Ukraine Refugee Assistance

Great news Bill!

DarkMonohue said:

Hot dang! Way to go!

Clutch engagement too low/early might be as simple as an air bubble in the hydraulics. They can be tough to bleed. Sometimes just opening the bleeder (with hose into a jar of fluid) and kicking the hell of the pedal many times, hard and fast, is necessary to move the fluid and take the air bubble with it.

I think I'm going to switch over to a dial diaphragm brake booster.  While I'm in there I'm going to have to reseal the seam between the wheel well and the firewall as there's water leaking in.  This is going to require me to remove the clutch master cylinder, so maybe I can do the bleed (kick the crap out of it) at the same time.

GIRTHQUAKE said:

Great news Bill!

Thank you!  It's darn good to have that weight off my chest (figuratively and literally). I still plan to crack open the removed transmission and have a look.  There was nothing wrong with the bearings in the original transmission (failed due to one broken synchro key) so I can use one of those as a replacement and then shelf the whole unit until needed.

It'll be good to have a spare.

Everyone, This is our official "Adopt A Medic" Fundraiser announcement:

I've been poking and prodding Paypal for two days now, and I honestly don't know if they've stopped allowing fundraisers, or if it's geo-restricted.  Either way, 100% of my attempts to create such a thing, or even to read ARTICLES about creating such a thing only result in error messages.  And as GoFundMe doesn't allow the funding of military personnel, we're going to have to do this one in "full manual mode".  Here goes:

|

Electricity in Ukraine is in short supply.  As such, Ukrainians are having to distance themselves from their dependency on the grid.  Unfortunately for Dr. Julia, that is not an option as she has valuable equipment that needs to continue operating during these brown and blackouts.  Things like Starlinks, etc.

When asked for specifics she stated that she needs to be able to operate something like a Starlink system for 4 to 5 hours, but I think we can do better.  I did some research on the power consumption of a Starlink and found a power supply that could knock this thing completely out of the park.  It's relatively inexpensive, it's portable (extremely important in her situation), and it could run that Starlink she has for up to 10 or 12 hours.  To me, that says this is the one.

Best of all, it's available in Ukraine.

That last part is important because I wont be able to drive this time.  Lucky for us, we have our absolute rockstar in the area "VikkiDp" who has volunteered to pick up my slack on this one.  The plan is as follows:

I'm going to use our current paypal to collect funds this month for both our "Mothers and Children's Fund" AND our "Adopt A Medic" fund for Dr. Julia.  Obviously there could be some confusion on my end, so I'm going to ask anyone who wants to donate to put one of those titles in the subject line so I can move the money accordingly.

We don't have long on this one, and honestly I'm a bit delayed in even STARTING this fundraiser as we received the request over a week ago (one day we'll get caught up).  For that reason, I'm going to put our stop date as June 21st.  Once we hit that date, I'll move the money to VikkiDp and she can make the purchase in country and ship the power supply to our good doctor (or, if we're lucky, she can deliver it in person if Dr. Julia can rotate off the front for a minute).

Total price of the unit is just under $770, so we do have a  bit of work ahead of us.  I'll do my best to keep a counter going on this one as we wont have an official fundraiser to conveniently reference.  In the event we have extra funding to send, we have received a list of needed meds from Dr. Julia and will 100% begin shopping from that.

(Now, I can't read Ukrainian either but of the few people in the logistics chat that I've hit up in an attempt to fill this need before our fundraiser, most of them report that there are some controlled substances on this list so we are getting a bit lucky that purchase in country is possible as they would add to our border crossing ability exponentially were we to try to do this through our normal routes)

Here we go everyone!  Our "manual mode" Adopt A Medic Fundraiser begins now!  It stops on June 21st when we channel everything we collected to Dr. Julia on the zero line and get her the much needed medicine and equipment she needs so she can continue saving lives!

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

Is the adopt a medic thing just normal PayPal to you, Bill? 

WonkoTheSane said:

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

Is the adopt a medic thing just normal PayPal to you, Bill? 

Correct, sir!  But please make sure to write something in the subject line to make sure I put it in the correct bucket of money

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

WonkoTheSane said:

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

Is the adopt a medic thing just normal PayPal to you, Bill? 

Correct, sir!  But please make sure to write something in the subject line to make sure I put it in the correct bucket of money

In for part of the adopt a medic

Before I toss in for Adopt-A-Medic, does she need a solar panel? My local haunt just got me this for $11 yesterday- I need to test it (once the rain lets up lol) but it's a composite thin panel that terminates in a common battery plug- and that Ecoflow has an XT60 port on the back that I think I have a converter for. Not sure how we can get it to Vikki tho.

