Lovely Fall Day.....not!

 Forty degrees and raining......and cloudy. Dog won't even go outside, and I can't blame her!

Hope you're having a good week so far. I'll be in the basement working on the Fisher stereo. I'm really embarrassed about how long this is taking me to finish. It needed a lot of TLC "under the hood", and some of the parts required were hard to source. The original transistors were obsolete ~30 years ago, and their replacement was obsoleted ~15 years ago. Fortunately Toshiba still makes Small Signal transistors for audio use, but it took some searching to find which ones to use. Then there were the 12 capacitors being run at, or slightly under, their rated voltage. It's amazing they lasted this long!

So have a good week, and keep checking your six. Might get spicy in the next couple of weeks. Whatever the outcome is, it's bound to be a Charlie Foxtrot.....

22LR Ammo....Your Preferences?

 Thinking about getting some more 22LR for my little Marlin semi-auto. I already have a good stock of 22LR, but they're all Wolf and Fiocchi "Match Grade" ammo, plain old lead round nose with what feels like a wax coating on the bullet. I bought these when it was hard to get any 22LR, and while they all feed and fire just fine, it might be nice to have something with a bit more punch to it.

My question is: Do you prefer Lead Round Nose, or Copper Plated Hollow Point? Does a CPHP expand in this caliber? Is it worth the extra cost?

Inquiring minds want to know....

Fall Is In The Air....

 The leaves have started turning here, and dropping, and I'm trying to make hay (aka "Yardwork") while the nice weather lasts. I've caught up on over half of my "Didn't Get Done in 2023" list, and have been keeping really busy with all the other projects I have.

And I just haven't felt like posting much. Maybe I can talk to OldAFSarge and see what he does when his Muse goes AWOL!

So between chasing grand kids, cutting firewood, fixing things on the house, and playing with the dog, I'm kinda busy.

I'm making great progress on the Fisher SR-2010 that I'm fixing. Found some more "25 Volt capacitors running at 24 Volts" that needed upgrading, and I finally got the right size dial cord to restring the dial pointer. The dial cord I had 'in stock' was a bit too big in diameter to smoothly go through the pulleys and guides, so I had to track that down and get some. Just another item requiring attention. 

And on the Supra front....

My son helped me roll it out and pressure-wash the engine bay, which had been marinating in Gunk for several days. I "missed" two small areas, but those will get hand cleaned when I get under the car to replace all the clutch hydraulics. I found receipts indicating the Original Owner had purchased NAPA parts for the this back in 2006. And his mechanic did a poor job of replacing it, using some "definitely wrong" hardware for the job. My new parts came with new hardware, so that will get addressed when I pull the master cylinder so I can repair where the leaking clutch fluid took the paint off the firewall.

I can see my bellhousing again!

This is one section of the intake manifold that I've port-matched to the gasket on both sides, and ground off all the casting flash and mold marks inside the runners, from end-to-end. Should flow much better as the port match was really bad.

Ms. Swan was quite happy to catch some rays and get a bath.

I'll try and get some shots of the Fall colors here. Only certain trees have flipped the switch, and they're quite striking to see.

Have a good rest of the week, and always remember to Checketh Thy Six!

Repeat After Me.....He's OK, Still Here, Yes He's Busy.....

 Goodness, I really should post more. I probably will once Winter sets in, but for now, I'm still catching up on Things I Couldn't Get Done in 2023.

The snow blower is #1 on the priority list. I have to get it running, and burn out the 2-year old gas in it. Then change the oil, and refill it with fresh gas with StaBil from my one gallon can, which I fill from my five gallon can, which is now sitting empty, and has to be refilled. 

So, Tuesday will be pretty busy between the Dump Run we're going to make, a trip to Home Depot to replenish some consumable supplies and pick up a few things, a stop at the auto parts store for some other consumables, then stopping for gas in the truck and gas cans. And depending on where and when, we'll probably stop for a late lunch.

WHEW!

Yes, I used to be able to do all this before lunch, and I marvel at how I did it. But that was then, and this is now. I ain't griping or anything....I give thanks  every  single  day  that I can still do it effectively, even if a bit slower.

Sorry, no eye candy. I'm doing busy doing things to stop and take pretty pix!

May you all be vigilant, safe, and prosperous!

Finally Friday!

 And I now have a functional PC with a new 4TB Solid-State Drive, and a fresh installation of Kubuntu 24.04 Long Term Support. It's also much quieter as the fans on the video card aren't screaming at full speed trying to keep the card cool. The Root Cause appears to be a leak from a failed soldered connection on one of the four heat pipes used in the heat sink assembly. Oh, well.....I built this rig in 2012, so I definitely got my money's worth out of the video card.

The money I budgeted to upgrade this PC will be used on the workshop PC, and a National Instruments IEEE-488/GPIB Interface board so I can automate my HP test equipment.

Have a great weekend, and keep your pagers and walkie-talkies wrapped in aluminum foil.....

NOT the Motherboard!

 In a last ditch attempt to verify the problem was with the motherboard, I pulled out the video card I was using, and used the built-in video on the motherboard.

Holy Smokes! It's been running for several hours now, and hasn't locked-up once.

