Almost Forgot.....Navy Days L.A. 2015!

I'll be on the Iowa all day Saturday, and I have a ticket for a brief tour a1300~1330 of one of the three ships here for Navy Days.

The ships arrived Tuesday morning around 0900, and were graced with:



The USS Halsey, DDG-97

The USS Bunker Hill, CG-52

and

The USS Cape St. George, CG-71

Here's some video courtesy of WABC, Channel 7:



   

And here's the story on the ABC website.


Between tinkering away on the Supra, fixing my wife's granddaughter's laptop (it "self upgraded" to Windows 10 on her!), AND doing research on proximity fuzes for a planned exhibit on the Iowa (hey, they're "radio related"!), I totally forgot this was coming up this weekend!

The Iowa was closed on Tuesday for filming, and when I woke up Wednesday morning, I was rather ill, so I didn't go in for my usual Radio Room shift.

Had a 48-hour stomach bug that knocked me for a loop, but I'm back to normal now.

SO......I'm taking my camera with me, but I think they have a "No Camera" policy on the ships; I'll have to read what the ticket says.

At least I should get some good shots from the pier and from the Iowa.

Backyard Visitor

And Pebbles went completely NUTZ!

She heard some other dogs barking, ran to the back door, and started whining, something she rarely does.

Then I heard my wife say "Oh my GOD!!" in a rather frantic voice, so I grabbed my 1911 and headed for the back.

We had a visitor on the backyard block wall!

 

By this time Pebbles had bolted out the door when my wife cracked it open, and by the time I got out there she was doing her best to dislodge the intruder from the wall:

This was when she was on her way UP!

Her front paws got to within a few inches of the top of the wall, so I decided I'd better end the fracas, as I didn't want a 1930 emergency call to the Vet.

I went over there, and barked out our "safe" word, and she stopped and sat down, so all those HOURS of practicing that command paid off.

I got her back inside and praised her for being "safe" (DO NOT use the word when doing this!), and gave her one of her favorite treats.

Part of the grapevine is on the ground, and not the trellis, as she tried to climb the trellis a few nights ago in response to "something" being up on the wall.

It's usually a cat, but they take off after she makes one pass at them, and the other night she repeatedly kept trying to get up the wall in that area, so now I think I know what got her so riled up!

The possum was starting to get a bit defensive by the time I got to the fence, but I don't think it's their nature to attack, so the only thing I was worried about was if it fell off the wall.

Hopefully the little critter won't be back tonight........

DC SHOES: ROBBIE MADDISON'S "PIPE DREAM"

This is amazing!

Pressure Washing -Part 1-

Well, yesterdays attempt at pressure washing the bottom front of the Supra was a mixed success. My son brought over his "Task Force" pressure washer (the old house brand at Lowe's), and we proceeded to blast the underside of the car.

There were several problems from the get go.

One, his washer soap tanks have never worked, and two, we wound up having the seals blow out of the pump, putting us out of action.

The other "problem" was that the ZEP Industrial Strength (whatever that means these days) Purple cleaner I bought was not meant to be sprayed on and washed off (regardless of what the container says....), and it just runs off without having a chance to do much. Some of the people I talked to said it works quite well if you put it in the detergent tanks of the washer, but with our washer being non-functional in that area, that was a NOGO for us..

Then I ran out of good old Gunk Engine Brite, which does work extremely well if you spray it on, let it sit, and blast it off.

We got the loose stuff off fairly well:

But the majority of the crud is still on the frame and suspension components, as you'll see in the following pix.



Found a small dent in the oil pan:

And a bent area of the front cross member, probably caused by somebody hitting one of those concrete parking lot bumpers:

The oil pan dent is nothing to worry about, and likewise the ding in the cross member. The metal isn't split or folder back on itself, so I can just use a little "persuasion", and bend it back.



Also gently cleaned the topside:

Which resulted in large chunks of the black wrinkle finish paint blowing off the cam covers:

That's no big deal, as I have another set of cam covers that I'm going to get degreased, and finish them in the same colors. I'm not sure if I'm going to do it myself, or get them powder coated.


And I found out my power steering pump is blue, probably indicating a replacement at some time in the past:

The only rust I found on the car is under the battery tray, which I knew was there from the topside:

When I put the new battery in, I cleaned the tray with Naval Jelly, primed it and painted it, but blew off the upper area for "later".

After I finish degreasing the car and get it in the garage, I'll pull the battery, clean and rust encapsulate this area, and paint it.

