SLW and I will be watching "The Maltese Falcon" tonight while enjoying some pizza from a local place. She doesn't recall ever seeing it before, so I'm hoping she'll enjoy it. I've been filling in the blanks in my movie collection the last few months, and this movie is a recent acquisition, along with "The Bridges at Toko Ri", "Giant", and "Casablanca".
In the meantime, enjoy some humor.....
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Now that the snow has mostly melted, I did some further examination of the damage we had from the storm.
Lost some branches from the crab apple tree, which will get stripped, cut up, and put on the drying rack.
And the far end support for my wire antenna got ripped off the fence post it was screwed to when the limbs from the ash tree snapped.
It tore the lag screws right out by the roots. I was lucky I had it mounted the way I did, as the short lags I used acted like a "mechanical fuse", and saved the wire from breaking.
As to what brought down the antenna, well, we're gonna need a bucket truck and/or man lift to get up there and remove the limbs.
Looks like one limb peeled away, and what was left couldn't support the limb above it.
Gutter zero, tree one!
When the arborist was here the last time, he recommended we get these two cut back some so they could handle wet snow better. We also need to get this tree inoculated against the Emerald Ash Borer, which is slowly working it's way up here.
Oh, well, at least we'll get some "free" firewood out of this.
YOW!!!!
I left at 1330 to pick up my wife at DIA, where she was returning on a 1500 flight. Normally it takes me just about an hour from when I leave until I'm in the terminal.
It took over two hours today, and SLW was frantic when I finally met her. Of all the times I've "forgotten" to take my cellphone with me, this one was just about the worst-case scenario. Fortunately she'd called our DIL who promptly informed her that the highway was CLOSED, and the detours could be "iffy" if you don't know the area well, and not to panic until I was over an hour late, which I was. As soon as SLW saw me walking in she burst into tears, and it took a good 15 minutes to calm her down.
Turns out a tanker truck with 12,000 gallons of diesel aboard had rolled over about 0100 this morning on the stretch of I-25 between US 34 and Larimer County Road 402. Traffic was blocked, going both directions, along this 2 mile stretch of I-25.
And the tanks broke open, spilling ALL of the diesel fuel out onto the highway, and into a drainage ditch adjacent to the Big Thompson River.
It's a first-class, Grade "A" mess, and will be until 1300 tomorrow when they're planning on opening I-25 back up after all the clean-up, decontamination, and emergency road repairs.
Coming home also took over two hours, but that was mostly due to very heavy traffic on the roads being used for the detours.
Between learning to really read and understand the map symbols for roads on the truck's GPS, and the 45 minutes I just spent using Google Maps, I now have a much better ideas of the state and county roads around here, and how to use them vs just hopping on the Interstate.
And I just put a couple of paper maps and an atlas in the truck.....
Or WEather FACSimile transmissions by NOAA. There are of great use to mariners, as they provide weather charts and weather forecasts to mariners at sea, and away from VHF radio range. They transmit this data on several frequencies around 4MHz, 8MHz, and 10~12MHz. Back In The Day, it took specialized equipment, but these days all you need is an HF radio that tunes 3~30MHz, and a PC running some free software.
This NOAA satellite image came in tonight from the Pt. Reyes station on 8.682MHz:
The image is slanted because I haven't done this in a while, and forgot where the "Slant Adjust" software slider was.
Other images after I corrected the slant, which is caused by timing errors between the sending station and my soundcard.
This one is a chart of the barometric pressure through the area. The curvy white lines are called "Isobars" . They represent points of equal barometric pressure.
And they also broadcast wind vector charts. This picture is several strung together, as I forgot where the control was to keep each image separate.
While these charts aren't very much use to me in my landlocked location, they are nice for getting a "Long Range" view of the global weather.
After the weather warms up, I'm going to build an antenna for the 137MHz Automatic Picture Transmission satellites, which will give me near real-time satellite imagery of this area.
And my little truck thanks me!
Quite a difference from yesterday:
I shoveled two paths to it, knocked the snow off, and then shoveled the paths again and put down a bunch of ice melt and sand. My new snow boots got a good workout, and my feet stayed toasty warm. Took me three times in 4-HI to punch my way out into the street. I probably could have done it in two, but the first attempt wound up with spinning tires, so I went back up the driveway, and then bashed into the snow again. The third time I hit the snow it powered right through to the cleared lane, and off I went. Took a drive around the neighborhood to survey the damage, and yowie, we've got everything from small branches, to 6" diameter limbs, to whole trees broken in half and laying on the sidewalks, streets and roofs. I think the tree service people are going to be pretty busy the next few weeks.
