Two Old Men.......

Bill gives homage to the two remaining Dolittle's Raiders.

These men, and their comrades, fit the definition of brave.

God Bless them and keep them........

Coming Soon To A Neighborhood Near You....The Muslim Invasion!

Say what you will about Pat Condell, he pulls no punches, and tells it like he sees it.

And on this topic, he has very clear vision.

Listen carefully, folks. This is already happening here, albeit at a slower rate.

For now.......

Navajo Nation Pissed Off At 0bama

Along with about 60% of the rest of the US.

Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye again called on Obama and administration officials to declare the San Juan River a disaster zone.
In August, an EPA accident resulted in 3 million gallons of contaminated water flowing into the Animas River, which runs into the San Juan River. One-third of the Navajo Nation’s people rely on the Animus for water.
EPA officials have insisted the toxins have been diluted. But Begaye said he “doesn’t buy it.” He argues toxins are seeping into ranchers’ soil and threatening livestock and crops.
“There’s no way we can guarantee that the drinking water is safe,” he said.
“We are asking the Democratic Party to have President Obama declare the river a disaster area — and we haven’t gotten anything. Nothing,” he said. “The Democrats? I don’t know what happened. We basically are Democrats. We always vote Democrat. But it seems like they’ve just walked away. And we’re not hearing anything that’s of value to us from the Democrats.”

Complete story here. 

And make sure you continue past the story and read the comments.

Some true comedy gold, and some very sad truths, are there.

Hmmmm....could this be the first known instance of "Black man speaks with forked tongue"?

Tip of the hat to our friends at DaybyDay cartoons.

Duh.....Forgot What I Was Going To Post

Must be an after effect of stopping the Chantix......

Anyway....got a couple of posts I'm working on, including one on "Basic Soldering" that I'm doing for the Celica Supra guys.

Some of the WORST soldering I've ever seen has been on automotive stuff, so I'm rewriting a primer I've used in the past to help teach the guys over there what I know.

If I was a big-time prepper, I suppose I could call it "SHTF Soldering" or something clever......

Be back after I spray the weeds in the back yard........

Another "eBay Sunday" in Progress

Still doing my "Shack Cleaning and Clearing" exercise in hopes of getting rid of some of the stuff I have that's never really going to see much, if any, use.

Last week only two of the four items I listed sold, and by the time you subtract the eBay seller's fees, and the PayPal fees for accepting the payments, AND the fact that shipping has gone up quite a bit (inflation? BigGov says "We don't gots no steeeenking inflation!"), I wound up LOSING about $12 on the two items.

Oh, well, I know they went to good homes, where they'll be used. I absolutely hate throwing out a perfectly serviceable item just because I have no use for it, so that takes some of the sting out of it, but I'm definitely going to have to adjust my flat-rate shipping to reflect the current reality.

Today I'll be listing a like-new-in-box ICom HT that I've never used, along with an older Heathkit electronic keyer, and some other obscure items of arcane electronic origins.

I'm charging/cycling the two battery packs I have for my Yaesu VX-6 that I bought some years ago, and rarely used. I'm going to dig through the garage this week to find the boxes and manuals for it. Having the original box can make a huge price difference when you list an item on eBay (I've seen 99% identical items go for a 30% price difference if the original boxes were included), and since I never throw away the original boxes, I should be in good shape.
 
Once I find them....

In that Black Hole that our garage has become....

AGAIN........

I'm going to keep my Kenwood TH-D72, but with the rise of $50 "throwaway" walkie-talkies, I'm not sure I can justify keeping a couple of $300 units just laying around.

The ICom I really want to sell, but if the little Yaesu unit doesn't go for at least $200, I'll just keep it. It's in a solid metal case, and is rated as "Submersible", and seeing as it's pretty small, would probably be a good back-up unit.

Trump Posts His Position on Gun Rights

Found this over at Mr. Codrea's place.

Here's the text, straight from Mr. Trump's campaign page.