 This is the area at the very bottom of the car, under the battery tray, where the battery had been dripping for who knows how long:

It's going to take some serious wire brushing and sanding to get the surface clean down there so I can encapsulate the rust and paint it.



And as usual, Pebbles was out there "Straw Bossing" us:

I'm not going for "show car" quality, and probably never will. This car has a nice "patina" to it (all the rage these days!), and since it's truly a "survivor" car, I figured it's earned every little nick, chip, and scrape.

Surface rust gets fixed. Nicks/chips through the paint get fixed. The bleached out cracked paint on the mirrors and rear sunshade are getting fixed, and the same with the front bumper. I have new carpets for the interior, and the seats will get properly cleaned when they're out for the carpet replacement.

 I bought this car to drive, and I'm more concerned about getting the front and rear suspensions rebuilt, the brakes rebuilt, all the hoses and belts (including the timing belt, tensioner, and idler) replaced, the new wheels and tires on it, and a proper 4-wheel alignment.

The only thing I can't do "in house" is replacing the windshield, which has seen better days, so that will get vended out. It's not cracked, and hasn't delaminated that I can see, but the blue tinted area at the top has that "Old Jap Car" brown tint to it now, and it has a lot of little nicks and chips in it, any one of which could turn into a crack.

Plus, it just looks bad!


The pressure washer that I bought should be here Tuesday afternoon, and I bought some gel-type Gunk that hopefully will stick to the vertical surfaces and soften up the crud enough that the washer can blow it off.

And all the bending, stretching, and lugging stuff around is good for me, and gets me off my behind and moving more than the day or two per week I spend on the Iowa. I joked with my previous Doctor that I had joined the "Toyota Physical Fitness Plan", and after I explained it to him, he said that was good way to look at it.

I just hope Part 2 goes better, and I can get all the grease, crud, and other gunk off the bottom of the car!

Saturday Already?

Sheesh.......time sure flies when you:

A) Don't Know What You're Doing

B) Are Having "Fun"

C) Are "retired".

Seems like I have less free time now than when I was working!

Or maybe it's just the backlog of projects I'd been saving "For When I Retire" that are finally getting my attention.

Writing up a PowerPoint (Libre Office "Presentation", actually) presentation to give to the Iowa staff on RF safety.

The speaker last month at the "other" radio club was a former SoCal Edison guru on RF Exposure, and he's offered his services to us.

So, while we've made the required calculations, he has the proper, calibrated test equipment to actually measure the RF field strength at various distances from our antennas, and tell us how well we meet the requirements.

One thing I deliberately did when I ran the calculations was to completely ignore any feedline loss, and used 100 Watts "at the antenna" to generate the results, giving us "Worst Case" results.

I keep pushing to actually measure the power at the antenna feed point, but nobody else seems interested. It's starting to look like another "Let Jim Do It" project, but knowing the guys, as soon as I drag in the gear and announce what I'm doing, several people will tag along to observe and help.

And I'm cleaning out the garage AGAIN. Seems like "stuff" just condense out of thin air to fill up garages in SoCal, especially when there's NO CAR in there!

My son is bringing over his pressure washer today so I can finally get all the grease/dirt/oil/crud off the bottom of the Supra under the engine bay so I can swap out the power steering hoses and get it smogged. The last time I took it in the refused to smog it, saying the high-pressure line to the power steering rack was leaking, and "Spraying fluid all over the place", making it unsafe to work on while the engine was running.

I looked under the hood, and while I could find a few drops of power steering fluid, no way was it "Spraying all over the place". I understand their concern, though. A long time ago I had a second generation Celica that had a cracked exhaust manifold, a common problem. Being extremely low on $$ at the time, I just let it go. I'd only paid $500 for the car, the crack happened right after I had it smogged to transfer the title, and it wasn't that loud.

WELL......the exhaust leak was pointed right at the high-pressure power steering hose, and one day when I was coming down the street, about a block away from my little bachelor pad, the hot gas finally burned through the hose.

Ever see hot hydraulic fluid under high pressure hit a flame?

Yep, it went BOOM, fire and smoke belched out from under the car, and one of my neighbors who happened to be walking down the street at the time said it looked like something out of a movie. There wasn't enough air under the hood to keep the fire burning, and it was low on fluid, so at least the car didn't burn to the ground.

So while I was upset that they greatly exaggerated the leak the Supra has, I can see why the mechanic was hesitant to work on it.

Oh, well.....

