I just finished reading Matt Bracken's latest book, "Castigo Cay".
Matt is the author of the "Enemies" series of books, which are a set of three books dealing with the near future of America. They're excellent thrillers, and I've read them a couple of times, so when I saw he had another book out, I preordered it, and started reading it as soon as I received it.
It's pretty good, but I like his first three books a lot more. "Castigo Cay" seems to drag a bit, and doesn't really "get going" until the last half of the book.
I think it's well-written, but not in the same vein as his first three books, which held my attention from start to finish.
If you liked "Unintended Consequences", and "Molon Labe!", then you'll love his "Enemies" series.
"Castigo Cay", while different, was a worthwhile read, a perfect "little book" for some light summer reading.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Gallows Humor....
Light posting this weekend as I'm working on my Honeydew list, but I thought you'd all get a kick (in the head?) out of this:
Let me get this straight . . . ...
We're going to be "gifted" with a health care
plan we are forced to purchase and
fined if we don't,
Which purportedly covers at least
ten million more people,
without adding a single new doctor ,
but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents,
written by a committee whose chairman
says he doesn't understand it,
passed by a Congress that
didn't read it but
exempted themselves from it,
and signed by a President who smokes,
with funding administered by a treasury chief who
didn't pay his taxes ,
for which we'll be taxed for four years before any
benefits take effect,
by a government which has
already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare,
all to be overseen by a surgeon general
who is obese,
and financed by a country that's broke!!!!!
'What the hell could
possibly go wrong?
Let me get this straight . . . ...
We're going to be "gifted" with a health care
plan we are forced to purchase and
fined if we don't,
Which purportedly covers at least
ten million more people,
without adding a single new doctor ,
but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents,
written by a committee whose chairman
says he doesn't understand it,
passed by a Congress that
didn't read it but
exempted themselves from it,
and signed by a President who smokes,
with funding administered by a treasury chief who
didn't pay his taxes ,
for which we'll be taxed for four years before any
benefits take effect,
by a government which has
already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare,
all to be overseen by a surgeon general
who is obese,
and financed by a country that's broke!!!!!
'What the hell could
possibly go wrong?
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Sub Off The Coast
I'm not sure what they were doing out there (backside of Catalina Island), but all day Monday and Tuesday we saw the sub going back and forth, accompanied by some small "patrol" type boats. Tuesday afternoon it looked like one of the small boats made a rendezvous with him, so I'm gonna take a SWAG and say the little guys were U.S. Navy, too.
NOBODY in their right mind would get so close to a sub that they could transfer people unless they were authorized!
I don't know enough about U.S. submarines to tell what class it was, but I know to see one run on the surface for so long is unusual.
Of course out where we were, there aren't too many other ships just hanging around!
For you guys that know far more about this than I do, I added a crop from one of the better pix I took.
Have at it!
Back Home Again
We got in this morning about 10am. Took another hour to get from the Pilot's Station to the pier, and then tied-down.
By this time the Purser (who has our passports) had gone to lunch, so we had to wait for her to show back up.
Then she had to call the Captain to see if it was OK to "release" us!
DUH!
Oh, well, she's new, and it was her first time out, so we all just sighed and cut her some slack.
Wonder how long the floor will continue to move under me now that I'm back on dry land?
Took some interesting pictures, and I'll post some after I finish unpacking.
There was a sub running on the surface the last three days, making rendezvous with some small boats. They never got closer than a few miles, but I thought it was quite interesting to see one running on the surface.
And there was a C-130 circling overhead a lot of the time.
Should have brought my 400mm lens this trip!
By this time the Purser (who has our passports) had gone to lunch, so we had to wait for her to show back up.
Then she had to call the Captain to see if it was OK to "release" us!
DUH!
Oh, well, she's new, and it was her first time out, so we all just sighed and cut her some slack.
Wonder how long the floor will continue to move under me now that I'm back on dry land?
Took some interesting pictures, and I'll post some after I finish unpacking.
There was a sub running on the surface the last three days, making rendezvous with some small boats. They never got closer than a few miles, but I thought it was quite interesting to see one running on the surface.
And there was a C-130 circling overhead a lot of the time.
Should have brought my 400mm lens this trip!
Friday, July 22, 2011
See you all sometime next week.....
Headed out for Sea Trials early Saturday morning. Since we don't have the contract for our satellite services provider signed, we'll have no Internet or email access while we're at sea, so I'll be incommunicado for a while.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Big Mil Training Op
Catchy title, isn't it?
Over the last couple of days, we've been visited by no less than 12 CH-47 Chinooks. Man, those suckers are LOUD! They'll come in from the ocean, and hover over the lone MARAD ship that's docked at the next pier over from us.
Today, they gave the ship the Full Monte.
At least six came in, and dozens of troops in full battle gear fast-roped down on to the deck. All this time four or five Super Cobras were orbiting the area, backed up by several particularly nasty looking Blackhawks.
While this was going on, two more Chinooks set down in the parking lot next door, and a whole lot of fully armed troops came out and stormed up the stern ramp (it's a RORO Cargo ship) of the ship.
Since the helos were Marine units, I'm guessing they were from Camp Pendleton, which isn't too far down the coast from us. A couple of times a year their LCACs will come into the inner harbor/turning basin, and maneuver around for a while, and they skeedaddle back out and over the horizon.
Pretty interesting, but I don't see any way these guys could sneak up on the bad guys! They shook the building I was working in the last two days when they went overhead, and we could hear them coming a good ten minutes before we could see them.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Any VME Experts Out Here?
Well, we're about 70 days from our Return To Flight, and I've been asked to assist with getting another computer system up and running again.
Geez, guys....I'm a RADIO guy, remember?
I just spent a week getting the Antenna Control Unit for our 6' fully steerable dish up and running, but we still have to check out and calibrate the telemetry receivers, and the rest of the RF system we use for the Telemetry and Command links we provide our customer.
The ACU had a myriad of problems, all of which were caused by leaving it out in the dome for two years with the air conditioning turned off. It's about the same things as storing your desktop PC out in your garden shed, and expecting it to come up and run!
I had to pull all the boards and clean the connectors where they plug into the backplane, and clean all the other connectors. I found RUST on a lot of the exposed metal parts, and had to clean that. Then I found the fan on the heatsink attached to the little Pentium 233MMX was was shot, so I brought in a fan from my "stock" here at home. It was thicker than the OEM fan, so I had to drill and tap the heatsink for longer screws. I was attaching it back on the CPU when POP! The fifteen year old plastic gave out.
RATS!
Luckily I found a better unit up at Alltronics in Santa Clara, and had them here in a few days. They're a great place to find obscure parts for projects, and are VERY reasonably priced. I highly recommend them!
ANYWAY.....I was asked to help get our VME computers running again after one of our Technicians replaced the CMOS batteries on the motherboards, rendering them "unbootable". I trust the Tech that did it. He's an extremely talented guy, and in the seven years I've known him, I think he's maybe made one mistake.
His soldering job was impeccable, and we're both scratching our heads on this one.
The manuals that came with the system are useless for hardware repair, as they were written for programmers working with the system, and for any hardware problems you have, their solution is "Return To Vendor".
Great, except the company that originally made these systems, VMIC (VME Microsystems International), was bought by GE/FANUC, who deny ever hearing of these things. Their "Customer Service" is absolutely deplorable, and they hung up on one of our people yesterday.
These are basically 200MHz Pentium P54C, Intel Triton "FX" single-board computers with AMI BIOS and a Cirrus VGA chip in a Eurocard package running Windows NT. The scant information in the manual states that they're "A/T Compatible", and that they are, indeed, standard PC components.
And we're going NUTS trying to get them to boot after a simple CMOS battery change.
Like I said, any VME experts out there?
*****UPDATE*****
Well, it turns out the CPU boards are OK. I tried them in the "test" rack we have, and they ALL powered up just fine.
I had to reset the system clock, and redetect the hard-drives, but they're OK now.
Turns out there's a "gotcha" in the external hardware connected to the racks the VMEs are located in, and *I* didn't know about it, and the other guy had forgotten about it.
That kind of thing happens when you've been shut down for two years, or get tossed into it.
So thanks, everybody, for the suggestions and comments.
Were 62 days away from Return To Flight, and counting. We're going out for Sea Trials at the end of July, and the first launch will be towards the end of September.
Geez, guys....I'm a RADIO guy, remember?
I just spent a week getting the Antenna Control Unit for our 6' fully steerable dish up and running, but we still have to check out and calibrate the telemetry receivers, and the rest of the RF system we use for the Telemetry and Command links we provide our customer.
The ACU had a myriad of problems, all of which were caused by leaving it out in the dome for two years with the air conditioning turned off. It's about the same things as storing your desktop PC out in your garden shed, and expecting it to come up and run!
I had to pull all the boards and clean the connectors where they plug into the backplane, and clean all the other connectors. I found RUST on a lot of the exposed metal parts, and had to clean that. Then I found the fan on the heatsink attached to the little Pentium 233MMX was was shot, so I brought in a fan from my "stock" here at home. It was thicker than the OEM fan, so I had to drill and tap the heatsink for longer screws. I was attaching it back on the CPU when POP! The fifteen year old plastic gave out.
RATS!
Luckily I found a better unit up at Alltronics in Santa Clara, and had them here in a few days. They're a great place to find obscure parts for projects, and are VERY reasonably priced. I highly recommend them!
ANYWAY.....I was asked to help get our VME computers running again after one of our Technicians replaced the CMOS batteries on the motherboards, rendering them "unbootable". I trust the Tech that did it. He's an extremely talented guy, and in the seven years I've known him, I think he's maybe made one mistake.
His soldering job was impeccable, and we're both scratching our heads on this one.
The manuals that came with the system are useless for hardware repair, as they were written for programmers working with the system, and for any hardware problems you have, their solution is "Return To Vendor".
Great, except the company that originally made these systems, VMIC (VME Microsystems International), was bought by GE/FANUC, who deny ever hearing of these things. Their "Customer Service" is absolutely deplorable, and they hung up on one of our people yesterday.
These are basically 200MHz Pentium P54C, Intel Triton "FX" single-board computers with AMI BIOS and a Cirrus VGA chip in a Eurocard package running Windows NT. The scant information in the manual states that they're "A/T Compatible", and that they are, indeed, standard PC components.
And we're going NUTS trying to get them to boot after a simple CMOS battery change.
Like I said, any VME experts out there?
*****UPDATE*****
Well, it turns out the CPU boards are OK. I tried them in the "test" rack we have, and they ALL powered up just fine.
I had to reset the system clock, and redetect the hard-drives, but they're OK now.
Turns out there's a "gotcha" in the external hardware connected to the racks the VMEs are located in, and *I* didn't know about it, and the other guy had forgotten about it.
That kind of thing happens when you've been shut down for two years, or get tossed into it.
So thanks, everybody, for the suggestions and comments.
Were 62 days away from Return To Flight, and counting. We're going out for Sea Trials at the end of July, and the first launch will be towards the end of September.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
2011 Old Fort MacArthur Days Pictures
We didn't get to Old Fort MacArthur Days last year because we forgot, (DOH!), but we set aside the time for it this year. It's always fun to go and see the reenactors, and talk to them. It's rather strange to see a Roman Centurion talking to a Viet Nam USGI, and hearing them talk about their computer problems! I think I learned more about smoothbore vs rifled muskets this year than I knew before, and had an absolute blast talking to the guy that owns the M29 Weasel you'll see in the pictures. He'd always wanted one, and was at a Military Vehicles Collectors meet a few years ago where he saw one for sale. It turns out he couldn't afford the fully restored one, so he bought FOUR that were in various states of disrepair, and built the one good one you see here. The Browning M1919 air-cooled 30cal on it is set up to "fire" propane, and he said it works very well. And he said the neighborhood kids just go nuts when he fires up the Weasel, and brings it out.
