Tinkering on the "new" car. So far I've changed the oil and filter after adding some Bardahl "Motor Flush" and running her on the highway for about 30 minutes, changed the transmission lube to Red Line Synthetic "MT-90", changed the differential lube to Red Line Synthetic 75W90 with 4 oz of Red Line friction modifier for limited-slip differentials, trouble shot and replaced the rear speakers (one had an open voice coil, and the other had broken wiring), troubleshot and got all the interior lights working (blown fuse; no shorts anywhere), troubleshot and got the power mirrors working (another blown fuse; no shorts), and gave her a really good bath. Scrubbed the rims twice to get most of the crud off, but they'll have to be pulled and individually detailed.
Now that she's clean, I found about half a dozen good sized stone chips that need to be touched up. NONE of the auto parts stores around here had Toyota paint code 040 "Super White" paint, so I ordered a couple of the little Dupli-Color paint "pens" to touch up the nicks.
Today I pulled the battery and cleaned out all the (very minor) corrosion that I found. Treated the metal with some rust encapsulator, primed it, and then painted it with the only can of the correct color paint I was able to find.
Installed a new battery of the correct size (the battery in there was about half the size of the correct one!) after the paint dried, and took the wife out for a late afternoon cruise.
Next week I'll get her smogged, and head to AAA to get the registration updated.
After that, I'm waiting on all the parts I've ordered to rebuild the front suspension. The passenger side boot/bellows on the steering rack is split and needs replacing, so as long as I have to tear it down that far to replace the boot, I'm also going to change both front struts and the top strut mounts, all the tie rod ends (inner and outer), and replace all the bushings with performance oriented "Poly" bushings. I'm also going to replace the rear shocks, but even though I ordered all the replacement bushings, I'll hold off on that a while.
Also received my new FUNCube Pro + dongle, so I'll be playing with that one and comparing it to the original FUNCube dongle I have.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
New Project For The New Year!
Yeah, as if I didn't enough "stuff" to keep me busy all the time.....
For the last year or so I've been dreaming of a Project Car to get me back to my Hot Rodding/Racing roots, and with the approval of my loving wife, I started seriously considering different cars that I've known and loved, along with my modest budget consideration.
1967 Mustang fastback with a small block and 4 speed?
$25k minimum!
Same with Camaros, Firebirds, Barracudas, and other Pony Cars.
Totally out of the question......
I tossed around the ides of maybe a Toyota MR2, or a Mazda Miata of certain model years. One of my ideas was to get a Miata, and put in a small-block Ford (they're several inches narrower than a small-lock Chevy), but then I ran afoul of Kaliforniastan's arcane smog laws.
The engine has to be the same year, or newer, than the car it's going into, and the completed vehicle must have all the smog equipment for the car, and for the engine.
Exceptions are possible, but either inconvenient (convert it to run on propane or 100% ethanol and you get a pass), or very expen$ive to accomplish.
Now mind you, this will NOT be my daily driver car....it'll be a week-end/nice day/warm summer evening car, and will maybe get a few thousand miles a year put on it. Considering I only drive about 5,000 miles a year normally, I doubt I'd come anywhere near to "a few thousand miles", but the Smog Nazis don't care about, and have no reasonable provisions for a Special Interest Vehicle.
Never mind that my cars are always properly maintained and tuned, The Smog Nazis of The People's Rebuplik of Kaliforniastan has no place in their stone-cold hearts, or their little reptilian pea brains, for a "fun car" that's rarely driven. No, in the fine bureaucratic spirit of "It's For The Children!!", we simply can't have citizens driving around in unregulated cars.
The cut-off date for "smog exempt" cars used to be a "Rolling 25", but they've since capped that to "1975 or earlier", coinciding with the general beginning of the Catalytic Converter Era. This has driven the price of pre-1975 cars through the roof out here.
So, I started thumbing through old car magazines, and old memories, and came up with a list of what I considered suitable vehicles.
Well, anyway.....I've wanted a "MKII" Toyota Supra ever since I first saw one. The Mark-II was first released in 1982, and was supposed to be discontinued for the Mark-III at the end of the 1985 model year, BUT the new Mark-III wasn't quite ready, so Toyota keep the production line rolling until about half way through 1986, when the Mark-III was introduced as a "1986-1/2", similar to what many other car companies have done.