The city ran a road grader down the cul-de-sac this morning about 0330, and luckily the blade was angled away from our side of the street. The people directly across the street had spent several hours yesterday clearing their drive way, and clearing a path to the lanes the Snowblower Guy cleared. This morning they had a three foot berm of snow blocking their driveway. This only the second time the city has sent anything down our cul-de-sac, and since Snowblower Guy had cleared a very serviceable path, he really didn't have to come down our street at all.
Have to take SLW down to the airport Wednesday afternoon, so I'm hoping the roads will be clear, and the trip uneventful.
Bright, sunny day with temps in the high 30's, so we did some additional digging out.
I'll do more tomorrow, like shovel a path to get to the truck, clean the snow off, and shovel some more.
The guy who owns the house past the truck with the open garage door is our neighbor who plowed a lane down the cul-de-sac, and did all the sidewalks. We're getting him a gift card as an attaboy.
Quite a bit different than 48 hours ago.
The snow on the ground has decreased by about 30% from what it was when it stopped snowing, but we still have quite a bit on the road into and out of this section of our area.
Again, kudos to our neighbor for clearing a lane down the street. I'll be helping him next year!
The insurance guy came by to look at the roof and discuss filing a claim or not, and explained some of the legalese of our policy in normal English. His very rough guesstimate is around $1800, close to what I was thinking. The major expense will be to get a bucket truck out here to remove the tree limbs from the roof, strip the small branches off them, and cut the limbs down to manageable sections for me. If stripping and cutting them makes the bill go crazy, I'll go buy a chain saw and learn how to do it. Since this is ash, a hardwood, it should be good firewood after it's seasoned. I'm not planning on making any baseball bats or axe handles, so I might as well put it to some other use along with another small limb from the crab apple tree. I'll add it to the woodpile once I strip the sticks off it.
Well, I kinda blew it last night when I said it looked like most of the storm would miss us. SLW and I had a nice fire going, and watched the original version of "Ocean's 11" last night, and I stayed up a bit longer doing the "Storm Watch" thing. I went to bed about 0100, and it was snowing, but not very heavy. I got up once around 0400, looked out the window, and it was really coming down.
Our maple, crab apple, and ash tree have all lost limbs, and the ash tree dropped a YUGE one, bashing a gutter on it's way down. It landed on the support rope for the wire antenna, and tore the end support mast out of the fence post on the South end. I'd only used 1" "Lath Screws" and some conduit hangers to mount the mast to the post, and they acted like a "mechanical fuse" when the limb hit the rope. Hopefully we don't have any roof damage. The limb is well clear of the chimney, so we can still use the fireplace.
Looking out front window. "Big Red" is somewhat buried:
Backyard from dining room window:
View from sun room. You can see the wire antenna running diagonally through the picture, and the two limbs that broke off the ash tree:
From the laundry room:
And the view from the side door on the garage. Notice the neighbor's snowblower for reference. It's a full-size, 24" width model:
The Kids up in Laporte are without power, but fortunately the house has gas for heating and cooking. The local radio station, KRFC, is off-the-air, along with KMAX, 94.3, but they're both still streaming online.
The in-laws up at the homestead have something like 48" of snow, and it's still coming down hard. They're not planning on going anywhere for a few days. The other in-laws in Cheyenne are getting hammered, but he reports his new snowblower is working just fine. And the other in-laws on "The Ranch" have heavy equipment, and know how to use it, so they'll be fine, too. No, Beans, I still haven't bought a replacement yet. I'll start seriously looking on nextdoor.com and craigslist in April. I would have bought the lightly-used Honda last year, but it would have been a PITA to get it home in my Jeep.
Now I have a truck, and will sally forth in search of a good, used snowblower in the near future.
It's been snowing off-and-on since about 1130 today, sometimes mixed with rain. The amount of snow on my "Snow Gauge" is about half what was predicted. The prediction was 8"~10" by evening, and we didn't make it.
Here's the snow as of 2245:
Looks more like 5"~6" to me. The bare spots under the chairs is because there's been zip for wind today. The snow came straight down, almost like rain, even though it's been pretty fluffy all day long. Any wind at all would have blown it around, and that didn't happen here.
I've been following the storm track on local and national weather for the last 24 hours, and it sure looks like this one dumped a lot more moisture well East of Fort Morgan, and that's 65 miles East of here.
