Field Day is NEXT Weekend

OOOPS....got too busy on the Iowa and messing with the Supra this year, and now Field Day is one week off.

SO....that means tomorrow I'm going to have to drag out the generator and fire it up, go through my "Field Day" tool bag and round up the usual suspects that always turn up missing, drag the antennas, preamps, feedlines, and control cables out, and set everything up.

We have three new satellites this year, so I'll have to make sure that they show up properly in SatPC32 (my tracking program), and make three new uplink/downlink frequency "cheat sheets" that I use to keep track of the frequencies used for each satellite.

Here's an example of the one I made for FO-29:

My tracking program is set to tune the radio to the middle of the downlink passband, in this case, 435.850MHz. The corresponding uplink frequency is 145.950MHz, +/- any Doppler shift. If the middle of the transponder is busy, and it usually is, I'll tune up to 435.870, or until I find a clear spot. The transmit VFO in the radio should tune to 145.930, but if it doesn't, I'll hit the "unlock" button on the radio which separates the two VFO's, and tune to what the corresponding uplink frequency should be, and do a "1,2,3" transmission to find myself, and center my signal through the satellite to my downlink frequency. Then I "lock" the two VFO's back togther, and the tracking program will send frequency corrections to both the transmit VFO and the receive VFO, keeping my signal properly tuned.

The chart just helps me keep things straight, as FO-29 uses an inverting transponder, which means the signals come back through the satellite on a different sideband (LSB up, USB down), and with the tuning direction reversed.

I'll be back at Angel's Gate Park this year, working with my other club, URAC. We ran Field Day on the Iowa last year, and although we did rather well, lugging all the satellite gear aboard, and getting placed in the location we were allowed to set up in, made satellite contacts difficult.

More to come as the week progresses......

400k Hits!

Wow....if I had 10x that amount I'd have something to cheer about.....

Well, So Much for "Be Back Later"!

DUH...posted that on Tuesday, and here it is Sunday.

Museum Ships Weekend went well on the Iowa. We made about 350 contacts, and the guys running the "Legacy Equipment" (the 1980's Navy-installed gear) made about 50 contacts.

If you worked NI6BB and want a QSL card, follow the directions on the NI6BB QRZ.com webpage. I can't link to it, as QRZ does not allow direct links; you must be logged-in on the QRZ page to do lookups.

I spent my "shift" for the legacy guys down in the transmitter room. I don't care to operate the Navy-installed equipment even though I have, as it's all tied through a telephone-type handset. Not my style of operating, but I'll support the guys when they need it.

Got the differential lube changed in the Supra. The "Mark II" Supras only have 1.3 quarts in the differential, which is pretty "light", so keeping fresh lube in it helps preserve the parts inside.

Getting the fill plug out was a pain, as it's a "Low Profile" hex plug, and they're usually in there "Gorilla Tight", which means you DO NOT use a typical box-end wrench or 12-point socket to get the plug out.

The wrench WILL slip off the plug, and you'll round the corners off, making it even more difficult to remove. I know people that wound up pulling the cast aluminum differential cover off the car so they could get the plug out!

Instead, use a 1/2" drive SIX POINT socket with a 1/2" drive breaker bar. PUSH DOWN on the socket with one hand to keep it in place, and smack the breaker bar with 5 or 6 pound "Hand Sledge" (or what my son calls my "BFH"), and after a couple of good whacks, the plug will come loose.

I refilled the differential with Red Line synthetic 75W90 GL-5 gear lube, with 2 oz (half a bottle) of their synthetic limited slip additive.

I just took the car down off the jack stands, and I'm going to take her out for a nice little Sunday Drive to get the transmission lube nice and hot, and then drain and refill the trans with Red Line synthetic MT90 gear oil.

One "bonus" to using the Red Line synthetic products is that they don't stink to High Heaven the way "regular" gear lube does.

And since the easiest way to refill the trans in the car is to pour in the 2.5 quarts of MT90 in through the top, AND most of the interior is out so I can get started on installing the new carpet, I'll just pull a few bolts and remove the shifter mechanism from the top, and pour the fresh lube in through there.

And since the shifter will be out, I'll replace it with the "Short Throw" unit I bought a while back from Raptor Racing, one of the very few places that sells aftermarket parts for these cars.

