Review: Biboraya Dual Mount Trash Bucket Sliding Shelf

I have a sliding drawer in one of my lower kitchen cabinets that conceals a pair of trash tubs. It came with the house when we bought it and it's a nice way to have a wastebasket that's out of view. The two tubs sit in a rack with two holes in it for the trash tubs to hang in, and that rack is affixed with some custom welded tabs that attach it to a pair of otherwise normal-looking drawer slide rails. But those custom tabs are specific to this model of device; you can't just buy a replacement part at a local hardware store because it's not a common standard part.

Now this isn't one of those posts where I bitch about poor craftsmanship. This slide-out tray is actually pretty cool and lasted fourteen years. But one of the drawer slides broke a clip that was holding bearings in place. Bearings fell out and one of the slides became untracked. When I started repair analysis, I decided I didn't want to buy a new fixture that was an exact replacement. I wanted something simpler, more easily found, and more cost effective. 

I found a dual tub sliding shelf on Amazon for about half what an exact replacement would have cost me. It was a simple metal cage that held the two tubs, and was sitting on a set of interlinked sliding bars mounted on the floor of the cabinet rather than on the sides like the old one. That all looked like it would be a much simpler mechanism to install and maintain. 

Amazon did its usual good job of getting it to me in two days. But it didn't take long after that to get frustrated with terrible instructions. This is not a super complicated device and the manufacturer made it about as goofy and confusing as they could have. 

First, you assemble the tub cage by fastening to side rails to the bottom of the cage. That should have been really easy except that the instructions tell you to use a screw, and when you look at the parts, there are only three screws for the step which has four connection points, two on each side, left and right. Why are there only three screws? 

There are another five screws of the same diameter and threading, but about two millimeters shorter than the three identified for the first step. So if you're careful, you can also use one of those to handle the fourth screw point on the cage assembly. The instructions say you can watch an installation video, but the video does a terrible job of explaining the three screws for the four connection points in the first step.

Next is the step where you complete the tub cage by adding two light bars to the top front and top rear of the cage to form the rectangular shape. Already at this point the cage is sort of leaning funny, but these two bars to help correct the form. The back one is super easy to install, it's just a dowel with curved ends that you drop into some holes on the back of the cage and it's held by gravity. But the front bar has two screw holes and you have to use two short screws to affix; the thread tolerances here are not very good and the screws go in with difficulty. However, I finally get it done.

The next step is to affix the tub cage to the sliding rails. That's not too hard, and you use the leftover screws from step one. They do work even if a little on the short side.  

The next step is tricky. It is time to install the cage and rail assembly into the cabinet, and to affix mounting brackets to the door. This isn't difficult but requires some precision because if the cage or the door brackets are installed out of alignment, you'll be stuck unscrewing the parts and having a bear of a time getting them lined up so they'll all fit together and also have the door fit nicely against the cabinet so it covers up the opening correctly. 

Here's where the instructions won a few points back for the manufacturer from me. The kit includes two paper templates. One has outlines of the cage assembly footprint. You put this one down on the cabinet floor with the front edge marked, and you line it up with the front edge of the cabinet space. The second template is for lining up the brackets at the proper location on the door panel. It also is marked so that you can line up the bottom edge to the first template's front edge. There are markings on both templates so you can line them up. The idea here is that the templates will show you where to start your holes for the wood screws. It actually works well and I got it right the first time, getting the cage assembly fastened to the cabinet floor and the door brackets on the door. Then the final step is to mount the door brackets to the front of the cage where there are two housings to put the door brackets in. 

The only problem I had in this last step was that the wood screws the manufacturer provides are not very good quality and I broke a couple of them on installation. Fortunately enough of them worked that the job could be completed.

In the end, I gave the unit four out of five stars. I wanted to give three-and-a-half, but Amazon doesn't support half star ratings. While the price was much nicer than the OEM rack and rails I had before, it wasn't exactly cheap, and you can tell the quality is middling at best. It does, however, work, and if I get ten years out of it it'll have been a worthy purchase. If you end up getting one, get your own wood screws for the final steps. 

Comparison: Squadron Signal book 1086 U-2 Spyplane 1988 vs 2002 editions

This'll be a quick one. The U-2 Dragon Lady is one of the intriguing aircraft from the Lockheed "Skunkworks" division that was ultimately made famous for developing secret reconnaissance aircraft, notably the U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird.

Squadron Signal Publishing released a book about the U-2 in 1988 as part of the "in action" line, book number 1086. Fourteen years later in 2002 they would publish an update with an additional eight pages, covering the use of the U-2 since the first book's release.