The other interesting thing we saw was the guy in the red jacket playing this very strange, hand-cranked stringed instrument. I'd never seen or heard anything quite like it, and it turns out it's a Hurdy Gurdy, also called a "Wheel Fiddle". Look for the guy in the red jacket holding it in his lap.
This year I took some pictures of the displays inside the tunnels that honeycomb the hills under and around Battery Osgood-Farley. Sorry for the dark shadow in the middle of the ones I used with my flash. I forgot to take off the sunshade on the lens, and the built-in flash will cast a shadow if it's on.
If you're ever in the Los Angeles/San Pedro area, drop in at the Fort MacArthur Military Museum. It's a very interesting place, and one of the last remaining examples of a Coastal Defense Installation around.
Unfortunately we missed the "Live Fire" this year of the artillery. We got there a bit later than I wanted to, and were over on the other side of the park when they started. We could hear them firing (boy, could we), and could see the smoke, but weren't able to make our way over there in time.
Enjoy the pictures!
The other interesting thing we saw was the guy in the red jacket playing this very strange, hand-cranked stringed instrument. I'd never seen or heard anything quite like it, and it turns out it's a Hurdy Gurdy, also called a "Wheel Fiddle". Look for the guy in the red jacket holding it in his lap.
This year I took some pictures of the displays inside the tunnels that honeycomb the hills under and around Battery Osgood-Farley. Sorry for the dark shadow in the middle of the ones I used with my flash. I forgot to take off the sunshade on the lens, and the built-in flash will cast a shadow if it's on.
If you're ever in the Los Angeles/San Pedro area, drop in at the Fort MacArthur Military Museum. It's a very interesting place, and one of the last remaining examples of a Coastal Defense Installation around.
Unfortunately we missed the "Live Fire" this year of the artillery. We got there a bit later than I wanted to, and were over on the other side of the park when they started. We could hear them firing (boy, could we), and could see the smoke, but weren't able to make our way over there in time.
Enjoy the pictures!
Friday, July 8, 2011
R.I.P. Sarah Jane Smith
Back in an earlier life, I was a huge "Doctor Who" fan. Particularly The Fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker. I tremendously enjoyed watching the escapades of the Doctor and his "companions" like Leela, Romana, and of course, K9, but my all time favorite was his companion Sarah Jane Smith.
Man, did I have a crush on her, or what!
And when she guest-starred in the "School Reunion" episode with The Tenth Doctor, it all came roaring back to me.
Sarah Jane had aged very gracefully, better than I had, and her acting was as good as I remembered it.
So anyway, as I stopped by the Wikipedia site today at lunch time, I noticed the featured article was about the episode called "Doomsday", which was the one where the Tenth Doctor said goodbye to his current companion, Rose Tyler. As I poked around the various Doctor Who episodes, I decided to check out Elisabeth Sladen, the actress who played Sarah Jane, and was saddened (bummed, really) to see she had passed away on April 19th of this year.
God Bless, Sarah Jane. Doctor Who was a better series because of you, and I'll certainly miss you.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Radio Daze
Well, I finished putting my satellite station back together today. I could have had it up yesterday, but there were some improvements I wanted to do, mainly weatherproofing things.
Don't laugh.....we DO get "Real Weather" out here in SoCal! Granted it's nothing like Northern Illinois where I grew up, but it does rain here in the winter (a LOT lately!), and we get get pretty soggy in the morning from the moisture the Marine Layer brings in. Saturday morning I went into San Pedro for the monthly breakfast my club has, and it was really socked in driving over the bridges into and out of Terminal Island, where I work.
I made some enclosures for the preamps and diplexer I use on the 2 Meter / 70cm side of the radio, and another rain shield for the elevation rotor. They're just Rubbermaid plastic boxes, but it will keep direct rain and dew off these items and their connections, hopefully prolonging their usable time on Earth!
Don't laugh.....we DO get "Real Weather" out here in SoCal! Granted it's nothing like Northern Illinois where I grew up, but it does rain here in the winter (a LOT lately!), and we get get pretty soggy in the morning from the moisture the Marine Layer brings in. Saturday morning I went into San Pedro for the monthly breakfast my club has, and it was really socked in driving over the bridges into and out of Terminal Island, where I work.
I made some enclosures for the preamps and diplexer I use on the 2 Meter / 70cm side of the radio, and another rain shield for the elevation rotor. They're just Rubbermaid plastic boxes, but it will keep direct rain and dew off these items and their connections, hopefully prolonging their usable time on Earth!
"It Takes A Long Time To Control The People"
This is an absolutely DISGUSTING video to watch.
I'd embed it, but Brietbart doesn't have that option.
And on Independence Day, no less!
H/T to The Market Ticker
I'd embed it, but Brietbart doesn't have that option.
And on Independence Day, no less!
H/T to The Market Ticker
Happy Independance Day!
Let's hope we can get our country turned around soon, and restore it to what it should be.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Field Day Pictures
We had a great time (again!) this year at the Angels Gate Cultural Center, a.k.a "The Upper Reservation at Fort MacArthur". The weather was great, we had plenty of food, nobody got injured, and we made a lot of contacts.
I had 50 "in the log", but when I cross-checked it, I had 5 duplicates, for a final count of 45, and a final valid score of 144 points..
I've never had 'dupes' at Field Day, and since they were all by the same guy, I'll write it off to his grabbing every contact he heard!
I think we easily could have made 65~70 contacts, but the HO-68 satellite wasn't operational this year, and since we made almost half our contacts on that one last year, it was sorely missed.
Enjoy the pictures!
I had 50 "in the log", but when I cross-checked it, I had 5 duplicates, for a final count of 45, and a final valid score of 144 points..
I've never had 'dupes' at Field Day, and since they were all by the same guy, I'll write it off to his grabbing every contact he heard!
I think we easily could have made 65~70 contacts, but the HO-68 satellite wasn't operational this year, and since we made almost half our contacts on that one last year, it was sorely missed.
Enjoy the pictures!
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Over For Another Year
And we had a great time, as usual.
I don't have the final tally yet, but the 20 meter CW station made around1000 contacts, the 20 meter phone station made about 1200, the 15 meter phone station made 380, and the satellite station (my son and I) made 49 this year.
We actually have 53 callsigns, but couldn't make the complete exchange with them, so we can't count them.
If HO-68 had been working this year, I think we could have made at least 70 contacts, maybe more.
I'll post some pix after I finish unloading the Jeep, and download them from my camera.
I don't have the final tally yet, but the 20 meter CW station made around1000 contacts, the 20 meter phone station made about 1200, the 15 meter phone station made 380, and the satellite station (my son and I) made 49 this year.
We actually have 53 callsigns, but couldn't make the complete exchange with them, so we can't count them.
If HO-68 had been working this year, I think we could have made at least 70 contacts, maybe more.
I'll post some pix after I finish unloading the Jeep, and download them from my camera.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Field Day Update
As of Saturday night when we shut down for the day, we had 35 contacts in the log, which is as many as we had in total last year..
I'm going to try and get back Sunday morning by 8am, and with luck we'll make 5~10 more. Last year we made about 15 on Sunday morning, and if we get that many again, we'll have around 50 in the log.
I'm going to try and get back Sunday morning by 8am, and with luck we'll make 5~10 more. Last year we made about 15 on Sunday morning, and if we get that many again, we'll have around 50 in the log.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Geert Wilders Acquitted
Mr. Wilders has been a controversial figure since about 2007. After much legal wrangling, and having the judges in his first trial removed, he was finally acquitted of all charges.
Read all about it here, on the Wikipedia.
Better read it quickly, as Wikipedia has a way of revising history.....
Read all about it here, on the Wikipedia.
Better read it quickly, as Wikipedia has a way of revising history.....
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Analog Electronics Loses Two Giants
I've always been more of a "analog" guy than a "digital" guy. It's probably because of when I grew up, and the fact that radio is really an analog mode.
On June 12th, Jim Williams passed away. I didn't know Jim, but he was one of the founding fathers of modern analog circuit design. He wrote many, many applications notes for Linear Technology (I'll bet I read most of them), many articles for EDN magazine, and published numerous books.
This morning I heard that another giant among analog engineers had passed away, Bob Pease.
I met Bob several times at conferences, and while I can't say he was a friend of mine, I always found him very charming, with an amazing sense of humor and wit. His column, or one of his "Pease Porridge" specials, was the first thing I turned to when my new Electronic Design arrived in the mail, and if they didn't run it that month, it really bummed me out.
Bob was driving his beloved 1969 VW Beetle, and was killed in a car crash coming home from the memorial for Jim Williams.
God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen!
The world is a far better place for having had men like you in it, and you will both be sorely missed.
My deepest sympathy and condolences go out to your families.
On June 12th, Jim Williams passed away. I didn't know Jim, but he was one of the founding fathers of modern analog circuit design. He wrote many, many applications notes for Linear Technology (I'll bet I read most of them), many articles for EDN magazine, and published numerous books.
This morning I heard that another giant among analog engineers had passed away, Bob Pease.
I met Bob several times at conferences, and while I can't say he was a friend of mine, I always found him very charming, with an amazing sense of humor and wit. His column, or one of his "Pease Porridge" specials, was the first thing I turned to when my new Electronic Design arrived in the mail, and if they didn't run it that month, it really bummed me out.
Bob was driving his beloved 1969 VW Beetle, and was killed in a car crash coming home from the memorial for Jim Williams.
God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen!
The world is a far better place for having had men like you in it, and you will both be sorely missed.
My deepest sympathy and condolences go out to your families.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Happy Father's Day!
To all my fellow Dads out there....Have A Good One!
My wife treated me to dinner at the Outback, and tomorrow I'M DOIN' NUTHIN'!
Well, going to play with my radio stuff and do that last full-up test to make sure it's ready for Field Day, check the laptops to make sure they're all AOK, run to Harbor Freight for a few things, and then maybe DO NUTHIN!
Enjoy the day, my friends.
My wife treated me to dinner at the Outback, and tomorrow I'M DOIN' NUTHIN'!
Well, going to play with my radio stuff and do that last full-up test to make sure it's ready for Field Day, check the laptops to make sure they're all AOK, run to Harbor Freight for a few things, and then maybe DO NUTHIN!
Enjoy the day, my friends.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Gettin' Awfully Crowded Up There....
Well, we finally got the Weather Radar operational. We still have to calibrate it, but at least now it works as intended with no unusual burps, hiccups, or farts. We're going to write it off to corroded connections, and not being active for over 18 months. The brushes on the drive motors weren't seating correctly after sitting in one position for so long, and most of the oil had drained off all the moving parts, making it hard to turn for portions of the azimuth. It's splash-lubricated, and we did "prop it" a few dozen rotations by hand, but it really needs to be operated to keep the cobwebs out.
Since I'm one of the guys in the Range Group, I get all kinds of COLA (COLlision Avoidance) notices from NASA, and "other" organizations. They pointed me to this article on the Spaceflight Now website about all the junk accumulating Up There.
It looks grim, and unless some entrepreneur can figure out a way to clean things up (Salvage 1, anybody?), we're facing a real possibility of a cascade failure, with collisions begetting more junk, begetting more collisions, etc, etc, until orbital space is unusable.
What a mess!
Sunday, June 12, 2011
It's That Time Again....
Field Day, that is.
After spending about 10 hours replacing the connectors on the cables between the rotor control box and the rotors themselves, I decided to mount the elevation rotor back on the mast and test them. They worked fine, so the next step was to put the cross boom through the elevation rotor, and mount the antennas, hook everything up, and play radio for a while today.