Time to go out and get greasy. Hopefully the power washer and the stuff I vought at Home Depot will get the car clean on the bottom.

I just hate working on crummy, greasy, grime-covered cars! It slows you down, and is a PITA......

Help Save Barrel #270 From The Battleship Iowa

The US Navy has decided to "purge" all remaining materiel in the inventory for the four Iowa class ships.

Were trying to get some of this, and the one thing on the Iowa "Hot List" right now is barrel #270, which was originally installed on the ship in 1942, and saw service in WWII and the Korean Conflict.

This barrel was also the "Lead Barrel" for all of the Iowa ships.

The barrel was replaced in 1955, and has been in storage since then.

The Navy will freely give us the barrel, but we're responsible for getting it from the St. Juliens Creek Naval Annex in Chesapeake, VA to California.

Moving a 70' long, 120 ton item from coast-to-coast isn't exactly easy, and the estimated cost of constructing a cradle and moving the barrel is between $120,000 and $150,000.

So far we've raised only $500, so we have quite a ways to go.

I don't think I've ever directly solicited funds here for any reason, but I am now.

If you can spare $5, $10 or whatever, please go to the fund raising site and donate what you can.

If we don't save it, the Navy will torch it into 8' long sections, and sell it for scrap.

Here's the Fund Raising Site, and more information can be found at:

www.SaveBB61Barrel270.org


Thanks, everybody!

Just A Common Soldier.........

A buddy of mine sent me a link to this, and I'd forgotten how poignant it was.

Thank you all for your service.

Been Busy With TV Repair

Well, my wonderful Panasonic TH50PZ85U 50" plasma took a dump a few weeks ago, and I finally repaired it.

It started suffering from the "10 Blinks of Death", where the power LED would blink 10 times, wait, blink 10 times, etc as soon as you plugged it in.

When it goes into this "SOS" mode it won't turn on, and is completely dead except for the power LED.

It had been acting up this way for 6 months or so, but unplugging it for a few minutes would clear the fault, so we kept using it.

It finally got to the point where unplugging it for a few days didn't clear it, so I started researching what board inside to replace.

Since the set was made in 2008, it's not "officially" supported by Panasonic any longer, but there are a few failures they'll fix under an "extended warranty", but this wasn't one of them.

Thanks to my good friends over at the AVS Forum, I was able to diagnose, and repair, the problem.

The problem is a 1uF "chip" capacitor on a daughter board on the "P" (power supply) board failing, and bringing down the +5 Volt logic power supply.

And it's not just a chip cap, but a very small chip cap, as shown in this picture from the forum member who figured it out, and posted the info on the forum:

First step was getting the set off the wall mount, and over to my temporary "work bench", the coffee table with a nice, thick comforter on it to pad the GLASS screen-side:

Then I had to remove all the $$##@@!! screws holding the back panel on so I could access the printed circuit baords inside.

NOTE: The "P" board has already been removed in this shot.  It sits just above the connector assembly (the "A" board), and just below where all the connectors are dangling:

This is the "P" board in place before I pulled it:

The "P" board is mounted to an aluminum plate, and once the "P" board is on-the-bench, there's more $$%%##!! screws to remove before I can get to the backside, so I can unsolder the daughter board:

Finally, the board is free of the aluminum plate, and on-the-bench:

And why are there so many screws on the back of the plate? To attach to all the individual heat-sink plates on the power transistors!:

Finally, after unsoldering the daughter board, I can clamp in my PanaVise, and remove the failed capacitor, which is the greyish colored rectangle mounted longwise up-and-down, to the left of the Integrated Circuit (wonder when we're going to be forced to change the name of ICs?), towards the top edge of the board:

And here's the board with the failed part removed:

Since there's NO WAY I'm going to get an exact matching part, and it would be VERY difficult for me to get something that small soldered back on, I went with a 1uF, 35V, leaded Tantalum capacitor. I had some of these left over from some long dusty project, so I trimmed the leads, and bent them to fit the pad spacing on the little board, and then tinned them. The package (a "JimPak" from Jameco Electronics) these caps came from said there were ten in the package for a price of $2.95, so in small quantities they go for 30 cents. The original chip cap in there was probably about ONE CENT in the quantities Panasonic buys!:

At last, the new cap is soldered on the daughter board, and the daughter board soldered back on the main board:

I'll stand this upright, and put a dab of Dow 5140 NON-corrosive RTV on it, and let it cure overnight, as having parts "hanging by their leads" like this is generally a Bad Idea unless you use some "staking compound" to protect them for vibration and thermal cycling, which can cause the solder to fracture, and the part fall off:

While waiting for the RTV to cure, I went ahead and bought some window-sealing tape, the 3/8" thick stuff with adhesive on one side, as the original tape had disintegrated from age and heat. Each of the cooling exhaust fans at the top of the set had similar tape applied to seal each fan to the cooling holes in the sheet metal back panel. They did this to ensure that the fans would exhaust the air through the cooling holes. If the fans weren't sealed tight, there's a very good possibility that instead of the heated air being exhausted from the cabinet, it would simply recirculate within the cabinet, rendering the fans pretty much useless.

