Yaesu Surgery

Well, I got really tired of not being able to use 40 Meters (7~7.3MHz) on this radio, so today I hoisted it off the operating table, had my wife lay a nice fluffy towel on the table, and then grunted this 50-pound beast back on the aptly named "Operating Table".

Off with the covers!

This thing is wall-to-wall packed under the hood(s). From the symptoms the radio shows (looks like power recycling or something pulling a logic bus to zero causing a reset), I went through the schematics to see what got switched, and when. A few weeks ago, I "crept up" on what frequency this odd behavior at, and what frequency it stopped at. I started at 4Mhz, and began tuning up. As soon as I hit 6.5MHz, the radio clicked when it switched filter banks, and started acting up. Coming down in frequency, it started acting up at 7.5MHz.

Gee....that pretty neatly brackets the 40 Meter band. What gets switched when it hits these transition frequencies between "General Coverage", and "Amateur Radio" frequencies? Hmmm....the only thing like that is the Low Pass Filter assembly on the output of the transmitter. Groan....that's on the top side of the radio. Have to flip this beast over again. While I had access to this side of the radio, I turned down the volume on the "Button Press Beep", which was annoyingly LOUD. Now it's a nice, reserved 'beep', letting the operator, and not everybody in the house, know that a button has been pressed.

The Low Pass Filter assembly is in the metal shield can behind the speaker. Let's pop it open!

The coils and capacitors that make up the individual filters for each frequency segment are in the center of the board. The small, grey rectangular boxes are relays, one for the input, and one for the output, that select each one of the eight filters on the board. The large grey cables with silver connectors are the RF cables into/out of the board. On the lower left corner of the board is a small, plastic, multi-pin connector with the wires running to the aptly named Control Unit, which tells what relays to activate. AH!!  A place to split the circuit! Pulling the connector out would remove all the incoming control voltages to the board, resulting in it going into bypass, or "General Coverage" mode. I pulled the connector and inspected the female connector sockets, and the male pins on the board, and all looked well. No pinched wires or chafed insulation, either. Turned the radio on, tuned through the band, and it worked! No clicking, clacking, and resetting. OK! Plug it back in to confirm the problem is indeed with this assembly, and ........uh-oh.....it still works fine, and now when I tune through the previously wonky frequency range, it continues to work, and now I hear the relays click in at 6.5MHz, and drop out at 7.5MHz, just like it should.

RATS! But Jim, didn't you just "fix" it? No, because I didn't find out what "it" was. There's always a possibility that removing and reseating the connector (a very common practice) cleaned off some corrosion through the 'wiping' action of the contacts, or that the connector wasn't seated properly to begin with, but for now I have to write this off as a "No (Hardware) Problem Found", and consider it one of the dreaded "Intermittents".

I still have several issues left to resolve with this radio. Four of the buttons don't work on the panel, meaning I can't 1)monitor my own transmitted audio, 2) get the second receiver to function other than as the "B" VFO, and 3) & 4), the rapid tuning "Up" and "Down" buttons don't work.

All four of the buttons share a common wire/path/circuit board trace on one side, so a fault on that one line takes all four out. Could be (another) connector issue, a "wire" issue, or a cracked/damaged printed circuit board trace or "via" between the two layers of the board.

I'll tear into that tomorrow.....

Final Tally for Museum Ships Weekend

Band conditions were poor, with a Solar Flux Index of 70. This indicates we're right around The Bottom of the current sunspot cycle. It was down to 68 on Friday, which is really low. I can't remember the lowest SFI I've seen, maybe 65, but it should start to increase in the next 12~18 months.

The new vertical antenna works quite well, and has "Textbook Curves" for the VSWR and Reactive Components (aka "Impedance") at and near resonance, and so far, if I can hear them, they can hear me. It also helps that this radio is set to put out about 175 Watts, and my little Elecraft K2 was "only" pumping out around 65~75 Watts. A bit over a 3dB power increase, and combined with the advanced (for the time) speech processing/compression of the transmitted audio, can make "just enough" of a difference to get through sometimes.