WELLLLL....right about the time I tipped the tower over (again!) to get the elevation set right on the antennas, I noticed I had mounted the elevation rotor UPSIDE DOWN,
DOH!
The sad thing is that it's marked "UP" right on the top of the rotor, and I missed it.
A few P-Touch labels later, AND flipping the elevation rotor around, I finally had things bolted together and up in the air.
Only had one satellite with a decent pass, VO-52, and right about the time I made a contact with a guy back in the midwest, the satellite was low enough in elevation that the antennas were pointed right at the roof, and I lost him.
Sigh....
Oh, well....I have all week after work, and all next weekend to get things debugged. It should be easy, as once I got the operator-induced mechanical problems solved, the antennas moved properly under control of the tracking program running on my laptop, and the radio tuned correctly, too.
And I only suffered one minor injury. Somehow when I was wrestling with the tower, I scraped a good sized chunk of skin off the back of my right hand.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Busy, Busy!
Between work and getting prepped for Field Day, I've been pretty busy.
One of the things I was griping about here, was the fact that the drawings we got from the vendor that built and installed our "C-Band, Pulsed Doppler Weather Radar" weren't done very well. I started redrawing them the other day, and found some glaring errors in them. Since we're still having problems, we decided to pull the interface box out of the dome, and bring it down to the bench where I could look at it.
I would have gone up there myself, but it's a 40' vertical climb, and I start getting pretty queasy above 15' or so. If the ladder is inclined, like the ladder on the mast of our other ship, I'll scoot right up there, but there's something about a "free" vertical climb that high that bothers me. I've got my own safety harness and shock absorbing lanyard I use when I do my Ham Radio stuff, but we're not allowed to use our personally-owned Personal Protective Equipment of that type on the job. All our "work" harnesses are all out being inspected and certified after sitting for two years, so when they get back I'll have an "approved" one to use.
Back to the wiring....
I opened the box up, and besides the extremely poor workmanship inside it, it doesn't match the drawings AT ALL!
Major screw-up on the vendors part for giving us these "As Built" drawings that are a hodge-podge of the drawings from the original system, and their "best guesstimate" of how the box was built.
So, I've spent the last two days making 25 pages of notes, wire lists, connector pinouts, and verifying each and every wire and connector pin with my Ohmmeter.
We also took several dozen high resolution photographs of this 18"x 24"x 12" box for future use. It's going to take me another couple of days to generate correct, accurate drawings suitable for archiving and troubleshooting, but it will finally be done. I had started this before I was laid-off, and had a good idea of what needed to be done, and some wirelists, but opening up the box and tracing the circuitry inside was a shock to us all.
The really funny (ironic? karma?) thing about all this is that the other night I was looking at the drawings I made in 2002 for the connections between the control box and the Azimuth and Elevation rotators for my Amateur Radio satellite station. I had some problems with the Molex connectors I used (they're just not made for repeated mate/demate cycles, and the female pins get loose), and I bought new connectors of a better type to replace them with. I figured it prudent to check my drawings before I just started cutting connectors off the cables, and....UH-OH!
Now, I have a 100% functional system, and it works exactly as it should, but my own drawings didn't match my "As Built" hardware!
Boy, talk about egg on my face!
So I now have a complete, correct set of drawings with pin numbers, wire colors, and wire function, for the cables and connectors used in my antenna system.
I guess when it rains it pours....
One of the things I was griping about here, was the fact that the drawings we got from the vendor that built and installed our "C-Band, Pulsed Doppler Weather Radar" weren't done very well. I started redrawing them the other day, and found some glaring errors in them. Since we're still having problems, we decided to pull the interface box out of the dome, and bring it down to the bench where I could look at it.
I would have gone up there myself, but it's a 40' vertical climb, and I start getting pretty queasy above 15' or so. If the ladder is inclined, like the ladder on the mast of our other ship, I'll scoot right up there, but there's something about a "free" vertical climb that high that bothers me. I've got my own safety harness and shock absorbing lanyard I use when I do my Ham Radio stuff, but we're not allowed to use our personally-owned Personal Protective Equipment of that type on the job. All our "work" harnesses are all out being inspected and certified after sitting for two years, so when they get back I'll have an "approved" one to use.
Back to the wiring....
I opened the box up, and besides the extremely poor workmanship inside it, it doesn't match the drawings AT ALL!
Major screw-up on the vendors part for giving us these "As Built" drawings that are a hodge-podge of the drawings from the original system, and their "best guesstimate" of how the box was built.
So, I've spent the last two days making 25 pages of notes, wire lists, connector pinouts, and verifying each and every wire and connector pin with my Ohmmeter.
We also took several dozen high resolution photographs of this 18"x 24"x 12" box for future use. It's going to take me another couple of days to generate correct, accurate drawings suitable for archiving and troubleshooting, but it will finally be done. I had started this before I was laid-off, and had a good idea of what needed to be done, and some wirelists, but opening up the box and tracing the circuitry inside was a shock to us all.
The really funny (ironic? karma?) thing about all this is that the other night I was looking at the drawings I made in 2002 for the connections between the control box and the Azimuth and Elevation rotators for my Amateur Radio satellite station. I had some problems with the Molex connectors I used (they're just not made for repeated mate/demate cycles, and the female pins get loose), and I bought new connectors of a better type to replace them with. I figured it prudent to check my drawings before I just started cutting connectors off the cables, and....UH-OH!
Now, I have a 100% functional system, and it works exactly as it should, but my own drawings didn't match my "As Built" hardware!
Boy, talk about egg on my face!
So I now have a complete, correct set of drawings with pin numbers, wire colors, and wire function, for the cables and connectors used in my antenna system.
I guess when it rains it pours....
Sunday, June 5, 2011
2012 Elections Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think
So think about this for a bit, courtesy of my buddy Ken over at Knuckledraggin My Life Away:
An old West Virginia Hillbilly saying: Ya can't get the water to clear up until you get the pigs outta the creek.
*If any other of our presidents had doubled the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?*
*If any other of our presidents had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had criticized a state law that he admitted he never even read, would you think that he is just an ignorant hot head? *
*If any other of our presidents joined the country of Mexico and sued a state in the United States to force that state to continue to allow illegal immigration, would you question his patriotism and wonder who's side he was on? *
*If any other of our presidents had pronounced the Marine Corps like Marine Corpse, would you think him an idiot? *
*If any other of our presidents had put 87,000 workers out of work by arbitrarily placing a moratorium on offshore oil drilling on companies that have one of the best safety records of any industry because one foreign company had an accident, would you have agreed? *
*If any other of our presidents had used a forged document as the basis of the moratorium that would render 87,000 American workers unemployed would you support him? *
*If any other of our presidents had been the first President to need a Teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes? *
*If any other of our presidents had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take his First Lady to a play in NYC, would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had reduced your retirement plan holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought it a proud moment for America ? *
*If any other of our presidents had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had visited Austria and made reference to the nonexistent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip? *
*If any other of our presidents had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income taxes, would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had stated that there were 57 states in the United States, wouldn't you have had second thoughts about his capabilities? *
*If any other of our presidents would have flown all the way to Denmark to make a five minute speech about how the Olympics would benefit him walking out his front door in his home town, would you not have thought he was a self-important, conceited, egotistical jerk. *
*If any other of our presidents had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, wouldn't you have winced in embarrassment? *
*If any other of our presidents had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he's a hypocrite?*
*If any other of our presidents' administrations had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually get what happened on 9-11? *
*If any other of our presidents had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans, would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence? *
*If any other of our presidents had created the position of 32 Czars who report directly to him, bypassing the House and Senate on much of what is happening in America, would you have ever approved. *
*If any other of our presidents had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved? *
*So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive?
*Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He's done all this in 24 months -- so you have that much time to come up with an answer .*
*An' how about all those vacations he & Michelle take constantly, (with a more than a full entourage) paid for by American tax-payers? *
Every statement and action in this email is factual and directly attributable to Barrack Hussein Obama. Every bumble is a matter of record and completely verifiable.
An old West Virginia Hillbilly saying: Ya can't get the water to clear up until you get the pigs outta the creek.
*If any other of our presidents had doubled the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?*
*If any other of our presidents had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had criticized a state law that he admitted he never even read, would you think that he is just an ignorant hot head? *
*If any other of our presidents joined the country of Mexico and sued a state in the United States to force that state to continue to allow illegal immigration, would you question his patriotism and wonder who's side he was on? *
*If any other of our presidents had pronounced the Marine Corps like Marine Corpse, would you think him an idiot? *
*If any other of our presidents had put 87,000 workers out of work by arbitrarily placing a moratorium on offshore oil drilling on companies that have one of the best safety records of any industry because one foreign company had an accident, would you have agreed? *
*If any other of our presidents had used a forged document as the basis of the moratorium that would render 87,000 American workers unemployed would you support him? *
*If any other of our presidents had been the first President to need a Teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes? *
*If any other of our presidents had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take his First Lady to a play in NYC, would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had reduced your retirement plan holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought it a proud moment for America ? *
*If any other of our presidents had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had visited Austria and made reference to the nonexistent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip? *
*If any other of our presidents had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income taxes, would you have approved? *
*If any other of our presidents had stated that there were 57 states in the United States, wouldn't you have had second thoughts about his capabilities? *
*If any other of our presidents would have flown all the way to Denmark to make a five minute speech about how the Olympics would benefit him walking out his front door in his home town, would you not have thought he was a self-important, conceited, egotistical jerk. *
*If any other of our presidents had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, wouldn't you have winced in embarrassment? *
*If any other of our presidents had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he's a hypocrite?*
*If any other of our presidents' administrations had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually get what happened on 9-11? *
*If any other of our presidents had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans, would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence? *
*If any other of our presidents had created the position of 32 Czars who report directly to him, bypassing the House and Senate on much of what is happening in America, would you have ever approved. *
*If any other of our presidents had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved? *
*So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive?
*Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He's done all this in 24 months -- so you have that much time to come up with an answer .*
*An' how about all those vacations he & Michelle take constantly, (with a more than a full entourage) paid for by American tax-payers? *
Every statement and action in this email is factual and directly attributable to Barrack Hussein Obama. Every bumble is a matter of record and completely verifiable.
Field Day Preparations
Was going to get started yesterday on Saturday, but I had a breakfast meeting with my club, and then I finished installing all the software on the PC I use to run my FlexRadio 5000A. The motherboard in that PC had been giving me random BSOD's, even from when it was new. It finally bit the dust early last week and wouldn't boot up at all. I ordered a new motherboard for it a couple of weeks ago, and installed it last Saturday. I left the Windows 7 installation alone, and while it worked OK, I just get all queasy inside running a new motherboard with the previous installation of Windoze. I think Windows has gotten much better in that respect, as I've done the same to to Vista installations, and after spending 20 minutes or so sorting itself out, they booted up and ran fine. Still, I prefer a clean installation when making a major hardware change.
SO......Spent some time cleaning up the garage this morning (ALWAYS a losing battle here at Casa de Radio!), and getting things rounded up (a.k.a. "One Big Pile") to make sure I have all the bits and pieces to put the portable satellite station back together.
The first thing I did after that was crank up my little Honda EU2000i generator, which hasn't been run in almost a year. I always put StaBil in the fuel, but it still took about 10 pulls to get it running, and it wasn't too happy at first. It took longer on the choke to keep running, and surged badly for about the first ten minutes of running. I ran it about 30 minutes with a 1000 Watt load, and shut it down to cool. Now it starts on the first pull, like a good little Honda should.
