Wife Headed Home

After a short stay for the baby shower in Fort Collins, she's on her flight, in the air, and headed back to LAX.

She should be here around 1600, so I'll get to the terminal parking area around 1530, see what gate she's arriving at, and go plunk myself down near the gate and wait.

Would have greatly preferred to have her return via LGB, but when you book your flight 12~14 hours before departure, AND you're trying to get a good price, you can't be too picky!

Miscellaneous Ramblings

Well, got the wife off to Colorado this morning, no thanks to Frontier Airlines. I've only flown on them once, and it was enough. She'd booked this flight a couple of months ago, as Saturday is the baby shower for little Noah, who arrived a wee bit early.

Her flight on Frontier was scheduled for an 1100 departure from John Wayne Airport down in Orange County, and they texted her a cancellation notice last night about 1800 citing a "Spring snowstorm" as the reason for the cancellation.

HUH? Now I know the National Weather Service has been getting a lot of flack lately for their "ZOMG!!!" weather "forecasts", and especially for their "ZOMG!!! SNOWMAGEDDON!!!!" forecast stunt they pulled a coupe,of weeks ago which literally shut down parts of the East coast. I looked at the satellite pictures, and the weather radar data, wet my finger and stuck it in the air, and decided that *if* Denver got much snow, DIA could handle it well, keeping the runways plowed (you get pretty good at the stuff after a while), and I certainly couldn't see any reasonable cause to cancel that particular flight considering that NONE of the other airlines serving Denver even had any delays expected.

I jumped on the old Intertubes and found her a flight on United leaving at 0947 from LAX this morning, nonstop, and while it cost almost double what her "economy" fare on Frontier cost. it had seats available, and gave you one free carry on bag.

Oh, did I mention that Frontier now charges $25 for a carry on bag?

Say what??

The only reason I can see for this is that they're stuffing the belly of the aircraft full of cargo, and the less stuff the passengers bring on board, the more cargo they can cram into the plane. I'll be on the Iowa all day tomorrow for Viet Nam Veteran's Day (Thank you all for your service), and one of our radio operators is a retied 747 Captain, so I'll ask him what he knows about this. He keeps up on industry trends, so he might know.

Our daughter-in-law laughed when we told Frontier had canceled the flight, saying it's been in the middle to upper 70's the last week!

So anyway......she's safely in Fort Collins now, and got to hold little Noah for the first time. She told me "He's barely bigger than a breath!", and that he opened his eyes and smiled at her, and reached out to grab her hair.

My wife was immediately overcome with "Grandma Love", so I imagine after she gets back Sunday afternoon we'll kick things up a notch to start getting things packed up in preparation for shipping a couple of "pods" there ahead of us. We're going back the last week of May to see the kids again and do some serious house hunting, and I know her holding the little guy today just increased her desire to move there by, oh, maybe 200% or so.


And in the Automotive News section today.....

Edd China has announced that after 13 seasons he's leaving "Wheeler Dealers", one of my favorite "reality" auto restoration shows.

When Discovery Network took over the show they wanted to glam it up a bit, claiming that there was too much time spent in each show showing Edd working on and modifying the car.

Hey, idiots, that's what we watch it for!

So, due to the infamous "creative differences", Mr. China has decided to leave the show and focus on his other enterprises and new projects.

Good luck, Edd. You WILL be missed!

I take issue with some of their past episodes where Mike Brewer overstated what work was done on the car as he gave the sales pitch to the buyer, but still, I always found it entertaining, and learned more than few good tips from Edd.

So, that's a wrap for this entry. I'll be yakking on NI6BB all day tomorrow, thanking our veterans, and enjoying the live music and food that are always a pert of these events.

To all our veterans, thank you for your service!

Nothing In The World Sounds Quite Like This.......

Except maybe a Titan IV launch.

The first rocket I watched live was an Atlas Centaur that lofted a NAVSTAR Block-1 bird from Vandenbeg AFB. My first wife's Uncle Tony worked for Rockwell, and was able to get us passes to the VIP viewing area.