Time to go for a drive!


****************************************************

Car is up on jacks, and the trans is draining. The drain plug came out fine, but the fill plug is being obstinate. It's not critical to get the fill plug out, as once I pull the OEM shifter, I can pour the 2.5 qts in through the top before I replace the shifter with my new one.

I'll just have to jack the car up a bit more and reposition the jack stands to get a better "angle" on my ratchet handle so I can PULLLLL harder on it.

I tried the breaker bar first, but there's not quite enough room to get the socket on the plug using the breaker bar as the head is thicker than my 1/2" drive ratchet/socket combo....

Busy Day....Be Back Later!

Title says it all.

Have some errands to run, and then I'll be back with a post about Museum Ships Weekend on the Iowa!

Supra Passed Smog.....BARELY....

Passed fine on NOX this time, but just barely squeaked by on HC.

Max limit is 130ppm, and the car tested at 129ppm.

That's a bit too close!

The test tech agreed that the converter should probably be replaced, based on the numbers out of the tailpipe.

SO....I now have until next April to get a converter, and install it.

Magnaflow never replied to my emails, and never called back like they said they would, so even if they make a converter that actually fits my car, I won't be buying one.

Walker makes one, and I'll probably get that one.

YAY! Supra's All Back Together Again, and the EGR System WORKS!

Whew........watta PITA, though.

To start with, I followed the recommendations of the celicasupra forum members who have been down this path, and took everything apart to clean it.

The first problem came when I took the EGR valve off the "Upper Intake Manifold". The valve is held on by nuts on studs, and taking the nuts off freed the valve up, BUT the big line bringing the exhaust gas to the valve was rigidly mounted. The 27mm (!!) nut came off OK, but the rigid mounting of the pipe, and the studs protruding through the valve mounting flange, didn't allow for much movement.

So, like a dummy, I grabbed my BIG pry bar, and pried the valve off.

Guess what? The valve is made of very thin section CAST iron, and the threaded part had two sections break loose from the rest of it.

GROAN!

I used some good old, field-proven "JB Weld", and bonded the pieces back together. After letting it sit in the hot sun for several days, I cleaned the JB Weld off the threads with some jeweler's files, and used a sanding drum in my Dremel tool to clean up the back side where the inlet tube slides into it.

In order to put it all back together when all the cleaning was finished, and not fight getting the valve over the studs while trying to get it to line up with the exhaust gas pipe, I pulled the studs out of the manifold, chased the threads on both ends of the studs, the hold-down nuts, and the threads in the manifold so they'd all go together "finger easy", as it's a cramped spot to work on.

I knocked the core plug loose from the manifold at the passage junction where the exhaust gas dumps into the manifold via a small, pressed-in brass tube, and found the brass tube was plugged solid. I cleaned that out, and then removed the threaded plug from the back of the manifold, and ran a Hoppes 45 cal Bore Snake through the passage to clean it out.

BTW.....Hoppes #9 Powder Solvent works GREAT to remove baked-on carbon on car parts!

Then I took the "EGR Vacuum Modulator" apart and cleaned it, and cleaned up my now "repaired" EGR valve.

I started putting it back together last Friday, but got sidelined a bit with all the Memorial Day activities I helped with on the Iowa.

I put the cleaned EGR valve on the manifold loosely and got it started on the inlet pipe, and then run the studs in. They threaded in easily since all the threads were chased, and once I had the valve and inlet pipe aligned and the BIG nut kinda started, I put the nuts on the studs and tightened the valve down solid to the manifold.

After a bit of fiddling with the BIG nut (and a few choice words....), I got the inlet pipe tightened down, made sure the hold-down nuts were tight, and put the rest of the air-intake piping back on.

The engine started on the first crank and came up to fast idle. I put full manifold vacuum on the EGR valve, and the idle speed dropped like a rock, and the engine ran really rough, just like it's supposed to.

After it was fully warmed up, applying full vacuum to the valve makes it stumble and stall, just like my Toyota Service Manual says it's supposed to.

SO, even though the only part that "needed" cleaning was the little brass tube that channels the exhaust gas into the manifold, the whole shebang is now cleaned about as well as it can be without pulling everything off the engine.

