Running a Tube-Type Radio on "Car Batteries" - PART 2 -

OK....on to the radio....finally!

There's nothing magic or wizardly going on here. The circuitry doesn't care if the voltages come from AC, DC, Solar, Nuclear, coal, or filtered unicorn farts. If you supply the radio with the correct voltages, it will operate.

In order to take an AC powered radio and run it from batteries, we'll need to make some changes to the wiring. Specifically, we'll need to connect the correct voltages to the correct circuit points for both the B+ and Bias supplies. To do that we'll add some wires to those points and bring them out of the radio for the external power to be applied, along with a ground connection to a new plug.

And we'll need to separate the filament wiring from the secondary of the power transformer, and bring those two (or three, in the case of a radio having both 6V and 12V filaments) leads out, too.

So, we'd need to use a 6-conductor plug and socket, rated to withstand, say 300 Volts.

But in a real SHTF/TEOTWAWKI situation, we'd probably just run wires out of any convenient opening in the radio case.

Here's the schematic for the power supply section of an SB-310 General Coverage receiver:

Just about smack dab in the middle, you'll see two symbols that look like right-pointing arrows, labeled "D6" and "D7". The right side of this symbol, the direction the arrow is pointing, are the positive (Cathode) ends of the rectifiers. Solder a red wire to this point, and bring it out for later connection. The wire has to be rated for at least 300 Volts to be safe, but wouldn't have to be much more than 20 gauge as the current draw is pretty low. Since we'll be feeding in a positive voltage, and that voltage will be blocked by D6 and D7, no other surgery is required. *IF* D6 and D7 are shorted (blown by that commie EMP blast!), just clip them out of the circuit.

A little below that point, you'll find D8, which is the rectifier for the bias supply. This time you'll want to solder an orange wire to the junction of D8, the capacitor C233, and the resistor R211. This will be where we apply the -85 Volt bias supply. If D8 is shorted, just clip it out like you did to the rectifiers.

Damn commies.....

Underneath the chassis should be numerous terminal strips. Look for one with a "foot" that's grounded, and solder a black wire to it.

On the terminal strip pictured below, the "#2" position is the "foot" I was talking about, which bolts it to the chassis, and provides a ground point.

That takes care of the "high" voltages. Just make sure the red, yellow, and black wires you added are long enough to come out of the radio a foot or two, so you'll have some length to work with when you connect your battery bank.

For the filaments, we'll have to be a bit more careful. Since we'll be using DC to power them, we must disconnect the secondary winding of the transformer or otherwise it will short out the new DC supply to the filaments.

Look back at the schematic for "T1", which is the power transformer. You'll notice (sorry, but I'm assuming you can "read" a schematic...) that leads "1" and "3" are the yellow filament power leads. One side is grounded, which means it's common to the B+ and Bias supplies. Pick the yellow lead that's NOT grounded, and cut it loose from the terminal strip. Add a new yellow wire to this point, and bring it out like you did the others.

That should complete the modifications to the radio. Simple, and pretty easy to reverse if the AC power ever comes back!

The battery connections will simply be 15 car batteries connected in series, with the positive lead going to the red lead coming from the radio, and the negative lead going to the black lead coming from the radio, and that takes care of the B+ supply.

For the bias supply, you'll have ten 9 Volt transistor radio batteries in series, with the NEGATIVE side of your battery stack going to the orange wire coming from the radio, and the POSITIVE side of the battery stack going to the black lead coming from the radio.

For the filament supply, you'll have a single battery in series with a 2 Ohm, 25 Watt resistor (drops the 12 Volts down to 6) on the positive side connected to the yellow lead coming from the radio, and the negative side of the battery going to the black wire from the radio.

Will this work, and power the radio as if it were plugged in?

I have no doubt it will. As I said at the beginning, the radio doesn't know/doesn't care where its power comes from. Apply the correct voltages to the correct points in the circuit, and it will function, assuming it was an operating radio to begin with.

If anybody wants to loan me 16 car batteries, I'd be willing to modify the receiver just to prove this will work!

Personally, I'd rather just buy a few inverters and some extra ammo cans to keep them in. Saves a lot of work lugging batteries up the hill the old Ham lives on.......

Now....a few words of caution here.....

CAUTION! 

You've just built a 185 Volt DC power supply capable of SEVERAL HUNDRED Amps output.

This is a LETHAL voltage source! You will NOT get a second chance if you accidentally contact the positive lead while grounded.

Use EXTREME care when operating this power supply!

You have been warned!

It would definitely be a good idea to fuse the positive lead of the battery string, and properly insulate ALL exposed metal connections, but make sure you use a fuse rated for 250 VDC, and with a very high "interrupting rating" so that the fuse doesn't turn into a bomb. Fuses for this service usually are packed with sand, and use a ceramic body instead of glass, so that when the fuse link inside opens, the grains of sand fall into the gap, and quench the arc. Otherwise, with a supply this "stiff", there will be enough energy available to keep the arc "lit" when the fuse link opens, and a plain glass body fuse will violently disintegrate, possibly causing somebody to get hurt.

And a 1 or 2 Ohm, high wattage current limiting resistor in series with the positive lead wouldn't hurt anything, either.

Thoughts on Iowa

No, not my beloved BB-61, but last night's goings on.

I'm no political analyst, and I sure don't play one on TV, but a few things immediately struck me.

1. Hillary is in deep doo-doo. If Bernie Sanders can wind up in a dead-heat TIE with her, I think she's doomed. I wonder what's going to happen next week in New Hampshire....

2. Cruz is much stronger than I expected, and I think that's a Good Thing. I thought the final numbers for Ted and The Donald would be flipped around. And Rubio's results surprised me, too. I figured he'd get about half what he did. Carly and Dr. Carson did poorly, and I wonder how much longer they'll slug it out. I think Dr. Carson is a fine man, a wonderful surgeon, and a great example for young people of ANY race to emulate, but I'm not sure he's got the stones to be President.

3. O'Malley and Huckabee are doing the right thing. I'm sure we'll hear more from them.

4, The people of Iowa were sure full of surprises, weren't they?

Voting, and other distractions.....

Found cartoon over at, and shamelessly borrowed from, Rev, Paul's place.

I haven't decided yet who I'm 100% behind, but it sure aint The Hildebeast.

Some people say we're too far gone to "vote ourselves out of this mess", and that ANY candidate is merely a puppet for one of the New World Order groups.

I don't think we're quite past Claire Wolfe's "Awkward Stage", but we're pretty damn close.....

If you or I tried some of the stuff The Hildebeast has done, we'd be locked up in a "Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison", probably for 25-to-life.