I really like this generator; it has an "Economy Mode" that conserves fuel, and with the light loading on it at Field Day, it will run a good 8~9 hours on one tank (1.1 gallons) of gas. Plus it's really quiet compared to some of the cheaper gensets on the market that use "lawnmower" engines. I've had people ask me if it was running, because the noise it makes was drowned out by the Coleman, Sears, and Harbor Freight generators!
Anyway.....back to work rounding up my stuff. I suppose if I did The Big Push I could get things running today, but I'd rather take the time to *make sure* all my gear is in good shape, and ready to go.
And I still haven't got the trailer licensed. That's on my To Do list for this week!
SO......Spent some time cleaning up the garage this morning (ALWAYS a losing battle here at Casa de Radio!), and getting things rounded up (a.k.a. "One Big Pile") to make sure I have all the bits and pieces to put the portable satellite station back together.
The first thing I did after that was crank up my little Honda EU2000i generator, which hasn't been run in almost a year. I always put StaBil in the fuel, but it still took about 10 pulls to get it running, and it wasn't too happy at first. It took longer on the choke to keep running, and surged badly for about the first ten minutes of running. I ran it about 30 minutes with a 1000 Watt load, and shut it down to cool. Now it starts on the first pull, like a good little Honda should.
I really like this generator; it has an "Economy Mode" that conserves fuel, and with the light loading on it at Field Day, it will run a good 8~9 hours on one tank (1.1 gallons) of gas. Plus it's really quiet compared to some of the cheaper gensets on the market that use "lawnmower" engines. I've had people ask me if it was running, because the noise it makes was drowned out by the Coleman, Sears, and Harbor Freight generators!
Anyway.....back to work rounding up my stuff. I suppose if I did The Big Push I could get things running today, but I'd rather take the time to *make sure* all my gear is in good shape, and ready to go.
And I still haven't got the trailer licensed. That's on my To Do list for this week!
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
All Work and Little Play....
Well, we've made good progress getting some systems running again. The Launch Control Center is now operable, and I was able to get Management to dump some of the old, antiquated software we were using, like PCAnywhere, in favor of a new program I use here at home called TightVNC. We use it for remotely connecting to, and controlling, a bunch of servers that provide all the display screens in "Mission Control".
Quite frankly, PCAnywhere is a PIG for resources, and extremely slooooow. It would take about 40 seconds from when you hit the "connect" button until the remote desktop appeared. With TightVNC it happens so fast you barely have time to count "One....Two..." and BAM, you're connected and displaying the remote desktop.
On top of that, PCAnywhere is $200 per pair of PC's you want to use it with, and TightVNC is free, as it's licensed under the GPL, like Linux. It's faster, can be more secure, and very simple to set up and use.
People's jaws dropped when I did the demo, as they were used to starting PCAnywhere, and then going for a cup of coffee.
Considering we use this type of software to control several dozen computers, I think I just earned my salary for the month.
We still have to figure out the clock system, as it's been changed several times without proper documentation, and nobody knows who did what. It's a robust system using several GPS units that spit out a time code to a "server" box (basically a NMEA-0183-to-RS-485 converter), and it's one of those things that "just runs", but if it ever broke, we'd be lacking a paddle to get back down sh1t creek without proper documentation!
Today we started on one of my 'specialties', the Weather Radar System. When we first powered it up and tried to command the antenna, things went nuts, and the PC we use to control it shut everything down to prevent damage. If you've ever seen a fully-steerable 3 Meter dish go bonkers, you know it's not pretty. We found corroded slip rings, and loose connections to the servos, synchros, and tachs. When we first powered it up, it took about 15 minutes to run "fsck", as the last person to shut it down just pulled the plug, NOT something you do to a UNIX Operating System unless it can't be avoided.
Tomorrow I'll look through the logs to see when the last time was that it was powered up and exercised, and that will probably explain why the loose connections weren't noted in the written log ("Antenna won't sync" or something similar), and the lack of operation would also explain why the slip rings got all crummy from just sitting.
After that we'll check the installed TWTA, and swap in the spare for testing.
Compared to all the PC bashing I've done lately, doing some "Real RF" work will be fun!
Quite frankly, PCAnywhere is a PIG for resources, and extremely slooooow. It would take about 40 seconds from when you hit the "connect" button until the remote desktop appeared. With TightVNC it happens so fast you barely have time to count "One....Two..." and BAM, you're connected and displaying the remote desktop.
On top of that, PCAnywhere is $200 per pair of PC's you want to use it with, and TightVNC is free, as it's licensed under the GPL, like Linux. It's faster, can be more secure, and very simple to set up and use.
People's jaws dropped when I did the demo, as they were used to starting PCAnywhere, and then going for a cup of coffee.
Considering we use this type of software to control several dozen computers, I think I just earned my salary for the month.
We still have to figure out the clock system, as it's been changed several times without proper documentation, and nobody knows who did what. It's a robust system using several GPS units that spit out a time code to a "server" box (basically a NMEA-0183-to-RS-485 converter), and it's one of those things that "just runs", but if it ever broke, we'd be lacking a paddle to get back down sh1t creek without proper documentation!
Today we started on one of my 'specialties', the Weather Radar System. When we first powered it up and tried to command the antenna, things went nuts, and the PC we use to control it shut everything down to prevent damage. If you've ever seen a fully-steerable 3 Meter dish go bonkers, you know it's not pretty. We found corroded slip rings, and loose connections to the servos, synchros, and tachs. When we first powered it up, it took about 15 minutes to run "fsck", as the last person to shut it down just pulled the plug, NOT something you do to a UNIX Operating System unless it can't be avoided.
Tomorrow I'll look through the logs to see when the last time was that it was powered up and exercised, and that will probably explain why the loose connections weren't noted in the written log ("Antenna won't sync" or something similar), and the lack of operation would also explain why the slip rings got all crummy from just sitting.
After that we'll check the installed TWTA, and swap in the spare for testing.
Compared to all the PC bashing I've done lately, doing some "Real RF" work will be fun!
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Fifty Years Ago Today....."We Choose To Go To The Moon"
President Kennedy gave his "We choose to go to the Moon" speech, kicking off the greatest human exploration of all time.
My, my........how times have changed........
My, my........how times have changed........
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Field Day's Coming Up....
Just talked to my son, who'll be taking Friday morning off to help set up, and all day Saturday off to play radio with me again this year. It's kind of a father-and-son tradition, and it's a lot of fun for us both.
Friday night we had the annual "White Elephant" sale where people bring in stuff they no longer want/need, and yours truly does the "auctioneering".
We only raised about $550 this year, a far cry from some of the years where we raised almost $2000. In a way it's good, though, as in the big money years we had a lot of donations from Silent Key estates, so less equipment coming in as donations mean fewer people passed away.
I was too busy this weekend to start checking out my gear, but I'll get started on that next weekend. I did manage to (finally!) get the lights wired up and tested on my little tower trailer, so the next milestone for that will be the DMV inspection and registration so I can hang a license plate on it and be 'legit'. With signs all over the roads out here in Kaliforniastan about traffic fines now being $1,000 ( ? ! ? ) in "construction zones", I'd hate to even think about what they'd clobber you with for a non-registered, non-licensed vehicle.
And now that I've got my Heathkit SB-310 running so well, I started in on my Heathkit "Mohican" GC-1A receiver. As usual, all the controls and switches will need cleaning, and I'm sure I'll have to do an alignment on it. I tried powering it up today for the first time, and nothing....nada.....zip....completely dead. I started checking the battery pack (it takes EIGHT "C" cells), and found the negative lead of the pack was broken loose from the lug on the connector it goes to. Replaced the 40+ year old wire with a new piece, plugged the pack back in, and it started to work. When I shut it down, I pulled the battery pack to disconnect it, and I noticed the batteries were HOT. Uh-oh....never a good sign! Looking at the schematic I saw that there were several electrolytic capacitors directly on the 12 Volt line, so I pulled the chassis out of the case, and one of them (in the audio section) had failed, and the end plug was pushed out of the can about 1/8". I was planning on replacing all of the electrolytics and any other tubular caps in there, and this just confirmed what I've known for years, that you really have to replace these things when they're this old. If the radio had been in use, the electrolytic capacitors probably would have stayed "formed", but these old design types aren't sealed very well, and once they dry out they become more resistor than capacitor.
Don't have any of that value in easy reach, so I'll stop tomorrow on the way home from work and grab a bunch.
Oh, and the dial cord for the bandspread dial has slipped off the drum, and the drum on the main tuning capacitor needs to have the hub soldered on. Somebody tried using some epoxy to "fix" it, but since it's a brass hub on a tin-plated steel drum, soldering it is really the way to go. Since I have to take the whole front panel apart to re-string the dials, I'll solder *both* drums to their hibs, and be done with it.
Have a good week, everybody!
Friday night we had the annual "White Elephant" sale where people bring in stuff they no longer want/need, and yours truly does the "auctioneering".
We only raised about $550 this year, a far cry from some of the years where we raised almost $2000. In a way it's good, though, as in the big money years we had a lot of donations from Silent Key estates, so less equipment coming in as donations mean fewer people passed away.
I was too busy this weekend to start checking out my gear, but I'll get started on that next weekend. I did manage to (finally!) get the lights wired up and tested on my little tower trailer, so the next milestone for that will be the DMV inspection and registration so I can hang a license plate on it and be 'legit'. With signs all over the roads out here in Kaliforniastan about traffic fines now being $1,000 ( ? ! ? ) in "construction zones", I'd hate to even think about what they'd clobber you with for a non-registered, non-licensed vehicle.
And now that I've got my Heathkit SB-310 running so well, I started in on my Heathkit "Mohican" GC-1A receiver. As usual, all the controls and switches will need cleaning, and I'm sure I'll have to do an alignment on it. I tried powering it up today for the first time, and nothing....nada.....zip....completely dead. I started checking the battery pack (it takes EIGHT "C" cells), and found the negative lead of the pack was broken loose from the lug on the connector it goes to. Replaced the 40+ year old wire with a new piece, plugged the pack back in, and it started to work. When I shut it down, I pulled the battery pack to disconnect it, and I noticed the batteries were HOT. Uh-oh....never a good sign! Looking at the schematic I saw that there were several electrolytic capacitors directly on the 12 Volt line, so I pulled the chassis out of the case, and one of them (in the audio section) had failed, and the end plug was pushed out of the can about 1/8". I was planning on replacing all of the electrolytics and any other tubular caps in there, and this just confirmed what I've known for years, that you really have to replace these things when they're this old. If the radio had been in use, the electrolytic capacitors probably would have stayed "formed", but these old design types aren't sealed very well, and once they dry out they become more resistor than capacitor.
Don't have any of that value in easy reach, so I'll stop tomorrow on the way home from work and grab a bunch.
Oh, and the dial cord for the bandspread dial has slipped off the drum, and the drum on the main tuning capacitor needs to have the hub soldered on. Somebody tried using some epoxy to "fix" it, but since it's a brass hub on a tin-plated steel drum, soldering it is really the way to go. Since I have to take the whole front panel apart to re-string the dials, I'll solder *both* drums to their hibs, and be done with it.
Have a good week, everybody!
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Pat Condell on the Death of Osama bin Laden
You GOTTA watch this. This guy says an awful lot of what most of us feel.
Great stuff!
And in case you're wondering who he is, here's a bit about him.
Great stuff!
And in case you're wondering who he is, here's a bit about him.
QOTD
From a buddy of mine.....
"Thanking Obama for killing Bin Laden is like going into
McDonalds and thanking Ronald McDonald for the hamburger.
It's the guy cooking the burger that should get the credit, not the clown."Sunday, May 15, 2011
2011 Chino Airshow Pictures Now Online
Spent some time today going over the pix, and here they are.