The 1985/86 cars were the best sorted out ones of the genre, with the highest horsepower and torque figures, and all the bugs worked out of the electronics. These cars are right on the verge of being recognized as "Classics" due to their design, features, build quality, and low numbers, but the car collecting world hasn't quite gotten hot on them yet..
I started looking about 6 months ago, using eBay, Craigslist, Auto Trader, and Google, and found that what I considered "good ones" were getting hard to find. Almost all of the ones I looked at had trashed interiors (and "soft item" parts are difficult to come by), had been wrecked and poorly repaired, had been turned into a "Drift Car", were way overpriced for their condition, or had 300,000+ miles on them (Toyota reliability!) and needed a complete overhaul.
A couple were "All of the Above".
And then I found this one. The original owner in Riverside/Redlands, California had it from April 1985 until June of 2013. I don't know why he sold it (possibly estate sale?), but he sold it to a woman who was planning on using it for a gift/bribe to her son if he finished high-school, got a job, and straightened himself out. He didn't, and after months of keeping the car, she sold the car to the third owner, the guy I bought it from. He only had it three weeks during which his girlfriend gave him unmitigated grief over "You have too many toys now, we don't have a place to keep it, your grandma is getting tired of your three motorcycles and boat over there, my car has to sit on the street because even our driveway is full of your stuff, and if you don't get rid of SOMETHING, I'M leaving!".
After contacting him via Craigslist email, we finally made arrangements to meet on December 31st. My wife drove me to his grandma's house, where I spent a good 30 minutes crawling over it with a flashlight waiting for him to get there. Finally after 30 minutes I called him, and he was "Oh SHIT! What time is it? I just upgraded my iPhone, and now the clock is off!", which I believed as the same thing happened to my son.
My wife thought he probably didn't want to sell the car, but from his emails and phone calls, I thought he was serious about it.
SO....the wife and I spent another 20 minutes going over the car together waiting for him the arrive. She thought it was an exceptional car for being almost 30 years old, although it definitely showed the effects of sitting in the high desert for 8 months, and being a high-desert car from it's "birth".
It "only" has 167,000 miles on it, not bad for an almost 30 year old car, and only about "half used up" for a Toyota of this vintage.
After he got there we talked a bit, he got the keys out of grandma's house, and after connecting the battery, it fired right up, and within a few minutes the idle was coming down, the water temp was coming up, the oil pressure looked good, and the tach was steady.
The wife and I took it for about a 20 minute test drive, and she was impressed at how smooth it ran, rode, and how much "pep" (her words) it had. I was pretty happy with it, and she told me that after all the other junk we'd looked at, she thought this one seemed like a good buy, but "Offer him $2500 and see if he takes it"!
Since it was advertised as having "new tires", and it didn't (they have 6,000 miles but SIX YEARS on them! Sidewalls have some cracking, but they have plenty of tread), I tried to negotiate him down $200 to cover about 1/3 the cost of a new set.
No deal. He told me he had over 100 emails from Craig'slist, and several other people waiting with cash-in-hand, and while he'd rather see it go to me than to some "punked out kid who'll race it and destroy it", money was money, and he wanted $3000 FIRM. He reminded me that he'd already stalled several other people so I could get first dibs on the car if I wanted it.
I paid him the three grand, and drove it home.
Here she is, getting her first oil change in God-only-knows how long:
Yes, the hydraulic lift cylinders are shot, requiring a piece of PVC pipe to hold the hood open, but new ones are on the way.
All original, NO leaks:
DOHC Toyota power!
No corrosion, but LOTS of desert dust!
More under-the-hood originality. The tops of the strut mounts are cracked, but since I'm planning on replacing the front struts/rear shocks with KYB units, all this will be replaced:
There was black plastic cladding over this stainless door beltline window molding, but they were so cracked and split I peeled them off and tossed them. They weren't salvageable at all.
Notice all the sand/dust that was trapped under the molding:
Same with the windshield trim. All the black coating is peeling off, and looks terrible, for now. IF I can get OEM or good used parts, that's what I'll go with, but since some of these items are now 'unobtainium', I may just take the trim off, clean it of all residue, and have it powder coated:
The Supra "billboard" decal is really faded, as is the rear sunshade (it's not a spoiler!), but the decals are available on the aftermarket. I'll hold off on those until I decide if it needs to be painted or not.
And IF I paint the car, all the glass and interior trim is coming out, and almost everything that bolts on to body (mirrors, bumper covers, etc) will also come off so the new paint job can be properly done. I already have new gaskets to hold the windows in. One is a high-quality reproduction, and the others are NOS parts.