And yet The Hildebeast continues to walk free, and is even running for President.

I wonder who I ticked off, to be consigned to live in such "interesting" times......

Friday Already?

Still waiting for the "4-pin" cable from the Maestro RR people so I can finish installing the new Kenwood radio into my Jeep. They're in Canada, so it might be here today, but I'm betting it won't be here until next week.

And the two switches on the steering wheel that control the radio channel selection (left switch) and the volume (right) switch haven't shown up yet, either.

The USPS "tracking number" claims they were delivered last Saturday, but my buddy where my mail drop is hasn't seen them.

I dropped the vendor a note, and he sent another set out on Wednesday, so they also might be here today since he's in AZ.

And of course, it's supposed to rain some this weekend, starting on Saturday night. *IF* the parts get here today I should be able to swap out the radios tomorrow before it starts raining.

And on the Iowa, we were (FINALLY!) able to get audio routed from one of the "Red Phones", through the "Coke Machine", and the transmitter audio switchboard, down to transmitter #3, and were able to get 500 Watts output from the transmitter into the dummy load. We then noticed that the Power Output knob was backed off a bit, and once we ran that up to max, we were getting 1000 Watts out.

The Power Output control knob is VERY nonlinear in it's action, and turning it down just a few degrees drops the power from 1000 Watts to 400~500 Watts. We don't really need full power out of the transmitter, and considering the two antennas we'll be using, we don't WANT 1000 Watts, as the tour route gets to within 5 or 10 feet of the antennas, and we have to limit the RF exposure to our guests.

On The Workbench This Week

Only this time it's not something being repaired, but something being assembled.

A few months after I bought my Jeep in the fall of 2006, I decided I wanted a navigation unit for it. I'd just helped my son install a Pioneer AVIC nav radio in his Xterra, so I started looking into an aftermarket unit, as the Jeep came with a pretty generic AM/FM/Sirius radio with a single-disc CD player, and I wanted something more integrated to the vehicle so I wouldn't have to reach over and grab my hand-held GPS when I wanted to see where I was.

WELL......at that time, in order to keep my steering wheel controls, I would have had to add several aftermarket modules, and cut into the wiring harness in several places, and it still wasn't guaranteed that everything would work.

SO....I opted for an OEM navigation unit from an eBay seller who came highly recommended on several Jeep forums.

I bought the radio at a great price, and then got the replacement plastic bezel for it, and installed it in less than 45 minutes!

The first thing I was unhappy with was that it did NOT have a touch screen, and I had to enter the street name and number one.....character.....at.....a.....time.....using the scroll knob.

What a huge PITA!

You simply didn't have enough time at a red light to do anything, and as soon as your speed went over 5~7MPH, it would lock out the front controls, so your passenger couldn't even use it!

Yeah, I understand the safety aspect, but if the car's  computer is smart enough to trip the seat belt warning chime when my dog is riding with me, why couldn't it be "smart" enough to sense a passenger is there, and unlock the controls so the passenger could make adjustments?

Damn lawyers.....

ANYWAY...fast forward 10 years to the present. The joystick/scroll knob used to input data or move the on-screen navigation cursor has been getting intermittent, and the 6-disc CD changer has gotten to where it maybe will/maybe won't play a disc, depending on ambient temperature, the day of the week, and possibly the phase of the Moon. It might be fixable, but I 'd really like a touch screen, and the Sirius/XM tuner has started getting funky, too, dropping signals and suffering "digital breakup" more and more often.

Things have progressed to the point that I was able to get a single box adapter that splices in between the OEM plugs in the car, and the wiring harness for the new radio, and retain full functionality of my steering wheel controls.

This little gem is called a "Maestro RR", made by Automotive Data Solutions, based in Montreal, Canada.


Just a little black box that captures and manipulates the data from the steering wheel controls, and turns it into something the radio can understand.

So, being somewhat of a Kenwood aficionado,  I ordered a DNX771HD from Cructchfield, a Maestro "Rr" interface unit, and all the other wiring harness adapters.

After going through some of the spotty documentation, I finally figured it all out and sat down and soldered the two wiring harnesses together.



Here it is, with the Kenwood on the left, the Maestro RR module in the middle, and the gray plugs on the right  which connect to the existing Jeep OEM wiring harness:

The Maestro RR module also has connections to the OBD II port, allowing various engine parameters to be measured, and displayed:

And it all plugs into the Kenwood radio using the Kenwood OEM connectors:

I used my typical "Good Amateur Practice" from the ARRL Handbook, and soldered the connections together, and covered them with heat shrinkable tubing:

And then we hit some snags.

The M5 screws provided with the Kenwood were too short to go through the thick plastic brackets in the dashboard adapter, so I had to hit the hardware store for some longer ones:

And, of course, some washers to spread the clamping force on the plastic, so it won't crack, which I've had happen before:

Since installing an aftermarket head unit loses control of the OEM Sirius/XM radio, a new receiver module is needed, seen here with the mating plug to the new head unit:

The new receiver has a $70 up-front cost, but when I call to cancel the service on the existing one, and activate this new one, I'll supposedly get a $70 gift card, making the receiver essentially "free". I'm also told that any remaining time on my existing contract will be added to the new contract for this new receiver.

And finally, the last remaining snag that stopped me from having this installed this weekend.....

This radio is an "iDatalink Compatible" model, which means that it's designed with the Maestro module in mind. Besides all the small plugs on the Maestro adapter harness and the OEM harness, which allows the Maestro to tap into the CAN bus of the vehicle, there's two addition connectors on the radio that go to the Maestro module.

WELL.....guess what? One of the cable assemblies that transfers data between the radio and Maestro module was missing from the new, sealed box the Maestro was in!

I went to "the12Volt.com" forum, where the Maestro technical reps hang out, and after a few days, I have a replacement cable on the way. Hopefully it went out Monday afternoon and I'll have it by Friday, but with the weather problems on the East coast, who knows when it will show up.

I'll do another post detailing the actual installation into my Jeep Grand Cherokee and a mini-review of the whole shebang once I get the missing cable.

Background Checks?

Found this over at Miss Lisa's blog.

It's funny, true, and very sad, all at the same time....

Any Huey Pilots Out There?

I've flown in the Bell civilian version of the twin-engine "Huey" (a Bell 212, IIRC) numerous times, but never in a real UH-1.

My question is based on what you see in the movies, where the pilot jumps in, starts flipping switches, and gets airborne really quick,

BUT, since we all know Hollyweird tends to take great liberties with real-world things, I know it's probably not anywhere near realistic.

So, assuming your bird is sitting there in good flying weather, full of fuel and fluids, and is 100% preflight checked, and tagged as  "good to go" by a Crew Chief you really trust, and you have clearance for immediate take-off, just how fast could you get airborne?