There's some duds in here, but hopefully none of them are too bad!
It was a great airshow, although I think the weather was better for flying today. We had a front go through with some rain, and the sky was crystal clear and bright blue today.
If you don't want to watch them in the blog window, here's a direct link to where they are.
Enjoy!
There's some duds in here, but hopefully none of them are too bad!
It was a great airshow, although I think the weather was better for flying today. We had a front go through with some rain, and the sky was crystal clear and bright blue today.
If you don't want to watch them in the blog window, here's a direct link to where they are.
Enjoy!
Strike Eagle on Afterburner
STILL going through the 300+ pictures I took at the 2011 Chino Airshow. Some are out-of-focus, some have people's heads in the way, and I even managed to get a couple of my own feet and the parking lot surface!
I've culled the bad ones either into my "duds" file, or straight to the trash bin, so I've cut the 300+ down to about 200. I'm going to pick out the best of the ones I kept, and post them on Photobucket with the slide-show link to hear like I did a while back with the Fort MacArthur pictures.
In the meantime, enjoy this one from the F-15 Strike Eagle demonstration.
Good God, are those things FAST, even considering he couldn't go over the Mach in the area.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
2011 Chino Airshow
The YF and I went to her first airshow today, out at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino. I used to go to all the airshows out here in SoCal, stating with the airshow at MCAS El Toro, going next to Chino, then the Point Mugu airshow, then the Miramar airshow, and finishing up the season with the Big One at Edwards AFB.
Sadly, El Toro is closed, and Miramar, former home of the Navy's Top Gun program, is just a shadow of its former self. I haven't checked to see if Pt Mugu still has the airshow, and Edwards, as fascinating a place as it is, has turned into a PITA to get into and out of for the airshow due to all the development of the surrounding areas.
The Chino show was great this year, with a large crowd of friendly people. The weather was kind of hit-or-miss, with clouds early, clearing in time for the show, and then clouding up again around intermission time. It cleared again. though. and the flying was great.
The most interesting thing I noticed, is that when the National Anthem was sung for the opening of the show, the place got so quiet you hear a pin drop.
ALL the men took off their hats, and a good number came to attention with some of the best executed salutes I've seen in years. Guess airshows attract a different crowd than all the other "sporting events" I've seen and been to over the years, with whistling, talking, and hootin' and hollerin' going on during the Anthem. Shameful behavior, but not today at Chino.
Anywhoo....I took several hundred pictures, and until I get them sorted, cleaned up, and posted on Photobucket, this one will have to do.
It's the "Heritage Flight", with an F-15 Strike Eagle flanked by two P-38's.
Enjoy, and I'll try and get the other pix online ASAP.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Heathkit SB-310 Receiver
I bought this from a very nice young couple that found it at a yard sale, and listed it on eBay. I was able to pick in up in person, as they don't live to far from here, and we agreed to meet at a SixBucks Coffee shop about half way between their place and mine.
It was exactly as they described it, and pretty clean considering it's about 45 years old. The matching SB-600 speaker that came with it has the typical Heathkit/Hallicrafters "peeling paint" syndrome, as back "In The Day" they didn't prepare the aluminum cases for paint they way we do now.
I pulled it from the case, and dusted it out with a soft paintbrush, and then proceeded to clean the tube sockets, switch contacts, and potentiometers with some Caig DeOxIt, and lubed the ball detents on the switches with a drop of gun oil. The mode switch was stiff and hard to turn, so I pulled the knob off and used a drop of light penetrating oil on the bushing where it comes through the front panel, and let the radio sit for a couple of hours with the front panel up so the oil could get in to the bushing.
While that was happening, I checked all the tubes with my EICO 667 tube tester, and surprise! They were all good. They were also all original Mullard and Tung-Sol tubes, which is what Heathkit supplied back then.
After putting the mode switch knob back on, and plugging all the tubes back in, I let it and my signal generator warm up for a couple of hours, and started in on the alignment.
Boy, was it ever out of whack!
The worst were the Heterodyne Oscillator (what Heath called the 1st Local Oscillator) coils, which required 1~3 turns of the slugs to get them back in spec. The 1st IF cans weren't too bad, but peaking them (1/2~1 turn) really made the noise level come up. The antenna and RF Amplifier coils were about as far off as the H.O. coils, and by the time I had everything peaked, signals were coming in without an antenna!
I had to put a dummy load on the antenna connector so I could go back through the alignment again, and make sure everything was adjusted right.
The last things to address were the S-meter calibration pot, and the Preselector variable cap. The S-meter pot was out of adjustment, resulting in the meter being "Off Scale Negative", and the Preselector cap was noisy as I turned it. A drop of light synthetic oil cured the cap, and adjusting the S-meter pot brought it back in line.
I still have some cleaning and polishing to do, and I have to install the 400Hz CW filter I bought for it. I'm also going to replace the original frosted "#47" pilot light bulbs with some of the frosted white LED lamps made just for this purpose, and this old warhorse will be ready to cruise the bands again.
My first "real" Amateur Radio receiver was a Hallicrafters SX-146, which was a present from my parents for passing my Novice exam back in 1964. My Dad had some friends who were "into" radio, and they all told him "Get the kid a GOOD receiver so he can hear the other stations, or he'll lose interest fast", so he consulted with them for a good one at a decent price (sorry, NO Collins gear!), and they gave it to me the day my Novice license arrived. When I upgraded to General Class about 10 months later, I had saved up enough money to buy a Heathkit SB-301 receiver, and an SB-401 transmitter, and Mom and Dad kicked in the extra money so I could get the crystal pack for the transmitter allowing 'split' operation, and the CW filter for the receiver. They also bought me the matching SB-600 speaker, and the SB-630 station console.
The SB-310 is the General Coverage version of the Amateur Band only SB-301, so it's like having an old friend return after many years.
No, it doesn't have all the bells-and-whistles that new radios have, and the audio is a little "hissy", but it's very sensitive, has decent selectivity with the crystal filters, and is rock solid stable after it's been operating for half an hour or so.
And it's got TUBES in it so it Glows In The Dark, and will probably survive an EMP!
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Happy Mother's Day!
To all the women and "other" Mother's out there!
Yeah, bad joke, but I'm really busy today doing "home owner" stuff. Being back at work is great, but it sure cuts down on the amount of said maintenance I can get done during the week.
Yeah, bad joke, but I'm really busy today doing "home owner" stuff. Being back at work is great, but it sure cuts down on the amount of said maintenance I can get done during the week.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Obama The Puppet.....
If you have any remaining doubts that "president" Obama is completely UNqualified for the job, READ THIS.
I particularly like the part about "President Obama was literally pulled from a golf outing and escorted back to the White House to be informed of the mission."
Thanks to Ed at Thunder Tales for the link!
I particularly like the part about "President Obama was literally pulled from a golf outing and escorted back to the White House to be informed of the mission."
Thanks to Ed at Thunder Tales for the link!
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Dead Servers, Dead Hard Drives, Dead Video Matrices....
Geez....I'm surround by DEATH at work!
Well, defunct hardware anyway.....
18 months ago, shortly before I was "released" as a contractor from the site I was assigned to, we came up with a very comprehensive shut-down procedure, and a set of minimum environmental control standards to be maintained after the equipment was powered down. Some of it happened, and some of it didn't. We knew the server/communications room was apt to get too hot, and we even had a portable air conditioner set up, with its exhaust directed into the air return for the ship's HVAC system. It kept the room at a nice 65 degrees, a welcome change from the times it got over one-hundred degrees in there when something went wacky with the ship's HVAC system.
WELL....we never finished shutting everything down, as each round of layoffs (that's really what they were) left fewer and fewer qualified people to work the procedures. It turns out that some of the servers were left operating because nobody was around to properly power them off, BUT because the air conditioning and HVAC were just soooo easy to turn off, that's what happened.
And none of the more obscure video equipment used to route the video sources, and run the Big Screens, got shut down.
And these things run hot.
Last week we started the process of bringing things back up, and some things just didn't turn back on, either at all, or properly. Bringing the servers up and examining their logs showed that whoever had shut the down basically just "pulled the plug".
I was able to get the systems we needed up and running so that we could do some testing, but I've got two application servers that have wonked out hard disks in them, and a couple of the others are throwing errors.
My suggestion will be to image the hard drives in the known good ones, replace ALL the hard drives in the 8 "mission critical" machines, and then re-image them with the good image.
You do NOT want an applications server to go down at T minus 10 minutes!
The video gear mostly has fried power supplies. I pulled a supply out of one of our good shelf-spares, and used it to confirm that was the problem with all the "failed" equipment. The supplies are being used at about 85% of their capacity (850mA from a 1 Amp supply), which I consider borderline for long-term reliability. Eventually we'll be upgrading all the "Big Screen" stuff, but for now we'll just lay in a good supply of the little power modules inside the boxes, and live with it.
The company that originally made these boxes wants $450 to "repair" them, and since the supplies can be had for about $20 shipped, it's a good way to save the reconstituted enterprise some money.
And we haven't even started on the RF systems and Weather Radar yet. The next four months should be a lot of fun.....
On the home front, I've been trimming trees all weekend, and *finally* got the lights on my little tower trailer wired up so I can haul it down to the DMV and get it licensed. Field Day is coming up the last weekend in June, and I need to get plates on it so I can tow it down to the Field Day site.
Well, defunct hardware anyway.....
18 months ago, shortly before I was "released" as a contractor from the site I was assigned to, we came up with a very comprehensive shut-down procedure, and a set of minimum environmental control standards to be maintained after the equipment was powered down. Some of it happened, and some of it didn't. We knew the server/communications room was apt to get too hot, and we even had a portable air conditioner set up, with its exhaust directed into the air return for the ship's HVAC system. It kept the room at a nice 65 degrees, a welcome change from the times it got over one-hundred degrees in there when something went wacky with the ship's HVAC system.
WELL....we never finished shutting everything down, as each round of layoffs (that's really what they were) left fewer and fewer qualified people to work the procedures. It turns out that some of the servers were left operating because nobody was around to properly power them off, BUT because the air conditioning and HVAC were just soooo easy to turn off, that's what happened.
And none of the more obscure video equipment used to route the video sources, and run the Big Screens, got shut down.
And these things run hot.
Last week we started the process of bringing things back up, and some things just didn't turn back on, either at all, or properly. Bringing the servers up and examining their logs showed that whoever had shut the down basically just "pulled the plug".
I was able to get the systems we needed up and running so that we could do some testing, but I've got two application servers that have wonked out hard disks in them, and a couple of the others are throwing errors.
My suggestion will be to image the hard drives in the known good ones, replace ALL the hard drives in the 8 "mission critical" machines, and then re-image them with the good image.
You do NOT want an applications server to go down at T minus 10 minutes!
The video gear mostly has fried power supplies. I pulled a supply out of one of our good shelf-spares, and used it to confirm that was the problem with all the "failed" equipment. The supplies are being used at about 85% of their capacity (850mA from a 1 Amp supply), which I consider borderline for long-term reliability. Eventually we'll be upgrading all the "Big Screen" stuff, but for now we'll just lay in a good supply of the little power modules inside the boxes, and live with it.
The company that originally made these boxes wants $450 to "repair" them, and since the supplies can be had for about $20 shipped, it's a good way to save the reconstituted enterprise some money.
And we haven't even started on the RF systems and Weather Radar yet. The next four months should be a lot of fun.....
On the home front, I've been trimming trees all weekend, and *finally* got the lights on my little tower trailer wired up so I can haul it down to the DMV and get it licensed. Field Day is coming up the last weekend in June, and I need to get plates on it so I can tow it down to the Field Day site.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Get Over It!
