1950's Los Angeles

WAY too many pictures to post her, so just mosey on over to this website and enjoy!

International Crystal Going Out of Business

If you use quartz crystals for any of your vintage radio gear, you'd better get your orders in NOW!

International Crystal will be closing their doors in the very near future.

This is quite a blow to the Amateur Radio community, as IC not only makes superb crystals, but they have information on probably 99.999% of all radios, scanners, walkie-talkies, and just about any other device made that uses a quartz crystals, and make make custom crystals having the exact properties required to work correctly in the gear.

They could supply crystals that :just worked" for that old BearCat scanner, piece of obscure military gear, or any Drake, Hallicrafters, Heathkit, etc, etc, etc rig ever sold.

They will be sorely missed!

Looks like JAN Crystals is about the only place left.....

Wisdom

From a FarceBook buddy....

And on a side note, I was checking the spam bucket on my email today, and found one from Senator Diane Frankenstein.

How thoughtful of my email provider to automagically dump that particular email in the spam bucket!

Grandbaby Update

He's a fighter!

Yesterday he ripped out his breathing tube, so they put him on a nose rig to supply him with O2, and they're closely watching his blood gases.

He's gained 5.5 ounces, and is doing better than expected.

His Mom came home from the hospital, and will be off work for a while while she heals up, but Mom and Dad have been going to see the little guy daily.

This is the most recent photo I have, taken right before he ripped his tube out.

His Mom just posted a "today" photo:

Welcome Baby Noah!

Well, here he is:

2.2 pounds, and 12" long. He'll be spending some time in the Baby ICU until he can fully cope with "Life on the Outside" on his own.

Mother and child are doing well, considering the circumstances.

My wife is ecstatic.........

Uh OH! The Grandbaby Is Coming Early!

About 65 days early, and it's happening RIGHT NOW!

More to come..........

Possible baby in distress, as they just started a C-section.....



ANNNNND.....It's a BOY!

Which we've known was coming for months, but were requested to keep mum about.

No word on anything else yet, but judging from my stepson's text messages, everything is OK.

Official word is "Mother and baby doing fine", but the poor little guy is only 2.2 pounds...........that's worrisome.

2.2 pounds and 12" long. He'll be in the Baby ICU for a few weeks until his little lungs are strong enough to fully cope with life on their own.

Mother and child are doing fine, considering the circumstances.

Full Metal Star Wars...

Found on the web.....

Stilton's Back!

"Hope n' Change" was one of my favorite blogs during the 8 years of the Obamanation. His humor helped keep me (and countless others) going on with our lives during what will most likely be considered by future historians as some of the darkets days in American history.

Well, with the election of President Trump (I still like writing that!), the Hope n' Change blog had pretty much run its course.

But Stilton promised us he'd be back, and he just launched his new blog.

Without further ado, I highly suggest you mosey on over to "Stilton's Place" and enjoy his new pursuit.

Meanwhile, Out Near San Clemente Island.....

Just going through some old pix of my Sea Launch days and found this one.

We were out by the Naval Bombing Range on San Clemente for sea trial after coming back in 2011. We were required to go out there to fire up all our various radio and telemetry systems as some of the Russian stuff used frequencies not licensed for that use in the US.

Well, there we were, and along pop up these guys:

Obviously some type of training mission......

Almost The Weekend.....

And we have some more rain coming.

The weather station finally started acting normal again after drying out for a few days.

The night time temps have been in the low 40's the last couple of nights, and in the high 50's/low 60's during the day.

I'll take the big tarp off the Supra Friday and drive her around a bit, then put the tarp back over her.

Working on a few radio projects, and doing another RF survey for the Iowa, this time in a format that's easier for "lay people" to understand.

That's all for now. Just don't have much to write.....

Big Light In Sky Scares Local Residents.....

Well, maybe not, but it sure is good to see the Sun after so many days of overcast skies and rain.

We have a 60% chance of rain tonight and tomorrow, but they're predicted to be light showers, nothing like the last deluge we had.

And something went wonky in my weather station. The anemometer had stopped working during the last rain, and now the yearly rainfall total is showing something like 185", more than ten times what we've actually received.

We had some major electrical disturbances during the rain, large green fireballs and BUZZZZ-ZAP! coming from a powerline one street over, and several power drop-outs lasting four to five minutes. This has never been a problem before, as the weather station, living room scanner, and my Drake TR-270 Ham Radio VHF/UHF transceiver all operate from a 1500VA APC UPS, and it's a brute of a UPS. It's one of the larger "Smart-UPS Pure Sinewave" units that weighs about 5 times as much as the "Back-Ups" ones commonly available at places like Best Buy.

The scanner and Drake are operating normally, so I'm guessing I either have some water intrusion into connecting cable, or something has gone South in either the remote head, or the control console hanging on the wall inside. I'll pull the "C" cell back up batteries out later, and unplug the wall wart to see if it resets. Otherwise I'll have to get the ladder out and get up there to see if the cable connections got wet and/or corroded. It's been up there since October of 2009, and I bought it new in 2005, so it might just be ready for replacement.

This model is no longer available, but it looks like they have a newer version of the cabled units. I really don't want to go wireless, as that means changing out a battery in the remote head every once in a while, something I'd rather not do!