This is a real, "somebody's life depends on it" scenario, where you roar up to your bird in a Jeep, jump in the bird, and start flipping switches even as you're buckling up and getting your helmet on.

When I was flying with the contractor pilots at Sea Launch, it was all extremely scripted and scheduled. They stroll out to the bird, climb in, buckle up, put their helmets on and plug-in, and run through their preflight checklist, and then start waking up the bird. They always had enough time that they'd sit on the pad, engines idling, and rotors turning, until they received clearance, and then they'd power up and lift off.

It probably took about 30 minutes from when they got in until they lifted off. Safety was tantamount with everything these guys did, and they were very good pilots, well experienced with off-shore operations, and landing on a moving, pitching, rolling platform.

So, assuming things are damn near perfect before you launch, how fast can you get airborne?

RIP Glen Frey

What a bummer.....

The Eagles have always been one of my favorite bands, and now they've lost one of their founders.

Truly a sad day for music....

One for Miss Lisa and Wirecutter

Enjoy!

Antenna Work, Part II

OK, so I dropped the antenna down today, and swapped out my homebrew PVC adapter for the OEM metal version.

I took a bunch of pictures....BUT.....I had my camera set wrong, and the pix came out so overexposed that I couldn't even save them with GIMP.

So, all I have to show are some before and after plots, and those didn't covert very well, either.

Here's the 2 Meter VSWR graph with the plastic mounting:

And here it is with the OEM metal mounting:

Here's the 70cm plot wth plastic:

And here's the plot with the OEM metal mount:

Sorry for the terrible size disparity with the plots. I had to "print to file" on the Windoze machine, then convert them to png's on the Linux machine, and the "print to file" utility that creates the pdf dows whacky stuff.

I have the Linux version of the capture/display software for my AA-520 analyzer, and I think it's high time I install it, and learn to use it!

ANYWAY......the plastic vs metal plots don't look much different, so I'm not expecting much difference in performance. I called "CQ" on our "club-comm" frequency of 145.510, but couldn't raise anybody on either radio, so I assume they're all busy tonight.

Now one thing kind of jumps out at me, and that's how FLAT the VSWR curve is on 2 Meters. That kind of "flatness" over a wider bandwidth than the antenna is rated for can be indicative of an excessively lossy feedline.

I'm going to run some plots on the little GP-1 antenna, and see if it looks more like the published curves. I physically inspected the feedline on the GP-3 today, and there's no external evidence of damage to it, the PL-259's are properly soldered and the one at the antenna was still nice and shiny and clean after I took the tape off of it.

Yeah, I know, I should have made some loss measurements, but I got clobbered with some Honey Dews right in the middle of this today.

It's an easy 10-minute job to lower the antenna and disconnect the coax, so if the plots on the GP-1 look like the ones Comet publishes, I have a feeling I'll be dropping the GP-3 down again on Monday......

Antenna Work

Did not happen today.

I dug out the bottom piece from the garage, only to find I've misplaced (what else is new......) the M6x8 bolt that holds it to the bottom of the antenna!

So, not having any metric bolts that size that fell "readily to hand", I made a run to Home Depot to get a replacement.

This issue with the antenna started sometime ago when I took down my Arrow Antenna GP52 6 Meter 1/4 wave vertical antenna and replaced it with my Comet GP-3 2M/70cm vertical so I could run the net from the shack, instead of using my Drake TR-270 which is in the living room on my wife's computer desk.

There were just too many times when people were over, or she was watching TV, and the "QRM" in the room was too high, and went out over-the-air, to properly conduct the net.

The GP-3 is a great little antenna, very rugged, and only 6' tall, meaning it doesn't really stand out in the neighborhood. The Drake is connected to it's little brother, the GP-1, and that's also an excellent antenna.

I'd been using the GP-3 at my apartment in Torrance before I moved here, and it worked extremely well. Back at the apartment it was on a 5' tripod, with a single 5' piece of mast, on top of a large two story building, with a clear view in all 360*. I could easily hit repeaters that were 70 miles away, and make reliable simplex contacts out to 30 miles.

Here at the house, it's on the same 5' tripod, ground mounted this time, with three 5' sections of mast, getting it well above the roof line with a clear view in all 360*. I'm even using the same length of coax, as it was "close enough" to being the right length, and was in excellent condition. The loss measurement for that piece of coax (Davis RF "Bury Flex") was as expected for the length, and the connectors were like new due to the fact I always properly weatherproof my connections on the outside ends.

I swept it with my Rig Expert AA-520 antenna analyzer, and the SWR was almost identical to the published curves for the antenna.

So I should be good to go, right?

Well, not really......The antenna just never "worked right", with receive being down from what it was in Torrance, although transmit seemed about the same. Now that's not really a good indicator, as I have a clear shot at the repeater, and can hit it almost "full quieting" with 5 Watts from my HT in the front yard. The problem came with simplex operation, when this higher gain (4.5dBi on 2M), physically higher antenna didn't even perform as well as the Comet GP-1 ("3dB" on 2M. No mention of it being dBi or dBd but I suspect dBi) on the other side of the house, and just barely clear of the roof line!

The only difference between the way it's mounted here at the house is when I swapped it out with the 6M antenna, I couldn't find the bottom "mount support pipe" piece, so I slipped it into a section of PVC conduit, and put it up.

This picture shows the metal piece, directly under the radials, at the bottom of the antenna:

And this is the actual item, measuring 245mm in length:

I'm not sure that this would be part of the antenna, or just a structurally sound piece to support the antenna. If it were actually part of the antenna, electrically speaking, I'd expect it to be held to the main part of the antenna with more than ONE bolt.

And since the radials are "too short" for doing much on 2M, I'm guessing that they're for the 70cm section of the antenna.

Guess I'll find out tomorrow when I put it back on the antenna!

Thursday Night Net Operations - Listening In......

The "other" radio club I'm in has been running a Thursday night Net since way before I got back into Ham Radio in 1995, and for about 10 of the last 21 years, I've been the Net Control station.

The functions of the Net Control are varied, depending on the type of net run, what frequencies it uses, and a whole lot of other things. Our club net was generally an informal on-the-air gathering where roll was called, people checked in, net control made some general announcements, and then turned the net over to the club president who polled each club officer, told us what specific events were coming up, and then opened the net up to club members for questions, comments, tall tales, etc. Pretty informal stuff, and not nearly as structured as an EMCOMM or traffic handling net would be, where you basically check-in, and then maintain radio silence until asked to respond.

