8 x 8 x 8 LED Cube

I WANT ONE!



And it's available as a kit from Jameco, a company I've bought many, many things from.

Meanwhile, at Long Beach Airport.....

A banner tower went down on takeoff.

Looks like he struck a power pole, sheared off a wing, and came down on an embankment of the 405 freeway.

He walked away.....

And he just barely cleared the freeway....

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Happy Independence Day!

I know you all remember what it took to get our country started, and may God be with us if we have to do it again.

And thank you to all who have served. It's a duty and an honor I wasn't allowed due to circumstances.


I'm goofing off.

ALL

DAY

LONG!


Well.....not really. The YF is recovering from minor surgery, so I'm doing laundry, swabbing out the head, and flying Mr. Kirby around today.

Be safe and sane out there.....
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Additional Proton-M Video

This is the video I first saw.

About 8~10 seconds after impact and fireball, the shockwave hits the cameraman.

Ours didn't get this bent out of shape. We went pretty much straight up, coasted after the engines shut down, and then plopped down into the water.

This sucker went BOOM in a really big way!


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Proton-M Launch Failure

Having been through something similar back in January, I feel for these guys.

Most people don't understand that while we've been launching liquid fueled rockets for over 70 years now, it's still not a 100% reliable process. Even with improved technologies like materials science, metallurgy, instrumentation, and a host of other things, sometimes rockets go BOOM.

Pretty complete coverage over at the "NasaSpaceFlight.com" website.

Boy Scout Merit Badge Class on the Battleship IOWA

Gonna be a busy day today. I'm helping with the Boy Scout "Radio Merit Badge" class today on the Iowa.

BTW.....we can't call the "U.S.S. Iowa" anymore (sob...sob...) as she's no longer an active ship of the U.S. Navy. We have to refer to the garnd old gal as the "Battleship Iowa".

A small technicality, but an important one none the less.

I'll be in the Comm Center helping the Scouts to get over any On-The-Air shyness (a.k.a. "Mic Fright"), and to make sure nobody does anything STOOOPID while transmitting.

In my experience, the Scouts are all fine young lads who take direction very well, but the FCC requires a "Qualified Control Operator" to be in physical control of the radio gear while unlicensed people use it.

If you know any Scouts, the Radio Merit Badge is one of the lesser-known badges, and a good one to have. I forget how many Merit Badges my son has, but his sash is pretty full.

Time to hit the shower, get dresses, gather up all my materials, and head on down to the Iowa.

See you all later.....

45th Anniversary of "Bullitt"

Gee....now I feel reeeeally old.....

Read about it here.

And enjoy the video......


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Field Day AAR

Well, we've had better Field Days, but nobody got hurt, the food was acceptable, the weather was great, and we all had a good time.

On the flip side, due to a solar event a few days previous, propagation was downright stinky on Saturday, making things pretty dull for the guys on HF ("Shortwave").

And try as we could, we just couldn't chase Murphy away this year.

My son forgot we use Friday as a set up day, and didn't take vacation, so I got nothing done at the site on my own station.

Then he upgraded the OS in his iPhone, which nuked his address book, and lost the GPS location of my house.

He got lost, had to call me, and got here 90 minutes late, putting us waaaay off schedule for this year.

Meanwhile, back at the site....

One guy had the lifting cable in his crank-up tower snap when the tower was about 24" up from the bottom, a very good time to have it break. The antenna doesn't drop too far, and nothing was damaged.

The antenna for that station wound up being about 15~18 feet above ground, which really put a dent in how well it worked.

The next station somehow managed to kill his radio, a Kenwood TS-2000 a normally reliable radio. We got him on a spare radio one of the other guys had, at which point he started wondering about his antenna working correctly.

Considering that this particular antenna gets mediocre reviews on eHam, we erected a telescopic mast, and hung a dipole on it.

And I had some really weird "Reverse Desense" problems that I never could overcome, but I think I know what it might be. I swapped out my filters and preamps (the most likely culprits) with no effect, so I just stuck to FO-29 for the weekend.

I "only" made 22 contacts, about half of what I normally do.

And my Azimuth rotor "broke" (I think) on the ride home. It now freewheels when it should be very hard to turn by hand, so I have to look in to what happened there. I transported the mount, rotors, and antennas fully assembled, and I think I shook something a wee bit too hard on the ride back home.

And I forgot my camera, BOTH days!

Only the guys running the CW station got through the whole weekend without a single problem.

Must have been all the garlic they hung around their trailer......

OUCH! I Killed My Optima Deep Cycle Battery

OOOPS!

Well, it's 7 years old, and I got a LOT of use out of it. I'd been charging it every few months to keep it from getting sulfated, and I just realized I hadn't had it out to use, or charge, in about a year.

It *might* come back if I get a different charger that will whack it with high-current pulses, but in my experience, while it might come back, you'll never get anywhere near full capacity out of it.

Lesson learned (actually, lesson remembered): CHARGE the damn thing on a regular basis!