One thing I noticed the other day when I was under the hood was that a corner of the video board looked like it had oil dripped on it. I just looked at it under magnification, and one of the heat pipes on it had sprung a leak, and the coolant (silicone oil, I believe) leaked out. Why the hard drive was active during the lock-ups remains unknown. I suppose the video could have locked up the PCIe bus by sending out garbage and hanging up the bus, but I have no way of testing for that.

I still need to upgrade this computer in the workshop, so the $$ budgeted for my main PC can be put towards that.

Now I have to transfer all my stuff from the hard drive that was in that PC to the new Solid State hard drive I put in it.

Hang in there, it's Wednesday, and that means it's all downhill to the weekend. And we're forecast to have a VERY wet (1~2") weekend!

Testing 1....2....3....

 Trying to post from the basement shop PC. My main PC appears to have a terminally ill motherboard.

Posting/Commenting Issues Solved.....and One for Phil.....

 By dumping Firefox. I've been using Firefox since Netscape morphed into it, and I've been very content until lately. It started refusing to post comments on any Blogger site due to "Cross-Site Tracking Cookies", and I couldn't even reply on my own blog. It was also running slow, and randomly locking up, sometimes tying up so many System Resources that it was very difficult to use the mouse and keyboard.

So now I've switched over to Falkon, a more "lightweight" browser. And in the middle of this, I did a major OS update, and forgot to plug the PC into the wired network. BAM! Lost my wireless connection, and spent a couple of days getting that squared away. I'd really rather have a wired connection to the router, as I was getting 750MB download speeds with very low latency (no lag monster), and I max out at 25MB on the 2.4GHz wireless link, and 75MB on the 5GHz wireless link. I'll have to check the specs on our 7 year old router, and my equally old wireless adapter and see where the bottleneck is.

And as usual for this time of year, I'm really busy. I have a ton of year-old Didn't Get Done things to take care of, and after all the ups and downs and recovery time of last year I'm making up for it as best I can. Between watching a grandson or two, cutting up a bunch of firewood, yardwork, attending family gatherings, a HoneyDew list that never ends, and working on my own projects.

Repairs on my friend's Fisher SR-2010 are continuing at a slow pace. After finding capacitors in the Amplifier section that were running Danger Close to their maximum ratings I started going through the schematic looking for others, and found half-a-dozen more "At Risk" capacitors, so I'm going to change them, too. They're "$2 Parts that cost $100 to fix", so out they go!

And here's the one for Phil I promised.....

Nice clean, shiny, NEW water pump, timing belt, tensioner, and spring. And everything around them is getting a good scrub, and paint touch-up where required.

I do love working with nice, clean, shiny stuff. Getting here is a lot of tedious, time-consuming work, but oh so worth it.

Enjoy your weekend, use your time wisely, and always stay in Condition Yellow. I have a feeling things might get a bit spicy in the next few months.....I just wonder how BIG a cheat The Evil Ones are planning to pull off come November.......

Posting and Commenting Issues....

 Awwwww.....CRUD!

Having trouble posting comments on other blogs, and even my own blog. It appears to be a setting in Firefox that blocks "Cross-Site Cookies", which is how Blogger remembers who you are on different pages.

So bear with me if my comments don't appear to new posts. If it's a WordPress blog, I can comment, but Blogger won't allow me. Really frustrating, and I'm working the problem.

Still Here, Still Busy!

"Busy As A........" pick your favorite term......

I really should post more often, considering the medical issues I had all last year. 

Anywhoo.....

Between having the grandsons twice a week, with an overnight on Friday or Saturday, doing yard work, working on my friend's Fisher SR-2010, and banging away on My Old Toyota, I haven't the time, or inclination, to do much posting.

If I could get maybe two per cent of the energy the little ones have, I could get more done.....

Enjoy the weekend, check your six, and God Bless y'all...

Trouble In The Skies?

 Every so often when I'm checking my PiAware ADSB receiver/display I'll notice an aircraft with a flight path that catches my eye. I watched all the aerial tankers and observation aircraft during the recent Alexander Mountain fire. And I see an occasional EC-135 Rivet Joint from Offutt AFB on a training flight.

This American Airlines flight originated at DFW, and was supposed to land in Eagle, Colorado, a fair bit Northwest of us.

Somewhere on his path he diverted to Denver. He enters an oval "Race Track" pattern, and then is directed to a longer, narrower Race Track, which he orbited several times. He then heads out quite a ways to the Northwest, turns and heads back to Denver, gets in the pattern, and lands. 

Kinda looks like something went wrong. Medical Emergency, or Aircraft problems? He didn't squawk 7700, so it wasn't a MAYDAY situation.

If you hear anything about AA1245, let me know.

Been 95+ and muggy the last several days. Yesterday and today's weather Radar showed some thunderstorm activity in the immediate area, and today it looked significant. We didn't even get any sprinkles here, but as long as it rained in the burn area, I'm good with it.

Got all the lamps, the electrolytic capacitors, and the burned resistors changed out in the Fisher RS-2010, and as soon as I figure out a bunch of components NOT on the schematic or parts list are doing, I'll annotate my schematics, and carry on.

Stay hydrated, my friends, and always keep the old noggin on a swivel...