A few weeks before the Mid-Ohio show, a dealer posted some suspensions for sale. One had several indicators that it was Russian. Seller had provided no description and it was only my best guess of it's origin. The extra big, unmarked cap, the appearance of the lesser quality of the glass, and most obvious was the two protruding inner skirts - a feature I had noticed several years earlier on a Russian website. [id=462831901] I agreed to buy it and take delivery at the show. At the show I was quickly dismayed to find the glass had English lettering and not Cyrillic as I expected. I do not have that many 11 inch glass suspensions and it was a new to me style, so I was still pleased with it. It just wasn't up to my expectation. (fail). After the show I started to look into what it might be. Yes, there are 50 different insulator groups on FB, which would require 50 different postings, and as far as I could see, there is no way to search previous posts. Even now, 20 years later, there is still only one picture poster with a built in search feature. I typed in the marking that is on the glass and had my answer in .04 seconds - according to Bill's timer. A 2005 posting identified it as having come from Iraq. Iraq imports many of it's insulators from a variety of countries, so it may well be Made in Russia: likely I will never know, and for sure I don't really care. For me it is an Iraq suspension.

This purchase provided a first for me and also a first for the insulator. According to Wikipedia, most of Iraq does not experience snow or freezing temperatures. So most likely this recent early blast of winter is the first snow and cold that this insulator has been exposed to.

Now, many of you promote FB. So tell me, how many postings would I need to make, and how many hours would I need to spend, searching through countless old postings on how many different sites - each of which it would seem I have to join in order to read, with no guarantee, to find out what Bill's old and often criticized as not keeping up with the times technology, accurately provided me from a 15 year old posting, in less than a fraction of a 1/10 second?