I was going through my archives this morning, and found one of my favorite Eagles songs, "Get Over It!".
It's fitting song for today's "Victim Mentality", and you can actually understand the lyrics as he sings them. And watch that wicked slide guitar WB6ACU plays!
Enjoy!
It's fitting song for today's "Victim Mentality", and you can actually understand the lyrics as he sings them. And watch that wicked slide guitar WB6ACU plays!
Enjoy!
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Light Blogging For A While.....
GROAN.......Just not used to getting up at O-Dark-Thirty, running around all day between two ships, climbing 157 (yes, I counted them!) steps on one of the ships to get all the way to the Comm Shack on the top under the main mast, and climbing ladders into and out of the SatCom dome on the other one.
At least our tests are running well, and I've lost track of how many times I've had people tell me how nice it is to have me back!
After we get the SatCom RF tests finished, I get to power up and check out the weather radar system. We're the ONLY ship in the world that has a C-Band Doppler radar for weather use, and I'm one of maybe 5 people that know (and *understand*!) how it works. I've already been told the controller is timing out on servo errors, so I suppose I'll be spending a lot of time up in the dome showing the youngsters how to swap out a servo, test it, and then calibrate the whole antenna controller servo system. Last time I showed them how to level the antenna I don't think they "got it", and it's possible that the person who was doing the "preventive" maintenance went in to the configuration section of the controller program and dinked with it.
And I suppose I'll have to teach them about Magnetic North vs True North, local deviation , and how they relate to the calibration procedure, all over again.
And probably another lesson on how using a hand-held magnetic compass on a STEEL ship can give you false information.
And we still have to bring the INU's back online, and probably send out the sensors for calibration.
Oh....calibration!
EVERYTHING is at least 12 months out of the calibration cycle! Since we have a lot of redundant instruments, I'm trying to convince the management to send half out now, and the other half out in 90 days. That way we'll never have all the instruments come due at the same time, which could shut us down.
That happened during my first "tour of duty" at this site, and it took much wailing and gnashing of teeth (along with lots of phone calls to the manufacturers) to convince Management that we could put a 30-day waiver on some of the instruments, and get them calibrated after we finished the current deployment.
Everyday my job jar gets fuller and fuller!
At least our tests are running well, and I've lost track of how many times I've had people tell me how nice it is to have me back!
After we get the SatCom RF tests finished, I get to power up and check out the weather radar system. We're the ONLY ship in the world that has a C-Band Doppler radar for weather use, and I'm one of maybe 5 people that know (and *understand*!) how it works. I've already been told the controller is timing out on servo errors, so I suppose I'll be spending a lot of time up in the dome showing the youngsters how to swap out a servo, test it, and then calibrate the whole antenna controller servo system. Last time I showed them how to level the antenna I don't think they "got it", and it's possible that the person who was doing the "preventive" maintenance went in to the configuration section of the controller program and dinked with it.
And I suppose I'll have to teach them about Magnetic North vs True North, local deviation , and how they relate to the calibration procedure, all over again.
And probably another lesson on how using a hand-held magnetic compass on a STEEL ship can give you false information.
And we still have to bring the INU's back online, and probably send out the sensors for calibration.
Oh....calibration!
EVERYTHING is at least 12 months out of the calibration cycle! Since we have a lot of redundant instruments, I'm trying to convince the management to send half out now, and the other half out in 90 days. That way we'll never have all the instruments come due at the same time, which could shut us down.
That happened during my first "tour of duty" at this site, and it took much wailing and gnashing of teeth (along with lots of phone calls to the manufacturers) to convince Management that we could put a 30-day waiver on some of the instruments, and get them calibrated after we finished the current deployment.
Everyday my job jar gets fuller and fuller!
Monday, April 18, 2011
"First Day" Back At Work.....
.......And I spent half the day shaking hands with people I'd worked with there for over five years.
Went through my security briefings, got my badges and parking decal, and a stack of paperwork to fill out for the medical benefits, 401(k), direct deposit, yadda-yadda-yadda.
Everything has been "Cold Iron" for over a year now, and yes, they're worried too, that some things might not / will not power back up, either properly, or at all.
We're completely replacing the data aggregator for the satcom system, so tomorrow my task will be to get the antenna and uplink controllers reprogramed to track the satellite we'll be temporarily using, shifting all the carrier and data frequencies to the new values, and setting the cross-pole correctly, so the preliminary testing of the new data system will run without worrying that something is wrong with the RF link up to the bird.
Geez....I could have sworn I wrote and distributed some clear-and-concise documents for the youngsters to follow, AND trained them in how-to-do-it, but everybody there is scared shitless to actually DO anything, touch anything, or program any new values into the controllers.
Sigh.......
Oh, well. Gives Old Greybeards like me a chance to teach them again, make some extra retirement cash, and have fun.
Went through my security briefings, got my badges and parking decal, and a stack of paperwork to fill out for the medical benefits, 401(k), direct deposit, yadda-yadda-yadda.
Everything has been "Cold Iron" for over a year now, and yes, they're worried too, that some things might not / will not power back up, either properly, or at all.
We're completely replacing the data aggregator for the satcom system, so tomorrow my task will be to get the antenna and uplink controllers reprogramed to track the satellite we'll be temporarily using, shifting all the carrier and data frequencies to the new values, and setting the cross-pole correctly, so the preliminary testing of the new data system will run without worrying that something is wrong with the RF link up to the bird.
Geez....I could have sworn I wrote and distributed some clear-and-concise documents for the youngsters to follow, AND trained them in how-to-do-it, but everybody there is scared shitless to actually DO anything, touch anything, or program any new values into the controllers.
Sigh.......
Oh, well. Gives Old Greybeards like me a chance to teach them again, make some extra retirement cash, and have fun.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
"Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" -My Take-
This is kinda funny. Last summer I gave my wife my copy of Rand's book to read. She got about half way through it, and gave up. She said she didn't like the characters in the book, and it was "too wordy".
Tonight we're leaving the movie, and she says "Wow, that was really good".
I was almost speechless, and then we started discussing the movie.
One thing that I noticed about 10~15 minutes into the movie was "Is this really Part 1"? I felt like I was watching a mini-series, and had caught it at the second or third episode. Granted, it's a long, complex book, but I felt that "something" was missing, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
I thought the actor that played Hank Rearden did an great job, while the actress that played Dagny Taggart was a bit lifeless for the first half of the movie. To me, the way the characters played in the movie are almost a complete reversal of how I perceived the characters in the book. Rearden's family, except for his wife Lillian, were relegated to much less important roles than the characters in the book.
Francisco d'Anconia is another major character in the book who's given very little 'air time', and Hugh Akston comes off as major space-case
Again, this is a long, complex novel with deep characters, and bringing it to the screen at all is a major triumph.
While I won't say it's one of the best movies so far this year, I think it's one of the more important ones, given the relevance of Rand's book to today's society.
Here's a much better review from the American Thinker website.
Tonight we're leaving the movie, and she says "Wow, that was really good".
I was almost speechless, and then we started discussing the movie.
One thing that I noticed about 10~15 minutes into the movie was "Is this really Part 1"? I felt like I was watching a mini-series, and had caught it at the second or third episode. Granted, it's a long, complex book, but I felt that "something" was missing, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
I thought the actor that played Hank Rearden did an great job, while the actress that played Dagny Taggart was a bit lifeless for the first half of the movie. To me, the way the characters played in the movie are almost a complete reversal of how I perceived the characters in the book. Rearden's family, except for his wife Lillian, were relegated to much less important roles than the characters in the book.
Francisco d'Anconia is another major character in the book who's given very little 'air time', and Hugh Akston comes off as major space-case
Again, this is a long, complex novel with deep characters, and bringing it to the screen at all is a major triumph.
While I won't say it's one of the best movies so far this year, I think it's one of the more important ones, given the relevance of Rand's book to today's society.
Here's a much better review from the American Thinker website.
Friday, April 15, 2011
"Atlas Shrugged: Part I" Opens Tonight
I'd go, but I have a prior commitment.
I just hope they don't screw it up!
Visit the Official Atlas Shrugged Movie Web Site here.
Trailer here
List of Theaters
I just hope they don't screw it up!
Visit the Official Atlas Shrugged Movie Web Site here.
Trailer here
List of Theaters
Thursday, April 14, 2011
25,000 Visits!
I just checked my sitemeter page, and I see I've gone slightly over 25,000 visitors.
While I'll never get to the numbers that some of my friends out here have, it's gratifying that enough people have stopped by to let me achieve this.
Either that or I'm a terrible writer, and people come by to use me as an example of how NOT to blog!
Off to the dentist...I was chewing on a caramel last night, and I popped a cap off one of my molars. Hopefully my dentist can just glue it back on without any other work.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Crawl Spacin' FINALE!
WHEW....I'm finished with the project, and it works fine.
Signal levels at each Set Top Box increased by 6~7dB, and the Signal-to-Noise ratio improved by a similar amount. My wife can now watch programs recorded on the home theater DVR without having them break-up/artifact/pixelate, which made watching them before an exercise in frustration.
I finished the little network panel this morning, and mounted it in the closet. I cut over all the Ethernet connections first and tested them, and now everybody's PC zips along at full FiOS speeds, 35 meg up and down. I was able to retire THREE wireless routers I had been using as Ethernet "bridges", and get rid of the Cat5e cable I had running from the main FiOS router in the living room to my stepson's bedroom.
Removing unsightly cables draped all over the place goes over very big with your spouse!
And I no longer have the "Looking Up...." or "Page Timed Out....." messages in the browser on my PC. I knew I had some DNS issues between the wireless bridge I was using and the main router, but I could never get them nailed down. Now, with a wired connection (well...there's a couple of GigE switches in the path, but they're 'transparent') to the main router, those problems are gone.
After getting the network tested, I went ahead and cut over the coaxial part of the system. At first I was going to just run a jumper from the existing coax out of the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) and the new coax I installed, but after I pulled the access panel off, I decided to just connect the new coax into the network panel in the closet. I switched all the cables on the Verizon router and STB's , and then power-cycled them all to let the network reset and come back up.
Everything worked!
My wife was surprised that I had some doubts about it working, but until you flip the switch, you never really know.
Tomorrow I'm going to remove all the old double-coax on the outside of the house, and push the old cables down through the floor and seal the holes. I'll pull it all up through the hatch in the closet floor, and dump it in the recycle bin.
There's not much copper in this type of coax; the center conductor is copper-plated steel, and the shields are all aluminized mylar foil, and aluminum braid. The new coax I used has a solid-copper center conductor, and two layers each of foil and braid, hence the term "Quad Shielded".
This is a project that I've wanted to do since we got FiOS installed, and it's finally done!
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Cables Pulled, Terminated, and Checked!
WHOO-HOO!
I'm in the home stretch now, baby!
Went under the new part of the house today, and ran the cables from our bedroom, through one of the old ventilation grilles in the old foundation, and brought them up through the holes I drilled in the closet floor.
I found some stuff under the new part of the house, but not Jimmy Hoffa, who's still missing.
I found a couple of hand-held garden cultivators, a hammer, and a really neat small pick axe/mattock with a 10" handle, just short enough to get a good swing in confined areas. The wife tells me they were probably left over from the plumbing work she had done a few years ago when they had to dig out a pipe and replace it.
I also found a full length of All Thread, which is now "All Rust".
I finished terminating the coaxial connectors, and swept the coax from 10MHz through 3GHz. All the sections have low loss, and the amount of "tilt" I'd expect for that frequency range.
Then I got out my Fluke Network Cable Tester and verified all the Ethernet cables.
We're good to go!
