Obama Busted By Jamie and Adam

Hmmmm....the other night when I was flipping through channels, I thought I saw our famed "Mythbusters" team with Teh One. I'm not sure if Obummer will be making a guest appearance or not (haven't had my coffee yet this morning), but I did find this little clip floating around in cyberspace.
Enjoy!

Not In Log

For those of us who "Chase DX", and collect the QSL cards, the words "Not In Log" are devastating. You KNOW you worked the DX station. You KNOW you had the band, frequency, date and time correct. You KNOW you heard the DX station reply to you. What could have happened? It's anybody's guess, but getting your card returned with "Not In Log" stamped on it is a real letdown.
Anyway....we've all seen this clip many times, and in many variations, but I found a new spin on it called "Not In Log". The technical references are spot-on, but the "Pin in the coax" line had me rolling on the floor!
Enjoy!

Hand Dancers....or something.....

I'm not sure what to make of this. One of my friends sent it to me as a spoof of "River Dancing", but I think it goes a bit beyond that.....

PC Repair Adventures

Haven't posted much because I've been busy fixing/repairing/upgrading/building a bunch of PC's lately. Seems like when it rains, it pours!
My best buddy from college sent me his to completely rebuild for his recording studio. I completely rebuilt it with an Intel i7 quad-core, Gigabyte motherboard, 8 gig of memory and a Windows 7 install, along with getting Windows 7 versions of all his recording/editing software, and getting everything working correctly. Took all his "old" parts and put them in a cheep case so he'd have another PC to use for email and stuff while his main PC is dedicated to the studio. Then I went through the 'little' PC I'd been using to run my FlexRadio Systems 5000A. Clean installation of Windows XP Professional, along with updating the BIOS and all the drivers. That little guy will be for sale in my radio club newsletter. Then had to fix a couple of PC's for the church the YF and I were married in, and upgraded the hard-drives in them. Then my step-son's girlfriend had problems with her laptop, so spent a day getting that one squared away. Then the video card in the new PC I built for my wife to use went POOF!, so I had to get a new one from Newegg and get that one going. In between all this I was building the new PC I'm using for my Software Defined Radio experiments. Needed a Keyboard/Video/Mouse ("KVM") switch so I can switch between this PC and the radio PC. Got one from Newegg, but I chinced on it, and didn't get a very good one. Blew the DVI outputs on TWO video cards before I got smart and RMA'ed the thing back to Newegg. Got a really sweet one from Monoprice, and now I have the radio room PC's up and running like they should be.
And I still have to finish the landscaping project along the side of the driveway, trim the big tree in the back yard, and finish cleaning up the radio room so it's back in good order. Too many cables just hanging everywhere, and stuff that belongs back on the shelves that I had to move to get at the cable runs for the Flex 5000A.
Oh....and the YF just called saying the heater in her car is on the fritz. I noticed it the other night when I used her car to run out to the store for some soda. The hot air stops coming out when you come to a stop sign or red light, so I think it's probably low on coolant, has an air bubble trapped in the system, or both.

December 7, 1941

Let us never forget.....

Back From The Range

And man, am I beat!
I fired SIXTY ROUNDS of 30-30 out of my Marlin 336, and my shoulder is gonna be sore tomorrow! Took about 30 rounds for a rookie like me to (in no particular order):
a) Figure out how to _use_ the scope (I forgot it was 3x to 9x!)
b) Figure out how to use the _spotting_ scope
c) Get smart enough to move the target back in from 100 yards so I could actually get hits _on_ the target
and
d) Get used to shooting the rifle!
After the first five or six rounds, my son loaned me one of those little plastic clamp-on bipods, and I started shooting my Marlin 1894 in 357 to see if I could even hit the paper at 100 yards. I did better with that little guy and its iron sights than with the 30-30 and the scope as it came out-of-the-box. After a few 357 rounds, and adjusting the rear sight, I was getting _all_ the rounds "In The Black", and a good portion into the middle circle, with my 1894!
I was stunned that I could shoot my sweet little 1894 that well at 100 yards.
But back to the 30-30.
During the 5-minute "cease fire" when we could change targets, I pulled the target in to 50 yards. With the 30-30 now more solidly supported by the bipod, and the target in closer, I was finally able to start hitting the paper consistently, and slowly, one-click-at-a-time, I worked the scope adjustments to where what I was aiming at, was close to where the hole in the target was after I fired. Not a good way to explain it, but it was a long drive home in L.A. traffic, and I'm kinda beat.
My son had his Savage .17HMR with him, and he was tack-driving all day long! At 100 yards, he can shoot the center out of the target. Must be nice to have 24 year old eyes! I was suitably impressed, and even some of the guys at the range told him he was doing extremely well. He let me fire his rifle a few times, and it was a joy to shoot. Very low recoil and practically no muzzle blast, kinda like a 22LR on steroids, and I could hit about anyplace on the target I wanted to, which means it hit whatever point the scope had wandered to when I squeezed the trigger!
After several hours of rifle shooting we decided to move down to the pistol range for some practice. He had his step-dad's S&W 9MM, and I had my wife's 357 S&W revolver, and we had great fun blasting away the rest of the afternoon.
Final tally, 60 rounds of 30-30, 200 rounds of 357 (rifle and pistol use), 200 rounds of 17HMR, and 100 rounds of 9MM.
It was our first time at the Angeles Shooting Ranges, and we're definitely going back again. The place is first-class all the way, the staff is excellent, and even the rest rooms are clean! I highly recommend it if you live in the area.
The only nit I have to pick would be to make sure you take an old mouse pad, or other piece of soft, thick "stuff" to rest your elbow on. The surfaces of the shooting benches on the side we used are covered with some kind of indoor/outdoor carpeting that does a real good impersonation of 60-grit sandpaper! My right elbow is raw from rubbing on it, and the other shooters I talked to there said the concrete ( ! ) benches on the other side are just as rough on your elbow..
Sorry we didn't have time to take any 'good' pictures, but my son is supposed to send me the few he took with his iPhone camera, and I'll post those when I get them.
I'm off to the shower, and tomorrow will be Gun Cleaning Day!
Oh, and we had a ball doing it.

