Blah.....Just Blah.......

Approaching terminal job burn-out, I think......

Too Tired To Blog.....

As is usual, the last week of activity before we depart on a launch mission is brutal, with 10~12 hour days common. Tomorrow (Saturday) I'll be going in for another 10 hour day, and Sunday will be at least (on the books, anyway) 12 hours. We had planned some testing with the customer today, but they weren't in! Seems they found it necessary to take a day off "To spend time with their families before departing on the voyage".
And us?
We'll keep chugging along to the beat of the schedule drum with NO time off for our families.
I'm getting too old for this stuff, and when I turn 62 next year I'm seriously going to consider retiring, if the economy hasn't gone completely to shit by then, and I can afford to.
Taking the YF out for a quiet dinner tonight, as I won't be here all day Sunday, Mother's Day, and probably won't get back home until she's fast asleep.

BTW.....Happy Mother's Day to all the Mom's out there!
*NONE* of us would be here without you.

Chino 2012 Airshow Pictures

As usual, we had a great time hanging out at the Chino Airshow.
The grandstand seats were MUCH better this year, being right on the flight line. Last year they were behind the walkway, and you couldn't really see much from them. They were so bad, in fact, that several times some of the staff came by and told us you could get a refund if you wanted to!
The weather this year was a lot warmer and sunnier than last year. My YF forgot to bring her sunscreen, and even though we took several breaks and sought out some shade, and some nice people sitting next to us offered some sunscreen, she was getting pretty cooked, so we left early, right after the B-25's got airborne.
The Planes of Fame Air Museum is a wonderful place, and if you ever get out to SoCal, it should be on your "Must See" list if you like airplanes. They have so much stuff in storage and on display that you can easily spend a whole weekend there just wandering around.
Stop in at Flo's Airport Cafe for some excellent chow if you make it there!

There's a few "duds" in the pictures, but most of them came out OK. I used my Nikon  80~400mm VR lens, and I'll never take it to an event like this again. It's slow to focus, loses auto-focus easily when you zoom on a moving subject, and is just too heavy to be lugging around all day. It's a very nice lens for what it does, BUT.....I should have taken my 80~200mm lens instead. This lens is one of Nikon's "Professional" line of lenses, being of all metal construction, and has lightning fast auto-focus. Since it was made back when film was king (yes, I still shoot film with my F4 or F100), so when used with a digital camera, it acts more like a 300mm lens, due to what's called "Crop Factor". I'll take the 80~200mm next year.

The planes in the airshow were fairly typical for Chino, but the guy in the little red Team Oracle aerobatic plane had everybody on their feet and cheering. One of the most impressive displays of flying prowess (and power-to-weight ratio!) I've ever seen.

Enjoy the pix!

Airshow

Just got back, and I'm beat. It was a LOT hotter there this year than last, and my poor wife about melted. She can't take much sun, so we left right after the N9M Flying Wing did its act.
Pix later.......

Gettin' BUSY At Work

Well, we're all cranked up for the next launch, around the end of May if things stay on-schedule. Spent the last two days debugging the telemetry tracking antenna I normally run, and learning more about it, and it's history, than I knew before.
We found today that the bearing assembly on the spinning feed is "almost shot" (it's got a lot of play in it), and although we can physically move each axis through its range of motion very smoothly (the mechanical stuff seems OK), when we turn on the servos and use the manually position hand wheels, the elevation axis doesn't respond smoothly. It kind of 'bumps and jumps' in response to commands from the Antenna Control Unit.
We're not sure if this is in the servo electronics somewhere, or in the software settings, but it's not right, and either contributed to, or is the cause of, the loss of track we had last mission.
I was on top of it as soon as it broke track, and put it in manual mode so I could get it back on the profile. Since this happened at first stage separation, AND we were running a "strange" flight profile, we didn't give it too much thought until the post mission review of the equipment logs showed some weirdness.
We break auto-track about 25% of the time at one-two staging due to the fact that the retros they use to back the first stage away from the second are solid fuel, and puff out a huge cloud of ionized gas around the launch vehicle, and RF doesn't go through ionized gas very well. It's why there's a communication blackout during reentry. Normally the tracking antenna will "coast" through this loss of signal, and reacquire on it's own, but the last time I had to coax it back to doing it's job, and it just didn't "feel" right.
We have a back up antenna array, but this thing is the darling of the RF Group, warts and all.
Oh, well, we'll either get it fixed, or write a "Use AS-IS" on it, and I'll just have to be really sharp during the launch.

This weekend, the YF and I are going to the Chino Airshow, so I'll post a bunch of pictures like I did last year.
Always an enjoyable event!