He certainly isn't afraid of taking a stance against where the presstitutes, Intellectual Elites, Metrosexual "Males", and Effete Snobs stand.

Does he mean what he says? Will he actually follow through if he's elected?

I have no idea...............

PROTECTING OUR SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

Donald J. Trump on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
The Second Amendment to our Constitution is clear. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed upon. Period.

The Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right that belongs to all law-abiding Americans. The Constitution doesn’t create that right – it ensures that the government can’t take it away. Our Founding Fathers knew, and our Supreme Court has upheld, that the Second Amendment’s purpose is to guarantee our right to defend ourselves and our families. This is about self-defense, plain and simple.

It’s been said that the Second Amendment is America’s first freedom. That’s because the Right to Keep and Bear Arms protects all our other rights. We are the only country in the world that has a Second Amendment. Protecting that freedom is imperative. Here’s how we will do that:

Enforce The Laws On The Books

We need to get serious about prosecuting violent criminals. The Obama administration’s record on that is abysmal. Violent crime in cities like Baltimore, Chicago and many others is out of control. Drug dealers and gang members are given a slap on the wrist and turned loose on the street. This needs to stop.

Several years ago there was a tremendous program in Richmond, Virginia called Project Exile. It said that if a violent felon uses a gun to commit a crime, you will be prosecuted in federal court and go to prison for five years – no parole or early release. Obama’s former Attorney General, Eric Holder, called that a “cookie cutter” program. That’s ridiculous. I call that program a success. Murders committed with guns in Richmond decreased by over 60% when Project Exile was in place – in the first two years of the program alone, 350 armed felons were taken off the street.

Why does that matter to law-abiding gun owners? Because they’re the ones who anti-gun politicians and the media blame when criminals misuse guns. We need to bring back and expand programs like Project Exile and get gang members and drug dealers off the street. When we do, crime will go down and our cities and communities will be safer places to live.

Here’s another important way to fight crime – empower law-abiding gun owners to defend themselves. Law enforcement is great, they do a tremendous job, but they can’t be everywhere all of the time. Our personal protection is ultimately up to us. That’s why I’m a gun owner, that’s why I have a concealed carry permit, and that’s why tens of millions of Americans have concealed carry permits as well. It’s just common sense. To make America great again, we’re going to go after criminals and put the law back on the side of the law-abiding.

Fix Our Broken Mental Health System

Let’s be clear about this. Our mental health system is broken. It needs to be fixed. Too many politicians have ignored this problem for too long.

All of the tragic mass murders that occurred in the past several years have something in common – there were red flags that were ignored. We can’t allow that to continue. We need to expand treatment programs, because most people with mental health problems aren’t violent, they just need help. But for those who are violent, a danger to themselves or others, we need to get them off the street before they can terrorize our communities. This is just common sense.

And why does this matter to law-abiding gun owners? Once again, because they get blamed by anti-gun politicians, gun control groups and the media for the acts of deranged madmen. When one of these tragedies occurs, we can count on two things: one, that opponents of gun rights will immediately exploit it to push their political agenda; and two, that none of their so-called “solutions” would have prevented the tragedy in the first place. They’ve even admitted it.

We need real solutions to address real problems. Not grandstanding or political agendas.

Defend The Rights of Law-Abiding Gun Owners

GUN AND MAGAZINE BANS. Gun and magazine bans are a total failure. That’s been proven every time it’s been tried. Opponents of gun rights try to come up with scary sounding phrases like “assault weapons”, “military-style weapons” and “high capacity magazines” to confuse people. What they’re really talking about are popular semi-automatic rifles and standard magazines that are owned by tens of millions of Americans. Law-abiding people should be allowed to own the firearm of their choice. The government has no business dictating what types of firearms good, honest people are allowed to own.