WELL.....some years ago the owner of the repeater we used decided to connect the repeater as an Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) node. IRLP is an interesting technology, which requires the users to access the node using a radio, and then the node converts to voice to VOIP, and sends it into the Internet, where it pops out on another node, and goes back out over-the-air. While a Ham can make a direct connection from their PC to the node, it's generally NOT allowed, somewhat ensuring that actual radios are used by the participants.

This is different than Echolink, which may or may not require a radio to access a node, or may be accessed directly from your computer.

Echolink has been (sometimes unfairly) compared to being a "glorified chat-room", as Hams can make "contacts" computer-to-computer, with NO RF involved at all. The only thing that makes it "Ham Only" is that in order to get registered as a node and have access to the system, you have to submit a copy of your Amateur Radio license.

These systems generally work quite well, and usually allow "arm chair copy" of the stations you're talking to, as long as you have a good (full quieting) signal into the repeater/node.

HOWEVER.....since you're dealing with interconnected machines over long distances, your operating procedure has to be different than if you're using a "normal" repeater, or operating simplex, namely that you must add a significant pause after the repeater stops transmitting, and another pause after you start your transmission, but before you speak.

This is because each of the linked repeaters has to stop transmitting, sit idle for a bit, and then accept your transmission. The pause before you speak is required to allow things to "settle" into their new state, and if you don't pause before speaking, you're likely to have the first few syllables, or even complete words, chopped off.

All this is quite variable, and depends on how each node/link is configured, and can vary from "pretty quick" to "almost useless".

Unfortunately the repeater the club was using falls into the latter category.....

I got very tired of explaining the same thing, to the same people, over and over and over again, week after week after week.

One particularly bad night I decided I'd had it, and sent an email to the club that effective immediately, I was no longer going to be the Net Control Station. A few guys jumped in to do it on a week-to-week basis, but it took a couple of months before somebody volunteered to take it over.

A few weeks ago the club decided to abandon the repeater, and go to a simplex net. We have a couple of guys who live on the Palos Verdes peninsula, and have enough elevation to overlook the entire L.A. Basin, so they can act as relays for those times when the Net Control Station can't hear someone clearly.

Some club members were unhappy with this, with reasons ranging from "All I have is an HT, and I won't be heard" (valid reason, but get an outside antenna and it'll help a lot. This guy lives where outside antennas are allowed, and his family is very well off), to "I'll have to reprogram my radio" (bogus - if you can't program ONE new, SIMPLEX frequency you probably don't deserve a Ham license), along with the usual complainers who gripe about EVERYTHING.

So, tonight I listened in, and as expected, the guys on Palos Verdes come booming in, and the other stations ranged from readable, to pure noise. I know I have an antenna issue with the 2M/70cm rig I'm using in the shack, and I have the parts to fix it. I suppose I should do that tomorrow, take a few pix, and have another post about "Don't Do This!", but that's for a later date.

The guy who took over the net has come a long ways, with a significant amount of "Elmering" by myself and the other experienced operators, but that's also another story for another day........

And We Thought "Innah-Gaddah-Da-Vida" Had A Good Drum Solo...

Yeah, well Iron Butterfly didn't have anything on Gene Kruppa!

A Bit More Rain On The Way

Supposed to start tonight after 2200, taper off during the day on Sunday, and then be partly sunny and dry until Wednesday.

Just let the dog out, and it's sprinkling again....

So far for the year, we've received 3.98" of rain, compared to a 5.77" "normal" rainfall for the same period, July to January.

The 12 month "normal" rainfall for Long Beach is 12.26" from July to July, so we're still quite a bit less than "normal".

We'll just have to wait and see what the rest of January, along with February, March, and maybe April and May bring.

And we're going to see the new Star Wars movie tonight. I've heard good and bad reviews of it, but I really want to see how a 73 year old Han Solo acts.....

Last night we went to the local Stonefire Grill, and I was NOT impressed.

It's one of those places where you order, get a little "table beeper" so they can find your table when the food is ready, and then bring you your food,

The entrees arrived at different times, followed by the side orders, and the appetizers arrived last.

I had a French Dip, which was like chunks of yesterday's (fatty) pot roast dumped on a decent bun, served up with OK garlic mashed potatoes, and some of Dow Corning's best "au jus".

The bread sticks were slightly burnt on the ends, doughy in the middle, and slathered in some concoction of "cheese", parsley, and Mobil One.

Needless to say, I won't be going back anytime soon.....

WHOO-HOO! New Water Heater Installed!

Our great neighbor and dear family friend, Mike The Plumber, had the old one out, and the new one in, in under an hour.

Hey, he's a Professional, so don't try this at home!

He also replaced the inlet/outlet flex pipes, as the old ones were crummy, and new ones are CHEEP!

The old, dead unit is laying in the driveway now, and we'll haul it out later to have the city pick it up.

States I've Visited

Courtesy of Rev Paul!


Create Your Own Visited States Map




Create Your Own Visited States Map

Rain, Day 2

So far we're at 1.35" for this storm, and Friday is supposed to be a nice day, before the next round of storms hits on Saturday.

And that's a good thing, as our 20+ year old water heater, which has been slooowly failing has finally decided to call it quits.

I'm not sure what "wears out" in a gas water heater, but this one is no longer heating the water, even though we've cranked up the thermostat on it to almost max.

I remember way back when I was a kid, that they'd "burn out", usually flooding the basement until somebody could valve off the water to it.

This one isn't leaking, and when our plumber friend was over here earlier this week, he tried draining it, and very little sediment came out, so apparently it isn't loaded up with gunk.

The new 45 gallon commercial grade heater gets delivered Thursday afternoon ($540....OUCH!), and our plumber friend and my wife's oldest son will swap it out. The place he ordered the new heater from will come and collect the old one, so that's a worry we won't have.

But in the meantime, we have barely tepid water to shower with.

Hot water on demand is one of those things you just take for granted, and when it goes away, life gets a little different.......

Rain, Day 1......

Well, it's been raining here since a little before 0800, about five hours, and we've received .9".

No signs of the yard getting saturated here yet, and the storm sewers are keeping the streets clear, at least in our little neighborhood.

It stopped raining about 5 minutes ago, so I'm going to grab the dog, and toss her out in the back yard as she hasn't gone outside since about 0200.

She'll go outside to do her business if it's raining and she's been inside for 8 hours or so, but she starts getting really "antsy" by that time.

At least she's really good about letting me wipe her paws off before she goes back inside......

Batten Down The Hatches!

Looks like we've got five days of rain coming, starting later tonight.

Spent all day on the Iowa doing Tour Guide duty, not something I don't normally do, BUT.....