I saw the sealing foam when I pulled the back panel off and smiled. This is truly a case of "Been There, Done That, and Got a Monetary Award For Thinking of It" in my career. One of the places I worked at was having trouble with severe overheating of a large motor control cabinet that had all the other Engineers scratching their heads. They had plenty of properly sized fans in the cabinet, but hadn't thought about exhausting the heated air from the cabinet. I was asked to help recalculate the airflow requirements and to check that the correct size fans had been used, and when I went over to where the things were being built, I just about fell down laughing.

There were NO holes, lovers, or vents in the cabinet! All the carefully sized fans were doing was moving the air around inside the cabinet, and letting the cabinet and all the sensitive electronics inside slowly cook to death.

I ordered some vents (with air filters) installed at the bottom of the cabinet to allow cooler, ambient air to be drawn inside, and some grilled fans installed at the very top of the cabinet to exhaust the heated air.

The temperature inside the cabinet dropped SEVENTY FIVE degrees, failure rate of the system dropped to about zero, and I got a nice check from corporate headquarters in recognition of solving a problem that had been costing the company thousands of dollars in warranty repairs.


Back to the TV set.......

I replaced the foam seals on the fans, vacuumed out all the dust that had accumulated over the years, and spent some time installing all the screws that held the aluminum plate to the "P" board, and put the board back in the set, and installed the back cover.

I had to lay on my back to see the power LED as the set was face-down on the table, and when my wife plugged the set in using a short AC cord, the power LED DID NOT flash, and I could cycle the power switch on and off with the LED staying off when the power switch was off.

Since my son was working, my stepson came over, and we put the set on the desk top stand, connected all the cables to it, and powered it up.

It worked just fine, so we shut it down and installed it back on the wall mount, where it ran for several hours last night.

I really like this TV, and I'm glad I was able to repair it!

RAIN! In SoCal In July!

In July.....in L.A!

Pretty unusual, and my rain gauge indicates about .18" since it started, which is a HUGE amount for us to get in July.

Hopefully we'll have a wet winter so we can catch up on the enormous rain deficit that we have.

UPDATE:

Storm total was .30"


UPDATE 2:

 Received another .23" on Sunday, bring the storm total to .53", and breaking the record that was recorded sometime in the 1800's.

CHINA To Buy Sea Launch?

Just got an email informing me there was a new post on a spaceflight forum I hang out at.

It referenced this article on the Space News website.

Ever since Sea Launch laid off about 60% of their staff last August (me included), they've been in limbo about the future. Since all they launch is commercial payloads, if the commercial satellite guys don't want to fly on them, they're pretty much SOL for business.

And nobody was booking a launch on them......


Turns out all the post bankruptcy launches had been sold earlier, and they were just clearing the backlog, hoping that successful launches would show the industry that Sea Launch was back in business, and new bookings would follow.

Now, I'm not sure why they couldn't get additional business, those things were way above my pay grade, and any assumptions I made about why customers stayed away would have been, and still are, pure speculation.

Typically, the satellite builder (Boeing, Loral, Astrium, etc) books the launch, and retains control of the satellite until it's at it's assigned orbital "slot" and fully checked out. Then the satellite builder hands over the keys to the satellite operator (Dish, DirecTV, EUTELSAT, INTELSAT, etc) and they take control. So, when you provide launch services, you not only have to court the satellite operators, but the builders as well.

Strange bedfellows, as they say, and there was some ill will I know of between at least one operator and Sea Launch.

So, as the article says, Sea Launch has been "twisting in the wind" since their last launch over a year ago, with no bookings in sight, and bills piling up. According to a friend who still works there, the last of the Boeing contract people have gone to other Boeing sites, other companies, or to retirement.

And Boeing still has a sh1t load of property on site, and on the ships, and is owed well over $400 million from two of the original partners that defaulted on their guarantees to the banks that loaned Sea Launch the money it needed before they went Chapter 11.