One thing I've been watching is the snow/ice load on my 94' wire antenna. Normally it's more "taught" than this, but the spring on the far end of the antenna is doing it's job, allow the antenna to sag under load without breaking.
I hope....
Made a run to the store to pick up some extra stuff, and some essential stuff, like COFFEE, and rawhide chews for Pebbles The Wonder Dog. She gets quite insistent if she doesn't get her morning rawhide, but the evening rawhide is not a daily treat.
As of 2330, it's overcast, but dry. Got hit by a few raindrops when we were out earlier, but minimal.
The current forecast calls for it to start raining around 0100, followed by freezing rain, and then snow.
As of 1517 this afternoon, the NWS was calling for 18"~24" of snow here. They'll issue and updated forecast Saturday morning.
So for now, it's The Calm Before The Storm......
The weather's been pretty quiet these last few weeks. Had some snow flurries and a spot of rain, but otherwise not much going on.
That's about to change. The NWS issued a Winter Storm Warning a day or so ago, and it starts at 0500 om the 13th and goes to 0600 on the 15th. Starting tomorrow, there's a 70% chance of rain/snow, turning to 100% for Saturday and Sunday. Up until an hour or so ago all they were saying is the snow would be "heavy", but now they've added the expected amounts. They're calling for 24"~30", up from 6"~10", and winds over 30MPH.
That's NOT going to be pleasant to be out in, as this time of year with the temps in the high20's/low 30's, it's going to be heavy, wet snow, and stuff may get broken.
I have to drop SLW off at the big Medical Center here to have a test performed, and we'll stop on the way back (if she's not too groggy) to pick up a few things like some COFFEE, rawhide chews for the dog, and some diet soda for me.
Be safe out there!
Just been busy, and haven't felt like posting. So much for my "try and post at least every three days" commitment. Oh, well....
The last two days have been fabulous; bright, sunny skies, moderate winds, and temps in the low 60's. I even got the garage swept out in preparation for Spring Cleaning! Hopefully this is a sign that Spring is rapidly approaching. I expect two more snows before the season is over. Usually one of them is heavy, wet snow that breaks branches and things, and the other one is a "Nuisance Level" storm.
This morning opened up overcast and drizzly, but it quit raining around 1600. Radar shows there's still a lot of rain out there, and some of it looks intense, due East of Denver, out towards the state line, but I don't think we'll get anymore tonight.
Work continues on the Heathkit transmitter, and I've taken pix of the work. Which has led me back down the Camera Rabbit Hole in search of a Nikon Macro lens. I have some excellent Nikon "General Purpose" lenses, and a couple of killer telephoto lenses, but nothing for close-up work, which is what Macro lenses excel at. I'll probably be getting one of these, a Nikon "AF-S FX Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8G ED" lens, which seems to best fit using the selection guides on several websites, and my intended use. This one has some "ED" glass elements in it, which is to correct for chromatic (color) aberration, the blue and yellow fringing some lens designs produce out towards their edges. And it's an f/2.8, which means it has a very narrow Depth of Field wide open. This means it's very good at keeping the main subject is perfect focus, while softly blurring the background/foreground. It really makes the subject pop out of the picture. I can't get close enough sometimes with the lenses I have to get the subject to fill the frame, and this will allow that. They also work very well for portrait photography, so I'll get some Really Good Pix of The Little Guy this year.
And speaking of which, he celebrated birthday #4 last Saturday! We had a small gathering, and there was pizza, ice cream, and CAKE! A splendid time was had by all.
He's now gone through his "Paw Patrol" phase and moved on to Super Heroes. Sooooo, all the Paw Patrol toys have been packed away in a YUGE Rubbermaid Roughneck bin, and the former "Paw Patrol Room" is now the "Avengers Room". Yes, redecorating is involved. And seeing as the bedrooms are on the second floor here, and the basement storage area is in the basement (duh), I get 5 flights of cardio exercise with each round trip! Sweet Little Wife is now in the middle stages of planning for when grandchild #5 arrives. TLG's current bedroom is the smallest in the house, and with a little brother/sister coming, she's thinking of making the current Avengers Room into their bedroom, and reverting the smaller, middle bedroom to her use. So we're prowling Nextdoor.com and craigslist for some kid's furnishings.
