My back is aching just looking at that!
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That looks like a right proper lot of hard work. So how strong are those? Seems like they’re a retaining wall, can they hold some shear or is is just on account of being tons of piled rock that they’re retaining?
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They can retain quite a bit, usually for a 2m high wall (what this is) you’d have 1.5m deep baskets at the bottom angled back at 6 degrees, with a 1m deep on top. You often see them in the uk at the side of dual carriageways holding the embankment up.
It’s completely over engineered as it won’t be holding back much weight at all. All our land is predominantly slate/mudstone/shale (pick your description), so not likely to slip/move. I probably could have got away with 50cm baskets, but if a job is worth doing.
The main benefit for us is its cost (baskets + stone) around 1/6th of the price of a retaining wall, which would also have need engineering specification planning on top. All unnecessarily but if a contractor did it, would insist on.
Digger did the grunt work, but I had to face up each basket. A massive 
.
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Welp, it looks like a million bucks, you can’t deny that. And those baskets are going to take at least a century or two to rot away, right?
Funny how availability of materials matters. Such rock baskets are stupendously, ostentatiously expensive here. Not just because of the amount of work they take in setting up, but getting rock to the flood plain that is .nl takes some serious hauling. Whereas for you, it’s just there for the picking, glad to be rid of it. So those baskets are a far cheaper option than pouring concrete or building up with mortar and brick.
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My best friend from our Guam days took delivery of a Carbon Cub this Spring. (Tricycle gear! Yuck!). Until then he hadn’t flown GA since the mid-90s. Now he’s posting Idaho ranch landings pretty regularly. Living the dream!
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You flew DC10’s and 757s.
Snow doesnt land on you brother 
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Well you had the confidence to tackle building your own flying machine. I’m not sure what machining/fabrication knowledge you had before, but I marvelled at the skills you showed in your build thread.
This is why I love people sharing their hobbies on here. It means I can partly enjoy the hobby without the need to do it.
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You flew a little pitts for kicks, decided it wasn’t dangerous enough and changed to tiny choppers… and you still think your badassitude doesn’t completely and utterly dwarf ours? Man. Nah you aight fam.
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The best kind of engineering. Germany approves
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The Pitts is still my main squeeze. Helos are a distraction. Anyway, I’m happy. But I was raised with a healthy respect for people who build and grow things.
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I’m no builder. My humvee is a fight against entropy. I’m a doctor that is only licensed to used bandaids and paracetamol 
The farmers, the builders are the real heros. I’m just playing with toy cars compared to them
But seriously, i cannot stress enough how cool flying DC10’s is to me.
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A couple of years ago you posted a video of yourself bodyslamming a tyre. While technically not “building” I somehow put you in the category. I’m not moving you.
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Ya, that was a form of art I had not seen before.
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Its got character
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Damn…that would be so cool. Take your fly rod and a picnic and just head out for the day. One of those cases where the journey truly is part of the destination…
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This one might take a little explaining.
See we, the Dutch, don’t do december holidays like the rest of the western world. We don’t usually do presents on Christmas day, but on Saint Nicholas’s day, december 5th. Dutch children call it Sinterklaas. Yes that’s the same St. Nick that became santa claus. Sound those names ouf loud and it’s obviously the same thing.
Anyway. When kids lose their “belief”, the ritual changes. Where with believers pakjesavknd, the evenkng of the 5th is a make believe visit of sinterklaas and his servant zwarte Piet (black Pete, yes we know. Used to be blackface too!), when the smallest child no longer believes it changes to a combination of giving gifts with humorous rhymes and/or creative packaging, a “surprise”.
So. My eldest is in his last year at school. He never was much of a creative type, so his surprises were usually done rather lackluster and or mostly done by us with little enthusiasm. But this year it’s his last. He drew his best friend too. The kid is into starwars. So I pulled out all the stops and spent three days in the workshop with my son.
It is glorious and I’m quite certain we’ll completely steal the siow with that monster AT-AT we built. It’s as big as a small dog.
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You absolute madmen!
What a beast! The proportions and shape is spot on and those cannons are perfect!
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That is a brilliant AT-AT!
I’m curious, is there a Dutch tradition of putting shoes out and waiting for them to be filled with candy? Growing up, my very British mother would have us do that (next to the front door- no chimney in base housing) and told us it was a dutch tradition.
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