Author: dale

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A long weekend

As I sit here Monday morning, I have little twinges to remind me of the weekend.  I almost feel like we got some things accomplished.  Kim & Stu called yesterday morning to invite us along on a motorcycle ride, but we decided to stay home and get some much needed work done in the yard instead.  It was perfect weather for either, and we really needed to get ready for winter.  The roads will still be there next time it’s a beautiful day.  We did see them Friday evening, went over for wine and cheese and some great conversation.  We really need to do that more often.

My shoulders and arms are feeling a little used from the leaf raking, as well as from pullig the cord in futile attempts to re-start the leaf blower that I’m afraid I killed.  Rob had filled the 2-stroke gas can, and I forgot that he’d done that and I had not not yet put the oil in it.  As a result, the leaf blower ran at full throttle with no oil until it croaked.  Twice.  Now it has no compression to speak of and won’t start.  Crap.  The rest of the leaves got raked the old fashioned way, and of course the back yard is already covered again.  Got the lawn mowed, Lisa did the front and side flower beds, Rob cut the spirea bushes out back down to the ground.  We have 14 or 15 bags of yard waste now.

With Rob’s help I got the work shop more or less cleaned up, at least the half with the work bench.  I can see the top of the bench now, and have it cleared off so I can assemble keyers again.  There is a lot more work to be done, of course, but it’s looking a lot better.

Pete was home for a few hours, and we got the new tires mounted on the Cougar so he can get around this winter.  Sent him back to Hastings with a load of food, of course.  The new tail light is on the Vespa, and I got to take it out for an extended ride around the neighborhood.  It’s running great now, started on the first kick once and doesn’t take more than a few any time.  All I need to do now is get the plate and I can ride it outside of the neighborhood without worrying about the gendarmerie.  I think, though, that I may be re-wiring the little guy this winter.  I suspect I may not have things quite right yet.

All in all it was a long, but very productive weekend.

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Nebraska City ride today

Well, I fear Lisa and I have taken what may be the last ride of the year.  Unless it warms up some, anyway.  We had a pretty nice ride down to Kimmel Orchard.  We split some apple pie, had coffee & hot cider and picked up some of their salsa and a couple other things.  The ride back was getting pretty damn cold, but we made it home safe & sound.

Along the way we met a few new people, had some nice conversation, saw the remaining fall colors.  The rain and all didn’t help much in that regard, but still — it was nice to get out and enjoy the day.

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The new phone book – I mean, Handbook’s here!

Navin R. Johnson said it best…

2010 ARRL Handbook
2010 ARRL Handbook

If you’re wondering why I care so much,I wrote a lot of Chapter 4, the new Digital Basics chapter.   Some came from the old Basic Electronics chapter, but I hope to have it completely rewritten for the 2011 edition.   I also have 3 projects in Chapter 24.   So, it’s pretty cool.   Besides,when you contribute to the Handbook you get your copy for free…   and every ham NEEDS at least one ARRL Handbook around.

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Hacking at code again.

00001
MK-1, now running V1.20 Alpha.

After a few weeks off, I’ve returned to hacking at the new release of MasterKeyer firmware.  In the past couple of days I’ve managed to add a couple of halfway nice features and improvements, and am now working on adding the last couple of emulation mode commands.  I think I’m going to discover just how many times you can plug and unplug a USB drive before the connector wears out.

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Riding the Vespa

Well, I got a chance to take the Vespa out this morning and put a couple of miles on the old girl.  I’d had her out a couple of weeks ago when we were watching Natalie for the day; Lisa wanted me to take her for a ride, which we did.  She liked it, and so did I – since it started up pretty easily and ran well.  I had to replace the fuel line after the first ride, it was hard as a rock and shook loose, but aside from that things were grand.

Today it started with a little encouragement, ran pretty well, and I rode all over the neighborhood.  The whole time I was enjoying the ride, I was also making a mental list of things I needed to do to get the scooter reliable enough for longer rides around town.

