Busy Week, Beautiful Weather, Amateur Radio Field Day

 Having gorgeous weather the last few days, and got some (more!) yard work done, and enjoyed evening strolls around the 'hood with SLW, and Pebbles.

We're headed to the CSU Flower Trial Gardens tomorrow where various types of flowers are grown to evaluate how well they do here in this environment. Some things grow here very well, and others croak rather quickly. Then it's off to Freddy's Frozen Custard and Steakburgers for some chow. Very good Patty Melts, burgers and fries, and their shakes and root beer floats are excellent.

  Thursday night I cleaned out one corner of the garage so the drywall guys could fix the damage from the plumbing leaks caused by the Incompetent Floor Guy.

The got here on-time at 0830, cut out the damaged drywall, trimmed new fire-rated drywall to fit the area, and had the tape and mud finished by 1130. They came back after lunch, put the final coat of mud on it, and cleaned up the area they worked in.

Very nice job:

They were a guy a some younger than me, and his 20-something son. who wants to go into business with his Dad, and Dad's teaching him the ropes. Great to see somebody doing that "live, and in-person". I wish them both well.

And I dove into the Pioneer cassette deck I bought a week or so ago. 

Pulled the knobs:

Then the front panel:

Then pulled the tape Transport mechanism out so I could do a full service on it. New belts, idlers, and pinch rollers, along with cleaning out all the 40 year old lubricant, and replacing it with synthetic lube and grease, and where required, "Light Machine Oil", a.k.a. "Sewing Machine Oil", "Honing Oil", "Gun Oil", and all its other names. You NEVER use products like WD-40 or 3-In-One Oil on a mechanism like this. Well, you can, but you'll be working on it again "Soon", to "Very Soon" if you do.

Trust me, as this is the level of disassembly involved in doing a rebuild of the transport mechanism:

In the picture below, you'll probably notice  a crack in part of the "Supply Reel Assembly" at about the 4-o-clock position. They're only replaceable as a complete assembly, and somewhat hard to find New or New-Old-Stock parts, so I'm going to rebuild them. The idler tire is mounted on the yellowed plastic wheel for it, and will require care in replacing so I don't damage the wheel.

These are the heads, capstans, pinch rollers, and tape guides before disassembly. This all has to be taken apart, cleaned, properly re-lubed, and the rubber rollers replaced. Then the spring tension has to be checked and adjusted as necessary using a spring scale. You can't see it here, but one of the rubber "Brake Pads" is missing from the Brake Lever Assembly. Since they both get replaced it's no big deal, except for the fact that they're getting very close to be NLA. I'll probably just fabricate some from a bit of neoprene tubing, or a couple of layers of heat-shrink insulation. They're not like the "Brake Pads" on an Indy Car of Formula 1 Car, at all. so there's quite a bit of latitude in replacement material.

And this all has to be properly reassembled.

Since I needed a few cassettes to test with, I found these at the local used records and books store:

I'll keep stopping in there to buy these whenever they have them, as they're much more reasonably priced there than on eBay and Amazon. The first two, left to right, are a "Type II", or CrO2 tape. The third one is a "Type IV" METAL tape, which this machine can use. It can also use the "FerriChrome" "Type III" tapes, but they're pretty much unobtainium, and are insanely priced.

And it's "The Last Full Weekend In June", so that means it's Amateur Radio Field Day, and the bands are wall-to-wall signals. 

So enjoy your weekend, be safe, and Viya con Dios.