to keep them safe during transport they were packed in sturdy plywood cases. After the war many lumber yards bought surplus gliders just to obtain the military grade plywood crates. A lumber yard near my grandparents summer home in Pennsylvania had bought a few surplus gliders, and after selling the plywood left the glider bodies in the back field. I was able to obtain the pilot's flight harness from one of these gliders and it provided a 4-point quick-release system. My parents bought me an air tank for Christmas when I was 15, and I bought the surplus parts I needed with money I made mowing lawns in summer and shoveling walks in winter. A neighbor was able to do the one bit of welding the project required. I did the rest of the assembly myself.
The Aqua-lung made the trip to New Hampshire with us the following summer. The first test revealed a lot of leaks in the regulator system, and I spent several days working on improving the seals in the surplus parts. When I thought it was ready we took it down to the lake again for a second test. The leaks were greatly reduced, but it still wasn't possible to breathe without getting too much water with the air. When I emerged from the lake my dad turned off the air tank while I marked the places that were leaking. Shortly afterwards Dad took the train back to New Jersey since his vacation was over. My Mom, brothers, and I stayed in New Hampshire for the remainder of the summer. I did some more work on the seals and was sure the Aqua-lung was ready for use. But my Dad's grip was a lot stronger than mine – I could not get the tank's valve open again. I did not return to New Hampshire during the next several summers, and by the time I did get back the Aqua-lung had disappeared.
Written as an assignment for the writers' group at The Fountains in March 2015. The assignment was to write on the topic "Building".