New Year's day was quiet on the ship, as most of the visiting Iowans were at the Rose Bowl, but Saturday was swamped, with around 1500 visitors, and few Tour Guides.

Uh-Oh!

So our lead sent out an urgent plea for people to show up today, Sunday, so I told him I'd be down.

Pretty quiet until noon, and then over the next few hours we had several hundred people show up, mostly people who weren't able to get aboard during the Thursday pre-game rally.

So, I got to meet a lot of new people, and explain the various parts of the ship that I know, and answer a ton of questions.

Happy New Year!

Hope we all have a happy and joyous New Year.

My wife gave me a nice little Polaroid 10.1" Android tablet for Christmas, and I gave her a Liberty Cross from the Liberty Rings Company, along with a nice silver chain, and a gift card to Macy's, her favorite place to shop.

One of the projects for the coming year is to figure out how to get root access to the tablet, which is running Android 5.0.1 "Lollipop", and so far, all I've managed to do is lock it up hard enough that I had to do a "reset and restore" back to the OEM image.

5.0.1 isn't the newest Android version, but it's new enough, and this tablet is obscure enough, that I haven't been able to find a pre=packaged app to root it.

And the "allow installation of apps from unknown sources" selector is greyed-out, so the apps I have been able to find from "unknown sources" (i.e., NOT from the Google Play Store) so I can't go that route.

Time to brush up my hack-foo skills, I guess!

***UPDATE*** 

Turns out that if you go to Settings/About Tablet and tap the "Build Number" entry about 7 times, you get elevated to "Developer" status.

Then going to Settings/Security, and tapping the "Unknown Sources" entry several times, it pops up with a warning, which you tap "OK", and the control is no longer grayed-out.

So, I can now install the apps needed to root the tablet, and even access the bootloader if I want to change the ROM to something like ParanoidAndroid or Cyanogen.

HUGE Day on the Battleship Iowa

Since the Iowa Hawkeyes are in the Rose Bowl this year, an estimated 25,000 Iowans came to L.A. to support their team.

And it looked like about half of them came down to the Iowa today for the rally!

**UPDATE** The current estimate is that we had between 10,000 and 15,000 people during the day.

I've seen big crowds at the Iowa before, but I've NEVER seen the entire parking lot, and the cruise ship parking lot, so full that the police blocked the entrance, and people were parking blocks away.

 This is what I saw when I was finally able to get into the parking lot and find a space:

The area between the road and the ship is about 60~75 feet wide, and the area between the forward and aft ramps leading onto and off the ship is several hundred feet long.

It was wall-to-wall people, spilling over onto the road in front of the ship. and requiring the security staff to "make a hole" for vehicle traffic.

And every single person was happy and smiling, and there were NO "incidents" of any kind!


This was taken later in the day, after the crowds had (somewhat) diminished, but as you can see, we still had quite a large number of people:

We even kept the ship open an hour longer so that everybody (as far as I know) who had been in line to get aboard at least got to see some of the ship.

So, a big THANK YOU to the wonderful people from the state of Iowa who helped make it possible to get the ship down here, and we hope you all had a great time!

Thank you all for your support, HAPPY NEW YEAR, and GO HAWKEYES!

On The Workbench This Week

I scored a Yaesu FRG-8800 General Coverage receiver a couple of weeks ago on eBay for $150, Buy-It-Now, with FREE shipping.

Since these things generally go for between $250~$400 depending on condition and options, I jumped on it even though it was sold as "Parts or Repair Only". Even if I couldn't repair it, I could always part it out.

Front panel from actual listing photos:

One thing I didn't notice in the listing photos, but caught me eye immediately when I unpacked it, was that the antenna connector had taken a pretty good hit at some time during the receiver's life.

If you look at the connector in the photo, you can see that it's punched in and angled upwards a bit, and you can see where the rear panel is pushed in at the lip of the upper case half:

The four position terminal strip for long wire antennas was also missing a screw, but I have a good collection of genuine Yaesu hardware that I've collected from radios I've parted out over the years, so that was no biggie.

The small access panel at the lower left is for the 3 "AA" size batteries used to back up the real time clock and the 12 memory positions, while the panel to the right of it is where the FRV-8800 VHF Converter would mount if so equipped.

The radio was sold as completely dead, which it was, but troubleshooting that problem would have to wait until I fixed the antenna connector.

I pulled the case off, unsoldered the board with the terminal strip, and saw that the connector had been hit hard enough to make the retaining nut "jump" one thread from side-to-side. Thinking I could just use a screwdriver to "pop" the nut back so I could straighten it out, I carefully applied some force to it, only to have the connector shatter! Yaesu, in a cost-cutting move, opted to use a CAST connector instead of a machined one, and castings don't like shock and being bent back and forth!

Fortunately, I have a supply of single-hole, panel-mount Type-N females, so that's what I used to replace the busted connector, after I straightened the rear panel using some hardwood blocks and a big "C" clamp.

After that was done, I noticed that the little subassembly with the "Mode" switched was popped loose from its mounting clips on the front panel, explaining why the mode switches didn't work, and felt "dead". Snapping that back into position made the switches come forward enough that the buttons on the front panel now engaged them.

The DOA problem turned out to be an internal 2A fuse on the power supply regulator board. I replaced the fuse and measured the current into and out of the regulator assembly, and they were in spec, so the fuse probably went due to old age and repeated thermal cycling.

The last thing I found was that all 4 of the dial lamps were blown. I replaced those with blue 3mm diameter LED's, and now the dial lights up in a "Cool Blue" color.

A general check of the alignment (sensitivity and frequency accuracy) shows it to be spot on the published specs, so I'm considering it repaired.

Cosmetically it needs a good cleaning, and there's a nasty scuff on the dial "glass", but that should polish out with some Novus plastic polish.

So, for $150 and a few $$ in parts, I now have a nicely operating Yaesu FRG-8800 General Coverage receiver.

I don't think the audio sounds as "smooth" as it did on my previous FRG-7700 receiver, so I'll have to Google around a bit and see if there's any "audio enhancement" mods for it.

My #1 Christmas Song

Merry Christmas everybody!

Christmas Song #2

Waaaay back when I first started working for Boeing on the Sea Launch program, I stumbled across this video during the trip back from the launch of the XM-3 satellite.

After the launch, we're all pretty burned out, and this launch, my first, was especially stressful, as we sat at the launch site for TWO WEEKS waiting for the sea currents to calm down so the Dynamic Positioning System could hold the Launch Platform in position.

Finally, after all the stress, we received launch clearance, and began the automated countdown. The launch vehicle was erected, the LP cleared of people, and the fueling began. We got down to T-8 minutes, and an abort was called due to some issue with the launch vehicle.