NO rust where the spoiler attaches to the hatch, a common point of rust on these cars:
The bottom of the hatch is also clean, a very common "rust out" point on these:
The inside it quite good, considering most of these cars from here on the West Coast have the dash pads all cracked and split:
The carpet on the driver's side has some extreme discoloration, so I'm not sure if I'll try cleaning it, or of it will have to be replaced. I have to pull the driver's seat and door sill to fix the gas door/rear hatch release mechanism where it came loose from the floor, making it a bit inconvenient to get the gas filler door open. I'll price out new carpet before that, as I want to pull the seats and console anyway to do a deep cleaning of the interior.
I originally wanted to get the seats recovered with leather, but man, these fabric seats are just soooo comfortable compared to the leather ones in my Jeep, that I'm thinking I'll just save that money, and clean these really well while they're out. The chrome plastic trim you see around the seat backshell in the above picture is cracked on the passenger seat, and a chunk is missing on the driver's seat, but that's an aftermarket item (about $25 for both seats) that's on the way, and is more easily replaced while the seats are out.
And the shift lever boot and center console armrest are in deplorable condition and need to be replaced and recovered.
I've got a two page list of things I need to fix, like all the interior lights are out except for the radio and instrument cluster, the power antenna is either jammed or miswired to the radio, the rear speakers don't work, and the front ones sound terrible, and so on, but they're all pretty minor compared to RUST and major mechanical problems.
It has new clutch master and slave cylinders, but the clutch doesn't fully release, so they either weren't properly adjusted, or bled, or both.
But it shifts smooth, brakes great (no pulling or noise), goes straight with your hands off the wheel, idles smooth, and pulls like a freight train that's running behind schedule and driven by an Engineer with a hottie waiting for him at home!
And in a sly kind of way, I reminded my wife that all the crawling around, stretching for things, moving equipment around, and keeping busy in general, will help me to lose weight.
Toyota.....from the days of "Oh, What A Feeling!".......
For the last year or so I've been dreaming of a Project Car to get me back to my Hot Rodding/Racing roots, and with the approval of my loving wife, I started seriously considering different cars that I've known and loved, along with my modest budget consideration.
1967 Mustang fastback with a small block and 4 speed?
$25k minimum!
Same with Camaros, Firebirds, Barracudas, and other Pony Cars.
Totally out of the question......
I tossed around the ides of maybe a Toyota MR2, or a Mazda Miata of certain model years. One of my ideas was to get a Miata, and put in a small-block Ford (they're several inches narrower than a small-lock Chevy), but then I ran afoul of Kaliforniastan's arcane smog laws.
The engine has to be the same year, or newer, than the car it's going into, and the completed vehicle must have all the smog equipment for the car, and for the engine.
Exceptions are possible, but either inconvenient (convert it to run on propane or 100% ethanol and you get a pass), or very expen$ive to accomplish.
Now mind you, this will NOT be my daily driver car....it'll be a week-end/nice day/warm summer evening car, and will maybe get a few thousand miles a year put on it. Considering I only drive about 5,000 miles a year normally, I doubt I'd come anywhere near to "a few thousand miles", but the Smog Nazis don't care about, and have no reasonable provisions for a Special Interest Vehicle.
Never mind that my cars are always properly maintained and tuned, The Smog Nazis of The People's Rebuplik of Kaliforniastan has no place in their stone-cold hearts, or their little reptilian pea brains, for a "fun car" that's rarely driven. No, in the fine bureaucratic spirit of "It's For The Children!!", we simply can't have citizens driving around in unregulated cars.
The cut-off date for "smog exempt" cars used to be a "Rolling 25", but they've since capped that to "1975 or earlier", coinciding with the general beginning of the Catalytic Converter Era. This has driven the price of pre-1975 cars through the roof out here.
So, I started thumbing through old car magazines, and old memories, and came up with a list of what I considered suitable vehicles.
Well, anyway.....I've wanted a "MKII" Toyota Supra ever since I first saw one. The Mark-II was first released in 1982, and was supposed to be discontinued for the Mark-III at the end of the 1985 model year, BUT the new Mark-III wasn't quite ready, so Toyota keep the production line rolling until about half way through 1986, when the Mark-III was introduced as a "1986-1/2", similar to what many other car companies have done.
The 1985/86 cars were the best sorted out ones of the genre, with the highest horsepower and torque figures, and all the bugs worked out of the electronics. These cars are right on the verge of being recognized as "Classics" due to their design, features, build quality, and low numbers, but the car collecting world hasn't quite gotten hot on them yet..