So if you're a collector and you don't have them, do you get both or just the update? It depends on what you like. I love the cover art and while sometimes an update to an earlier edition of a Squadron book has the same artwork, in this instance they chose to put on a new cover. So I bought both because both are nice covers. 

The original release had a Don Greer painting of the famous incident where Francis Gary Powers, a U-2 pilot, was shot down while on a recon mission over Russia. It was huge news back in May, 1960 when it happened. Since this is easily the most famous incident involving the U-2, it is curious Squadron decided to go with a different cover for the update.

The 2002 edition features a newer variant of the U-2, a U-2R, in 1991 during Desert Shield and Desert Storm deployment. I can't find a signature on the cover, so I has to assume that Don Greer is also the artist as he's the only contributor credited with "color" art in the credits.

If you're tight on cash, just get the update. You'll miss out only on the 1988 edition's cover and perhaps you can live with that. If you're a completist, get both, and if you're a sucker for the art like me, get both. 

If you can't find the update, which appears to be rarer in the wild than the 1988 edition, then just get the first edition as it's a great book even without the updates. 

Book 1086 was published before Squadron started printing the disclaimer that the "in action" books were only supposed to be focused on chronicling the development of a craft and its development through variants and not include other information. Earlier entries in the "in action" series like 1086 are, in my opinion, better reads since they tend to include some operational history and sometimes even pilot testimonials, and are therefore more interesting. I've touched on this before, but later in the game, the "in action" books started to become very light on text and more like picture books with captions; still good reads but with less meaty content.

Another Story from a Used Book

A few months back, I wrote of hidden stories in used books [blogger]. I came across another interesting one a couple days ago, as part of my bid to shore up my Squadron Signal book collection. I purchased a bundle of used aircraft books at eBay and in reviewing the copies, I saw a couple had an address label in the inside front cover.

The label identified CAPT Bob Munsey and LCDR Rosemary Munsey, likely the former owners of the book. I was curious about the history this hinted at, and did a little research. I was not fully prepared for the journey this search would take me on.

It all starts well enough. The ranks listed by the names on the label indicate they were both in the US Navy. This appears to be true: there are publicly available obituaries for both.

Charles Robert Munsey Jr. [funeralsolutions.net] served twenty-nine years in the US Navy. He attended the United States Naval Academy and spent time on a destroyer and several carriers. Some posts on his tribute page point to his service as an aviation maintenance officer. He retired while working at the Pentagon with the rank of Captain. He was involved in church activities and, no surprise given his ownership of some Squadron Signal books, modeling and aircraft restoration. One of his sons, Bill Munsey, has a video clip from a news piece on Bob [YouTube] taking a ride on a restored Ford tri-motor.

Without concrete evidence or testimonial, one must assume Munsey met his wife in the navy. Rosemary [scholar.lib.vt.edu] appears to have been quite accomplished and reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander back in the eighties, when women didn't have the same presence, mobility, and support they have in the military now is quite a feat. Like Munsey, Rosemary worked in aviation maintenance at various posts around the nation. 

Rosemary Munsey passed away in 1996 from breast cancer. Charles Robert Munsey Jr. passed away in 2023. You can fill in one blank and figure the aviation books I picked up in 2024 probably ultimately came from Munsey's estate sale.

Then, looking over the posts in the Robert Munsey obituary page, some ugliness materializes. A person claiming to be his niece points to Munsey's record as a sex offender. And this too appears to be true. Munsey was convicted in 1999 in Virginia and after moving to Florida was active in the Florida Action Committee, an organization with the goal of advocating for reasonable sex offender laws. 

This discovery saddened me because minus the criminal past, Munsey would have absolutely been the kind of person I would have enjoyed chatting with. His military service and love for aviation are things I respect. 

Let's take this as an opportunity to learn. Browsing a few more of the articles about Munsey, I learn there's a community of sex offenders that have paid their debts but now cannot integrate fully into society. There is an understandable stigma around them and I too would give pause to an association. And yet, isn't this using too broad a brush without investigating the situations in more detail? Some of the posts on Munsey's FAC memorial page tell of an offender that was misled into the crime due to falsified records on a person's age. Another laments of the loneliness and sense of abandonment felt and the challenges of trying to find a job. Offenders in any crime should pay, no question, but after that, what do you do to ensure they have a sustainable path to being productive members of society?

I haven't named any other parties except for those on the address label from the book out of respect for the family. All of this is public if you want to see it for yourself. And my condolences to all involved parties. 

From buying and selling old airplane books to pondering crime and punishment. What an exercise for a Sunday morning!