Heathkit SB-310 Receiver

I bought this from a very nice young couple that found it at a yard sale, and listed it on eBay. I was able to pick in up in person, as they don't live to far from here, and we agreed to meet at a SixBucks Coffee shop about half way between their place and mine.
It was exactly as they described it, and pretty clean considering it's about 45 years old. The matching SB-600 speaker that came with it has the typical Heathkit/Hallicrafters "peeling paint" syndrome, as back "In The Day" they didn't prepare the aluminum cases for paint they way we do now.
I pulled it from the case, and dusted it out with a soft paintbrush, and then proceeded to clean the tube sockets, switch contacts, and potentiometers with some Caig DeOxIt, and lubed the ball detents on the switches with a drop of gun oil. The mode switch was stiff and hard to turn, so I pulled the knob off and used a drop of light penetrating oil on the bushing where it comes through the front panel, and let the radio sit for a couple of hours with the front panel up so the oil could get in to the bushing.
While that was happening, I checked all the tubes with my EICO 667 tube tester, and surprise! They were all good. They were also all original Mullard and Tung-Sol tubes, which is what Heathkit supplied back then.
After putting the mode switch knob back on, and plugging all the tubes back in, I let it and my signal generator warm up for a couple of hours, and started in on the alignment.
Boy, was it ever out of whack!
The worst were the Heterodyne Oscillator (what Heath called the 1st Local Oscillator) coils, which required 1~3 turns of the slugs to get them back in spec. The 1st IF cans weren't too bad, but peaking them (1/2~1 turn) really made the noise level come up. The antenna and RF Amplifier coils were about as far off as the H.O. coils, and by the time I had everything peaked, signals were coming in without an antenna!
I had to put a dummy load on the antenna connector so I could go back through the alignment again, and make sure everything was adjusted right.
The last things to address were the S-meter calibration pot, and the Preselector variable cap. The S-meter pot was out of adjustment, resulting in the meter being "Off Scale Negative", and the Preselector cap was noisy as I turned it. A drop of light synthetic oil cured the cap, and adjusting the S-meter pot brought it back in line.
I still have some cleaning and polishing to do, and I have to install the 400Hz CW filter I bought for it. I'm also going to replace the original frosted "#47" pilot light bulbs with some of the frosted white LED lamps made just for this purpose, and this old warhorse will be ready to cruise the bands again.
My first "real" Amateur Radio receiver was a Hallicrafters SX-146, which was a present from my parents for passing my Novice exam back in 1964. My Dad had some friends who were "into" radio, and they all told him "Get the kid a GOOD receiver so he can hear the other stations, or he'll lose interest fast", so he consulted with them for a good one at a decent price (sorry, NO Collins gear!), and they gave it to me the day my Novice license arrived. When I upgraded to General Class about 10 months later, I had saved up enough money to buy a Heathkit SB-301 receiver, and an SB-401 transmitter, and Mom and Dad kicked in the extra money so I could get the crystal pack for the transmitter allowing 'split' operation, and the CW filter for the receiver. They also bought me the matching SB-600 speaker, and the SB-630 station console.
The SB-310 is the General Coverage version of the Amateur Band only SB-301, so it's like having an old friend return after many years.
No, it doesn't have all the bells-and-whistles that new radios have, and the audio is a little "hissy", but it's very sensitive, has decent selectivity with the crystal filters, and is rock solid stable after it's been operating for half an hour or so.
And it's got TUBES in it so it Glows In The Dark, and will probably survive an EMP!

Happy Mother's Day!

To all the women and "other" Mother's out there!

Yeah, bad joke, but I'm really busy today doing "home owner" stuff. Being back at work is great, but it sure cuts down on the amount of said maintenance I can get done during the week.

Obama The Puppet.....

If you have any remaining doubts that "president" Obama is completely UNqualified for the job, READ THIS.