MAJOR bummer, as if an abort was called after fueling was started, it was a minimum two day turn around, The tanks had to be drained, then flushed and purged, and the issue with the launch vehicle resolved.

We wound up being there another week, and were really burned out by the time we launched, secured our gear, and headed home.

Hence, this video, as annoying as it is, seemed to fit our mood, and became a Sea Launch "Christmas Classic".

It's silly, stupid, and annoying, but then so were we after all the stress, missed sleep, 12~14 hour days, and being stuck on the ACS for over a month.......


I promise my next "Christmas Song" will be much more enjoyable!

Christmas Song #3

One of the two "Favorite Christmas Songs" I posted over on Miss Lisa's blog when she asked is "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses.

It's a cute little song with a happy ending, and always makes me smile.

WestJet Merry Christmas to Passengers on a Flight

This is amazing. Brings "Customer Serice" to a new level!

58 Years Ago Today

The Boeing 707 first flew.

I've flown in them many times, and always got quite a thrill out of it.

The one pictured above is owned by John Travolta, and has been lovingly restored to its full glory.

The 707 was based on the famous "Dash 80" that Tex Johnson barrel rolled, and was the prototype for the KC-135 tanker that the US Air Force still flies, although they've all been rebuilt and re-engined so many times that I wonder how much of the original airplane is left!

Truly beautiful aircraft, and they made possible the rise of low-cost transatlantic and transpacific air travel.

Two For Saturday

The music video was found over on LL's blog, while the sign came from Common Sense Evaluation.


I just thought they kind of went togther.....

After doing some Googling for "The American's Creed", and finding several versions of what's been called "The American/s Creed", I found that this particular version was written by a man named Dean Alfange.

His brief bio here is from "Good Reads".


Dean Alfange was born in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) of Greek parents, December 2, 1897. His family migrated to the United States and settled in Utica, New York, when he was very young. He attended Hamilton College where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1922. Later he attended Columbia University Law School and was admitted to the bar in 1925.

Alfange's interests led him to pursue a career in politics as well as law. He was also deeply involved with the Order of Ahepa, a Greek-American cultural organization, acting as its national president from 1927-1929. He ran for New York State Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1942 against Thomas E. Dewey and was a strong advocate of the New Deal and a great admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

During World War II he was the Vice-Chairman of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. He made speeches for aid to the Jews against the Nazis, and at a hearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives submitted a plan to save the Jews in Europe. After World War II he became chairman of the Committee to Arm the Jewish State, a group aimed at lifting the arms embargo on Palestine.

He was instrumental in the formation of the Liberal Party in 1944 when the American Labor Party split between pro-communist and anti-communist factions. Alfange held nominations or appointments
from Democrats and Republicans as well as the Liberal and American Labor Party. As early as 1954 he expressed opposition to the American policy of military aid to the French government in Indochina, his position being one based on anti-colonialism. This position continued throughout America's involvement in the Vietnam Conflict.

Other positions held by Alfange were: Deputy Attorney General of New York State, Trustee of the Fashion Institute of Technology and New York State Quarter-Horse Racing Commissioner. Among his awards are the Freedom Foundation Award (1952) for his composition “My Creed” (included in Box 5, folder 3) and the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Award for his book The Supreme Court and the National Will (1937).

He died in New York City on October 24, 1989 at age 91.

______________________________________________________

This man helped found the modern "liberal" movement, which bears little resemblance to the "liberal" parties of today.

He's probably spinning in his grave like a gyroscope over what the "liberals" have become...........

Housing Market Bubble Inflating Again

At least it is by my observations.

When the housing market blew up last time, the real estate listings I get were loaded with short sales and foreclosures. Over the last few years, these slowly went away, and 95+% of what I received were just regular sales.

Over the last two months or so, I'm seeing a rising number of short sales and foreclosures again, along with hearing things on the radio and in blogs about the "0% Down" loans, and even some sub-prome loans being offered again.

This morning's listing of 5 properties in the 60435 area code had two foreclosures, two short sales, and one regular sale.

Looks like it's starting again, and when this one pops, I suspect it will be worse than the last time....

112 Years Ago Today

This happened:

And the world changed forever.

An uncle on my Mom's side was about 10 years old when this happened, and I remember him crying when we landed on the Moon.

He simply couldn't believe that in his lifetime we had gone from a fragile little 12 Horsepower machine, to a giant, thundering rocket (still the most powerful machine ever built) that carried three men to the Moon.

I'll always remember his fascination with television, and the fact that it "had NO moving parts".

Finally Got My Windows 7 PC Back Up and Running Stable

GROAN.....what a PITA.

After doing a restore to the last previously known "good" configuration, it seemed to be running OK, but with a ton of almost continuous  hard-disk activity, and requiring numerous "updates", and reboots.

It was so sluggish that I was about to rip out what's left of my hair, and start on my beard....

Finally, after letting it run for about 12 hours total, it's settled down, and is operating more-or-less normally.

At least all the installed software on it works without blowing up, and I can use my Flex Radio Systems 5000A again. I haven't tried any of the digital programs, like FLdigi, or the slow-scan/wefax/RTTY programs yet, so I might have to reconfigure the program that runs the virtual serial ports.

And this time, rather than going through and removing all the Windows Updates by hand, I went ahead and took several people's advice and installed the GWX Control Panel, which makes rooting out and killing the Windows 10 "upgrade" notifications and included spyware as easy as a few mouse clicks.

I even sent to guy $10 and thanked him!

The User Guide is located here, and I highly recommend getting this fine utility if you're running Windows 7, 8, or 8.1.

Back to checking if *all* my Amateur Radio software is working......

Toe Tappin' Time!

Enjoy....

One For Old_NFO.......

GO NAVY!

Courtesy of Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford during the Gemini VI mission

Happy Birthday, Frank!

Old Blue Eyes would have been 100 years old today.

Not much I can say about him that hasn't already been said. I remember watching him in movies when I was a kid, especially movies like Ocean's 11, and thinking the Rat Pack was the coolest bunch of guys (next to the Astronauts!) in the world.

Truly a different world back then, and for all it's faults, I think a better place.....

Happy Birthday, Frank!

Down With A Cold.....

Got the blechs again...

Started feeling something coming on late Sunday. My wife came home early last Thursday, and took Friday off, and now it looks like I have it.

Sore throat, runny nose, minor cough, and general blotto feeling.

Feeling somewhat better today, and spent most of the day sleeping. I'll hit the NyQil and Mucinex in a few, and then off to bed.

Oh, well.....

Long Time Gone ~ Aliotta Haynes Jerimiah

These guys were fairly big in the Chicago area in the late 1960's/early 1970's.