One of the things that amused me was that Sea Launch was having a "garage sale" to dispose of unneeded/surplus equipment.

The one item mentioned specifically was the Spacecraft Adapter (SCA), which is the structure that the satellite mounts to, and in turn is bolted to the Interface Structure/Payload Support (ISPS) that mounts the entire Payload Accommodation to the Block-DM upper stage. The satellite mounting part of it is pretty standard, as some years back most of the satellite builders decided to agree on a fixed number of mount types, which makes it easier for everybody involved in the business. This meant you could "stock" maybe 5 or 6 different SCA designs, rather than having to design/build/test/certify one for each launch.

I find this very interesting, as that particular SCA will ONLY fit a Boeing ISPS that was designed to ONLY mate to a Block-DM.

If they're selling that, then it pretty much means they won't be doing any more business with Boeing.

And that makes me wonder what will happen to all the Boeing property, and Boeing controlled and operated ITAR sensitive equipment that's still on site.

Anyway.......we BEGGED them to let us sort through all the surplus equipment and "junque", and assign it a keep/sell or scrap status when they were asking for ideas about cutting costs and raising money.

We were continually shot-down for various non-reasons.

They have at least 15 high-end copy machines that need some minor maintenance/repair sitting in the warehouse that they could have sold to an independent copy machine service, but didn't.

They have a brand new roof-mounted chiller for a large HVAC system just sitting there that could have been sold but wasn't.

They have TONS of stuff sitting in the Payload Processing Facility parking lot that could have been sold either for scrap metal value, or to be refurbished.

They have thousands of pounds of copper wire and cable in storage that was never going to be used.

They have at least four pallets of surplus desktop computers that could have been sold, or stripped of good parts, and the parts sold.

And on, and on, and on...

And then I read on the same forum that ownership of the platform had already been transferred to the Chinese, with the platform listed as "Scrap Value". And as another poster pointed out, selling ships to the Chinese for "scrap value" worked out real well in the case of the ex Soviet aircraft carrier the Varyag.

I checked the IMO listing for the Odyssey, but all it shows is where it's flagged, not who owns it.

Anyway......it's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out in the coming weeks.

Back and Beat!

Typical 5+ hour flight in Economy class. At least the seats were big enough to kinda-sorta get comfortable in.

No video display in the seatbacks this time, so if you wanted to watch a "free" movie, you had to download (they said) the United app, pay the $12.99 Internet connection cost, and then stream the movie over WiFi to your device. I paid the fee and browsed the Web on my smartphone, and set my wife's tablet up, only to find out their streaming doesn't support Android yet. I set up my wife's friend's laptop so she could watch a movie, and she eventually gave up about 3/4 of the way through the movie, as the video was stuttering, and "buffering" rather than streaming. Might have been a laptop problem, but I noticed other passengers were griping about it, too, so I'm guessing they just don't have the WiFi bandwidth on board to support so many streaming connections at once.

Landed at LAX about 20 minutes early, which meant NO GATE for us to pull up to.

Crept along the taxiway until we finally got a gate assignment, and wound up deplaning about 10 minutes later than originally scheduled.

Then a nice 45 minute wait for our luggage. There were four aircraft using the same luggage carousel, so naturally a quiet pandemonium ensued.....

Then out to the curb where we checked in with Super Shuttle to let them know we were ready for pick-up, and then a NINETY MINUTE wait for the not-so-Super Shuttle to gather up enough passengers to make it worth their while to make the trip from LAX down to Long Beach.

The total cost of three, two-way tickets on the Shuttle was $96, vs $80 to park for a week at LAX.

Next time I think we'll take the Jeep and park it. I thought the extra $16 would be worth it to avoid the aggravation of driving out of LAX at night, but I'd rather put up with that than sit there for an hour and a half waiting for our "ride" to show up.

FINALLY got home, semi unpacked, thanked and paid the dog-sitter (long story about how that came to be....), got slobbered on by the dog for 30 minutes, and hit the hay about 0300.

Had fun in Hawai'i, and saw a lot of cool things, and met some very nice people.

It's a beautiful place, but I'm not sure I could live there. I was astounded at the humidity (it felt like Illinois in August) compared to here on the West coast, and although the fuel prices (except for Diesel @ $4.80/gallon!) were about the same, the food prices were significantly higher.

And then there's always the worry that if TSHTF, you're stuck there with a looooong supply chain to other places for food and medical stuff.

Still, quite a marvelous place to visit.