I particularly like the part about "President Obama was literally pulled from a golf outing and escorted back to the White House to be informed of the mission."

This man is totally incompetent, and should be removed from office immediately.

Thanks to Ed at Thunder Tales for the link!

Bin Laden Killed By U.S. Strike

Or so it seems.

Dead Servers, Dead Hard Drives, Dead Video Matrices....

Geez....I'm surround by DEATH at work!
Well, defunct hardware anyway.....
18 months ago, shortly before I was "released" as a contractor from the site I was assigned to, we came up with a very comprehensive shut-down procedure, and a set of minimum environmental control standards to be maintained after the equipment was powered down. Some of it happened, and some of it didn't. We knew the server/communications room was apt to get too hot, and we even had a portable air conditioner set up, with its exhaust directed into the air return for the ship's HVAC system. It kept the room at a nice 65 degrees, a welcome change from the times it got over one-hundred degrees in there when something went wacky with the ship's HVAC system.
WELL....we never finished shutting everything down, as each round of layoffs (that's really what they were) left fewer and fewer qualified people to work the procedures. It turns out that some of the servers were left operating because nobody was around to properly power them off, BUT because the air conditioning and HVAC were just soooo easy to turn off, that's what happened.
And none of the more obscure video equipment used to route the video sources, and run the Big Screens, got shut down.
And these things run hot.
Last week we started the process of bringing things back up, and some things just didn't turn back on, either at all, or properly. Bringing the servers up and examining their logs showed that whoever had shut the down basically just "pulled the plug".
I was able to get the systems we needed up and running so that we could do some testing, but I've got two application servers that have wonked out hard disks in them, and a couple of the others are throwing errors.
My suggestion will be to image the hard drives in the known good ones, replace ALL the hard drives in the 8 "mission critical" machines, and then re-image them with the good image.
You do NOT want an applications server to go down at T minus 10 minutes!
The video gear mostly has fried power supplies. I pulled a supply out of one of our good shelf-spares, and used it to confirm that was the problem with all the "failed" equipment. The supplies are being used at about 85% of their capacity (850mA from a 1 Amp supply), which I consider borderline for long-term reliability. Eventually we'll be upgrading all the "Big Screen" stuff, but for now we'll just lay in a good supply of the little power modules inside the boxes, and live with it.
The company that originally made these boxes wants $450 to "repair" them, and since the supplies can be had for about $20 shipped, it's a good way to save the reconstituted enterprise some money.
And we haven't even started on the RF systems and Weather Radar yet. The next four months should be a lot of fun.....

On the home front, I've been trimming trees all weekend, and *finally* got the lights on my little tower trailer wired up so I can haul it down to the DMV and get it licensed. Field Day is coming up the last weekend in June, and I need to get plates on it so I can tow it down to the Field Day site.

Get Over It!

I was going through my archives this morning, and found one of my favorite Eagles songs, "Get Over It!".
It's fitting song for today's "Victim Mentality", and you can actually understand the lyrics as he sings them. And watch that wicked slide guitar WB6ACU plays!

Enjoy!

Light Blogging For A While.....