I'll cut over the Ethernet segment tonight so I can get rid of the three wireless Ethernet bridges I've been using, and tomorrow I'll connect all the splitters to the coax, and cut over the FiOS to the new RF segment. Before I do that, though, I'll go into the diagnostic menu of each of our set top boxes, and record the signal levels, and signal-to-noise ratio. I'm curious how much better the signals will be with all new, modern, low-loss coax.
After everything is connected and checked out I'll remove all the crummy old cabling that's hanging all over the outside of the house.
Been a pain, but I'm almost done.
I'm in the home stretch now, baby!
Went under the new part of the house today, and ran the cables from our bedroom, through one of the old ventilation grilles in the old foundation, and brought them up through the holes I drilled in the closet floor.
I found some stuff under the new part of the house, but not Jimmy Hoffa, who's still missing.
I found a couple of hand-held garden cultivators, a hammer, and a really neat small pick axe/mattock with a 10" handle, just short enough to get a good swing in confined areas. The wife tells me they were probably left over from the plumbing work she had done a few years ago when they had to dig out a pipe and replace it.
I also found a full length of All Thread, which is now "All Rust".
I finished terminating the coaxial connectors, and swept the coax from 10MHz through 3GHz. All the sections have low loss, and the amount of "tilt" I'd expect for that frequency range.
Then I got out my Fluke Network Cable Tester and verified all the Ethernet cables.
We're good to go!
I'll cut over the Ethernet segment tonight so I can get rid of the three wireless Ethernet bridges I've been using, and tomorrow I'll connect all the splitters to the coax, and cut over the FiOS to the new RF segment. Before I do that, though, I'll go into the diagnostic menu of each of our set top boxes, and record the signal levels, and signal-to-noise ratio. I'm curious how much better the signals will be with all new, modern, low-loss coax.
After everything is connected and checked out I'll remove all the crummy old cabling that's hanging all over the outside of the house.
Been a pain, but I'm almost done.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
One Cable More To Go!
Hmmm...almost sounds like a C&W song title.
Got the cables from the kid's room and the Home Theater rack pulled in after crawling around on my belly for about an hour under the house.
Rather than crawl into and out of the divided areas a couple of times each, I used two big tape measures as 'fish tapes' to bridge the span. That way I only had to crawl under the bathroom once, tape the cables for the kid's room to the tape measure blade, and then crawl back to where the tape started, and retract it carefully so the cables wouldn't tangle, kink, or otherwise bind up.
I did the same for the cables to the Home Theater rack, only I didn't have to crawl under the bathroom and wiggle around all the pipes!
BTW, the bathroom plumbing looks to be in great shape, no leaks, no foul odors, so the wife was very happy to hear that after getting all the plumbing problems fixed that the house had before I met her.
And I found some interesting things laying around today while I was doing my reptile impersonation:
A 6' piece of 1" steel pipe, capped on both ends.
a 4' piece of large diameter black iron "soil pipe", probably from when my wife had the bathroom repaired.
A couple of big light bulbs.
Half a dozen scraps of coaxial cable from the cable TV installation.
Several sawed off pieces of 2x4, probably from when the house was built.
A whole box of the wire pipe hangars like you use to hang gas and water pipes.
And other bits and pieces left over from various other "projects" that preceded mine.
Before I came back up for the day, I looked at the board on top of the foundation that separates the old and new parts of the house. I found a drilled hole between the old and new parts, and it's in the correct location to use for a pass-through to get the cables from our bedroom over to where I'm bringing them all up. Fed a long piece of stiff wire most of the way through it, taped to some of the 3/16" Dacron cord (think small paracord) that I use for guying light antennas. This will (I hope!) let me pull the cables from our bedroom without having to go under this side of the house again.
So, tomorrow should be the last time I go Crawl Spacin' for a while. I'll go under the new side of the house, tape the last cable pair to the stiff wire I left in there, and stuff the cables through the existing hole. I should be able to just pull on the cord coming out of the floor hatch, and have the cables "Come To Daddy!", and be done with it.
While crawling around under there in the dirt and mud, I began to think about all the men and women who've served our country in the armed forces, and protected our freedoms to do things like own and work on our own houses. I by no means put myself equal to them for this bit of under house work, but knowing that a lot of people have crawled through dirt and mud, in the rain, while getting shot at, just so *I* could do things like this, made me say a little prayer to all who have, and who are, serving our country.
Got the cables from the kid's room and the Home Theater rack pulled in after crawling around on my belly for about an hour under the house.
Rather than crawl into and out of the divided areas a couple of times each, I used two big tape measures as 'fish tapes' to bridge the span. That way I only had to crawl under the bathroom once, tape the cables for the kid's room to the tape measure blade, and then crawl back to where the tape started, and retract it carefully so the cables wouldn't tangle, kink, or otherwise bind up.
I did the same for the cables to the Home Theater rack, only I didn't have to crawl under the bathroom and wiggle around all the pipes!
BTW, the bathroom plumbing looks to be in great shape, no leaks, no foul odors, so the wife was very happy to hear that after getting all the plumbing problems fixed that the house had before I met her.
And I found some interesting things laying around today while I was doing my reptile impersonation:
A 6' piece of 1" steel pipe, capped on both ends.
a 4' piece of large diameter black iron "soil pipe", probably from when my wife had the bathroom repaired.
A couple of big light bulbs.
Half a dozen scraps of coaxial cable from the cable TV installation.
Several sawed off pieces of 2x4, probably from when the house was built.
A whole box of the wire pipe hangars like you use to hang gas and water pipes.
And other bits and pieces left over from various other "projects" that preceded mine.
Before I came back up for the day, I looked at the board on top of the foundation that separates the old and new parts of the house. I found a drilled hole between the old and new parts, and it's in the correct location to use for a pass-through to get the cables from our bedroom over to where I'm bringing them all up. Fed a long piece of stiff wire most of the way through it, taped to some of the 3/16" Dacron cord (think small paracord) that I use for guying light antennas. This will (I hope!) let me pull the cables from our bedroom without having to go under this side of the house again.
So, tomorrow should be the last time I go Crawl Spacin' for a while. I'll go under the new side of the house, tape the last cable pair to the stiff wire I left in there, and stuff the cables through the existing hole. I should be able to just pull on the cord coming out of the floor hatch, and have the cables "Come To Daddy!", and be done with it.
While crawling around under there in the dirt and mud, I began to think about all the men and women who've served our country in the armed forces, and protected our freedoms to do things like own and work on our own houses. I by no means put myself equal to them for this bit of under house work, but knowing that a lot of people have crawled through dirt and mud, in the rain, while getting shot at, just so *I* could do things like this, made me say a little prayer to all who have, and who are, serving our country.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
I Think I'm Getting Too Old For This Stuff!
GROAN!
Well, I didn't get all the crawl spacin' finished today. I had a couple of cables I forgot about, so this morning's activities consisted of making the measurements, adding 20% plus 5 feet to my calculated length, and then cutting lengths of RG-6QS and Cat6a Ethernet cable. I drilled a new hole in the floor under the radio desk, and stuffed the Ethernet cable into it, then went outside, trimmed a small hole in one of the foundation vent grills, and stuffed the coax that will connect to the FiOS ONT ("Optical Network Terminal") into the new hole. Got that finished (in between phone calls), had lunch, and then went down under the house, and pulled the cables from the front room PC and router from where they landed on the dirt when I stuffed them in the other day, back to the hatch opening. Then I crawled the other direction to where the two new cables were that I laid in, and pulled them back to the hatch. While I was down there, I "scouted out" the locations of the cables from the Home Theater rack, and my step-son's room to see how far I'd have to crawl to get to them.
I couldn't even see them!
All I had was my drop-light, and while it lit up the immediate area, it doesn't throw a beam, so anything more than 4~5 feet away is effectively UN-illuminated. I would have taken my spotlight down, but it uses the same battery as my cordless drill, and that battery was in the charger.
Since I've never been under a house before, it was a real learning experience for me. I can see where I need to go, but the entire area under the house is not all open space. I suppose I should have known that, understanding a bit about Mechanical Engineering and Construction Practices, but I wasn't prepared to see all these concrete "pilings" under the house in various places. All the load-bearing walls have good support under the flooring, resting on these pilings, but they make crawling around under the house a bit like being in a maze.
Let's see, we go 6' this way, make a left turn through the cutout in the foundation, go 6 more feet, through another cutout, make another left, and there's the cables from the home theater rack! I can't just drag them back with me, as they wouldn't be long enough, so I've got to feed them through the open spaces in the framing that rests on the pilings, go back and take out the slack, feed them through the *next* open spaces in the framing, and THEN go back to where I started from to get them to the hatch area.
The process will be similar to get to the cables from my step-son's room, but I'll be twisting and turning to a different map.
The one thing that bothers me the most is going in and out of the hatch in the closet floor. I don't mind crawling on my belly like a reptile so much, but man, getting in and out of that damn hatch (it's 24"x18") when there's only 27" of space between it and the dirt is a major pain in the a$$! I just aint as limber at 59 as I was at 29!
Going under the "new" part of the house shouldn't be quite as bad. The access to that crawl space is through a small door on the side of the house, and it's just a straight crawl all the way. I have to go in there to get the cables from our bedroom, feed them through a gap I found, and then pull them over to the hatch. It shouldn't be as bad as pulling the cables under the original part of the house. When I was down there today, I fed a long length of small Dacron line (think tiny paracord) through the gap, and I'll secure that to the cables before I feed them to this side of the house. That way I won't have to go through that damn hatch, but will be able to pull them to me with the cord.
Gads, I'll be glad when this project is finished!
Well, I didn't get all the crawl spacin' finished today. I had a couple of cables I forgot about, so this morning's activities consisted of making the measurements, adding 20% plus 5 feet to my calculated length, and then cutting lengths of RG-6QS and Cat6a Ethernet cable. I drilled a new hole in the floor under the radio desk, and stuffed the Ethernet cable into it, then went outside, trimmed a small hole in one of the foundation vent grills, and stuffed the coax that will connect to the FiOS ONT ("Optical Network Terminal") into the new hole. Got that finished (in between phone calls), had lunch, and then went down under the house, and pulled the cables from the front room PC and router from where they landed on the dirt when I stuffed them in the other day, back to the hatch opening. Then I crawled the other direction to where the two new cables were that I laid in, and pulled them back to the hatch. While I was down there, I "scouted out" the locations of the cables from the Home Theater rack, and my step-son's room to see how far I'd have to crawl to get to them.
I couldn't even see them!
All I had was my drop-light, and while it lit up the immediate area, it doesn't throw a beam, so anything more than 4~5 feet away is effectively UN-illuminated. I would have taken my spotlight down, but it uses the same battery as my cordless drill, and that battery was in the charger.
Since I've never been under a house before, it was a real learning experience for me. I can see where I need to go, but the entire area under the house is not all open space. I suppose I should have known that, understanding a bit about Mechanical Engineering and Construction Practices, but I wasn't prepared to see all these concrete "pilings" under the house in various places. All the load-bearing walls have good support under the flooring, resting on these pilings, but they make crawling around under the house a bit like being in a maze.
Let's see, we go 6' this way, make a left turn through the cutout in the foundation, go 6 more feet, through another cutout, make another left, and there's the cables from the home theater rack! I can't just drag them back with me, as they wouldn't be long enough, so I've got to feed them through the open spaces in the framing that rests on the pilings, go back and take out the slack, feed them through the *next* open spaces in the framing, and THEN go back to where I started from to get them to the hatch area.
The process will be similar to get to the cables from my step-son's room, but I'll be twisting and turning to a different map.