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

WonkoTheSane said:

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

Is the adopt a medic thing just normal PayPal to you, Bill? 

Correct, sir!  But please make sure to write something in the subject line to make sure I put it in the correct bucket of money

Subject line says "Adopt a Medic - June 2024"   That'll get us almost 1/7th of the way there :)

WonkoTheSane said:

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

WonkoTheSane said:

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

Is the adopt a medic thing just normal PayPal to you, Bill? 

Correct, sir!  But please make sure to write something in the subject line to make sure I put it in the correct bucket of money

Subject line says "Adopt a Medic - June 2024"   That'll get us almost 1/7th of the way there :)

Got it, sir!  (And thank you!)

Paypal used the USD symbol to reflect the amount of Hungarian Forint sent and I about darn near had a heart attack (see below)

I checked, and it did in fact come through as HUF and not $34 kilo-bucks.  But what a way to wake up on a Monday!

With that we are off to a great start!  On a whim I decided to google "fundraiser thermometer generator" and came up with this little guy:

I figure we'll use that to track our progress.

Thanks again everyone, and Happy Monday!!

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

Got it, sir!  (And thank you!)

Paypal used the USD symbol to reflect the amount of Hungarian Forint sent and I about darn near had a heart attack (see below)

 

I checked, and it did in fact come through as HUF and not $34 kilo-bucks.  But what a way to wake up on a Monday!

With that we are off to a great start!  On a whim I decided to google "fundraiser thermometer generator" and came up with this little guy:

I figure we'll use that to track our progress.

Thanks again everyone, and Happy Monday!!

Wow, yeah, that'll get the heart pumping!   I wish I could donate like that, but it sounds better in HUF!

Have a good week, and stay safe Vikki!  Sounds like things are starting to push back pretty nicely over there!

Raffle Update:

Sorry guys, but I've spent the better part of this week now trying to go back and tally up who has and has not won a raffle drawing (or how many times).  We actually have quite a few prizes this time but I wanted to make sure that everyone got a gift before we drew names for this run's prizes.

If someone has NOT won a raffle yet, could you send me a PM?  We've all been working this effort for over two years now.  I'd really like it if everyone got something in return

Thankss everyone!

GIRTHQUAKE said:

Before I toss in for Adopt-A-Medic, does she need a solar panel? My local haunt just got me this for $11 yesterday- I need to test it (once the rain lets up lol) but it's a composite thin panel that terminates in a common battery plug- and that Ecoflow has an XT60 port on the back that I think I have a converter for. Not sure how we can get it to Vikki tho.

That is crazy cool!  Is the controller integrated into the back of the panel?

That'd be a great way to charge up a car battery if the power were out for long periods of time.  I bet we could source an inverter from there to run a small appliance or something.

If Vikki can use it, we can work on logistics (I'm 100% not above bribing people with home-baked goods at this point)

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

No, the box on the back tends just to be a mount for the wiring and a diode to prevent backflow of energy. I'd check with that Ecoflow to see if it has a car battery charging function, but if not I have specific MPPTs I've gotten that are meant to work specifically with 12 and 24 volt batteries like those.

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

That would be awesome!  (I do love it when a plan comes together).

I'll be honest, now I'm pondering the idea of converting my sunroof into a solar panel to trickle charge my battery...  I'm prepping for a trip to Tunisia and my recent experience with that yellow top has me considering adding a 12v "house battery" with solar trickle re-charge capability

Everyone, we have some super good news concerning our "Adopt a Medic" fundraiser for Dr. Julia.

Just 4 days in....

We have raised $900.89USD of our original $770usd goal!!!!

This is so awesome and I don't want to delay this device another minute.  I'm going to immediately start the process to get the money to VikkiDP.

I'll leave the donation channel open, but will dial back the "push" a bit to free up some time and energy as we've been doing a LOT lately in very short amounts of time.

Oh man,  I still can't believe this happened so darn QUICK!!!  You guys ROCK!

Hi everyone!!! 

Just 4 days in....

We have raised $900.89USD of our original $770usd goal!!!!

This is so awesome and I don't want to delay this device another minute.  I'm going to immediately start the process to get the money to VikkiDP.

I'll leave the donation channel open, but will dial back the "push" a bit to free up some time and energy as we've been doing a LOT lately in very short amounts of time.

Oh man,  I still can't believe this happened so darn QUICK!!!  You guys ROCK!

The first thing i'd like to say is WOOOWWW!!! guys, it was incredibly fast!!! We both - i and Bill - are still shocked!!!