I started looking about 6 months ago, using eBay, Craigslist, Auto Trader, and Google, and found that what I considered "good ones" were getting hard to find. Almost all of the ones I looked at had trashed interiors (and "soft item" parts are difficult to come by), had been wrecked and poorly repaired, had been turned into a "Drift Car", were way overpriced for their condition, or had 300,000+ miles on them (Toyota reliability!) and needed a complete overhaul.
A couple were "All of the Above".
And then I found this one. The original owner in Riverside/Redlands, California had it from April 1985 until June of 2013. I don't know why he sold it (possibly estate sale?), but he sold it to a woman who was planning on using it for a gift/bribe to her son if he finished high-school, got a job, and straightened himself out. He didn't, and after months of keeping the car, she sold the car to the third owner, the guy I bought it from. He only had it three weeks during which his girlfriend gave him unmitigated grief over "You have too many toys now, we don't have a place to keep it, your grandma is getting tired of your three motorcycles and boat over there, my car has to sit on the street because even our driveway is full of your stuff, and if you don't get rid of SOMETHING, I'M leaving!".
After contacting him via Craigslist email, we finally made arrangements to meet on December 31st. My wife drove me to his grandma's house, where I spent a good 30 minutes crawling over it with a flashlight waiting for him to get there. Finally after 30 minutes I called him, and he was "Oh SHIT! What time is it? I just upgraded my iPhone, and now the clock is off!", which I believed as the same thing happened to my son.
My wife thought he probably didn't want to sell the car, but from his emails and phone calls, I thought he was serious about it.
SO....the wife and I spent another 20 minutes going over the car together waiting for him the arrive. She thought it was an exceptional car for being almost 30 years old, although it definitely showed the effects of sitting in the high desert for 8 months, and being a high-desert car from it's "birth".
It "only" has 167,000 miles on it, not bad for an almost 30 year old car, and only about "half used up" for a Toyota of this vintage.
After he got there we talked a bit, he got the keys out of grandma's house, and after connecting the battery, it fired right up, and within a few minutes the idle was coming down, the water temp was coming up, the oil pressure looked good, and the tach was steady.
The wife and I took it for about a 20 minute test drive, and she was impressed at how smooth it ran, rode, and how much "pep" (her words) it had. I was pretty happy with it, and she told me that after all the other junk we'd looked at, she thought this one seemed like a good buy, but "Offer him $2500 and see if he takes it"!
Since it was advertised as having "new tires", and it didn't (they have 6,000 miles but SIX YEARS on them! Sidewalls have some cracking, but they have plenty of tread), I tried to negotiate him down $200 to cover about 1/3 the cost of a new set.
No deal. He told me he had over 100 emails from Craig'slist, and several other people waiting with cash-in-hand, and while he'd rather see it go to me than to some "punked out kid who'll race it and destroy it", money was money, and he wanted $3000 FIRM. He reminded me that he'd already stalled several other people so I could get first dibs on the car if I wanted it.
I paid him the three grand, and drove it home.
Here she is, getting her first oil change in God-only-knows how long:
Yes, the hydraulic lift cylinders are shot, requiring a piece of PVC pipe to hold the hood open, but new ones are on the way.
All original, NO leaks:
DOHC Toyota power!
No corrosion, but LOTS of desert dust!
More under-the-hood originality. The tops of the strut mounts are cracked, but since I'm planning on replacing the front struts/rear shocks with KYB units, all this will be replaced:
There was black plastic cladding over this stainless door beltline window molding, but they were so cracked and split I peeled them off and tossed them. They weren't salvageable at all.
Notice all the sand/dust that was trapped under the molding:
Same with the windshield trim. All the black coating is peeling off, and looks terrible, for now. IF I can get OEM or good used parts, that's what I'll go with, but since some of these items are now 'unobtainium', I may just take the trim off, clean it of all residue, and have it powder coated:
The Supra "billboard" decal is really faded, as is the rear sunshade (it's not a spoiler!), but the decals are available on the aftermarket. I'll hold off on those until I decide if it needs to be painted or not.
And IF I paint the car, all the glass and interior trim is coming out, and almost everything that bolts on to body (mirrors, bumper covers, etc) will also come off so the new paint job can be properly done. I already have new gaskets to hold the windows in. One is a high-quality reproduction, and the others are NOS parts.