So how many Museum Ships did I contact? A dismal FIVE.

W1M at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vermont

NS7DD aboard the USS Turner Joy in Oregon

W8COD aboard the USS Cod in Ohio

WW2LST aboard the LST 325 in Indiana

and NI6BB aboard the Battleship Iowa in Southern California, where I had a nice 30 minute chat with two of my friends.

I also heard, but couldn't contact, the following:

W5LEX aboard the USS Lexington in Texas

N4WIS aboard the Battleship Wisconsin in Virginia

NJ2BB aboard the Battleship New Jersey in New Jersey

N5E aboard the Tall Ship Elissa in Texas

and WA4USN in South Carolina.

I heard people working KH6BB aboard the Battleship Missouri in Pearl Harbor, but I couldn't hear them at all. All four Iowa-class Battleships were on-the-air this weekend, a very rare occurrence.

I heard a lot of DX (distant) stations from Italy, France, the Azores, and Slovenia, too, so even though the band conditions were not good, there was a lot of activity. Signals were weak, and went from consistently weak (S4~S5) but very stable and readable, to "S9 Plus", fading to zero in 15~20 seconds, and then back to very strong (S9) in about the same time. Since I haven't been this "RadioActive" in quite a while, I'm still getting used to cruising around the bands, what they sound like, and how propagation changes during the day. I really have to get into the FT-1000D and see why it goes bonkers between 6.5MHz and 7.5MHz, as that fault renders 40 Meters at 7MHz unavailable to me. I'm suspecting a bad component on the filter assembly, as when it tries to switch in that bank, the radio starts blinking on and off and resetting like the power's being interrupted. Maybe a bad "flyback diode" across a relay, causing a supply to short when that bank is switched on.

Anyway....I'd really like to get on 40 Meters again now that I have a more suitable antenna. The Elecraft KAT100 tuner I use with my K2 could load the 20 Meter Buddistick just fine on 40, but it's a bit short to be an efficient antenna on that frequency. Oh, well....it's apples-to-oranges anyway, as the 88' wire ain't anywhere near being a 17' vertical, so the "pattern" of the wire antenna is anybody's guess. Mostly straight UP under 14MHz due to it being less than half a wavelength above ground at that frequency, good for what's called NVIS use, but not terribly effective as a long-distance antenna. My 33' vertical (the "Long Beach Antenna") shines at that on 40 Meters, just like this new one does on 20 Meters.

Just gotta dig into that radio and get 'er done!

Poor Propagation on 20 Meters

Bands aren't too good today. I've been searching the bands for any and all Museum Ships, and although I've heard 5 of them, I've only managed to contact W1M at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, and NS7DD aboard the USS Turner Joy.

The guys on the Turner Joy told me they'd contacted the Iowa today, but I haven't heard them.

So I'll continue to scour the 20 Meter band looking for other ships. The FT-1000D loads into the new vertical on 17, 15, 12, and the low end of 10 Meters, so while it's probably got a really screwy radiation pattern on those bands, at least I can load it with the 'tuner' in the radio, and use it on those bands.

Just for grins, I tuned in WWV on 15Mhz and compared the signal levels between the two antennas. The vertical is noticeably better, about two 'needle widths' on the S meter, so I'll see how it compares on the other bands that are close to WWV frequencies.

The Continuing Saga of The Antenna....Now With Pictures!

So in between playing Grandpa and installing the new weather station, I did manage to get some (undocumented - gasp! -) antenna work accomplished, both on the end-fed random wire, and on the 20 Meter BuddiStick replacement. The BuddiStick worked extremely well, but I didn't consider it to be an "all weather" antenna, so I took it down during windy, stormy weather. I just couldn't see letting that Really Cool shock-cord whip get turned into a pretzel.