Tomorrow I'll take her out for a good, long drive and make sure everything is up to operating temperature, and then head to the smog test place.

If she doesn't pass this time, I'll put a new converter on her, but the Toyota guys seem to think she'll pass, given as she failed on NOX, and the EGR system was essentially NON-OP.

Glen Beck "Suspended" By Sirius/XM Radio

Interesting article located here.


The gist is that Mr. Beck is suspended for a week, and his program will be replaced with David Webb.

Memorial Day Thanks

 
To all our fallen service people, and to fallen warriors everywhere who fought for liberty, I humbly give you my thanks.

I'll be on the Iowa all weekend helping out with NI6BB operations, and (probably!) doing some tour guide and escort duties.

All the tour guides and Security folks (yep, they wear red shirts!) know when "Radio" is manned and  having an event, so we usually get several visitors who ask to see the Comm Center. We're pleased and honored to show them the area and answer questions even though we're not on the tour route.

The Iowa is having quite a shindig, as usual, so if you're in the area, please stop on and say hi.

Battleship Iowa "Original" Transmitter/Receiver Update For Museum Ships Weekend

Haven't done a specific post on this topic in a while, and since Museum Ships Weekend is coming up, I figured it was time to let everybody know what's been happening.

As of this time, we have three of the transmitters working. One only puts out a couple of hundred Watts (it has low exciter drive to the final amplifier) and the other two put out approx 1200 Watts PEP when running in SSB mode.

Some of the pix below are courtesy of the excellent Navy Radio website run by Nick, K4NYW.

Nick has been a GREAT help to us, and has visited the Iowa.

THANKS, Nick!

Transmitters:

We have four operational R-1051 receivers, that have had the "chain belts" replaced with spares we received from the good folks on the USS Midway.


R-1051 Receiver aboard USS America:

If you ever get down to San Diego, please stop in and see the Midway. It's time well spent!

We also have three URR-74 receivers, which are the MILSPEC version of the Watkins-Johnson 8718 receiver. One of those works perfectly, one works but is low on sensitivity, and one works when it wants to.

URR-74:

For antennas on Museum Ships Weekend we'll be using the "Goal Post" or "Bull's Horns" antennas located on the starboard side by the #2 stack for transmitting, and the "Twin Whip" antennas mounted on the bridge deck for receiving.

We have two of the "Red Phones" manually patched through the "Coke Machine"; one on the bridge, and the other in FACCON, which is the correct name for what we call the Comm Center, or "Radio Room".

Red Phone:

Coke Machine:

We've trained up a crew of guys for the transmitter room that will set the transmit frequency and adjust the antenna coupler for minimum reflected power, and we'll have a guy in FACCON to tune the receiver if we have to "QSY", and another guy who will coordinate everybody, and keep the transmitter and receiver crews on the same page, and more importantly, on the same frequency!

Antenna Couplers:

"Goal Post" or "Bull's Horns" Transmit Antenna:

"Twin Whips" (to the right) Receiver Antennas:

We've tested all the gear on the air several times, and except for the fact that the 1051 receivers have a front-end "as wide as a barn door", and aren't the best to use on a crowded Amateur Radio band, everything is working well enough to hit the airwaves on Museum Ships Weekend, which is June 4th and 5th this year.

NI6BB will be on 17 Meters, at the upper end of the band around 18.164MHz, using this gear, which we refer to as the"legacy" equipment, and on the other ham bands using our commercial Ham Radio gear.



We'll be running SSB, CW, and PSK-31 this year, so hope we run into a few of you on the air!

The Trumpinator!

Stumbled across this and thought you might find it funny.....

Boeing Wins Case Against Sea Launch Partners

From a post on NASASpaceFlight.com:

Boeing wins case against Sea Launch partners

On May 12, 2016, judge Andre Birotte of the Central District of California, ordered RKK Energia to pay Boeing and its business unit, Boeing Commercial Space Company, BCSC, a total of $322.49 million in owed investments and interest.

The same ruling ordered KB Yuzhnoe and its production partner Yuzhmash, (both based in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine) to pay a total of $193.44 million.

The total sum owed by Russian and Ukrainian space industry in the Sea Launch debacle thus reached $515.93 million.

As the person making the post noted, it's doubtful that Boeing will get that amount, if anything, from their former partners.