Range Time!

My son and I are headed out to the Angeles Shooting Ranges today. He wants to try his 17HMR, and I want to try my year-old "new" Marlin 336 in 30-30.
Were also bringing a couple of pistols just in case we get bored with rifle shooting.
He's bringing the spotting scope, and I'm bringing my camera, so we should have some pix to post later.
Gee....I wonder of 200 rounds per gun is enough.......

And Don't Call Me Shirley!

Well, he'll always be Commander J.J. Adams of United Planets Cruise C-57D to me, but to many other people he was Frank Drebin of Police Squad, or Dr. Alan Rumack of Airplane!
Whatever role he played, Leslie Nielsen was a good actor, and will always be remembered.
He passed away yesterday from complications due to pneumonia.
RIP, Commander Adams.

Magic Smoke

No, I haven't let any of the Magic Smoke out of any of my equipment lately, but I thought those of you who work on cars, particularly British cars, might find this replacement item quite handy to have around.
Replacement Lucas Smoke
Side Jokes:
Why do the English drink warm beer? Because they have Lucas refrigerators!
Who is the Lucas Electric Company named after? Lord Lucas, Prince of Darkness!
If you've ever owned a car with Lucas Electric components, you'll know exactly what I'm referring to.
Now, if you've ever worked on electrical/electronic stuff, you've probably heard the term "Smoke Test", which is the first test you run on a recently assembled or rebuilt unit. You power the unit up, carefully checking and hoping you've assembled and wired it correctly, because if you haven't, you'll let the Magic Smoke out of it, and it won't work any more.
In Amateur Radio we have a phrase "Tune For Maximum Smoke", which means to load up a transmitter to the point where any further increase in the loading control makes it impossible to find a "dip" in the plate tuning control.
Usually the plates (Anode) in the output tubes are glowing red (or orange!) before you hit this point, so you generally don't get any more output power by loading the transmitter this far, and in some cases the output power actually drops off.
These days, with solid-state equipment and broad-band output stages, you don't have to do the "load, dip, load, dip" dance when you change frequency or bands. Of course you also can't load up a wet string for an antenna (I've done it. A story for a later date) because the components are fixed value, and even if the rig has a built-in "Antenna Tuner", they don't match a very wide range of impedance, and the equipment will automatically fold-back the output power to protect itself.
And since I'm coming down with a cold, I think I'll "fold back" the covers and hit the hay!
Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Winding %%!!**^^$$##!!! Toroids

GAWD, I *HATE* winding these freaking things! Out of ALL the Amateur Radio activities I do, winding toroid coils is at the all-time absolute BOTTOM of my enjoyment scale. I'd rather work on antennas in a blizzard (and I have...) than wind these abominations. Yeah, I know Toroidal Inductors have high inductance for their volume, they're self-shielding, and have a whole slew of other neat properties, but GAWD, what a PITA they are to wind!
When I built my Elecraft K2 transceiver, I bought the coils prewound from "The Toroid Guy" for about $35, and when I bought the 100 Watt amplifier module, I again bought the prewound cores for about $40, and it was money well spent, every penny of it!
The latest kit I'm (still!) building is an LP-100 Digital Vector Wattmeter, which is an excellent piece of equipment. It gets rave reviews over at eHam.net, it's extremely accurate, and has a PC interface so you can capture the data, and make all kinds of Geeky plots of neat things to know about your antenna system.
It also has two toroids to wind.
Now as toroids go, these don't look like they'd be particularly hard to make. The cores are a couple of inches in diameter, the wire is a decent sized gauge, and there's only 26 turns to wind. He even gives you a very clever way to mark the cores, so you can get the windings on "just right".
Yeah, right!
Well, any way, after fighting one for about 20 minutes, I have it wound, but now I have to straighten the windings on the core, then put the bushing through the center so I can mount the core(s) in the coupler housing.
Gawd....I *HATE* winding toroids!

Happy Thanksgiving To All!

Even though I haven't had a full-time job in over a year now, I still count my blessings.
I've lost a bit over 35 pounds, my glucose is now "Disgustingly normal" according to my Doctor, same with my blood pressure, my wife is in excellent health with a great job with good benefits, my son is knocking down A's and B's in his new College major, I have a lot of good friends, we have food on the table and a roof over our heads, and we're keeping all the bills paid, with some left over to save. Compared to the past year that some have had, we have a LOT to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!