NO rust where the spoiler attaches to the hatch, a common point of rust on these cars:
The bottom of the hatch is also clean, a very common "rust out" point on these:
The inside it quite good, considering most of these cars from here on the West Coast have the dash pads all cracked and split:
The carpet on the driver's side has some extreme discoloration, so I'm not sure if I'll try cleaning it, or of it will have to be replaced. I have to pull the driver's seat and door sill to fix the gas door/rear hatch release mechanism where it came loose from the floor, making it a bit inconvenient to get the gas filler door open. I'll price out new carpet before that, as I want to pull the seats and console anyway to do a deep cleaning of the interior.
I originally wanted to get the seats recovered with leather, but man, these fabric seats are just soooo comfortable compared to the leather ones in my Jeep, that I'm thinking I'll just save that money, and clean these really well while they're out. The chrome plastic trim you see around the seat backshell in the above picture is cracked on the passenger seat, and a chunk is missing on the driver's seat, but that's an aftermarket item (about $25 for both seats) that's on the way, and is more easily replaced while the seats are out.
And the shift lever boot and center console armrest are in deplorable condition and need to be replaced and recovered.
I've got a two page list of things I need to fix, like all the interior lights are out except for the radio and instrument cluster, the power antenna is either jammed or miswired to the radio, the rear speakers don't work, and the front ones sound terrible, and so on, but they're all pretty minor compared to RUST and major mechanical problems.
It has new clutch master and slave cylinders, but the clutch doesn't fully release, so they either weren't properly adjusted, or bled, or both.
But it shifts smooth, brakes great (no pulling or noise), goes straight with your hands off the wheel, idles smooth, and pulls like a freight train that's running behind schedule and driven by an Engineer with a hottie waiting for him at home!
And in a sly kind of way, I reminded my wife that all the crawling around, stretching for things, moving equipment around, and keeping busy in general, will help me to lose weight.
Toyota.....from the days of "Oh, What A Feeling!".......
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Happy New Year.....I Hope!
Thought I'd get an early start to the well wishes.
Don't stay out too late tonight, and DON'T drink and drive!
My wife and I were joking about how late we'd be able to stay up tonight. The consensus was maybe 11pm.
I have some errands to do today, and some other running around, but I'll be back here before 6pm.
And the weight loss is coming along nicely since my Doctor told me I had to drop 30 pounds by July. My wife has some very good diabetic cookbooks, and I knocked off eating most of the junky stuff I'd been nibbling on during the day. I think this will be the first Christmas season that I didn't gain 5 pounds, but rather lost 5 pounds!
I probably won't make it to the rifle range over the holiday, as I have a new project coming up, but I did field strip my M1, clean it, and properly grease it with some moly-based wheel bearing grease that most of my Garand books recommend. A dab here, a dab there, and an 'extra' dab where the Operating Rod slide back and forth in the channel.
Took me about 45 minutes from start to finish, but the extra time was spent learning all the parts, and inspecting them in their "as new" condition so I can spot wear patterns as they develop, and catch any parts that start to go bad. One of the things I have to do is get some spares for it so I can keep it running if it ever breaks down, something that shouldn't happen if I take care of it, and maintain it correctly. Still, I'm big on having spares (usually double spares!) on hand to minimize downtime if a failure occurs. It's worked well before, and I always replenish my stock of parts asoon as I draw one out for repairs.
So, hope you all have a safe New Year's Eve, and here's hoping we can get things back on-the-rails for 2014!
Don't stay out too late tonight, and DON'T drink and drive!
My wife and I were joking about how late we'd be able to stay up tonight. The consensus was maybe 11pm.
I have some errands to do today, and some other running around, but I'll be back here before 6pm.
And the weight loss is coming along nicely since my Doctor told me I had to drop 30 pounds by July. My wife has some very good diabetic cookbooks, and I knocked off eating most of the junky stuff I'd been nibbling on during the day. I think this will be the first Christmas season that I didn't gain 5 pounds, but rather lost 5 pounds!
I probably won't make it to the rifle range over the holiday, as I have a new project coming up, but I did field strip my M1, clean it, and properly grease it with some moly-based wheel bearing grease that most of my Garand books recommend. A dab here, a dab there, and an 'extra' dab where the Operating Rod slide back and forth in the channel.