BACKGROUND CHECKS. There has been a national background check system in place since 1998. Every time a person buys a gun from a federally licensed gun dealer – which is the overwhelming majority of all gun purchases – they go through a federal background check. Study after study has shown that very few criminals are stupid enough to try and pass a background check – they get their guns from friends/family members or by stealing them. So the overwhelming majority of people who go through background checks are law-abiding gun owners. When the system was created, gun owners were promised that it would be instant, accurate and fair. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case today. Too many states are failing to put criminal and mental health records into the system – and it should go without saying that a system’s only going to be as effective as the records that are put into it. What we need to do is fix the system we have and make it work as intended. What we don’t need to do is expand a broken system.

NATIONAL RIGHT TO CARRY. The right of self-defense doesn’t stop at the end of your driveway. That’s why I have a concealed carry permit and why tens of millions of Americans do too. That permit should be valid in all 50 states. A driver’s license works in every state, so it’s common sense that a concealed carry permit should work in every state. If we can do that for driving – which is a privilege, not a right – then surely we can do that for concealed carry, which is a right, not a privilege.

MILITARY BASES AND RECRUITING CENTERS. Banning our military from carrying firearms on bases and at recruiting centers is ridiculous. We train our military how to safely and responsibly use firearms, but our current policies leave them defenseless. To make America great again, we need a strong military. To have a strong military, we need to allow them to defend themselves.

Help Identify This Old Hot Rod

This is from my friend The Wandering Minstrel's blog.

I know I've seen those lines before, but I can't place it.

Plymouth? FoMoCo?

And I'm no expert in prewar cars, either!

Oh....and I'm working up a post on the new season of "Wheeler Dealers".

I used to really love the show, and the interaction between Mike and Edd, but this season they're really pushing things, and I hope it doesn't backfire on them.

Just because you have a popular show in the EU, and the US, don't expect to move your shop and production company here to the US and expect things to stay the same.

The changes they've made might just drive away their core audience.....

RAIN! And not just some sprinkles....

We received .64" of rain last night, remnants of the hurricane down in the Baja region.

It was coming down so hard that it woke me up about 0230, and the rain gauge showed about .25" at that time, so it must have continued for quite some time.

The future daughter-in-law from Fort Collins was in town this week, so she came over yesterday and we all went out for dinner to a local Greek restaurant.

She said real estate is still "hot" out there, but I guess a "hot market" has different definitions between Fort Collins and L.A.

She looked at the properties I had in my "saved" folder on the real estate websites I use, and said they were all within a 15 minute drive from where they live, and suggested I open up my search parameters a bit to include some areas I thought were too far.

*I* don't mind driving, but my wife does. She absolutely hates driving on the freeways here, and will spend an extra 30~45 minutes using surface streets vs the freeway to go to certain places.

I'm not sure how she'll do in the Fort Collins area. The freeways/Interstates seemed wide-open to me, even when the locals were commenting that the traffic seemed heavy, and the secondary/"County" roads reminded me of driving on similar roads back in Illinois. My wife is not used to driving for 5 miles without a side street or street signs to guide her, and her nav skills are pretty poor.

Guess I'll just have to keep that 7" color screen Magellan Road Mate updated, and get a decent mount for it for her car!

Whittle's Take on "The Donald"

And as usual, Mr. Whittle is dead-on....

Missile Guidance Systems Basics

Shamelessly borrowed from Bayou Renaissance Man

NEVER Forget......

HAMCON 2015 Is THIS Weekennd!

I totally forgot about posting this earlier, but if you're a Ham, and live in SoCal, you probably already know about it.

Also known as the South West Division ARRL Convention, HAMCON  starts Friday September 11th, and runs through Sunday, September 13th.

Friday's schedule is 1300~1800, with the vendor hall open from 1600~2000Saturday's is 0730~1800, and Sunday's is 0800~1500.

Admission at the door is $27, and "extra" patches and pins are $5 each, while supplies last.

HAMCON is on a rotating schedule, and is held at a different venue each year, on a 4 year rotation.

From the HAMCON website:

The ARRL’s annual Southwestern Division Convention rotates yearly from the Los Angeles-Orange County area to a location in Arizona, then to a site in Santa Barbara or Ventura County, and finally to the San Diego area before repeating this four-year cycle

This year it's going to be held at the Torrance Marriott, near the Del Amo Fashion mall.