  • No taillight.  I need to look into that, not sure if my custom LED tail light is kaput or just not getting power.  Either way, I have a new repro of the larger assembly here.  It’s of horrible quality and needs to be completely re-done on the outside, but the guts seem serviceable. Update: The LED light was completely blown.  The new housing is fixed and ready for paint, and bulbs are on their way from Scooterworks.
  • It needs a new fuel line some time in the next year or so, before this one hardens up.  The stuff Scooterworks sells as fuel line…  well, it sucks.
  • A new gas cap gasket would be good.  Scooterworks strikes again.  Why the hell would you sell a gas cap gasket that’s not gasoline-proof?
  • I really need to look into the brakes.  I think one is dragging, which doesn’t help matters any.
  • A rear view mirror or two would be a very welcome addition.
  • Timing, yet again.  A couple degrees more advance will make it a LOT easier and faster to start!!!  If ScootRS ever has the VL1 CDI 12V conversion kit again, I’m buying one.  Period.
  • A couple of scratches need to be touched up, yet again.
  • I really do need to finish the last of the floor rails.  Of course NOW I can buy a complete set for the VL1, instead of cobbling something else up to make it work.  But I’ve already spent enough on the floor rails I’m not doing it again from scratch.
  • One of these days I would like to re-run the gear shift and clutch cables, and adjust the clutch.  I want to get rid of the CLUNK when shifting into first, and be able to turn the handlebars all the way to the right without the cables hitting the legshield.  The parts are cheap enough at a bike shop, and I think using heat-shrink tubing would be just the trick to get the old cables to drag the new jackets through.
  • I’m still not sure whether the odometer is registering miles or kilometers.  At some point I want to either ride a measured distance and figure it out, or take a GPS along for a ride and compare it to the odometer.
  • It needs current tags.  I think I’ll see about getting historical plates so I don’t have to hassle with it every year.
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Shack update

The new “shack” setup is in progress. The main radios are up in the office/shack room, and I’ve got a new PC built for ham use. I used mostly leftover parts from either older computers or projects that just didn’t work out, like the media center PC.  In the progress I’ve gotten much further with MythTV and some other stuff than ever before, but that’s a different story.

I have the wire cut for the Loop Skywire antenna, but it’s not up yet.  I may need to beg or borrow a HyperHanger from a buddy to get the thing up in the trees.  Right now I have a random length of wire out the window, which hears a little and causes massive RFI in the house when I try to transmit even with low power, so I haven’t made any contacts yet.  I really need to get that loop up before winter!

I’ve been playing with some ham radio apps for Linux. The biggest problem so far has been the plethora of sound card mixers and management apps on the PC. OSS, ALSA, and half a dozen others sometimes appear to compete for control. I am going to try to remove some, but I suspect that dependencies will keep me from doing so. I think one of the biggest challenges Linux faces is a complete lack of agreement, discipline or even half-hearted effort by app developers to standardize on ANYTHING. If you want to run six different apps, chances are you’re going to have six completely different sets of dependencies that will cause problems with everything you try to do.

But that’s a rant. The station is coming along, slowly but surely. I figure by Thanksgiving I should be back on the air.

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We need a new TV.

So last night I decided to try out the new whiz-bang Linux box running MythTV, connect it to the big screen in the family room to watch a couple of movies.   As it happens, though the PC has DVI and HDMI outputs and optical sound output, it’s just not going to play.   The TV’s available screen resolutions and interlace modes just don’t match up with what the computer tried to shove at it.   Though it was sold as “HD ready” at 1080i (or maybe 1080p, I don’t remember) there are severe limits on what it will do.

So, I finally gave up.   Disappointing, but I know all the new LCD panels will handle whatever mode I can throw at them…   and use the HDMI interface for the sound as well, making it a one-cable proposition.   I like that.   Maybe two, if we use S/PDIF for the sound.   Of course everything needs to go if we make the switch.   The receiver (aside from a dead remote receiver) has no HDMI switching, only component or S-video.   The DVD/VHS combo won’t read CDs, and has been a little finicky with some DVDs as well.   Maybe Santa will drop a nice new Samsung LED flat panel down the chimney this year.

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A little bit of early snow

We got a little surprise yesterday morning.  Fortunately the roads to Hastings were clear, so we were able to get out to Pete’s game without any problems.  Unfortunately, they lost to Morningside.  The Broncos are now 5-2, with their two toughest opponents behind them.

A shot of the back yard
A shot of the back yard
This one shows how deep it was...
This one shows how deep it was...

By the time we got home last night most of the snow was already gone.  We still have some hanging on in the back and side yards where it’s well shaded, but the rest is dry.

Hopefully it will get warm enough today that I’ll be able to get the sprinklers blown out.  Temperatures are supposed to be in the 40s for the next several days, with no freezing lows, but of course you never know for sure.