Their most "mainstream" hit was called "Lake Shore Drive", about the road of the same name that runs along the West coast of Lake Michigan, but I always liked this one better.

"A Date Which Will Live In Infamy..."

 
Every day we lose many WWII Vets.

Soon there will be none.

I'm very blessed in that I get to meet many of them doing my various "jobs" on the Iowa.

Cherish them while we still have them. They truly were "The Greatest Generation".



These two "vets" of a slightly different type saw much action.

The USS Iowa, and the USS Midway. I'm fortunate to have been on both, and have friends on both.

I "Fixed" My Windoze PC

WELL....thinking about this, I decided to pull the AC plug from the UPS for a few minutes to let the power supply completely discharge, which completely turns the PC off.

Most newer PC's actually don't turn "off", in much the same way that a newer TV never turns completely "off", since the TV needs some circuitry alive 24/7 to detect the commands from the remote.

PC's are similar in the the power switch doesn't disconnect the power like it did in the old "AT" days, but rather puts the PC into a very deep sleep, and brings it back up when the "power" button is pressed.

Sure enough, after being unplugged for a few minutes it got past the POST error, and began to boot into Windoze.

Since I'd attempted to restart it numerous times after the error first appeared, it had some corrupted files, so I let Windoze search for the problems, and selected "Continue" when it offered to restore the system to it's last known operating state.

Now I'll re-do all the updates that I installed before we went to Colorado for Thanksgiving, and *carefully* nuke all the "Get Windows 10!!" spyware that the mothership installs.

And this time, when it wants a reboot, I'll do a complete shutdown, unplug it for a few minutes, and then bring it back up!

Liberal vs. Actual reality

Shamelessly swiped from the fine people at WRSA.....


Nothing to see here.....Move along.....

More "Workplace Violence".....

I was going to do a "Colorado Wrap Up" post, and then the ugliness in San Berdoo took place.

It's amazing how fast the media has dropped this hot potato, no doubt due to the identity of the perps, and the glaring fact that it doesn't fit the official agenda.

And of course, the POS currently residing in our White House immediately spun another BLATANT LIE about how "People we won't let fly can walk into any gun store and buy a gun".

Not hardly......

FINALLY Home!

BLECH........The Explorer wouldn't start this morning. Another hotel guest gave us a third jumpstart.

Plane to Salt Lake City was 45 minutes late arriving in Denver.

Our connecting flight was scheduled to depart 50 minutes after our scheduled arrival, and was one set of gates away.

We barely made it. We were literally the last two people to board the aircraft.

Then because that aircraft had been sitting most of the day at Salt Lake, where there were minor snow squalls moving through the area, it had to be de-iced again.

We left Salt Lake 45 minutes late......

So our "2100" arrival time in Long Beach wound up being about 2225....

I'll unpack tomorrow....I'm trashed......

Headed Home Saturday

After I shut the laptop down tonight I'll pack it, along with all my other stuff except for what I'll wear Saturday.

We had a wonderful time here, as usual, and actually took a few hours today to drive by 6 of the homes I've got in my saved properties list.

We didn't get to look inside any of them, but just doing the drive-by confirmed that yes indeed, the people who take the pictures used in the listing are quite creative with camera angles!

One house looked really sweet "on paper", BUT the listing photos don't show the neighbor's yard with cars-on-blocks, the other neighbor's yard that looked  like a used Jeep/ATV dealership, or the house down the road a few hundred feet that just looked plain "weird".

One we looked at had NO garage at all, the garage having been converted into more living space. Don't know how I missed that in the listing, as a BIG garage is very high on my priority list.

Another had a HUGE yard, but the fence around the yard in the photos was gone! Since the photos were taken months ago, hopefully a new fence is in the works.

BUT....two of the ones I had saved were true gems. One has a very nice yard, with a "nature area" that the back yard abuts to, almost guaranteeing that the land will never be developed, and the other was a knock out. 30,000 sqft lot, a large garage/workshop as a separate building, and looked to be in excellent repair. It's been on the market for almost 6 months now, with the priced dropped $20k at the end of October.

My "local connections" are looking in to it to see if there might be code violations or other headache-inducing things wrong with it. They seemed to think it was still a bit overpriced considering the "comps" in the neighborhood, so they're going to discreetly nose around a bit on our behalf.

My wife has said she wants to seriously "run the numbers" on it when we get home. She's now thinking that we could go ahead and buy it, and let the kids rent it until we're ready to move. That's probably the only scenario I'd EVER consider being a landlord in!

And with family renting it, I could make repeated trips out here with a truck moving our extensive collection of "stuff", greatly easing the entire moving process.

AND...we had another "episode" of our Ford Exploder refusing to start. It's one of these keyless-start cars, loaded with electronics, and methinks there be some gremlins lurking within this particular one. The various modes of the electronic traction control quit working, and the auto-fold mirrors don't always report for duty.

I'd have to give this model of Explorer a strong "NOT Recommended", and we're going to tell Budget to send this one to the showers when we turn it in Saturday afternoon.

See you all on the flip side.........

A Few Pictures From Thanksgiving Day

These are from when we went to pick up the kids.

Their little house is actually in Bellvue, Colorado, very close to Laporte, which is where we're looking for houses.

My stepson greeting my wife:

A neighbors house:

Our rental car, which required a jump start here. No idea why the battery appeared dead. When I started it again up in Cheyenne, the Ford "Sync" screen appeared on the previously dead entertainment center, and announced "Performing required system maintenance".
The car's been OK since then.

Looking out to the East:

Neighbor's house on the North:

So far we've had a great time. It was good to see our future in-laws again, and catch up with thwm on what's been going on here.

Happy Thanksgiving to All! ...UPDATED...

Posting this early as we're going to have to make an early start tomorrow.

The big gathering of my step-son's fiancee and all her family will be at her younger sister's place in Cheyenne, Wyoming, about 50 miles North of here.

And since we have some serious winter weather about to hit the Fort Collins area, we'll have to leave early, and drive carefully.

We're looking at rain turning to snow overnight, and snow all day on Thanksgiving, with an estimated high of 20*F in Fort Collins, and 18*F in Cheyenne.

Overnight lows for Thursday/Friday are expected to be 10*F and  4*F.

Makes me glad I brought the liner for my jacket, but wondering if I should have packed my N-3B instead!

Even though I grew up in Northern Illinois, and spent a whole lot of time driving in "real" winter conditions, I'm more than a little out-of-practice having lived in SoCal since 1982!

So, even with a 4WD vehicle, I'm going to take it easy both ways.

My wife wanted to see winter in this area, and I think she'll get her wish!