On the 88' end-fed, I wound up removing ALL the counterpoise radials, exactly "As Advertised", and it works acceptably well on all bands except 75 Meters (3.5~4MHz), and 60 Meters (5 "channelized", shared frequencies at ~5.5MHz). I took the radials off in stages, sweeping and recording the antenna response each time, and the "best" it got was with a single 7' wire off the ground connection. I could raise the center another 6', but I really don't want 3 sections of mast on the ends. I'm just afraid it might get 'whippy' in the winds we have here and come down like the Tacoma Narrows bridge did. I might change my mind after I get the new post installed for the fed end, and have a much more substantial mount for the mast, but for now, this is about as good as I think I can make it work. Took me a while to shift-gears, and think about the specifics of deliberately NON resonant antennas, but now I understand why that particular class of antennas can be quite 'counterpoise independent'. What I had ingrained in me about antennas was 90% resonant antennas, and it's wrong for these antennas. So it was a valuable learning experience to understand this new critter, and proves an Old Dog can learn a few new tricks when properly motivated.

And I finally took down the BuddiStick tripod which has been out there for about a year now. Even though the "final" version of what is now called the "20 Meter Vertical" is sketched out, there comes a point where I put the hardware I have together, and test it out. Then I use it, experiment with it, and modify it until I figure it's pretty much optimized for what I have to work with. For now, it's mounted on the 5' tripod and section of mast that my original Davis weather station was mounted on. The curves are "text book perfect" for a 1/4-wave, resonant antenna, and I'm quite pleased, even though my meticulously calculated element lengths appear to be an inch or so too long. Better than too short! It's a simple matter to loosen a hose clamp, slide a section down an inch or two, and retighten the clamp to change the resonant frequency, but that could shift again if I move the antenna. Anyway, it never exceeds 1.5:1 VSWR anywhere in the 20 Meter band, so getting it 'smack on' @14.150MHz is easy to do, but not strictly necessary.

Pix of the aftermath.....

Weather station off the tripod and ready to rebuild. I was going to replace the white plastic OEM enclosure with a plastic junction box from HD, but after examining the damage, I can just glue it back together with some JB Weld, and paint it to slow down any further degradation.

Here's the new vertical on the former weather station tripod. I'm going to put a few guy ropes on it later today.

Yes, it's "Pebbles Approved"! The branch is from the crabapple tree. Once it dries out, I'll strip the leaves and twigs from it, cut it up, and we'll have a bit of hardwood to toss on the fire.

Truly a gorgeous day outside today.

This the feedpoint assembly showing the coax-to-studs box I made, and the line isolator coax choke I threw together last night. The coil of coax adds some "Common Mode" isolation between the feedline and antenna. If you don't use something like this you'll get currents on the outside of the coax shield, and it can cause Funny Things to happen.

The five books I've been pouring over on antennas, transmission lines, and baluns really helped me understand a few things I was more than just a bit hazy on, and solidified the differences between resonant and non-resonant antennas for me. They're both antennas, but quite different in how you feed them, and what you see when you measure them.

This is the VSWR curve for the vertical.

Pretty damn flat!

But will it help get us off the island, Professor? Well, maybe, Gilligan, if propagation is good.

I'll find out both answers this weekend, as it's Museum Ships Weekend, and I'll be on 20 Meters trying to contact as many Museum Ships as I can. The Iowa, New Jersey, and Missouri will be on-the-air, but the Wisconsin is MIA again. They have an Amateur Radio club, but they're not very active.

The USS Nautilus is supposed to be on, and I'd really like to contact them.

'Twas A Dark and Stormy Night.....

Actually that was last night when the front went through but I haven't used that title in a while, and it is 44* and raining right now, so that's kind of "stormy".

Anywhoo....spent some time cleaning up the basement workshop/lab/repair shop so The Little Guy can go down there tomorrow morning. We had him last night, and he was quite disappointed that we couldn't go down there today before he had to go home.

Seems he spent his time budget playing with this little guy I picked up at Harbor Freight.

Turning out to be the best $20 I ever spent at Harbor Freight! It's a super simple R/C car, with two independently controllable motors, and a twin-stick remote. It's driven like a skid-steer (kind of) in that you stop one motor to turn, or reverse that motor to turn reeeal fast. In fact, with proper manipulation of the two sticks, you can make this thing spin, dance, flip around, and all kinds of other crazy maneuvers. Which I got quite good at doing, much to The Little Guy's delight and amusement.