GROAN.......Just not used to getting up at O-Dark-Thirty, running around all day between two ships, climbing 157 (yes, I counted them!) steps on one of the ships to get all the way to the Comm Shack on the top under the main mast, and climbing ladders into and out of the SatCom dome on the other one.
At least our tests are running well, and I've lost track of how many times I've had people tell me how nice it is to have me back!
After we get the SatCom RF tests finished, I get to power up and check out the weather radar system. We're the ONLY ship in the world that has a C-Band Doppler radar for weather use, and I'm one of maybe 5 people that know (and *understand*!) how it works. I've already been told the controller is timing out on servo errors, so I suppose I'll be spending a lot of time up in the dome showing the youngsters how to swap out a servo, test it, and then calibrate the whole antenna controller servo system. Last time I showed them how to level the antenna I don't think they "got it", and it's possible that the person who was doing the "preventive" maintenance went in to the configuration section of the controller program and dinked with it.
And I suppose I'll have to teach them about Magnetic North vs True North, local deviation , and how they relate to the calibration procedure, all over again.
And probably another lesson on how using a hand-held magnetic compass on a STEEL ship can give you false information.
And we still have to bring the INU's back online, and probably send out the sensors for calibration.
Oh....calibration!
EVERYTHING is at least 12 months out of the calibration cycle! Since we have a lot of redundant instruments, I'm trying to convince the management to send half out now, and the other half out in 90 days. That way we'll never have all the instruments come due at the same time, which could shut us down.
That happened during my first "tour of duty" at this site, and it took much wailing and gnashing of teeth (along with lots of phone calls to the manufacturers) to convince Management that we could put a 30-day waiver on some of the instruments, and get them calibrated after we finished the current deployment.
Everyday my job jar gets fuller and fuller!

"First Day" Back At Work.....

.......And I spent half the day shaking hands with people I'd worked with there for over five years.
Went through my security briefings, got my badges and parking decal, and a stack of paperwork to fill out for the medical benefits, 401(k), direct deposit, yadda-yadda-yadda.
Everything has been "Cold Iron" for over a year now, and yes, they're worried too, that some things might not / will not power back up, either properly, or at all.
We're completely replacing the data aggregator for the satcom system, so tomorrow my task will be to get the antenna and uplink controllers reprogramed to track the satellite we'll be temporarily using, shifting all the carrier and data frequencies to the new values, and setting the cross-pole correctly, so the preliminary testing of the new data system will run without worrying that something is wrong with the RF link up to the bird.
Geez....I could have sworn I wrote and distributed some clear-and-concise documents for the youngsters to follow, AND trained them in how-to-do-it, but everybody there is scared shitless to actually DO anything, touch anything, or program any new values into the controllers.
Sigh.......
Oh, well. Gives Old Greybeards like me a chance to teach them again, make some extra retirement cash, and have fun.

"Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" -My Take-

This is kinda funny. Last summer I gave my wife my copy of Rand's book to read. She got about half way through it, and gave up. She said she didn't like the characters in the book, and it was "too wordy".
Tonight we're leaving the movie, and she says "Wow, that was really good".
I was almost speechless, and then we started discussing the movie.
One thing that I noticed about 10~15 minutes into the movie was "Is this really Part 1"? I felt like I was watching a mini-series, and had caught it at the second or third episode. Granted, it's a long, complex book, but I felt that "something" was missing, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
I thought the actor that played Hank Rearden did an great job, while the actress that played Dagny Taggart was a bit lifeless for the first half of the movie. To me, the way the characters played in the movie are almost a complete reversal of how I perceived the characters in the book. Rearden's family, except for his wife Lillian, were relegated to much less important roles than the characters in the book.
Francisco d'Anconia is another major character in the book who's given very little 'air time', and Hugh Akston comes off as major space-case
Again, this is a long, complex novel with deep characters, and bringing it to the screen at all is a major triumph.
While I won't say it's one of the best movies so far this year, I think it's one of the more important ones, given the relevance of Rand's book to today's society.

Here's a much better review from the American Thinker website.

"Atlas Shrugged: Part I" Opens Tonight

I'd go, but I have a prior commitment.
I just hope they don't screw it up!

Visit the Official Atlas Shrugged Movie Web Site here.

Trailer here

List of Theaters

25,000 Visits!

I just checked my sitemeter page, and I see I've gone slightly over 25,000 visitors.
While I'll never get to the numbers that some of my friends out here have, it's gratifying that enough people have stopped by to let me achieve this.
Either that or I'm a terrible writer, and people come by to use me as an example of how NOT to blog!
Off to the dentist...I was chewing on a caramel last night, and I popped a cap off one of my molars. Hopefully my dentist can just glue it back on without any other work.