Took me about 45 minutes from start to finish, but the extra time was spent learning all the parts, and inspecting them in their "as new" condition so I can spot wear patterns as they develop, and catch any parts that start to go bad. One of the things I have to do is get some spares for it so I can keep it running if it ever breaks down, something that shouldn't happen if I take care of it, and maintain it correctly. Still, I'm big on having spares (usually double spares!) on hand to minimize downtime if a failure occurs. It's worked well before, and I always replenish my stock of parts asoon as I draw one out for repairs.
So, hope you all have a safe New Year's Eve, and here's hoping we can get things back on-the-rails for 2014!
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
How You Speak Reveals Where You're From
As if we all didn't know this.
Jeffro over at the Poor Farm found this, and it nailed my hometown so close it's scary!
For some reason when I copied the image it left the cities off, but the darkest red around and a bit South West of where Chicago is is where I grew up.
Yep, I knew "Joilet Jake" and his bother Elwood......
Jeffro over at the Poor Farm found this, and it nailed my hometown so close it's scary!
For some reason when I copied the image it left the cities off, but the darkest red around and a bit South West of where Chicago is is where I grew up.
Yep, I knew "Joilet Jake" and his bother Elwood......
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Monday, December 23, 2013
Saturday, December 21, 2013
The Chamber Brothers "Time Has Come Today"
Love it or hate it, this song was one of the defining songs of "my" generation.
Working on the "Honey Dew" list today while the wife is out visiting friends.
Have to recaulk the bathtub seal to the tile on thee wall, fill in some holes the little dog created, and start cleaning up/organizing the Radio Room, which I have let totally get out of hand over the last several months of working on projects and such.
Hope y'all have a good weekend, and I'm off work for the next SIXTEEN days.
YAY!
Working on the "Honey Dew" list today while the wife is out visiting friends.
Have to recaulk the bathtub seal to the tile on thee wall, fill in some holes the little dog created, and start cleaning up/organizing the Radio Room, which I have let totally get out of hand over the last several months of working on projects and such.
Hope y'all have a good weekend, and I'm off work for the next SIXTEEN days.
YAY!
Thursday, December 19, 2013
YAY! Finished With Training Classes!
And I'm now "Certified" in various areas of Electrical Bonding, Resistance Measurements of Bonds, Connector Engaging and Disengaging ("Mate" and "Demate" are no longer allowed to be used!), Moldable Plastic Shims (basically epoxy spacers used in structural applications), Electrical Torque, Basic Torque, and Soldering.
I aced all the written exams, and the other students kept coming over to look at my finished soldered connections (turret terminals, bifurcated terminals, hook connections, solder lugs, and connector pins) to see how they should look, and were asking me as many questions as they were the instructor!
He was really good about it, and told my manager the other day that I was probably at least as qualified as he was to teach the class, a nice little pat on the back.
These are training courses I'd taken several times in the past when I worked for the company that started the enterprise, so they were nothing new to me, but more of a refresher, always good to take, as with shooting, some of these are perishable skills if you don't exercise them often.
And speaking of shooting, my two former workmates that I helped instruct during the recent "NRA First Steps Pistol" class have taking to their new hobby with great zeal and enthusiasm. One of them called me yesterday to ask about renting the range we use for a day so she could "sponsor" a "Day At The Range" for a group of friends. I checked with the range, and while they're willing to rent the range for $2500 per day, my friend thought that was a bit out of her price range, and decided to get an accurate headcount of attendees, and only rent two or three lanes for several hours. Most of the people she mentioned have some firearms experience, so I wouldn't be flooded with 10~12 complete rookies, not that I mind, but at least the people would have some idea of Range Safety and the Four Rules.
I'll still go over these important items with them before we step onto the range, and I'll see if I can get another instructor friend to give me a hand.
I aced all the written exams, and the other students kept coming over to look at my finished soldered connections (turret terminals, bifurcated terminals, hook connections, solder lugs, and connector pins) to see how they should look, and were asking me as many questions as they were the instructor!
He was really good about it, and told my manager the other day that I was probably at least as qualified as he was to teach the class, a nice little pat on the back.
These are training courses I'd taken several times in the past when I worked for the company that started the enterprise, so they were nothing new to me, but more of a refresher, always good to take, as with shooting, some of these are perishable skills if you don't exercise them often.