On Sunday when it was still nice and dry out, we made and chased soap bubbles all over the backyard using his "Tiger Head" soap bubble blower, which his gramma (my wife) bought for him at their recent trip to the Denver Zoo, his first trip ever to THE ZOO!

But it was pretty soggy outside, so we resorted to building things with his giant-size lego-type blocks, and running the crazy little R/C car around, driving poor Miss Pebbles absolutely bonkers.

So the basement area is now squared away, and all the equipment I had on the racks has been rearranged, freeing  up two whole shelves, which are quickly filling up with the dreaded STUFF.....

Memorial Day 2019

The graphic below says it all.

Image courtesy of Stilton's Place. Image created by Janet Burroff.

Memorial Day Remembrance Event

Down on the Battleship Iowa.

If you're in L.A. for the weekend, it's a very moving ceremony.

And I just worked K1A in the Dallas-Fort Worth area on 20 Meters, at 2230 local time. That's very unusual because at this time of night, at this point in the sunspot cycle, 20 Meters isn't supposed to support any propagation.

The callsign "K1A" is a memorial to "KIA", and the station is being operated in remembrance of all out fallen warriors.

Anybody Up for a Little Sinatra?

Well, i finally got around to gathering up and patching together enough stuff to drive the HitMaker speakers I finished a while back.

I had the little amp in the workshop, but the turntable and phono preamp were stored (buried?) in the 'cold storage' area under the steps in the basement that my seet little wifer refers to as "Der Boonker" for some strange reason. Must be the Gadsden Flag hanging inside. Oh, well....

So I dug those things out, then went on a hunt for the 12 Volt power supply, aka "Wall Wart", the preamp needs. I have several medium U-Haul boxes  packed full of these little critters, some AC output, some DC output, and even some regulated ones. Took about an hour or so, but I now have them semi-sorted, and found one that works for the preamp.

I have no idea where I bought the preamp from. Might have been eBay, or Amazon, or one of the specialty vendors I buy things from. It had rave reviews on the audio forums, does exactly what I need, and was under $100. Well under, IIRC. It's dead quiet with no input, sounds good to my tin ears, and it's built like a brick in a nice, heavy steel case.

The Pyle amp was sitting on the shelf, victim of my shack "realignment" plans. I was going to use it with my Flex 5000 as the 'audio output' stage, but that's not needed any longer. It's rated "40 Watts" per channel, but I think that might be downhill with a tailwind on a good day. That power rating is also spec'd as into 4 Ohms, and these are 8 Ohm speakers, so it might not have enough voltage to drive them to that power level. In any case, the amp isn't happy with the speakers, and depending on how you have the Bass control set, you can easily get to a volume setting where it's pretty obvious the speaker/amp combo is going into some kind of sub-sonic oscillation. If it were happening at a lower frequency it would be called "Motorboating", but you can hear that. This oscillation makes the speaker cones appear as if they're 'vibrating' in and out. I suppose I could break out my scope and look at the audio.....

BUT.....if I keep the Bass control down some, and don't try and rattle the windows in the basement, the amp and speakers play nice, and the speakers sound really nice. You have to be pretty much "on axis" with these, and as you move around you can hear the sound change. It's more pronounced if you get above the speakers. The tweeters start to overpower the other speaker, and it sounds too "bright". I still haven't decided where and how to mount these, and have to give it some more thought.

The turntable is my 'Ol Faithful' Technics Quartz Direct Drive SL-1210MK5, and yes, that's all on the label. Cartridge is a low-end Audio-Tecnica AT92E, soon to be replaced by an AT440MLa, a much better cartridge.

Taken as a whole, this little 'mini-system' sounds pretty good. I won't go into all the audiofool techno babble, but Sinatra sounds like he's 10' from you.

I can hardly wait to get the big Heathkit completed. Then I will be able to rattle the basement windows....

