Remember the Royal Smithfield Show?
If you’re from an agricultural background and are above a certain age, you’ll remember The Royal Smithfield Show.
It was the national agricultural show of the year held at Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre in London.
It was enormous. And all the major agricultural machinery suppliers attended on the ground floor. The ground floor wasn’t a place for us lesser mortals. Instead, we set up our stands on the upper gallery that encircled the exhibition centre. We were high up, but had a superb view of all the major exhibitors below.
Now, as a lad, I vividly remember attending these shows with Michael Williams, our late father. He revelled in showing visitors the new Big Brute vacuum cleaners he’d developed. Ever the showman, Mike always had his trusty grain tray on the stand. He used this to show how great the Big Brute is at sucking up grain.
Enter the Big Brute Suck & Blow
One year, the star of the show was the new Big Brute Suck & Blow power unit. It takes all that suction power and turns it into blowing power in an instant. As ever, Mike was very keen to demonstrate it at the Royal Smithfield Show.
In later years, members of the Royal Family attended the show. In this particular year, The Queen Mother attended on one of the days. Of course, she was only attending the major exhibitors on the ground floor, not the upper gallery.
As The Queen Mother and her entourage had a guided tour of the lower level, Mike continued to proudly demonstrate his new Suck & Blow power unit on the upper gallery. He showed how to suck up grain, and how quickly you could switch to Blow mode. Turn off the suction, pull the hose off the inlet, push it onto the outlet, and turn the power back on. Quick and easy!
Now, after you take the nozzle out of the grain, it it’s really important to keep the power turned on for a few more seconds. This makes sure all the grain has made it safely into the drum, and isn’t sitting in the hose. Otherwise, as soon as you turn the power back on in Blow Mode, all that grain’s going to shoot out of the nozzle at high velocity. And if you’re standing on the upper gallery of Earl’s Court Exhibition centre with the nozzle over your shoulder, it’s going to shoot high into the air. And rain down onto the crowd below. Which might include a senior member of The Royal Family and her security personnel.
Luckily, Her Majesty’s security personnel were highly trained. They quickly recognised this wasn’t a massive security threat and Mike didn’t end up in The Tower that night.
Useful as the Suck & Blow Power Unit is, do please make sure your hose is empty before you switch to blow mode.
Find out more
The Big Brute Suck & Blow Power Unit is an optional power unit for use on any of our dry Big Brute models. You can add it as a Power Unit Option when putting your Big Brute specification together, or add it as a replacement power unit to your existing dry Big Brute model.
Photo by Paul Rigby on Unsplash