Here's a nice history of the program from RussianSpaceWeb.com.

Every time I drive from Long Beach to San Pedro, I see the ships sitting there.

They haven't moved in almost three years now, and I'm sure the hulls are rather thickly encrusted with barnacles and other sea life.....

Tuesday Car Bashing

Well, not really "bashing" anything on the car, as I refuse to let it get to me.

It's an inanimate object and while working on it can be frustrating at times, I just walk away if it gets that bad.

All the bits and pieces of the EGR system have been cleaned up, and are being reassembled today.

Hopefully I'll have it running this afternoon, but had to take a break for lunch.

Patriotic Soda Display

Saw this over at a car-guy place, and since I haven't seen it before, I thought I'd share it.

Quiet Day

Thursdays are generally pretty quiet here.

Wednesdays I'm on the Iowa all day, so Thursdays are used to catch up on other things, and just kick back.

I've got the EGR passages in the Supra's intake manifold all cleaned out, along with the EGR valve and Vacuum Modulator for it.

I used a Hoppes 20 gauge "Boresnake" to get the passages all scrubbed out from fore to aft, and pipe cleaners and compressed air to get the valve and modulator cleaned out.

The red line shows the path of the EGR passage from the valve 'atthe rear, to where the throttle body bolts to the Upper Air Chamber" portion of the intake manifold. In the center is a core hole plug (aka "freeze plug") that you gently remove to gain access to the passage.

Photo credit goes to my buddy "Driftingmy85" over on the celica supra forum.

The entire HOWTO thread is located here in case you're curious about how to do it.

Tomorrow I'll put the whole shebang back together and take the car out for a run, AFTER I do the "apply full vacuum to valve to see if the engine stalls" test, which will tell me if the exhaust gas is indeed getting into the manifold.

I'll probably wait until Monday to go back to the smog test place and see if it passes.

If it doesn't pass, I'll get a replacement catalytic converter. I took back the Magnaflow converter I bought as it had an extra fitting for supplemental air injection which this car doesn't have, and it's the ONLY converter Magnaflow has in production that's supposedly for this car.

Two emails and a call to Tech Support at Magnaflow yielded exactly *nothing* other than "We'll get back to you".

Walker Products makes a California legal converter without the air fitting, so if if cleaning out the EGR doesn't produce a passing result, that's what I'll get.

Freedom.....I WON'T

Or as our friends over at the Western Rifle Shooters Association are given to say, resist.


I first read this little story by Eric Frank Russell back in high school, and thought it was quite interesting, and more than a bit quaint, but then I grew up in the Midwest, with all the accompanying values and morals that growing up middle-class in the 1960's Midwest entails, including taking your "obs" seriously.

It's a little story of a vast Terran empire reaching out to its long neglected colonies in order to bring them "into the fold", and most likely tax the living snot out of them.

The residents of one particular planet aren't about to be enslaved, and have pretty much perfected The Ultimate Weapon, and show the Terran empire what it can do.

So grab a cup of coffee, and head on over to abelard.org and read "And Then There Were None".

I'm sure you'll enjoy it, and maybe pick up an idea or three.....

TGIF!

Raining here in SoCal in May.....amazing!

So, with the rain, I'm not doing much on the Supra today.

Vacuumed the house (and fixed the vacuum!), cleaned the bathroom, and unloaded/reloaded the dishwasher.

We're going to see some female comic Saturday night, so I'll report back on that.

In the meantime, enjoy this old Leon Russel classic.

It has a great lyric in it...."The left ones think I'm right, and the right ones think I'm wrong".

Cruz Suspends Campaign

Trump beat him in Indiana, so Ted's throwing in the towel.

Details on all major news outlets.....

Cartoon courtesy of various places.....

You Tell 'Em, Charlie!

You tell 'em, Charlie!

Shamelessly borrowed from OldNFO.....

Busy Saturday

WELL....I had wanted to continue work on the Supra today, BUT...I had volunteered to help with "Volunteer Recruiting Fair" this morning on the Iowa, from 0800 to 1230.

Then one of the other Radio Guys who was at the table with me (we had ZERO visitors) asked if I could stick around for a while and get him checked out on the Ham Radio gear. That took an hour or so, but while I was running him through the checklist and making sure he understood everything, my cell phone rang, and it was another new radio guy who wanted to know how long we'd be hanging around......