The first year I was involved it was held on the Queen Mary, and then it was held at the Long Beach World Trade Center, and finally settled in to the Torrance Marriott.

The Queen Mary was fun, but not very practical, as the vendors were in one area, and all the Tech Talks were scattered throughout the ship in various meeting rooms, making it rather inconvenient to attend the talks.

You might have 5 minutes between two talks you wanted to attend, and have to go three decks up or down, and half way fore or aft to get there!

The Trade Center was an extremely nice venue, and I don't remember why it was only there one year; probably cost of the venue, and cost of parking.

Hams are notoriously CHEAP (there, I said it in print!), and will willingly cough up $400 for a new walkie-talkie, $1500 for a new HF rig, or drop $10k on an antenna, tower, rotor, and feedline, and then whine and cry about $8 parking and $6 hot dogs at the venue.

Oh, well.....

I volunteered to help with the table for Pacific Battleship Center and BIARA, so if you're in the area, please drop by and say hi.

All the usual vendors will be there, along with some smaller local ones, and during my break from the BIARA table, I'll be stumbling along drooling over all the new equipment, and saying hello to some of the vendors I know.

Political Correctness

From a friend. Sorry about the crummy formatting. This was a "cut, paste, and correct" job from an email that's probably been forwarded a whole lotta times!


This is About Political Correctness
Do You Know What The Term Means?​


​T​his seems to fit right into ​items discussed on every news broadcast.

For the last six odd years, almost all of the things I wanted to write or say have been stymied by that modern term referred to as 'POLITICAL CORRECTNESS'..  Although I consider myself fluent in English, that term was not in my vocabulary.  Curiosity got the  better of me so I decided to do a little research. After two weeks of chasing fruitless leads, I found what I'd been looking for at the Truman Library and Museum in Independence Missouri .

An  unnamed source there sent me copies of four telegrams between then-President Harry Truman and Gen Douglas MacArthur on the day before the actual signing of the WW2 Surrender Agreement in September 1945. 

The contents of those four telegrams below are exactly as received at the end of the war - not a word has been added or deleted!

​​

 (​#​1)​
 Tokyo ,Japan
 0800-September  1,1945
 To:   President Harry S Truman
 From: General D A MacArthur
             Tomorrow we meet with those yellow-bellied bastards and sign the Surrender Documents, any last minute instructions?
 
(​#​2) ​
 Washington, D C
 1300-September 1, 1945
 To:   D A MacArthur
 From: H S Truman
             Congratulations, job well done, but you must tone down your obvious dislike of the Japanese when discussing the terms of the surrender with the press, because some of your remarks are fundamentally not politically correct!
 
 (​#3) ​
 Tokyo , Japan
 1630-September 1, 1945
 To:  H S Truman
 From: D A MacArthur and C H Nimitz
      Wilco Sir, but both Chester and I are somewhat confused, exactly what does the term politically correct mean?
 
 (​#​4) Washington, D C
 2120-September 1, 1945
 To:  D A MacArthur /C H Nimitz
 From: H S Truman
      Political Correctness is a doctrine, recently fostered by a delusional , illogical minority and promoted by a sick mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end!
 
 Now, with special thanks to ​t​he Truman Museum and Harry himself, you and I finally have a full understanding of what 'POLITICAL CORRECTNESS' really means.....

Real Estate Doublespeak

Seems like I just get used to all the lingo they use out here in Kommifornia, and now I have to learn a different set of rules for Colorado!

At least they seem, how do I say it......"more honest" than here in LaLa Land.

Still, *all* the real estate websites have some things in common that I've noticed, starting with the photography used.

1) They Photoshop the living daylights out of the pictures in regards to brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation. I've seen pictures of places that remind me of some of the things I'd seen on Friday or Saturday nights when I was in college!