New Weather Station Installed

I didn't really "get into" monitoring the weather until I started working at Sea Launch in 2004, and wound up being assigned to keep the Weather Monitoring and Reporting System maintained and operational. That also included the C-Band Pulsed Doppler Weather Radar System, the only one ever installed on a ship. I always had one of those multi-instrument  barometer/thermometer/hygrometers around, but never seriously studied the weather. Then one of the Meteorologists I worked with showed me his home weather station connected to the Internet, and I kind of picked up (another!) new hobby.

I went with a Davis Instruments Vantage PRO2, and went through half-a-dozen different devices to get it on the Internet so I could monitor the weather while out-of-town.

Fast forward to 2019.....

My original Vantage weather station was getting a bit 'tatty', and while it was sitting outdoors here, we had a couple of huge windstorms come through, blowing over the 5' tripod, mast section, and weather station. It smacked the concrete patio pretty good, and damaged the cover for the instrument package.

The solar cells are for a fan kit I added when the station was sited on the big, flat, HOT roof of my apartment, and kept a flow of air  going through the sensor housing during the day. This helped keep the temperature sensor at more of an 'ambient' temp to counteract the effects of it being sited on a HOT surface.

So I just kind of moved it off to the side and let it sit. A week or so ago I stood it back up, connected the cable to the display console, turned it on, and went through the setup procedure. Rats! It just sat there blinking at me, and I assumed (uh-oh....) that it was damaged, and no longer functional.

So, off I went to the Interwebz, and ordered a newer version. While waiting for the new one to arrive, I did the RTFM thing to acquaint myself with the new one, and this time I read the whole thing.

Uh-oh.....I didn't complete the setup procedure! Doing it right made the station come up and function normally. So while this one needs some mechanical repair, electrically it seems to be just fine. I'll get a plastic electrical "Junction Box" from HD, swap the guts into it, scrub it up, and either have a back-up unit, or more likely, I'll give it to one of the in-laws to use.

The new one arrived Friday, and I unpacked it, RTFM (at least Davis still gives you printed paper manuals), and commenced installation on Saturday.

And it went together, went up on the new mast, and worked 99% the first time!

This is a much better installation than the original station would have been just sitting on the tripod, as the wind sensor is in the clear, and 15' AGL. The only "better" site I have for this is up on the roof of the house, and that ain't gonna happen!

The vertical "wires" sticking up out of the rain collector are "Bird Spikes", and will discourage our feathered friends from perching on the rim, causing all manner of "stuff" to collect in the rain bucket besides just rain. The little black antenna sticking up on the Instrument Package is for the 900MHz radio link back to the display console. The cover has solar cells similar to my original station, but these are used to power the station, and charge the internal battery that gets used at night and on on days with little sunlight.

When I first installed it, I kept getting a "Low Battery On Station No.1" alert. Turns out I had the battery installed backwards! The solar cells were carrying the entire station, even at night! Yow....these must be pretty good cells. I swapped the battery around yesterday, and within 14 hours, the alarm had cleared, indicating that the cells not only run the whole shebang, but have enough 'extra' current to charge the battery. Good job, guys!

And the two stations agree very closely, unlike the "WeatherWise" station I bought last year as a 'gap filler' until I got the Davis station back on the air.

I have a little "ZOTAC ZBox" mini-pc that I'm going to use the get this on the 'Net, and I'm in the process of getting that all configured to connect to the Davis console, and our home network.

And we suffered a minor bit of storm damage from the front that went through and dropped 2" of heavy, wet snow on us.

A branch from our crabapple tree came down, nice, clean break, hopefully not injuring the tree much. I'll let this dry out, strip the leaves off it, and we'll have some nice kindling to use.

I REALLY Needed to RTFM!

And I didn't.

Which resulted in my GoPro Hero video camera turning on, but not going into "Record" mode.

So I didn't get any video of the Union Pacific 4014 "Big Boy" locomotive chugging up the hills of Tie Siding, Wyoming.

But we had a great time finally meeting up with Well Seasoned Fool and his sister, and learned a lot about the railroad out here.