So many amazing people around us  as long as there are people like that, humanity still has a chance. I continue to believe that there are more good people around after all. Although, nooo.... I know it!!! 

I already checked yesterday to see if that thing we need is available and we won't have to wait for additional shipments. The demand for such things has really increased in the last couple weeks because of the current situation 

So cross your fingers, guys. 

Anyway we always do no matter what!!!

GIRTHQUAKE said:

 does she need a solar panel? My local haunt just got me this for $11 yesterday- I need to test it (once the rain lets up lol) but it's a composite thin panel that terminates in a common battery plug- and that Ecoflow has an XT60 port on the back that I think I have a converter for. Not sure how we can get it to Vikki tho.

Cool thing 

Ben, if it works you can be 1000....%(and more ) sure i'll find a place where it'll be useful 

The biggest problem is how to get it to Ukraine, or at least to Bill.

And some news from Moms and kids fund 

All babies received diapers and baby food 

Little Aron

-translation-

Thank you so much. I'm grateful for your help.

If you look out at the photo, little Aron is playing with the toys we gave him for his birthday in March 

*it was this stuff

The monthly transfer has received today 

The fund report below

*quick reminder - the fund balance also includes the money we should pay( the second half of the price) for the device for the orphanage (25000 uah + bank fee). I contacted the manufacturer last week - work on the device is ongoing.

So, we keep helping people and it's great!!!

Thanks everyone!!! 

VikkiDp said:

GIRTHQUAKE said:

 does she need a solar panel? My local haunt just got me this for $11 yesterday- I need to test it (once the rain lets up lol) but it's a composite thin panel that terminates in a common battery plug- and that Ecoflow has an XT60 port on the back that I think I have a converter for. Not sure how we can get it to Vikki tho.

Cool thing 

Ben, if it works you can be 1000....%(and more ) sure i'll find a place where it'll be useful 

The biggest problem is how to get it to Ukraine, or at least to Bill.

1000...% (and more) already on it!  Address sent to Girthquake with instructions.  We'll get this thing here, and I'll drive it in when we see each other in August/September

I'm so happy to hear the goal was met! :) Great work everyone!

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

In the event we have extra funding to send, we have received a list of needed meds from Dr. Julia and will 100% begin shopping from that.

(Now, I can't read Ukrainian either but of the few people in the logistics chat that I've hit up in an attempt to fill this need before our fundraiser, most of them report that there are some controlled substances on this list so we are getting a bit lucky that purchase in country is possible as they would add to our border crossing ability exponentially were we to try to do this through our normal routes)

 Ohhh, i wanted to write about this yesterday, but .... what? .... yeah!!! i forgot 

Why? ummm... because someone's posting on the forum during business hours  okay-okay, not always, but quite often 

No worries, i can buy all the meds on the list here in Ukraine, no problem - absolutely!!!

Because... What? Because i have a good friend who works as a pharmacy manager 

So we can get almost everything and we have a good discount, which is nice too!!! 

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

VikkiDp said:

GIRTHQUAKE said:

 does she need a solar panel? My local haunt just got me this for $11 yesterday- I need to test it (once the rain lets up lol) but it's a composite thin panel that terminates in a common battery plug- and that Ecoflow has an XT60 port on the back that I think I have a converter for. Not sure how we can get it to Vikki tho.

Cool thing 

Ben, if it works you can be 1000....%(and more ) sure i'll find a place where it'll be useful 

The biggest problem is how to get it to Ukraine, or at least to Bill.

1000...% (and more) already on it!  Address sent to Girthquake with instructions.  We'll get this thing here, and I'll drive it in when we see each other in August/September

Awww, guys!!! i love how it works!!!

Thanks!!! 

VikkiDp said:

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

In the event we have extra funding to send, we have received a list of needed meds from Dr. Julia and will 100% begin shopping from that.

(Now, I can't read Ukrainian either but of the few people in the logistics chat that I've hit up in an attempt to fill this need before our fundraiser, most of them report that there are some controlled substances on this list so we are getting a bit lucky that purchase in country is possible as they would add to our border crossing ability exponentially were we to try to do this through our normal routes)

 No worries, i can buy all the meds on the list here in Ukraine, no problem - absolutely!!!

Because... What? Because i have a good friend who works as a pharmacy manager 

So we can get almost everything and we have a good discount, which is nice too!!! 

I was wondering about that

Because when I first posted those to the Medical Logistics Groups, the first response was "I work in the field and have access, but a lot of those are controlled substances "

But like you said, I love how it works!