And speaking of shooting, my two former workmates that I helped instruct during the recent "NRA First Steps Pistol" class have taking to their new hobby with great zeal and enthusiasm. One of them called me yesterday to ask about renting the range we use for a day so she could "sponsor" a "Day At The Range" for a group of friends. I checked with the range, and while they're willing to rent the range for $2500 per day, my friend thought that was a bit out of her price range, and decided to get an accurate headcount of attendees, and only rent two or three lanes for several hours. Most of the people she mentioned have some firearms experience, so I wouldn't be flooded with 10~12 complete rookies, not that I mind, but at least the people would have some idea of Range Safety and the Four Rules.
I'll still go over these important items with them before we step onto the range, and I'll see if I can get another instructor friend to give me a hand.
Monday, December 16, 2013
NOAA APT Satellites with A FUNCube Dongle, Gqrx, and WXtoIMG
WELL.....in case anybody's been wondering, I've been adjusting the parameters (high-tech talk for "messing around with") on the Gqrx SDR receiver program, while making some antenna adjustments.
I still don't have a 137MHz bandpass filter, but by carefully adjusting the software RF gain control in the receiver program, along with a few antenna tweaks, I've got this process fairly well nailed down.
First, the antenna.
I came home from work Friday ("Moldable Plastic Shim" class...MESSY!), and as I turned down the street, I didn't see the eggbeater sticking up.
Uh-Oh!
WELL.....the dogs (Pebbles, I'd bet on it!) decided the extra length of RG-6QS coax I had coiled up where it came into the house looked like a great tug-of-war toy, and they (she?) yanked on it hard enough to destroy the connector before it pulled through my bulkhead pass-through, and pulled the antenna over!
Fortunately ( ? ) it laded across the telephone and FiOS cable drops from the utility pole in the back yard, and didn't come crashing down to the ground.
Since I had just cable-tied it to my "portable" satellite mount and antenna, I had to take all that stuff apart, cut the super-duty cable ties I used, and get everything separated,
Since I now had the mount completely stripped, I was able to get the mast with the eggbeater on it mounted parallel to the large diameter mast on the mount, and secure it with some large stainless hose clamps. I was then able to get the whole shebang vertical again, and this time I put four concrete blocks on the base to keep it vertical!
I took about 90 minutes to get that "almost disaster" was averted, and the antenna back in the air where it belongs.
The sceenshot below shows how I have mine set up.
I still don't have a 137MHz bandpass filter, but by carefully adjusting the software RF gain control in the receiver program, along with a few antenna tweaks, I've got this process fairly well nailed down.
First, the antenna.
I came home from work Friday ("Moldable Plastic Shim" class...MESSY!), and as I turned down the street, I didn't see the eggbeater sticking up.
Uh-Oh!
WELL.....the dogs (Pebbles, I'd bet on it!) decided the extra length of RG-6QS coax I had coiled up where it came into the house looked like a great tug-of-war toy, and they (she?) yanked on it hard enough to destroy the connector before it pulled through my bulkhead pass-through, and pulled the antenna over!
Fortunately ( ? ) it laded across the telephone and FiOS cable drops from the utility pole in the back yard, and didn't come crashing down to the ground.
Since I had just cable-tied it to my "portable" satellite mount and antenna, I had to take all that stuff apart, cut the super-duty cable ties I used, and get everything separated,
Since I now had the mount completely stripped, I was able to get the mast with the eggbeater on it mounted parallel to the large diameter mast on the mount, and secure it with some large stainless hose clamps. I was then able to get the whole shebang vertical again, and this time I put four concrete blocks on the base to keep it vertical!
I took about 90 minutes to get that "almost disaster" was averted, and the antenna back in the air where it belongs.
Gqrx Configuration
This is what I've found works acceptably well with a FUNCube dongle, and the antenna I have. This only applies to the "Gqrx SDR" program I'm running, which is freely downloadable for Linux of Mac OSX. He includes the source code on his website, so you might be able to compile it for Windows, but that's beyond this little post.
This first part concerns controls on the "Input Controls" tab.
#1. Calibrate the frequency! You do this by tuning in a known station, and adjusting the "Frequency Corr." to get the carrier of the station centered on the red fiducial line. I used NOAA Weather Radio on 162.550 MHz to do this. Click either the "up" arrow or "down" arrow to adjust the frequency as required.
In my case the dongle needed a -17ppm correction to center NOAA on the red line. Your dongle will be different.
The screenshot below shows the correct Frequency Correction, along with the RF Gain slider being reduced, and the "DC Cancel" box checked, so the next two steps are included in it,. You don't need to drag the RF Gain slider with your mouse. Just click it to change the focus, and use the left and right arrow keys for better granularity in adjusting it.