UPDATE..............

Went and had dinner with the kids, and when we left about 2000 it was misting, and freezing.

Their front porch steps were icy, and we really had to use the hand rails and watch our step.

Woke up this morning, and there looks to be 3~4" of white fluffy stuff all over, and it's snowing, and the flakes are getting bigger.

So, we'll be extra careful when we leave in a couple of hours to pick up the kids and head on up to Cheyenne.

Hope you all have a Blessed and Happy Thanksgiving!

Arrived Alive in Fort Collins

Left Long Beach this morning at 0700, and changed planes in Salt Lake City. Got to Denver an hour or so later, picked up our rent-a-car, and were checked in at the hotel about 90 minutes later.

Nice hotel, and the wireless is 12 Meg up-and-down! Just stunning compared to the last couple of hotel wireless connections I had.

Took the kids out for dinner after spending an hour or so checking out their new house and getting seriously assaulted by the two dogs with licks, kisses, lap time, and multiple tummy rubs.

Yep, they sure remembered us, and went completely NUTSO when they heard/saw/smelled us.

I'd told my wife the reserve a 4 wheel drive vehicle for us, and while I claim she got my approval on an "Explorer/Grand Cherokee" sized vehicle, she had reserved an "Expedition/Suburban" sized vehicle!

DUH.......just a bit bigger than we needed!

Turns out that the larger vehicles cost less through her plan than the smaller ones, to the tune of about $50/day!

The agent gave us our pick of smaller vehicles at the lower cost, and we wound up with a 2015 Ford Explorer Limited with 4WD and just about every option you can get with the exception of a sunroof and a V8, and I'm not sure they even offer a V8 in that model.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with it, with a few exceptions, that I'll report on it after I drive it some more.

Over the 14,000 miles it has on it it's averaged 21.2MPG, which is pretty amazing fora vehicle of this size, weight, and capability.

2100 here, and I'm pretty well beat-up from getting up at 0430, and being on the move all day.

Later......

RATS! I Hosed My Windoze PC......

WELL....I thought I knew what I was doing.

In getting ready for our trip to Colorado, I wanted to check and see if there were any updates for the Magellan RoadMate we use when traveling. Since the Magellan Account Manager software is on the Windoze PC I use for all my Ham Radio stuff, I fired it up and proceeded to do all the updates that come with leaving a Windoze PC turned off for more than a few days.

Update MalwareBytes? Check!

Update AVG Free Antivirus? Check!

Update Adobe Acrobat Reader? Check!

Windoze Update? Uh-oh...there's the little "Get Windows 10!" icon in the task bar. Hmm...thought I got rid of that?

So, I "Search Installed Updates" for KB3035583 update, find it (I must have forgotten to hide it before), and uninstall it.

It requires a reboot, and then the fun starts.....

The PC goes through POST, Windows starts, then immediately goes to the Windows Error Recovery screen, and fails with an 0xc00000e9 "An unexpected I/O error has occurred" error, indicating that Windoze can't "reliably communicate" with the hard disk......

Since we're leaving tomorrow morning at 0500, this will have to wait until our return.

I used the laptop I'm taking with me to check the RoadMate for any updates, and there were none, so this whole exercise was moot.

Saturday Plumbing Adventures......

Gawd, I HATE doing plumbing stuff.

Every single stinking time I go to "fix" something, I find 5 other things that need work.

This started a week ago when my wife insisted I replace the fill valve in the bathroom toilet. Since the handle with the lever on it to lift the flapper was all loose and sloppy, I went and bought a new one.

Now, to my way of thinking, "If It Aint Broke, Don't Fix It!", and as far as I'm concerned, the fill valve wasn't broke.

It didn't run continuously, and shut off properly when the tank was full.

The only thing it did was make a slight noise while the water was filling the tank.

SO, I set out to replace the fill valve and tank lever last week, and cleared out the area around the toilet.

I go to close the water valve feeding the toilet (A "stop" in plumber-speak), and it starts leaking. It doesn't leak or even drip when it's all the way open, but start closing it, and water starts spraying out where the shaft comes out of the body. Even fully closed, it leaks.

So, I go out to shut off the water coming into the house, and find I can't turn the wheel on the valve.

The last time we shut off the main water valve was sometime back when we had a full-house water filtration and softener system installed by RainSoft. The guys that did the work were excellent, but they were also a lot stronger than me these days (hey...they were late 20's and I'm 64!), and they really cranked it open.

Fortunately I was able to close the main water valve once I busted it loose with my 12" Channel-Locks, and I left the kitchen faucet open to bleed of any residual pressure, as the shut-off valve doesn't really turn the water completely off.

OK, so I've got the water finally turned off, and take the top off the toilet tank so I can remove the old tank lever.

It was made of pot metal, and the nut holding the mechanism to the tank was completely corroded, and I could NOT bust it loose. As a side note, the new tank lever has a LEFT HAND thread on it, and if they're all made this way, then I was actually trying to tighten it, which explains why the only wrench I could get in there just rounded off the corners, making the nut now impossible to remove with a wrench.

I got my 12" Channel-Locks out again, when I realized I was going to have a bit of a problem getting them in there:

There's barely enough room to lift the tank top and get it off, and when the top is off, you have maybe 4" of clearance!

I can't even get my hands all the way into the tank to reach the flapper valve, which I had to do to get the chain, which had fallen to the bottom of the tank after I disconnected it from the lever.

And yes, the tank is not square on the toilet bowl assembly, but I'm NOT mentioning it to my wife, or she'll want that "fixed", too!

The people that remodeled the bathroom, and installed the counter top, should be dragged out and flogged for doing it the way they did. There's NO clearance in there to work on things unless you have arms like a 10-year old kid.

SO.......Since I couldn't get any wrenches or BIG pliers in there to twist the nut off, I decided to cut it off with my cordless Dremel tool, and a small cut-off wheel. I get my Dremel out, and find that BOTH batteries are dead.......I charged both batteries yesterday, and then today when I went to find the tooling for the Dremel, I couldn't find the box I put all the tooling into after I DROPPED the entire box last year, and spent two hours finding all the little bits and pieces that had scattered themselves all over the garage floor, and under the workbenches.

Off to Home Depot to get replacements for the stuff I misplaced, and will probably find tomorrow afternoon.....

Finally got the old handle cut off, and the new one installed, and then spent about 20 minutes getting the chain adjusted so that it lets the flapper valve completely close, but is long enough, and has enough travel, that it fully opens the valve to let the tank drain.

And that was just to replace the handle. I still haven't (and told my wife I will NOT) replaced the fill valve.

Gawd, I HATE plumbing repairs....