Well, he showed up about an hour later, and brought the Hallicrafters SX-100 he bought last week with him. The radio is in stunning condition for being well over 50 years old, having been owned b a Professor at the Naval Postgraduare School up in Monterey, CA.

And he only paid $100 for it!

So he and the other guy got out the tube tester and proceeded to start checking the tubes in it, when another radio guy came in to operate the station for a few hours.

He saw I was there, and asked if I could mentor him a bit on operating the "Digital Modes" (PSK31, RTTY, SSTV, etc), so I spent a couple of hours with him going over the software we have on the station computer, the little SignaLink box that interfaces the radio to the PC, what the modes sound like, (we have tagged audio recordings of quite a few of them), and proper operating procedure.

Soon enough it was 1700, and since I didn't care to hang around and listen to the ABBA tribute band they had for "Music Under The Guns", I headed home.

The wife was out shopping, so I crashed out and took a nice little nap, and then we went out to dinner at Panera Bread.

So, had a good and busy day, but the car will have to wait until Sunday.

I have most of the EGR system cleaned out, and just have to check out and clean the vale itself, and the vacuum "modulator" that goes with it. After that I'll put it all back together, do the "engine stall" test, and should be good-to-go.

The Magnaflow P/N 332888 catalytic convert I ordered turns to NOT be usable on the car as it has an additional fitting on the side for an air-injection pump that my car doesn't have.

I'm not going to modify it because if I do that, and the smog inspector sees it's been modified, he'll tag the test report with a "TAMPERED WITH" flag, which will fail the car.

I emailed Magnaflow on Friday about this issue, but haven't heard anything back. If I haven't heard anything by Monday afternoon, I'm going to give them a call and find out if they make a CORRECT converter for the car.

The people who really know these cars well on one of the forums are split on whether I should replace the converter or not, and also split on if it will give me the cushion I need to feel comfortable about getting it smogged again. The consensus seems to be to just go get it tested after I clean out the EGR, and if it fails again, THEN replace the converter and try again. The problem with that solution is I'll have to cough up another $60 to test it again, as that EGR-repair-only "test" will burn my "Free Retest in 30 Days" from the place that failed it.

AND I'd still have to buy the converter and swap it out!

So, I'll hold off a while until I can find an EXACT FIT replacement converter, and get it retested with the repaired EGR AND a new converter.

I wouldn't mind doing a test before and after replacing the converter, but not without telling the guys on the forum to take up a collection for the $60 it would cost me!

I'm all for "Science Experiments", but not when they cost $60.......

Small Block Chevy Time-Lapse Rebuild

Yeah, I know I've posted this before, but being in a "car guy" mode these last couple of weeks, I thought I'd post it again.

Two-bolt main block, pressed-in rocker studs indicate it was never a High-Performance engine, but they have the Corvette "Rams Horns" exhaust manifolds on it, so perhaps it came out of a (very) early Corvette.

Enjoy!

Toyota Smog Test FAIL Again

Well, she failed the smog test again.

This time it was for NOX emissions, and the HC and CO passed.

EGR is a technique used to lower the combustion chamber temperature, thereby reducing the amount of Oxides of Nitrogen produced.

It's a "known issue" with the 5M-GE engine that the passage through the intake manifold from the EGR valve to where it dumps into the throttle body gets plugged up.

A very simple test is to apply vacuum to the port on the EGR valve, which opens it, and dumps large quantities of exhaust gas into the intake manifold.

It should make the engine stumble ot stall, as the EGR is normally disabled at idle.

I hooked the valve to direct manifold vacuum, and I could hear and feel the valve "POP" open and shut.

NO change in idle speed or quality, indicating that the passage is plugged.

Not a terribly difficult job to do, but time consuming, and you have to do with engine COLD.

I'll also be replacing the catalytic converter, as the one on the car looks to be the original one, and after 30+ years, and 165,000 miles, it's about time to retire it!

Since I was driving on expired plates and didn't want to get pulled over and ticketed, I took the side streets to the nearest smog test place. As a result, the car didn't get the usual "30 minute highway blast" to get it FULLY warmed up, and get the converter nice and hot. A converter at the correct operating temperature is essential to get it working correctly, and an old one usually benefits from a good highway run before getting the car tested.