I saw one more Atlas launch, and then a Titan launch, at Vandenberg before he transferred from that program to another one.

I didn't get to see any more live launches until I started to work at Sea Launch, where I went on 18 launches.

I stumbled across this on YouTube and it reminded me of the Titan launch I saw.

First Start and Run of Hagerty's Rebuilt Hemi!

Whoo-Hoo!

They got so many requests to hear it run that they made this short video.

Full screen and high volume works best for me....

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!

It's Raining Cats and Dogs!

Or so says my weather station.

Rain was supposed to start last night at 1900, then the rolled it back to 2200, but it didn't start until about 0600 this morning.

As of right now (1522 PST) we've picked up about .65", and it's cominf down in sheets.

I'd give you a wind speed report, but it looks like my anemometer has decided to take the day off, and I'm not going outside to even check it, let alone attempt a repair!

This screen shot show the current NWS weather radar image:

And this one shows the sat image:

So as you can see, whe're in the middle of a storm cell, with more coming.

The barometer is dropping like a rock, currently at 29.30. and it promises to be a pretty wet and windy night.


*****UPDATE*****

We've received 1.7" as of 1645, and the rain rate is now 2.40" in/hr.

"Lake Long Beach" is coming back for a return engagement.....

Pretty Much Back to "Normal"....

Or as "normal" as I get!

Went out on my mail run last night, and did the grocery shopping for the first time in, oh....years.

My wife is still fighting off the remnants of this crud, but she soldiered off to work this morning. Since she's the Office Administrator, when she's gone for a few days the place kinda runs on autopilot, but always seems to hit some turbulence requiring her to answer the phone even when she's out sick.

Looking forward to Wednesday, when I give LL the Grand Tour of the Iowa. I'm sure he'll enjoy it, and since I have access to nominally "Off Limits" areas, I'll show him some of the more interesting things.

Feeling Better, Finally....

Getting back to being myself after almost a week since this bug bit me.

Not coughing all night long, but I'm still congested and a bit worn out.

Nothing else to post today....maybe something later.

Major BLECH

Been in bed all day.
 Nose is still running like Niagara, every single muscle in me hurts, I have a pounding headache, and it took ten minutes to write threse lines.

Go read the good people in the links....I'm going back to bed..........

Miscellaneous Stuff

Family medical emergency is somewhat under control.

I'm coughing and sneezing every 5 minutes, all my muscles ache, my nose is running like Niagara, my head feels like a balloon, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I'm sure I picked this bug up one of the two times I went to the ER last week. Most everybody was wearing face masks, and there were signs up advising people to wear them.

My wife just ran out to pick up some NyQuil and Mucinex, and she'll probably be sleeping in the front bedroom tonight so I don't wake her up with my coughing.

My friend Randy who posted, and then mailed me, the pix of a very young drjim in his basement Ham Radio shack also posted the only photo known to exist of my 1969 Dodge Charger R/T.

This was taken in the 1969~70 school year, as we sold the car in the spring after Allstate found out that it was a Charger R/T, and not "just" a Charger, and TRIPLED my insurance rates.


$500/year I could handle with my parents help and my part-time jobs, but FIFTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS PER YEAR was an astounding amount of money back then, more than a "college kid" could afford. With 100 Octane leaded premium fuel costing thirty eight cents a gallon, $5 a week was enough gas to go to/from school, my job, and cruise around a bit when the weather was nice.