The screenshot below shows the correct Frequency Correction, along with the RF Gain slider being reduced, and the "DC Cancel" box checked, so the next two steps are included in it,. You don't need to drag the RF Gain slider with your mouse. Just click it to change the focus, and use the left and right arrow keys for better granularity in adjusting it.
#2. Set the RF Gain slider (in the "Input Controls" tab) to no more than 5 "ticks" to the right of the "zero" setting. You might be able to get away running more gain if you live in an area with few strong signals, but here in the "RF Alley" of Los Angeles, any more than this will cause you grief if you don't have some decent bandpass filters between the antenna and receiver. I was able to verify this by inserting a DCI-146-4H 2 Meter bandpass filter between the receiver and antenna to listen to the Amateur Radio satellites with 2 Meter downlinks. It pretty much eliminated all the crud and spurs that get internally generated by the dongle when the RF Gain slider is higher than about half way.
The box with the "A" in it to the right of the slider sets the AGC to "Auto", but this isn't supported by all devices.
#3. Check the "DC Cancel" box. This (mostly) gets rid of the "spike" in the center of the screen when no signals are tuned in. The "Swap I/Q" and "I/Q Balance" controls aren't need for this application, so leave the check boxes UNchecked.
This part concerns the controls on the "Receiver Options" tab.
The sceenshot below shows how I have mine set up.
#4. Set the mode to "Narrow FM". Ignore the "Filter" choices as you'll be setting the to a "User" value. Click the little box that looks like a crossed screwdriver and wrench to open the "Mode Options" menu. Set "Max dev" to "APT (17k)", and tun the "Tau" to "OFF". "Tau" is another term for the de-emphasis time constant, and since we want the flattest audio we can get, turn it off.
#5. Grab one side of the gray window in the upper display (it shows the bandwidth), and pull it wider until the "Filter" box changes to "User (40k)". This indicates you have set the receiver bandpass to 40 kHz, wide enough to recover the audio properly, and a little bit more so the Doppler tuning isn't so critical.
#6. The "AGC" and "NB1/NB2" boxes don't need to be adjusted, as they have little effect on FM.
#7. Slide the "SQL" (squelch) slider all the way to the left to turn it off.
This part concerns the "FFT Settings" tab.
#8. These control the spectrum and waterfall displays. The "Averaging" slider controls how fast the spectrum display updates, while the "Panadapter" slider controls how much of the screen the waterfall takes up.
I leave the "FFT size" at the 4096 default, and the "Rate" at the 15fps default.
The "Zoom" "Color" and the "F" in the box are cosmetic, so play with them to see what they do.
This part concerns the "Audio" tab.
And here's the screen you get after you pick or create file save location.
And here's the screen you get after you pick or create file save location.
#9. SET A LOCATION TO RECORD YOUR FILES!
If you don't, the default is a null string, and the program will terminate if you click the red button under the gain slider to start recording the received audio. To select a director, click on the crossed wrench and screwdriver box to open the "Audio Options" menu. The default is the "Documents" folder in your /home directory, but you can save them anywhere.
This should get you set up well enough to hear the satellites, and record them, if you have a decent antenna.
Today's images came out quite well. I suppose I could write some scripts to automate all this, but that would mean leaving a PC running 24/7, something I'd rather not do.
Here's some images from today:
NOAA-18 "A" Channel enhanced:
NOAA-18 "B" Channel enhanced:
NOAA-18 color IR:
NOAA-18 Multi-Spectral:
NOAA-18 Sea Surface Temp:
NOAA-18 Thermal:
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Too Busy To Write
Been going nuts with training classes at work in such mundane things as Fiber Optics, Electrical Bonding and Ground, and Aircraft Tubing and Hose Installation.
BLECH!
But so far I've scored 100% on all the written and practical exams.
Anyway....here's one of my favorites.
Enjoy!
BLECH!
But so far I've scored 100% on all the written and practical exams.
Anyway....here's one of my favorites.
Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Lazy Day.......
Low 90's today, cloudy and breezy, and we'll probably get an afternoon shower because it's that time of year here. Yes, The Fis...
-
Yawn....just more Kabuki Theater, but interesting reading, nonetheless. Read All About It Here.....
-
%20American%20Airlines%20Flight%20Tracking%20and%20History%2004-Aug-2024%20(KDFW-KEGE)%20-%20FlightAware.png)
Every so often when I'm checking my PiAware ADSB receiver/display I'll notice an aircraft with a flight path that catches my eye. I...