(Picture from Wikipedia)

This was the first time I'd seen Live Steam, and it was wonderful! I've been around a lot of locomotives in my career, but none recently. I used to go to Conrail in Enola, PA and do Field Service work on the electric locomotives that used a big upgrade kit the company I worked for sold them. Most current locomotives are diesel-electric, meaning the big diesel engine spins a generator, which supplies DC voltage for the Traction Motors used in the trucks under the loco. The Conrail ones ran "Under The Wire", like an old street car, and since the overhead wires carried AC, you needed to rectify it to DC to feed the motors. Why all the emphasis on DC motors? Because until recently, a series-connected (Field coils and Armature in series, like a starter motor) DC motor was the most powerful way available. They make maximum torque at ZERO RPM, exactly where you want it to get an extremely heavy load moving from a standstill.

And I was around all the big diesel-electric locomotives, too, because the yard we did the upgrade in also had them around to move cars in the yard.

Diesels, are big, noisy, smelly, vibrating things that seem alive as they rumble the ground they travel over. The electric ones were much quieter, didn't stink, and ran "Like an electric motor".

When Big Boy went by, it was almost ethereal. Steam puffing out out of the pistons, the melodious sounds of the big steam whistle, and smoke pouring out of the stack as she came over the crest.

And as they passed, she just glided by!

UP 844 was also in the convoy, along with a diesel-electric, but it sounded, and felt, like the diesel was just along for the ride, and was maybe pulling it's own weight. Pretty much just idling, which made the hammering, clattering, diesel noise and vibration you feel from 50' greatly diminished.

(UP 844 from Wikipedia)

You could tell the two steam engines were working, but the sound was totally different than anything I've heard before. Very little vibration coming in through your feet, and none of the hammering impulse noise of a diesel's firing cylinders. This was a different sort of power, different even than the other steam powered things (ships with steam turbines) I've been around. This was a Reciprocating Piston steam engine, and the first 'real' one I've ever heard run. The Los Angeles Maritime Museum has a small scale model of a Triple Expansion steam engine that was supposedly capable of actually running, and the SS Lane Victory has the working prop engine used in the movie "The Sand Pebbles", but it's turned by an electric motor.

And you could sense the power of these two engines, but it didn't hammer you over the head like a triple diesel-electric would have. It seemed alive, like a few other machines I've had the good fortune to get to know, and I connected with it as solidly as I did to the P-51 Mustang and the McClaren CanAm cars when I first met them.

An amazing display of technology, and it thrills me that people care enough about them to spend the time and (SERIOUS) money to restore them, keep them running and usable, and share them with others.

And thanks again to Well Seasoned Fool and his Sisty that made this possible!

"HitMaker" Speakers Finally Complete

Remember these guys?

Well, after giving them two coats of the DuraTex coating, and allowing to dry thoroughly, I finally got off the dime, stacked up all the bits and pieces needed to finish them, and went at it.

The two coats I gave them were probably a bit 'light', as I've never used the stuff before, and wasn't sure how it rolled out, if it ran or sagged, or how well it filled surface defects that I missed.

As you can see, the joining line between the top, side, and front panels wasn't completely filled in on the outside, and you can see the join line. Considering this stuff comes out of the can almost like pudding, I assumed it would cover any remaining flaws, which it doesn't. It shrinks quite a bit as it cures, which I now know. Seeing as these are 'Basement Workshop' speakers, and I'm not building them for sale, they're plenty good enough.

So here they are, fully assembled as specified in the "instructions" they give you, along with the twenty-six #8x3/4" deep thread screws, and the input terminal plate, which were not included in the "kit".

I'm going to tack on some protective grilles for the speakers with little dabs of sealer. That way they don't require any hardware to attach, and the sealer keeps them 'floating' over the grilles so they can't get loose, vibrate, and cause Bad Sound, like Da Kidz that drive by with their stereos on loud enough to vibrate everything in their car.

How do they sound? Crude preliminary testing with a little Pyle "40 Watt" per channel amp driven by my 'shop radio' indicate much promise.

Not an "Audiophile Grade" at all, but it works, and I had it.

Since these speakers have a reputation for being inefficient, and taking a lot of power to get good volume, this little amp, with sketchy specifications, actually worked OK.

Now to get that big old Heathkit AR-15 finished up!