And he's discovered the Lego kits of various Super Hero vehicles and "accessories". These seem to be based on the hugely popular Lego Movies that people of a certain age group are fascinated by. These kits aren't your Father's Lego kits! They're much more akin to the "Snap Together" model cars of my youth. They use Lego-style pins and recesses to snap together, but there are many, many custom molded pieces for each kit, although most of the kits have common parts, usually molded in a different color.
I built this one last night, a Lego "Ironman Mech Suit", your basic Armored Fighting Suit.
And the assembled product. This is where a Macro lens shines. This was a close as I could focus, with my 18~70mm zoom lens all the way out to 70mm.
I've also built the Lego Spiderman car, but I'm not sure where it is right now, maybe upstairs.
Hope y'all have a great upcoming weekend!
Been busy hustling around with projects, SLW, and TLG. It got up to 46* today, so I took Pebbles the Wonder Dog out for a stroll. She hasn't been out of the backyard in several weeks (hey, she's got a quarter acre to roam!), and was most anxious to re-sniff every inch of the path we take.
The tree carving project is completed, but that part of the yard is a mud pit, so I'll have to wait until things either dry out or freeze solid again so I can get out there and take some decent pix.
Spent all day playing with TLG, except for his nap time, and we had a ball doing Guy Stuff, like taking most of his Green Army Men, and cordoning off "The Blob" so we could get it back in it's container. The part of The Blob was played by today's guest star, Color Changing Green Slime. After dinner we played "Captain Hook and The Pirates", a free-form game made up as you go along.
"Arrrrrrgh, Matey! Heave To Whilst We Board Your Scurvy Vessel" was heard more than once, along with "Shiver Me Timbers", and "Walk The Plank Ye Scurvy Dog".
Great fun for all.
I even managed to get ten items listed on eBay. Several of them were posted as "Buy-It-Now" with what I thought were fair prices, and they sold within hours.
Think I'll get some Dogecoin with the eBay sales proceeds....
To The Moon!
3.8* @ 2130 here, forecast to drop to -6*, and there's some flakes coming down.
It's not as cold as some places are reporting, but it's the coldest it's been this season, and we've got 2~4" of snow on the way.
Finally got the new 3-wire AC input socket installed on the SB-401 transmitter. It might look like it's not-quite-straight in the chassis, but it's not tightened down yet.
Over the last week, I've built and installed three new media storage racks, and sorted out four U-Haul boxes of CD's and DVD's, and got them pretty much organized.
The lighter colored rack to the left is SLW's collection, properly arraigned alphabetically, and the two black ones on either side of the doorway are all of mine, arranged by genre.
This area was previously stacked with boxes and packing material, and now all the boxes have been flattened for easier storage, and the packing materials stored separately. I still have a ton of stuff to get rid of, and the boxes will get recycled to ship things in.
The area under the model car workbench was also stacked with boxes, and those have been taken care of, too. The bench will get cleaned up as the weather warms, and I can run the little cars outside again.
Plans for the weekend include hunkering down, having a fire, and watching a movie. TLG won't be here until Tuesday, as his Mommy and Daddy have a 3-day weekend together. BTW......the DIL is expecting again, with an August 20 due date. Fingers-crossed and prayers sent that she has an easier time, and goes full-term.
Geez, I should get out more often!
Had some "Bumps and Lumps and Down In the Dumps" the last week, so rather than work more on the transmitter (I did get the new AC socket installed), I decided to work on cleaning up the "Storage Room" in the basement. Found some things I haven't seen since we moved here, and started sorting stuff out.
I now have another huge box of clothing to donate to our local ARC Thrift Store, several boxes of electronic "stuff" have been reduced to one box, and I have a whole bunch of somewhat rare, obscure T-Shirts to sort through from my rocket chucking days. I'm only going to keep the ones with the best graphics, and that means those with just the name of the satellite or mission name on them will be hitting ePay for disposal. I have more than enough plain, white T-Shirts with obscure logos where a pocket should be, and I don't need more. If they don't sell, they'll go to the Thrift Store.
And I dug out all the APC UPS units I have, and will probably put them on the "Come And Get It!" email list the local Ham Radio Club has. I kept the two with the newest batteries plugged in since we moved here, but they all should have new batteries installed.
I gave away a Systron-Donner 1702 Signal Generator and a Tektronix 492 Spectrum Analyzer I posted on the list last week, and that opened up some floor space, and now with the UPS units moved out, I freed up some more.
Now there's plenty of room for Pebbles' dog bed in the shop, and I'm sure she'll appreciate it.
In which I joyously announce all the switch contacts are cleaned!