May Day Festivities

I haven't had the TeeVee on today, but I do have my scanner up and running, and there are "protests" (that's what the cops are calling them) going on around the L.A. area.
The magnet high-school where my wife works is on the campus of one of the state universities, so anytime I see a transmission from them, I listen closely.
So far things seem peaceful, but from the 'back chatter' taking place on some of the other channels, Da Cops are taking no chances, and seem to have a fair amount of resources staged in various places around the city, along with several air units. I should probably fire up my "Air Band Only" scanner and see what's going on with the Eyes In The Sky.
Should be interesting.
I'm working "at home" today, as I have some projects to do that I can't do at work (no tools or parts!), so I'll be listening all day while I tinker away.

Hmmm....somebody in one of the protest groups is "distributing flares".

Sounds like the "protesters" are now going to go from bank to bank all along Hope Street (irony?) in downtown L.A.
BoA, Wells-Fargo, HFSC, and several others mentioned.

The LAPD is doing well at keeping the OLA  on their planned route, and preventing them from spreading out.

And I did hear one report of people walking along with flares.

Uh-oh...something's going on. ALL supervisors have been ordered to 5th and Hill streets.

Well....sounds like OLA has fizzled out. Nothing going on, and the only calls are to move police units so they can restore the normal traffic patterns.

Twenty Years Ago Today In L.A.

Today is the anniversary (if you can call it that) of the "Rodney King" riots here in La-La Land.
BonnieGadsden ran a series on it a couple of weeks ago, based on a series of forum posts by Texas Arcane long before there were blogs.
While there's been some "discussion" over the accuracy of the original posts, the important thing is to get the gist of it, and not quibble over some of the technical details.
This IS what will happen when TSHTF out here, and in every other big city.
Doesn't matter if it's caused by some "injustice", the power grid going down, a Massive Solar Flare or an EMP, or the total collapse of the U.S. economy. The cause of it will only partly determine the amount of time it takes to start and get up to speed.
And if the government is "down" or "off-line", it won't settle down until the damage and casualties reach absolutely staggering levels.
Be prepared, it will come sooner and faster than you think.

Thursday Already??

Wow....time sure flies when you're having fun.
Working on another project for a friend of mine at work that should be interesting.
His younger sister is Autistic, and just loves playing records and singing with them. Her last little portable phonograph, like the type lots of us had a kids, bit the dust last month. I helped him find several suitable replacements on eBay, and he turned them over to me the other day so I could go through them, and make sure they work properly.
These are really simple little devices, with a single tube (25C5 in one, a 25EH5 in the other, both Beam Power Pentode tubes) grid-driven by the output of the cartridge, and feeding a transformer coupled speaker. Both had bad tubes (one very leaky, the other with a burned out filament), and bad filter capacitors. The filters in these are a dual section "cardboard tube" type, of 30uF/50uF @ 150VDC rating. Rather than get *exact* replacement parts (at $30 a pop!), I'm substituting two modern electrolytics of 33 and 50uF@200VDC ratings, for a total cost of about $4. These will work at least as well, and probably last much longer owing to the newer technology employed in their manufacture, and the higher voltage ratings.
I'll also replace both of the coupling capacitors, which are the old style paper caps dipped in wax. These are notoriously UNreliable, so I'll be using modern film types, rated at 630 Volts. As incredible as it may seem to those of us who actually fix things, and understand about the various types of parts used, I've seen these old, crummy paper caps sell on eBay for up to $30 each! Seems the "audiophile" crowd believes they have those magic properties that give you The Tone in your amplifiers.
Hmm....maybe I should list the ones I remove??
One of the players has a Selenium rectifier, and I'll replace that with a modern Silicon rectifier, and add a 33~47 Ohm 5 Watt series resistor to compensate for the lower Forward Voltage drop of the Silicon rectifier.
Selenium rectifiers can have nasty consequences when they fail, besides the stench they release. The Selenium compounds they produce are toxic, and replacing the old rectifier eliminates this hazard.
This should be a fun little project, and since I've never seen a schematic of one anywhere online, I'll draw one up, and post it here, along with a few pictures of the players.

Radio Dazed....and Confused!

WELL....started out trying to fix a VCR for my brother-in-law. They have a huge stack of unlabeled tapes, some with grand-kid stuff on them. They want to have them transferred to DVD before the tapes deteriorate too far, but they only VCR they have died. Since it has all the classic symptoms of a dead power supply, and 30 minutes of Googling confirmed it, I swapped out ALL the electrolytic capacitors in the supply, even though they passed visual.
No dice, it's still dead.
I loaned him a working VCR I had wrapped up and stored in the garage for just such occasions when he was over here Sunday after church, so at least they'll be able to sort out the tapes before they bring them over here so I can do the transfer to DVD for them. I have a Sony Professional VCR, and a PC I built specifically to do this, so once I get them on disk, I'll use Adobe Premiere Pro to author some nice DVD's with fancy title cards, fades, etc for them.