The one thing that bothers me the most is going in and out of the hatch in the closet floor. I don't mind crawling on my belly like a reptile so much, but man, getting in and out of that damn hatch (it's 24"x18") when there's only 27" of space between it and the dirt is a major pain in the a$$! I just aint as limber at 59 as I was at 29!
Going under the "new" part of the house shouldn't be quite as bad. The access to that crawl space is through a small door on the side of the house, and it's just a straight crawl all the way. I have to go in there to get the cables from our bedroom, feed them through a gap I found, and then pull them over to the hatch. It shouldn't be as bad as pulling the cables under the original part of the house. When I was down there today, I fed a long length of small Dacron line (think tiny paracord) through the gap, and I'll secure that to the cables before I feed them to this side of the house. That way I won't have to go through that damn hatch, but will be able to pull them to me with the cord.
Gads, I'll be glad when this project is finished!
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Crawl Spacin' Update
Got the holes drilled through the floor in all the rooms where they need to be, fed the cable pairs through, and cleaned out the closet that has the hatch so I could take a look down there.
As you can tell, I'm apprehensive about diving under the house, but after I pulled the hatch and stuck a drop light down there, it doesn't look *too* bad. The dirt is dry, and looks pretty well compacted, and best of all, I measured 27" from the "floor" to the bottom edge of the joists.
YAY! I won't have to worry about getting stuck while I'm crawling around down there!
There was a nice breeze coming up through the hatch, and *NO* foul odors of any sort, so I'm guessing we don't have any plumbing leaks. I even took one of my small low-light video cameras, connected it to a old monitor I have, and "probed" around under the house as far as I could reach with the pole I had the camera mounted to. No beady eyes stared back at me, and it looked remarkably free of cobwebs and other junk.
If all goes as planned, all I should have to do is crawl about 15' to each cable pair, and bring them back to the hatch area. I've drilled holes through the floor in the closet by one of the side walls, and that's where I'll bring the cables back up through the floor to connect to the splitters and 8-port Ethernet switch that I mounted on the plastic plate today.
I was going to use a piece of plywood, and then I remembered I had several plastic cutting boards left over from a project, so I grabbed one of those and used it. It's easy to drill, doesn't splinter, and doesn't need to be painted to look nice. I've used various sizes of plastic cutting boards to mount radio stuff on over the years, and a bonus is that they even have a handle built-in!
As you can tell, I'm apprehensive about diving under the house, but after I pulled the hatch and stuck a drop light down there, it doesn't look *too* bad. The dirt is dry, and looks pretty well compacted, and best of all, I measured 27" from the "floor" to the bottom edge of the joists.
YAY! I won't have to worry about getting stuck while I'm crawling around down there!
There was a nice breeze coming up through the hatch, and *NO* foul odors of any sort, so I'm guessing we don't have any plumbing leaks. I even took one of my small low-light video cameras, connected it to a old monitor I have, and "probed" around under the house as far as I could reach with the pole I had the camera mounted to. No beady eyes stared back at me, and it looked remarkably free of cobwebs and other junk.
If all goes as planned, all I should have to do is crawl about 15' to each cable pair, and bring them back to the hatch area. I've drilled holes through the floor in the closet by one of the side walls, and that's where I'll bring the cables back up through the floor to connect to the splitters and 8-port Ethernet switch that I mounted on the plastic plate today.
I was going to use a piece of plywood, and then I remembered I had several plastic cutting boards left over from a project, so I grabbed one of those and used it. It's easy to drill, doesn't splinter, and doesn't need to be painted to look nice. I've used various sizes of plastic cutting boards to mount radio stuff on over the years, and a bonus is that they even have a handle built-in!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Crawl Spacin'
Well, at least that's what I call it.
Since I'll be returning to work in a couple of weeks, I got a fire built in me to finish up some projects that got stuck in the doldrums for the last year. The first one out of the Job Jar is to finish up cabling the house, which as the post title implies, requires going into the crawl space to pull new RG-6QS coax, and Category 6a network cable.
The way the house is wired now for the TV is antiquated, obsolete, and a general MESS. The cable was originally installed waaay back when they had to run TWO cables to each cable box because the analog systems they had back then didn't have enough bandwidth to carry all the channels. Each Set Top Box ("STB") had two "F" connectors on it where the coaxes attached, and the box would do an A/B switch internally to get all the channels on the cable system. I'm pretty sure this hasn't been used since the early 80's, so that would make all our existing cable, connectors, and splitters at least 30 years old. And the original installation was your typical "Paid by the job, not the hour" installation, which means they did it the quickest way possible. This resulted in some of the cables being (poorly!) mounted under the eaves, and run down the side of the house into (and back out of!) the nearest ventilation grill. We literally have cables running everywhere, and I can't make heads-or-tails as to which are the "gozintas" and which are the "comesouttas". All the cable on the outside of the house has several coats of paint on it (NOT good to paint coax!), and over the last year I've had to replace several connectors, and redo some splices to get the signals in to the STB's up to an acceptable level. Since the system is all digital, along with all our TV's, you don't get "snow" or "static" if you have a weak signal. The picture will just freeze, or pixelate/artifact if the level drops below what the STB can decode and send to the TV. I knew the cable was pretty crappy the first time I saw it, so I bought a 1000' foot spool of Belden RG-6QS, and a BIG bag of Snap-N-Seal compression connectors so I could (eventually) rewire the place.
When we got Verizon to install FiOS for us (it's amazingly fast!), all they did was disconnect the cable drop from Charter (our previous TV provider), and plumb the new signal from the Optical Network Terminal (the big gray box on the side of the house where the fiber comes in from the utility pole) into the existing coax.
YEEECH!
What I'm going to do is to pull a new coax, and a network cable, from each room to a central point, which happens to be the middle bedroom, a.k.a. The Radio Room. I've made a thick plywood panel that I mounted the required splitters and a Gigabit Ethernet switch to, and after I dive under the house and pull the new cables, all I'll have to do is put the connectors on, plug it all together, and then swap the coax from the ONT to the new wiring. If it all works properly, I'll cut the ends off the old cables, stuff them back down through the hole in the floor where they come up, and remove all the exterior cables.
We'll have a nice, new, low-loss coax, *and* a Cat6a Ethernet cable, in each room, and the outside of the house will be cleaned up. It also gives us ALL the cables at one central point, making it much easier to troubleshoot if that's ever required. And we'll probably have half the signal loss we do now.
A couple of the "access ports" the original installers used had FOUR paired (8 actual coaxes!) cables coming out, and haphazardly running up to the eaves, and then running every which way.
Over the last few days, I measured/guesstimated the cable length I'd need from each room to the "Server Closet", added 10' to each length, and measured/cut new sections of cable. Then I taped a network cable to each coax, and drilled new holes in the floor to pull the new cable pairs through. I made the cables extra long, as my old adage is "Better 10 FEET too long than 6" too SHORT!". If it was a straight-line measurement of 12' from one location to the "Server Closet", I doubled it to 24', and with the added 10', I wound up with 34'.
When my wife asked me why I made them soooo long, I just smiled and told her that compared to my "cost" of spending a lovely day crawling around under the house, the cost of the actual cable was insignificant!
I have a Tyvek suit with hood, some good flexible leather gloves like driving gloves, a bunch of the anti-particulate face masks, a good pair of goggles, and a good BRIGHT lantern. I'll also take a long-handled brush with me to "clear the way" as I go Crawl Spacin' on Thursday. My stepson is home that day, and he'll be topside helping me by feeding the cable through so it doesn't kink or hang up on anything.
I haven't done this in years, so I'll be extremely careful, and if it looks like I can't fit where I have to go, I'll back out and we'll figure out some way to fish the cable to where I can grab it.
I don't relish doing this, but it's got to be done.
Since I'll be returning to work in a couple of weeks, I got a fire built in me to finish up some projects that got stuck in the doldrums for the last year. The first one out of the Job Jar is to finish up cabling the house, which as the post title implies, requires going into the crawl space to pull new RG-6QS coax, and Category 6a network cable.
The way the house is wired now for the TV is antiquated, obsolete, and a general MESS. The cable was originally installed waaay back when they had to run TWO cables to each cable box because the analog systems they had back then didn't have enough bandwidth to carry all the channels. Each Set Top Box ("STB") had two "F" connectors on it where the coaxes attached, and the box would do an A/B switch internally to get all the channels on the cable system. I'm pretty sure this hasn't been used since the early 80's, so that would make all our existing cable, connectors, and splitters at least 30 years old. And the original installation was your typical "Paid by the job, not the hour" installation, which means they did it the quickest way possible. This resulted in some of the cables being (poorly!) mounted under the eaves, and run down the side of the house into (and back out of!) the nearest ventilation grill. We literally have cables running everywhere, and I can't make heads-or-tails as to which are the "gozintas" and which are the "comesouttas". All the cable on the outside of the house has several coats of paint on it (NOT good to paint coax!), and over the last year I've had to replace several connectors, and redo some splices to get the signals in to the STB's up to an acceptable level. Since the system is all digital, along with all our TV's, you don't get "snow" or "static" if you have a weak signal. The picture will just freeze, or pixelate/artifact if the level drops below what the STB can decode and send to the TV. I knew the cable was pretty crappy the first time I saw it, so I bought a 1000' foot spool of Belden RG-6QS, and a BIG bag of Snap-N-Seal compression connectors so I could (eventually) rewire the place.
When we got Verizon to install FiOS for us (it's amazingly fast!), all they did was disconnect the cable drop from Charter (our previous TV provider), and plumb the new signal from the Optical Network Terminal (the big gray box on the side of the house where the fiber comes in from the utility pole) into the existing coax.
YEEECH!
What I'm going to do is to pull a new coax, and a network cable, from each room to a central point, which happens to be the middle bedroom, a.k.a. The Radio Room. I've made a thick plywood panel that I mounted the required splitters and a Gigabit Ethernet switch to, and after I dive under the house and pull the new cables, all I'll have to do is put the connectors on, plug it all together, and then swap the coax from the ONT to the new wiring. If it all works properly, I'll cut the ends off the old cables, stuff them back down through the hole in the floor where they come up, and remove all the exterior cables.
We'll have a nice, new, low-loss coax, *and* a Cat6a Ethernet cable, in each room, and the outside of the house will be cleaned up. It also gives us ALL the cables at one central point, making it much easier to troubleshoot if that's ever required. And we'll probably have half the signal loss we do now.
A couple of the "access ports" the original installers used had FOUR paired (8 actual coaxes!) cables coming out, and haphazardly running up to the eaves, and then running every which way.
Over the last few days, I measured/guesstimated the cable length I'd need from each room to the "Server Closet", added 10' to each length, and measured/cut new sections of cable. Then I taped a network cable to each coax, and drilled new holes in the floor to pull the new cable pairs through. I made the cables extra long, as my old adage is "Better 10 FEET too long than 6" too SHORT!". If it was a straight-line measurement of 12' from one location to the "Server Closet", I doubled it to 24', and with the added 10', I wound up with 34'.
When my wife asked me why I made them soooo long, I just smiled and told her that compared to my "cost" of spending a lovely day crawling around under the house, the cost of the actual cable was insignificant!
I have a Tyvek suit with hood, some good flexible leather gloves like driving gloves, a bunch of the anti-particulate face masks, a good pair of goggles, and a good BRIGHT lantern. I'll also take a long-handled brush with me to "clear the way" as I go Crawl Spacin' on Thursday. My stepson is home that day, and he'll be topside helping me by feeding the cable through so it doesn't kink or hang up on anything.
I haven't done this in years, so I'll be extremely careful, and if it looks like I can't fit where I have to go, I'll back out and we'll figure out some way to fish the cable to where I can grab it.
I don't relish doing this, but it's got to be done.
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