I'll put it in the car, and exchange it for a new one on the way home from setting things up today.

Ready for Field Day

Made a bunch of satellite contacts over on Sunday, confirming things work As Advertised.

I pick up a little 5 x 7 trailer from U-Haul on Thursday, load it up Friday with my son, and head down to the site for setup.

More info on Field Day, and all things Amateur Radio, at the ARRL website.

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Happy Father's Day!

To all my fellow Dads out there!

My Dad passed away in 1992, and I never realized how much I loved him until he was gone. But then I think it's that way with a lot of Father's and sons. We never appreciate all they did for us, and all the things they taught us. It's that old "Two Males Bumping Heads" thing.

I'm blessed I have a better relationship with my son than my Dad did with me. My Dad was pretty "Old School", and we used to disagree on some things that I thought were important. I know now that he just didn't understand why I did some of the things I did, and I didn't understand that he didn't understand.

Some of my "projects", the race cars in particular, he was vehemently against. He always said that if I wanted to be a "grease monkey", I should join the Army and "Learn to do it right!".

To this day I don't know if that was a slam against the Army, or me......Dad was a SeaBee in WWII, and truly loved the Navy.

He didn't understand that I looked at it like an Engineering Project, to build the best car I could, using my 'different' way of looking at things than most other car builders did.

He finally got a glimmer when he stopped in to visit with the machinist that was doing all my work. He knew the machinist's Dad from the navy, and had sold my guy his Bridgeport mill and Logan lathe.

My machinist showed him the work he was doing for me, all my detailed notes and drawings for the parts I was having fabricated, and told my Dad that my concepts were some of the most innovative he'd ever seen, and Dad should be proud of me for being able to think like that, and having the ability to put it on paper, proper drawings and all.

After that, Dad kinda quit bugging me about the car, and when I started setting records, I heard from friends that he was baffled about why I was doing it, but proud of the good job I was doing.

So, in honor of Dad's everywhere, here's an old post I did sometime back.

Things My Father Taught Me

Any job worth doing is worth doing well, or don't do it at all.

If you don't know, ASK!

If you think you know, but aren't sure, find an expert and ASK!

(My Dad really did believe the “No Such Thing As A Dumb Question” mantra).

LEARN the proper, correct names of your tools, whether a hand tool or a machine tool.

Make a drawing or sketch and materials list before you start.

Have all the required tools and materials on hand before starting.

Do your layout work on the side that won't be seen, and protect the finish side during cutting and machining.

Measure TWICE, cut ONCE!

Remove all jewelry and loose clothing before using machine tools. Roll your sleeves up, and tie back long hair.

Buy the best tools you can afford. The “pain” of paying for quality tools only lasts a little while, while the pain of using cheap tools lasts much longer, and costs much more in damaged projects and scrap.

Always clean your tools and work area when you're done for the day. Store your tools properly.

Promptly clean any liquid spilled on the floor, and keep the floor swept clean of any chips.

If using someone else's tools or work area, leave them/it cleaner than when you started.

Keep your cutting tools sharp. Don't let them bang around in your tool box. Dull tools can damage your work and cause accidents.

Keep your measuring tools clean and in a separate drawer. Precision tools should be treated as such, and not allowed to bang around in a drawer with other tools.

NEVER force a tool to do a job it wasn't designed for!

NEVER “store” the chuck key for your drill press in the chuck!

Always clamp the work to the table, or use a drilling vise to hold it. Thin metal will “bite” when the bit breaks through the other side, and a spinning workpiece can be extremely dangerous.

When possible, 'back up' your workpiece with a wood block or sheet so that you don't drill into the table.

NEVER use your hands to remove the swarf or chips! Besides being very sharp, they can also be very hot. Use a small brush to remove them.

Know the “Speeds and Feeds” for the material you're working with. Aluminum is very different than steel.

Use the proper coolant/lubricant when required.

NEVER grind plastic, aluminum, copper, or “soft” brass on a grinding wheel!

Keep your grinding wheels dressed and true, and stand off to the side when turning on the grinder.

(Always good advice. I've had grinding wheels fly apart a second or two after I turned the grinder on, and wire-wheels shed all their wire!)

Unless you have no choice, or no other tool, use a WRENCH on a bolt or nut, not a pair of pliers.

There are at least four types of 'cross-point' screw heads, and they're NOT all “Phillips heads”.

(In case you're interested, there's Phillips, Fearson, JIS B 1012, Pozidriv, Supadriv, Torq-set, and a couple of others that I forget. The driver tips or bits are NOT interchangeable among them, as they'll either chew up the screw, the bit, or both!)

There's no such thing as a “Flat Head Screwdriver”. There are flat BLADE screwdrivers, but a “Flat Head” is a type of head on a screw, not the tool to turn it.

A Pipe Wrench is NOT a Monkey Wrench.

The teeth on a hacksaw blade point FORWARDS when it's properly installed.

Hacksaws and files cut on the FORWARD stroke ONLY. Lift them off the work on the back stroke.

It's a poor workman who blames his tools.