Radio Daze

Well, I finished putting my satellite station back together today. I could have had it up yesterday, but there were some improvements I wanted to do, mainly weatherproofing things.
Don't laugh.....we DO get "Real Weather" out here in SoCal! Granted it's nothing like Northern Illinois where I grew up, but it does rain here in the winter (a LOT lately!), and we get get pretty soggy in the morning from the moisture the Marine Layer brings in. Saturday morning I went into San Pedro for the monthly breakfast my club has, and it was really socked in driving over the bridges into and out of Terminal Island, where I work.
I made some enclosures for the preamps and diplexer I use on the 2 Meter / 70cm side of the radio, and another rain shield for the elevation rotor. They're just Rubbermaid plastic boxes, but it will keep direct rain and dew off these items and their connections, hopefully prolonging their usable time on Earth!

"It Takes A Long Time To Control The People"

This is an absolutely DISGUSTING video to watch.

I'd embed it, but Brietbart doesn't have that option.

And on Independence Day, no less!

H/T to The Market Ticker

Happy Independance Day!

Let's hope we can get our country turned around soon, and restore it to what it should be.

Field Day Pictures

We had a great time (again!) this year at the Angels Gate Cultural Center, a.k.a "The Upper Reservation at Fort MacArthur". The weather was great, we had plenty of food, nobody got injured, and we made a lot of contacts.
I had 50 "in the log", but when I cross-checked it, I had 5 duplicates, for a final count of 45, and a final valid score of 144 points..
I've never had 'dupes' at Field Day, and since they were all by the same guy, I'll write it off to his grabbing every contact he heard!
I think we easily could have made 65~70 contacts, but the HO-68 satellite wasn't operational this year, and since we made almost half our contacts on that one last year, it was sorely missed.
Enjoy the pictures!

Over For Another Year

And we had a great time, as usual.
I don't have the final tally yet, but the 20 meter CW station made around1000 contacts, the 20 meter phone station made about 1200, the 15 meter phone station made 380, and the satellite station (my son and I) made 49 this year.
We actually have 53 callsigns, but couldn't make the complete exchange with them, so we can't count them.
If HO-68 had been working this year, I think we could have made at least 70 contacts, maybe more.
I'll post some pix after I finish unloading the Jeep, and download them from my camera.

Field Day Update

As of Saturday night when we shut down for the day, we had 35 contacts in the log, which is as many as we had in total last year..
I'm going to try and get back Sunday morning by 8am, and with luck we'll make 5~10 more. Last year we made about 15 on Sunday morning, and if we get that many again, we'll have around 50 in the log.

Geert Wilders Acquitted

Mr. Wilders has been a controversial figure since about 2007. After much legal wrangling, and having the judges in his first trial removed, he was finally acquitted of all charges.
Read all about it here, on the Wikipedia.
Better read it quickly, as Wikipedia has a way of revising history.....

Analog Electronics Loses Two Giants

I've always been more of a "analog" guy than a "digital" guy. It's probably because of when I grew up, and the fact that radio is really an analog mode.
On June 12th, Jim Williams passed away. I didn't know Jim, but he was one of the founding fathers of modern analog circuit design. He wrote many, many applications notes for Linear Technology (I'll bet I read most of them), many articles for EDN magazine, and published numerous books.
This morning I heard that another giant among analog engineers had passed away, Bob Pease.
I met Bob several times at conferences, and while I can't say he was a friend of mine, I always found him very charming, with an amazing sense of humor and wit. His column, or one of his "Pease Porridge" specials, was the first thing I turned to when my new Electronic Design arrived in the mail, and if they didn't run it that month, it really bummed me out.
Bob was driving his beloved 1969 VW Beetle, and was killed in a car crash coming home from the memorial for Jim Williams.
God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen!
The world is a far better place for having had men like you in it, and you will both be sorely missed.
My deepest sympathy and condolences go out to your families.

Happy Father's Day!

To all my fellow Dads out there....Have A Good One!

My wife treated me to dinner at the Outback, and tomorrow I'M DOIN' NUTHIN'!

Well, going to play with my radio stuff and do that last full-up test to make sure it's ready for Field Day, check the laptops to make sure they're all AOK, run to Harbor Freight for a few things, and then maybe DO NUTHIN!

Enjoy the day, my friends.

Gettin' Awfully Crowded Up There....

Well, we finally got the Weather Radar operational. We still have to calibrate it, but at least now it works as intended with no unusual burps, hiccups, or farts. We're going to write it off to corroded connections, and not being active for over 18 months. The brushes on the drive motors weren't seating correctly after sitting in one position for so long, and most of the oil had drained off all the moving parts, making it hard to turn for portions of the azimuth. It's splash-lubricated, and we did "prop it" a few dozen rotations by hand, but it really needs to be operated to keep the cobwebs out.
Since I'm one of the guys in the Range Group, I get all kinds of COLA (COLlision Avoidance) notices from NASA, and "other" organizations. They pointed me to this article on the Spaceflight Now website about all the junk accumulating Up There.
It looks grim, and unless some entrepreneur can figure out a way to clean things up (Salvage 1, anybody?), we're facing a real possibility of a cascade failure, with collisions begetting more junk, begetting more collisions, etc, etc, until orbital space is unusable.
What a mess!

It's That Time Again....

Field Day, that is.
After spending about 10 hours replacing the connectors on the cables between the rotor control box and the rotors themselves, I decided to mount the elevation rotor back on the mast and test them. They worked fine, so the next step was to put the cross boom through the elevation rotor, and mount the antennas, hook everything up, and play radio for a while today.
WELLLLL....right about the time I tipped the tower over (again!) to get the elevation set right on the antennas, I noticed I had mounted the elevation rotor UPSIDE DOWN,
DOH!
The sad thing is that it's marked "UP" right on the top of the rotor, and I missed it.
A few P-Touch labels later, AND flipping the elevation rotor around, I finally had things bolted together and up in the air.
Only had one satellite with a decent pass, VO-52, and right about the time I made a contact with a guy back in the midwest, the satellite was low enough in elevation that the antennas were pointed right at the roof, and I lost him.
Sigh....
Oh, well....I have all week after work, and all next weekend to get things debugged. It should be easy, as once I got the operator-induced mechanical problems solved, the antennas moved properly under control of the tracking program running on my laptop, and the radio tuned correctly, too.
And I only suffered one minor injury. Somehow when I was wrestling with the tower, I scraped a good sized chunk of skin off the back of my right hand.