And all the rotary controls have been cleaned and lubricated, and more glaring examples of Poor Workmanship have been corrected.
And I started on the next item on the punch list, updating the AC Input connector. I removed the original connector, and penciled-in the cut-lines for the new one.
After I get the new connector installed, I'll start moving on to the Power Supplies in the radio. All new manufacture filter caps will be installed, followed by new rectifier diodes with higher ratings. The original diodes were rated 750 Volts PIV and 750mA Forward Current, while the replacements are rated at 1000 Volts PIV, and 3 Amps forward current. A bit overkill on the current ratings, but I have good supply of 1N5408 diodes from the little place back in Torrance I used to get items like that from.
And it's forecast to be sunny and in the low 60's tomorrow. Probably ought to get Sweet Little Wife's snow tires on. I think we're gonna have a slushy/snowy rest-of-the-winter.
In which Murphy walks in the shop, dumps over my coffee, and laughs......
Well, I hit a snag in the process of removing the knobs on the control panel so I can free the control panel from the chassis, and repair the dial mechanism. It's an identical procedure to what I did on the receiver, but this time one of the knobs fought me. It uses a small, Allen-drive setscrew to secure it on the shaft. It takes an .050" Allen wrench to get it loose. And the setscrew is in an awkward position, meaning it's hard to get the teeny-tiny Allen wrench all the way into the setscrew to tighten and loosen it. Most people don't get the wrench fully bottomed out, and they round the corners of the wrench, and round the corners of the setscrew, meaning it gets very difficult to get the setscrew loose.
I tried brand-new wrenches with sharp corners, grinding an older wrench so the rounded off part was removed, heating the metal insert the setscrew threads into, and lots of other things, including turning the knob a bit too hard.........POP!....there goes the coffee....
I broke the little "paddle" off the knob by pushing on it with my thumb, and it shot off across the shop towards The Place Where 10mm Sockets Go To Die......
The bright green color is where the "paddle" that hangs down used to go. So now I HAVE to get the knob off so I can replace it. I was able to easily cut off the green plastic, and then attacked the aluminum insert the setscrew threads into.
Took a good 90 minutes of gently cutting away parts of the aluminum insert so I could "split" it, release the tension provided by the setscrew, and slide it off the shaft.
You can see the setscrew sitting there laughing at me....
So finally, and with minimal collateral damage, I got the insert off the shaft.
In other news, The Brown Truck of Happiness stopped by today with a load of Thermionic Devices of types I didn't have, so at least some things are progressing.
Too bad we can't "Reload" tubes when they get used up.
Enjoy your weekend!
Got the new BNC connector all squared away, and replaced the mismatched hardware on the SO-239 RF Output connector. Still waiting on parts because I can't locate a couple I thought I had.
So I went on to my favorite pastime lately, cleaning wafer switches.
This is the Function Switch, all cleaned and lubed.
Before I got started cleaning the switches, I went through the whole chassis tightening hardware. Seems like every time I put a screwdriver or 1/4" nut driver on a piece of hardware, it was loose. Sometimes maybe an 1/8th of a turn, usually about 1/4 turn loose, and a couple that were over a full turn loose, which is definitely in the "Finger Tight" category. Since most of these either grounded the periphery of a printed circuit board, or were securing a ground lug/terminal strip, it was critical to get them all nice and snug again.
And while doing that, the occasional example of Poor Workmanship popped up, like this wire crudely stuck through the terminal and "soldered" in place.
Judging from how "well" the solder flowed onto the bare wire, I'd say this is either a bad solder joint, or about to be one. This is on the Bandswitch, and poor soldering here can cause all kinds of grief down the road.
What I've been doing to help prevent that is cleaning/flushing/treating each wafer separately, and then wicking off all the solder, cleaning the wire and terminal, applying a very small amount of new "Flux, Rosin, Type RMA", and resoldering each connection on that wafer.
And you can see how dirty the rotary and stationary contacts are compared to the above picture.
We got about 2" of snow last night, and tonight as of 2330, it's down to 15*. Makes me glad the new track has remote start in case we have to go somewhere. One thing I've noticed is how fast this engine warms up. I'll get in the car in 15~20* weather, start it up, and by the time I'm buckled in and a block away, the temp gauge is up off the peg, and the heater is beginning to blow warm air. One of the things all the manufacturers do these days is to get the engine up to operating temp ASAP, as it greatly aids emissions reduction, and this is a side benefit.
