How's About a Little ZZ?

One of my favorites.

Those Who Cannot Remember The Past.......

Got this from a friend's email.

I think it says it all.....

"Unbroken" - A Movie of Courage and Valor

We went to see "Unbroken" tonight, and I recommend it to all.

It's the story of Louis "Louie" Zamperini from Torrance, CA, and is based on the book "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption" by Laura Hillenbrand.

My wife bought the book several months ago, and was waiting for the film to come out.

I haven't read the book yet, but I'll get started on it in the next few days.

It's a stirring movie, and doesn't pull any punches concerning the treatment of Allied POW's in Japan.

Highly recommended, and take a box of Kleenex with you.

Loud Music, A Laser Light Show, and Fireworks Going Off

At 2245 local time, that's the extent of New Year's Eve madness in La-La Land.

I suppose things night get a little more nuts, but I'm going to bed.

Hope you all had a safe and sane New Year's Eve, and wishing you all the best for 2015!

Wonderful "Christmas Present" for Us Radio Guys on the Iowa

God bless the guys at PCS Associates!

During the process of troubleshooting the URR-74(v)2 receivers in the radio room, we've been terribly hampered by a lack of usable documentation.

The WJ 8718 receiver is very close to the URR-74, and we were able to find manuals for that receiver, BUT all the freely downloadable manuals were poor copies made into pdf's.

The worst part was that the schematics were copied with the copier magnification improperly set, resulting in a 1"~2" "gap" in the schematic between the two pages it was spread over!

You couldn't get them to overlap so you could tape them together and get a complete schematic, and in some cases it was cut so badly that complete components and/or circuit blocks were missing.

This makes it rather difficult to follow signals on the schematic, as you're never really sure where they're going between the two pages.

I finally found a place that still supports the Watkins Johnson receivers we have aboard the Iowa, and sent an email asking how much it would cost us to BUY a real, correct copy, stating that we weren't looking for a freebie, and would gladly PAY to get the manuals.

Well, this morning I received an email from a very nice gentleman containing the details of the ftp account he set up for me so I could download the manuals they have available!

I grabbed the manuals, and have been looking at them part of the day.

They manuals are crystal clear, and all the schematics are complete, and not butchered up.

I notified our Grey Radio Gang, and we're going to be working up a nice, official "Certificate of Appreciation" for this gentleman and his company.

Merry Christmas, and God Bless Us, Every One!

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

And here's one of my favorite stories from years ago.

"The Star" by Arthur C. Clarke


Forgot to add that we had a Christmas card signing project aboard the Battleship Iowa this year.

We signed and delivered 3051 personalized cards to our troops serving overseas.

"Old School" RTTY Equipment on the Battleship Iowa

Sorry I didn't take more pix of the gear, but I snapped these few after I finished photographing the six HF antennas on the ship.

I took the pix of the antennas so I could document them by their nameplates, and we could compare the what and where of them to the scanty drawings we have.

ANYWHOO....this is a representative of one of the four or five AN/UGC-48A machines abord the Iowa.

This particular one is working perfectly, and has an almost full roll of paper in it.

I am NOT an expert on these by any means, so I can't tell you much about it. In one of my older posts about the equipment in the Comm Center I have a ton of pictures of the RTTY gear, the printers and reperferators, and the CRT-based Data Terminals, which I found out the other day are in working condition. We're trying to find some of the magnetic tape cartridges for them, and supposedly there is a box or two of them stored somewhere on the ship, but this equipment is not on my "TO-DO" list, as I'm more concerned with getting our last non-functioning Watkins-Jenkins AN/URR-74(V)2 receiver working, and learning to replace the chain drives in the 1051 receivers, and the ART-23 exciters.

Nameplate:

Top covers opened:

Close-up of Print Head:

Paper Tape Mechanism:

2nd Tape Mechanism:

2nd Tape Mechanism:

It's definitely neat stuff, but not really in my "knowledge base"!

A Day at the Workbench

Spent the day catching up on some stuff.

*Cleaned my Kimber 1911

*Cleaned my wife's TRR-8 revolver

And started building the little "Digital Modes Sound Card Interface" for the Kenwood TS-940 we use on the Iowa for CW. The guy who donated it used to be a RTTY operator "Back In The Day", and was blown away when I told him you no longer need a "HAL Interface"
 

and a lumbering Model 19 Teletype machine to operate Radio Teletype ("RTTY") any longer.

These days, a PC is used to generate and decode audio frequencies corresponding to "Mark" and "Space", and the audio signals are sent to/received from the audio circuits of the radio.

The "nice" thing about doing it this way is that you're no longer limited by the hardware you have to just RTTY. You can also transmit and receive Slow Scan TV, PSK-31, WEFAX, and many other "Digital Modes" on the ham bands.

After I finish and test the little interface, I'll post a few pictures of it.

Earthrise 45 Years Later

I still remember watching this live.

5 Years here?

Just looked at my settings page, and it indicates I started this blog in January 2009.

Gee.....where'd the time go?

Damn Blogger and Google!!!

*Something* changed the other day, and now all the comments I make on other blogs are going to my gmail account, which I NEVER look at.

And I can't figure out how to switch it back to my real email address.

Freaking IDIOTS......



*****UPDATE******

Figured out HOW to do it.

Just go here and follow the instructions.


Too bad it nuked all the post replies, but now I'm rid of the ##@@!! gmail address.