2) They use wide angle lenses that make a 9x9 room seem HUGE. And I've seen some traces of the artifacting that results from using a fish-eye lens with the software used to "straighten out" all the distortion that occurs.

3) And I've seen some very good, tasteful photography that shows a property beautifully without being all hit-you-in-the-face gonzo about it.

One thing I learned is that if the basement is "finished", the additional square footage of the basement is included in the square footage of the house. I stumbled across this by accident when was looking at some of the "fine print" in the online listings.

I was wondering why a 3br 2ba house had 2400 square feet when the pictures and room dimensions didn't seem to indicate anywhere near that number.

Ahhhh.....there's an additional 900 sq ft of finished basement included!

And since most of the house have basements, there's more emphasis on how "oversized" the garages are.

To me, and "oversize" garage is a separate 30'x40' structure out back!

With two roll-up doors, a couple of entry doors, and some nice windows....

Still, most of the garages seem decent, except for those poor houses that only have a one-car attached garage.

Unless they're on a 12,000 sq ft (or bigger) lot, and there's enough room on one side to put in a driveway leading to a "Dr. Jim's Workshop" out back (I'm pricing Armstrong Steel buildings, just in case), those get crossed off the list.

And I've also seen the prices dropping on the properties I've tagged to watch. Some of the ones I tagged at $350k have come down to $300k, while some that started at $285k have dropped to $250k. Unless something was seriously misrepresented on the real estate websites, it looks like homes aren't selling super fast in the Fort Collins area.

Meanwhile, here in the Land of Fruits and Nuts, our little 3br 1ba 1170 sq ft house  has an "estimated" value of between $410k and $450k!

If we had a second bathroom, you could tack another $15k on that.

At this point in time, if we sold, we'd walk away with about $185k of "profit" after the dust settled. That would make a really nice down payment on a $300k house.

Since my wife is 18~24 months out from retirement (it takes the school district 45 days to generate an estimate of your retirement earnings!), I just hope, pray, and cross both my fingers and toes that "The System" hangs together long enough for us to make a graceful transition.

Time will tell, I guess.......

Boeing delivers 8th and Final C-17 to Australia

 The FINAL C-17, ship #279, is in the Paint Shop right now. I don't know how long before she gets finished, checked, and flown to her new owner.

Really sad, as that aircraft will mark the end of 80 years of aircraft production in Long Beach.


Full details here at the Press-Telegram

Coaxial Friday!

Making up some jumper cables for some gear on the Iowa.

Most of them will be fabricated from DX Engineering cable, specifically their "400MAX" cable, which I've been using for some time now, but a couple of them will be Andrew LDF4-50 Heliax cable.

Heliax is great stuff. I've helped dismantle 50 year old repeater installations that used it, and the cable still looks, and performs, like brand-new cable.

Even the connectors are reusable if you take them apart with care.

Anyway....maybe post a few pix of them later today......

Found over at extexanwannabe's place.

Just too good not to cross-post!

I Have A Dream…

That some day, I will wake up and not worry about my children getting attacked in a racially motivated assault.

I have a dream that some day I will stop worrying about the money that my wife and I have worked for all our lives, will not be confiscated by those who would take what does not belong to them, and give it to those who do not deserve it.

I have a dream that some day I won’t have to worry about soldiers coming to my door and confiscating my firearms because those in power want absolute control over everything and everyone.

I have a dream that some day I will not have to worry that my food and water storage will be confiscated and redistributed to those who were incapable of foresight or aforethought.

I have a dream that some day what’s good for America will be everybody’s business, and not just the agenda for one man.

I have a dream that some day one person’s misfortune will not be the precedent for the rest of us law abiding citizens losing our constitutional rights.

I have a dream that some day that illegal immigration will stop, and those wanting to enter our country will be allowed to do so within the boundaries of United States law.

I have a dream that some day those of us who store food, water and guns for our longevity will not be labeled as ‘domestic terrorists’.

I have a dream that maybe today is the day that the person responsible for the shit happening in the United States today, will be impeached and imprisoned.