Hopefully a new converter and cleaning the EGR system will get rid of the vicious pass/fail/pass/fail cycle this car has been trapped in for the last 10 years or so.

And I'll also replace the distributor cap and rotor, as the one on the engine looks pretty old, and I have a couple of new ones I bought on sale at Rock Auto.

One other thing I'm considering is to put 5 gallons of lead-free, alcohol free 100 octane VP racing fuel into the tank before I take it back to get retested.

The octane requirement for these engines is only 91 octane, BUT when they were designed and built, the computers were calibrated to use GASOLINE, not some funky blend of gas and moonshine!

As far as I'm concerned, adding 10% booze to the gas I buy at the pump means I'm buying adulterated gasoline. There are a few "pure gas" stations here in SoCal, but none are close to where I live.

Luckily there's a VP distributor here in Long Beach, so getting a 5 gallon bucket is just a short drive.

One of the things about the 10% ethanol blends here in Kommiefornia is that the quality is all over the map. Sometimes the refiners will use a lower grade base stock, and ballast it with ethanol to get the octane up, and sometimes they won't.

And it's well known that 10% ethanol blended gas can damage the fuel systems on cars not modified to use it.

The whole thing is just another "feel good" program to con people into thinking "renewable energy", when we have plenty of oil in the ground here in the USA.

Of, well....enough ranting for now.

Off to the auto parts store (NOT Auto Zone!) to order a converter, and grab a new gas cap while I'm at it. The car passed the "EVAP" portion of the test fine, but the smog guy was suggesting that the old, crusty gas cap get replaced just for peace of mind, and I agree. It's just one of those things I kept forgetting to do.....

Hey, Kids....What Time Is It?

It's LOG TIME!

A blast from the past.....




There's a longer, much funnier commercial, but I can't embed it, so here's the link to it.

GQRX is Broken.....RATS!

Thought I'd try messing around a bit with a few of the USB "dongles" I have last night, and went to fire up GQRX on this PC.

It wouldn't start.

Running it from the command line revealed the following error: gqrx: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib64/libgnuradio-osmosdr-0.1.5git.so.0.0.0: undefined symbol: hackrf_device_list

Google shows nothing posted about this error in the last year, and some of the comments I did find about it related to broken symlinks.

SO....I proceeded to remove ALL of the SDR, radio, hamlib, gnuradio, linrad, hackRF, and other numerous assorted and sundry files from this machine. This took a bit of searching, as removing the software with the YaST package manager still leaves some debris behind in hidden config files and libs.

Did a reboot, reinstalled only gqrx and it's requirements, and was greeted by the same error.

SO.....back to searching, or I guess I can build it all from source, which takes a while, and can be no guarantee of producing an error-free install.

UPDATE

Well, it seems this package provides functionality for a lot of things:

"OsmoSDR Gnuradio Source supports the OsmoSDR hardware, but it also offers a wrapper functionality for FunCube Dongle, Ettus UHD and rtl-sdr radios."

Now to find out why it's broken.... 


UPDATE 2 

Well, I've got one of the little receivers working with a very basic Linrad configuration. Here it is receiving NOAA weather radio on 162.550MHz: 

  

 So, either Linrad uses completely different libraries, or something "fixed" itself.

Linrad is really cool software, and I should spend the time and learn how to use it better. At this point, it's a bit hard to adjust things and change/add things "on the fly". For example, while you can grab the side and/or top and bottom of the screen to resize it, those settings won't "stick" when you exit the program, and it will restart at the size you choose when you set it up the first time. A lot of things can get set in the "Global Parameters" setting, but require a restart to see the changes.

Guess I'm too spoiled by GUIs in my old age!

I'll try running GQRX again, but I have a feeling it's going to stay busted until an update rolls out.

Oh, and Gnuradio doesn't work anymore.

I try and start GRC from the command line, and it barfs back: Warning: Block key "blocks_ctrlport_monitor_performance" not found when loading category tree.

Segmentation fault

Seg faults are bad.................

TGIF!

Enjoy the weekend!

I'm tinkering on getting one of the "USB Dongle" SDR receivers to work on the %%##$$!! Polaroid Android (say that three times fast!) tablet that my dear little wife gave me for Christmas.