Seeing as it was only 7:30 when I put the toe tag on the VCR, I went back to doing what I had originally planned for tonight, upgrading my Elecraft KPA100 100 Watt amp that I use with my K2 portable HF transceiver.
I built the amplifier when they were at "Rev. C", and now they're up to "Rev. G", so I have some upping to do.
WELL....I destroyed the thermal pads under the two driver and two final transistors when I lifted the main board off the heatsink, and even though the kit says it includes them, all it had was ONE pad for one of the final output transistors.
RATS....
I sent them an order, and the parts will be here in a day or two, so that just gives me some extra time to do the work carefully, since putting the heatsink back on is one of the very last steps.

Oh.....and I get to do one of my favorite radio activities.....winding two toroids.
-sigh-

Radio Daze

ARRRGH! I'm trying to get my Kenwood TM-D710 set up for remote operation without spending $500+ on a neat little box called "Remote Rig".
#1, I'd need one on each end, and #2, I doubt if I could get our IT guys on the ship to open up the specific ports I'd need to control the radio with these boxes. I already know the ports for Echolink are blocked, and they're unresponsive to opening them up for me. I can probably go to a Higher Authority to get them to listen to my request, but I'd rather use something else than fight the bureaucracy that's been growing since we came out of Chapter 11 last year.
I built a small "Shuttle" PC that I'm running OpenSUSE 12.1 on, and it doesn't have a serial port to connect to the radio. Now I don't normally have anything against running a USB-to-serial converter, but I'd prefer to have a "real" serial port to use in the PC. I bought several different add-on cards, and NONE of them will work with the latest Linux 3.1 kernel. Usually Linux is quite good at low-level hardware like a serial port card. These things work 100% in my Windows 7 PC that I use for some other radio stuff, like controlling my FlexRadio 5000A and my scanners, but the included drivers for Linux will NOT compile on the Linux box I built to use for this specific purpose.
So, I went off to Newegg again, and found some even simpler serial cards, and ordered a couple of different ones of those. The problem is that the "bridge" chip, an MCS9865, that connects all the 16550 UART chips in these things isn't properly recognized, and since I can't compile the damn drivers (it errors out with no specific error message....WTF?), it looks like I'll have to drop back 10 and punt.
For now I'll go back to the USB converter while I wait for the new cards to get here. If I can't 'talk' to the radio, I can't do what I want. The audio part is handled by the sound card in the PC using pretty standard VOIP stuff, but I need a way to positively control the radio, short of having my wife come into the Radio Room and turn the thing off if it gets hung in some weird state.
And on a more positive note, I completely finished and calibrated my LP-100A RF Vector Watt meter. It works 100%, and is an excellent station accessory for the Flex 5000A.
And yes, it's connected to one of the extra serial ports I added to the Windoze PC I use to run the PowerSDR software that controls the Flex.

Upside Down Land

Shamelessly borrowed from a wise man....OldNFO.


You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
A Muslim officer crying "Allah Akbar" while shooting up an army base is considered to have committed "Workplace Violence" while an American citizen boasting a Ron Paul bumper sticker is classified as a "Domestic Terrorist".
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
You can get arrested for expired tags on your car but not for being in the country illegally.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
Your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more of our money.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
A seven year old boy can be thrown out of school for calling his teacher "cute" but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if.....
The Supreme Court of the United States can rule that lower courts cannot display the 10 Commandments in their courtroom, while sitting in front of a display of the 10 Commandments.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
Children are forcibly removed from parents who appropriately discipline them while children of "underprivileged" drug addicts are left to rot in filth infested cesspools.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
Working class Americans pay for their own health care (and the health care of everyone else) while unmarried women are free to have child after child on the "State's" dime while never being held responsible for their own choices.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
Hard work and success are rewarded with higher taxes and government intrusion, while slothful, lazy behavior is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid and subsidized housing.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
The government's plan for getting people back to work is to provide 99 weeks of unemployment checks (to not work).
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
Being self-sufficient is considered a threat to the government.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
Politicians think that stripping away the amendments to the constitution is really protecting the rights of the people.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
The rights of the Government come before the rights of the individual.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
Parents believe the State is responsible for providing for their children.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
You can write a post like this just by reading the news headlines.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
You pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big screen TV while your neighbor defaults on his mortgage (while buying iphones, TV's and new cars) and the government forgives his debt and reduces his mortgage (with your tax dollars).
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
Your government can add anything they want to your kid's water (fluoride, chlorine, etc.) but you are not allowed to give them raw milk.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
Being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you "safe".
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
You have to have your parents signature to go on a school field trip but not to get an abortion.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
An 80 year old woman can be stripped searched by the TSA but a Muslim woman in a burqa is only subject to having her neck and head searched.
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You know you live in an Upside-down Land if....
Using the "N" word is considered "hate speech" but writing and signing songs about raping women and killing cops is considered "art".

NOW, it's time to change this and regain control of this country... We are better than this, and it's time for us to step up and VOTE!

Remember, Re-Elect NONE! Get rid of all the incumbents from the White House on down, regardless of party...