For those that don't know....the car is a 1969 Dodge Charger R/T with the SE (Special Edition) package, 440 Magnum V8, TorqueFlite automatic trans, 3.23 SureGrip ("POSI") rear, power steering, 11" manual DRUM brakes, tinted glass, and an AM radio. The SE package included "leather" (worst automotive leather I've ever seen) seating surfaces on the front seats, a simulated wood grain dash and steering wheel, a lighting package (light over ignition key, door panel lamps, and hood-mounted turn signal indicators), clock, and "SE" emblems. The paint code was "T5 Copper Metallic", and it had a tan interior. It did NOT have the R/T "Bumblebee" stripe because we ordered it from the Dodge dealer (Melvin Teasdale Dodge) in Morris, IL that my Mom grew up with, and since it was "her" car, he checked the "delete stripe" box on the order form, and also specified white wall tires instead of the standard Red Line F-70x14 tires they normally came with. With the stripe delete (There were discrete "R/T" emblems on the rear quarters) and white walls, it was a real sleeper! The best it ever ran at the strip was a 15.60@102MPH as it was severely traction limited with those skinny tires on 5" wide rims. I could spin the tires as long as I wanted to, and it would get pretty boring after a block or three. I wanted to get the 15" Magnum 500 styled steel rims with white letter Goodyear PolyGlas F-70x15" tires, but that would have put me WAY over budget, as that option required extra cost power disc brakes, and I wanted the SE package. My friend Randy and I took this car out one night and I held the accelerator down until it topped out at an indicated 130MPH. I don't know what RPM the engine was turning, because the tach would have cost about $100 extra, and I just couldn't afford it. Window sticker on it was exactly $4004, and I think we got it for about $3600~$3700.

"Mindbender II" was the name of a road rally a friend of mine and I laid out, and "JJC" stood for Joliet Junior College, also called "Ju-Co" or "Super High". It was the first public junior college in the USA, and this was the first year the school was located at its new campus, waaaay out on the West side of Joliet, on a high plateau surrounded by cornfields.

There was nothing to break the wind and snow in the winter time, and it could get pretty brutal for the Midwest, with 30~40 MPH winds, and temps of 10*~20* below zero. The closest parking spot to the temporary classrooms (trailers) was over a quarter mile away, and you typically walked at least a half mile, usually  more, from parking to your classroom.

People who didn't dress properly could, and did, get frost bite walking in to the classrooms from the parking lot.

JJC was a nice transition from high school to "college", but if you weren't careful, you'd treat it like an extension of high school ("Super High"), and fall flat on your face if/when you went away to a "real" college or University.

Family Medical Emergency. Gonna Be Busy for a Few Days.

Title says it all.

Be back shortly.

Flag Raising Ceremony on the Battleship Iowa

This time it was for two people I knew and volunteered with.

Farewell, shipmates!

Headed Out.....

It's 78 degrees, the sun is shining, and I'm wearing one of my Celica Supra T-shirts.

I just cleaned the windows, and she's idling in the driveway to warm up a bit.

Time to hit the road, shake out any rain water still in her, and blow some cobwebs out of the brain.

Just got back with all the carbon blown out of the engine, and all the cobwebs blown out of the head.

Put about 60 miles on the car, and found it it has a water leak, probably the sunroof, that got the passenger seat and all the junk I had sitting on it, pretty wet.

SO.....I'll be leaving the windows down during the day for the next few days.


And I'll put a tarp over it so the rain won't go where it's not supposed to!

"Edge of Space" It 'Aint!

Rant time.....

I just received my new QST magazine, and on the cover as the lead story is an article about "Amateur Radio At The Edge Of SPACE!".....

It's an article about a group of high-school Hams who send home brew instrument packages up ~120,000 feet using balloons, and recording the downlinked data.

This is great stuff, and I greatly admire the young men and women who are doing it.


BUT....for crying out loud, STOP calling it "The Edge of Space"!

It's NOT.

It's not even close!

The official definition of "Space", is an altitude ABOVE 100km, or about 62 miles, a bit more than 328,000 feet.

120,000 feet is a bit more than ONE-THIRD the required altitude to be in "space", and as such is pretty far from being "the edge" of anything meaningfully close to "space".

I remember not too long ago when the guy jumped out of the balloon sponsored by Red Bull, and they insisted on using this same "Edge of Space" nonsense.

I sure don't have the big brass ones it takes to do that, and I also greatly admire Felix Baumgartner for having the cajones to do it, but it wasn't, and never will be, "The Edge of Space".

Knock it off, people....you're just demeaning the people who really do go into space for your own cheap amusement....

/rant off

50 Years Ago Today

The Apollo 1 fire occurred, taking three of our Astronauts on their final voyage.

Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee  perished in the fire inside thier Apollo Command Module.

The cause of the fire was eventually traced to some chaffed/frayed wire that caused a spark, resulting in an extremely hot flash fire accelerated by the pure Oxygen used at the time in the Command Module.

In the race to beat the Russians to the Moon, compromises had been made in the design of the Command Module, including the use of a pure Oxygen atmosphere. At the time it was deemed too expensive, and more importantly, too heavy, to include the required Nitrogen system so the the atmosphere in the Command Module would be "air", and a much simpler pure Oxygen system was used.

The hatch on the side of the Command Module had also been designed to open inward, and had many bolts to secure it closed, making it very difficult to get into the  Command Module quickly from the outside.

And many materials used in the interior of the Command Module were later found to be extremely flammable in a pure Oxygen atmosphere.

Manufacturing carelessness also played a factor in the accident, as quality controls were not up to the standards used today. One of the things that NASA did with the remaining Command Modules in the inventory was to put them on shake tables, and shake the living daylights out them to see if anything was loose. One thing I remember from from my NASA Soldering Certification classes was that several POUNDS of loose solder bits and loose solder "balls" were shaken loose from the Command Modules that were tested.

Every one of these little things was a potential short circuit that would be floating around in the microgravity experienced by the Command Module during it's flight, and the Engineers were horrified to see how much junk came out after the shake tests.

Wiring was also rerouted, tied down, and encapsulated with tubing at any point where it rub against anything to ensure that the insulation would remain intact.

And the pure Oxygen system was replaced with a system that used a 60/40 mix of Nitrogen and Oxygen until the Command Module was in orbit, at which time the Nitrogen was slowly purged, and the atmosphere replaced with pure Oxygen.

Manned spaceflight is an extremely risky business, even when practicing on the ground, and you will lose flight crews. You take every precaution you can, design things with triple redundancy, have detailed checklists that must be rigorously followed, and still, you cross your fingers and say a little prayer when the crew boards the spacecraft.

Man is a curious, exploring animal, driven in his quest by a thirst for knowledge and understanding.

And brave men like these lead the way.

God speed, Apollo 1 crew.

Per Aspera Ad Astrum

What A Difference A Day (or two...) Makes

Don't worry, I won't 'entertain' you by singing.

"Lake Long Beach" has sunk back into the Earth, leaving only very minor inconveniences behind.

The wind had knocked the vent stack for the water heater loose, so I had to get the ladder out of the garage, climb yp there, and put it back together. Our across the street plumber friend had knocked the mountings around when he installed our new water heater last summer, and it was just a matter of time before Mother Nature moved it around some more.

This resulted in two things happening. First, when the wind blew, the open end of the stack resonated like a large organ pipe with a rather disturbing thrumming sound, and second, when the gas burner fired up, it sounded somewhat akin to an F-4 Phantom lighting up in the driveway.

The blowing wind sound really bugged my wife, and the jet engine noise bugged her even more, to the point where she stated saying "Oh My God....IT'S GOING TO EXPLODE!".

So up I went to rectify the damage.

And we really ducked a bullet as far as water incursion goes. I had two boxes of "stuff" that got wet. One has a large, heavy Rohn "Non Penetrating Roof Mount" antenna base that was surplus from my wireless service provider days, and the other had some cleaning/waxing supplies in it.

The Rohn box had maybe 1/2" of "water damage" to it, and got securely taped up today, and the other box went into the recycle bin after I moved the items in it to another box.

And the grass is going to grow like crazy over the next few weeks!

Welcome to "Lake Long Beach"!

Just a bit of water in the back yard....

Even though we make sure the dog always has a bowl of fresh water in the backyard, I don't think she needs it today, and wouldn't want to wade out there to get to it...

The brick border is actually TWO bricks high....

If you know how big a DogLoo is, this will give you an idea how deep the water on the patio is...

Or if you don't know how big a DogLoo is, here's a standard size cooler-on-wheels...

View from the porch steps...

Nope, not doing any laundry today...