After that, there are several software packages I'll try and install to do some useful things, like receive ACARS broadcasts and VTS info.

I'd also like to "root" it, but after spending dozens of hours on trying to do that, I've just about given up.

I was able to get "developer's access" rights on it, but I can't find any rooting software that's compatible with the hardware.

I just might sell this one and get one that's known to be rootable, as theses things come with entirely too much crapware on them,and most of the "factory installed" stuff can't be removed without root access.

Antipodal Map

The other day somebody asked me how "far" I could "talk" using Amateur Radio.

The obvious answer was half-way around the world, depending on band conditions.

So then I started thinking (I know, a sometimes dangerous thing with me), where, exactly, was "Half Way Around The World"?

Well, the point that's "half-way around the world" from wherever you are is called The Antipode, and of course, there's an app for that:

It's a pretty neat little webpage, and it's located here.

I'm Such a Klutz......

Well....yesterday morning as I was having my 2nd cup of coffee, I turned around to do something, and dumped coffee over.

ALL over the desk, and my IBM "clicky" keyboard.

I've lost keyboards in the past when I've spilled various liquids on them, but hopefully the IBM will survive plain, black coffee after it dries out.

It really pained me to open up my last brand-new IBM keyboard, and put it into service, but I don't have any other decent keyboards with a PS2 connector, so I slit the plastic wrap open and put it on the desk.

The worst I've ever done was dumping an entire milkshake on a keyboard a year or two ago. I put that one in the dishwasher (I have a very understanding wife!) on low heat, with no supplemental drying heat, and after it came out I left it outside for a few days to completely dry off.

Surprisingly, it came back to life, very clean, and smelling nice, too.

Today is the 27th anniversary or the Turret #2 explosion on the Iowa. I was going to go down to the ship for the memorial service, but woke up a bit late.

A moment of silence, please.....

Thank you.

Headed Out To A Supra "Meet and Greet and Eat".

Headed out to Wildomar, Ca in an hour or so to attend the Southern California Supra Meet.

Like most of the Supra meets I've gone to, the majority of the cars there will be the MKIV "A80" (1992~2002) models, followed by the MKIII "A70" (1986~1992) models.

The the MKII "A60" (1982~1986), and MKI "A40" (1978~1981) models are getting less and less common these days.

Since you can't tell the players without a program, here 'ya go:



"Mark I" Supra:

"Mark II" Supra:

"Mark III" Supra:

"Mark IV" Supra:

When I'd decided I wanted one of these, I settled on either a MKII or MKIII. The MKII's were "Spaceships" when they first hit the market, and I almost bought one in 1983, but held off as I'd only been here in Kommifornia for a year, and was getting settled into my new career at Hughes Aircraft.

Then I got married.

Then we had a kid.

Then we bought a house......

So it took me about 30 years to finally get one!

I looked at and drove several MKIII's, but decided against it because they'd gained about 500 pounds, and weren't quite as nimble as the MKII's. They had larger engines, though, and were available with turbochargers, so they were significantly quicker than the MKII's.

The MKIV's were completely out of my price range, having shot through the roof after they first appeared in the "Fast and Furious" movies.

The twin-turbo MKIV's are also stupid fast, having 300HP, and 320 ft-lbs of torque. "Car and Driver" said to think of them as a "Lexus for Smokey Yunick".

The bottom end of the engines are pretty bullet-proof, and can easily be cranked up to over 400HP with minimal effort.

Last year at the "Supras In Vegas" meet there were several slightly modified ones running low 12's at the strip, and a couple of track-only cars running in the 8's at over 135MPH!

On a good day, my MKII might break into the 16's, at maybe 85MPH, so you can see they really evolved in the ten years between the models.

The MKII is a sweetheart to drive, though. 2.8 liter DOHC electronic fuel injection, 4 wheel disc brakes, 4 wheel independent suspension, 5 speed manual transmission, and it all plays together extremely well. Not a very quick car (acceleration), and not a very fast car (top speed), but immensely rewarding to drive, and quite capable of hustling along at high speeds in comfort.

Just don't square off against any new cars, or you'll get your doors blown off, and the other guy won't even know he's "racing" you!