June 07, 2007
Well It's Official...Again.
Rich people don't have to stay in jail. We already knew this, but it's always good to see it reinforced for us reg'lar folks.
I'm telling you, people, if we don't get the People's Republic of Gah-LEE-fournia to succeed, we're all gonna be doomed in the end!
Don't want to finish your sentence? No problem! Just develop a rash and you're free to go! Thank you, drive through. Oh yes, and here's your super-cool new ankle bracelet--I hear they're all the rage in Newark. Don't stray from home now, OK? Thanks again and one last thing: can I have your autograph? My daughter thinks you save us from our mundane selves.That's how I imagined the conversation when they were out-processing her skankness.
I'm telling you, people, if we don't get the People's Republic of Gah-LEE-fournia to succeed, we're all gonna be doomed in the end!
// posted by wayne @ 6/07/2007 01:14:00 PM 
Double-Dang!
Can you guys believe it's June already? Jeez Louise, where does the time go? Do you remember when we were kids and it seemed an eternity just to survive those 9 months of school to get to the good stuff? Now it seems like I blink and a month has literally gone past. It's downright criminal, I tell you.
What have I been up to, you ask? Ham stuff. As Aimee pointed out, I have revolving obsessions. Most of them revolve anyway--firearms are a permanent OCD. So this is going to be the year of the ham, I suppose. After turning in that perfect score on the general test (you can view the exact test I was given HERE, then select the GENERAL radio button and pick test 3 from the drop-down menu) I've been very busy trying to build my "station"--aka "The equipment I'll use to conduct my bid for global take-over on the airwaves". So far, I've procured the aforementioned Kenwood TH-F6A tri-band hand-held transciever and I've just added my first dual band (2m/70cm) mobile. Getting that mobile, a Yaesu FT-8100, back up to snuff has been the order of the week. Turns out quite a few of those radios suffered from a common soldering failure where the tiny (and I'm talking crazy-small) connector which joined the volume/squelch sub-circuit board to the main circuit board came loose and caused intermittent operation or none at all. The previous owner of the radio had tried to correct this common problem by re-soldering the tiny plug back onto the main board. I guess he must've missed a trace because it didn't work for him. He was going to let me borrow the radio because (remember, it's a dual band radio) the other band's volume/squelch nob was not effected by this affliction. So, in essence, it was going to be half a radio. Given that it wasn't working anyway, I asked him if it was cool for me to give it a go. He agreed. I started in and gave it my best, but by the end I truly thought I had hosed it beyond hope by soldering two of the 6 pins together--they are insanely close together. But remember: it wasn't working on that band anyway. Thinking that it couldn't be any worse, I decided to go whole hog and de-solder the wee plug from the main board, clean the excess solder off the pins and get it back together. Sounds good, but 3 of the 6 solder pads actually came detached from the main board with the plug! Lovely. After a few choice words, I scraped the lacquer off the traces where the pads had come off and tried again. It seemed to hold, but since I have not yet wired the CR-V for power, I had no way of testing my repaired repair. I finally "engineered" a passable power supply from a wall-wart power adapter and it turns out I actually got it right! Surprise, surprise--I guess I still know a thing or two about soldering. Yeah, right. Anyway, the other problem with the radio is that the display back light is burned out. The reason? You guessed it: all 4 micro-sized bulbs are burned out. They apparently burned out in groups of two which is strange given that, according to the schematic, all 4 are wired in parallel. Whatever the case, they are burned (verified with a 10X loupe) which means a trip to radio shack in my immediate future to obtain replacements and solder those in place.
Some of you (well, the two of you still reading) may be wondering why I would spend good money on a rig with two known issues. Simple: economics. The comparable current production model is approaching 4 bills. According to the reviews, it is worth every cent. This predecessor has just about 98.7% of the features on the current radio but because of these 'personality flaws' I was able to pick it up for 1/4 of the price. Which is still half of the going rate for this radio on the eBay. I don't expect it to last for ever, but it should get me through 'til I can get enough cashahol saved or scrounged to get a high-frequency radio and that, as you may recall, is why I started all this madness in the first place. Why even mess with spending $100 on a radio that could've gone towards that HF rig? Well, there are a lot of hams who chew the fat on the local (VHF/UHF) repeaters and they are usually (as with any hobby there are a few freaks out there) a very good resource for what works, what doesn't and what is actually worth that hard-earned dollar.
I haven't joined any repeater clubs yet, but I will be attending my very first hamvention this weekend! Yes folks; get out the pocket protectors and red suspenders 'cause it's time to get geeky! A great site which illustrates exactly what I'm talking about is www.hamsexy.com. It's a seriously funny look at those hams who've taken it "too far" maintained by, you guessed it, other hams. You should take a few to check out their galleries as they are immensely funny. I'm about out of things to type for now, so just to whet your whistle, I'll leave you with this hamsexy gem!
What have I been up to, you ask? Ham stuff. As Aimee pointed out, I have revolving obsessions. Most of them revolve anyway--firearms are a permanent OCD. So this is going to be the year of the ham, I suppose. After turning in that perfect score on the general test (you can view the exact test I was given HERE, then select the GENERAL radio button and pick test 3 from the drop-down menu) I've been very busy trying to build my "station"--aka "The equipment I'll use to conduct my bid for global take-over on the airwaves". So far, I've procured the aforementioned Kenwood TH-F6A tri-band hand-held transciever and I've just added my first dual band (2m/70cm) mobile. Getting that mobile, a Yaesu FT-8100, back up to snuff has been the order of the week. Turns out quite a few of those radios suffered from a common soldering failure where the tiny (and I'm talking crazy-small) connector which joined the volume/squelch sub-circuit board to the main circuit board came loose and caused intermittent operation or none at all. The previous owner of the radio had tried to correct this common problem by re-soldering the tiny plug back onto the main board. I guess he must've missed a trace because it didn't work for him. He was going to let me borrow the radio because (remember, it's a dual band radio) the other band's volume/squelch nob was not effected by this affliction. So, in essence, it was going to be half a radio. Given that it wasn't working anyway, I asked him if it was cool for me to give it a go. He agreed. I started in and gave it my best, but by the end I truly thought I had hosed it beyond hope by soldering two of the 6 pins together--they are insanely close together. But remember: it wasn't working on that band anyway. Thinking that it couldn't be any worse, I decided to go whole hog and de-solder the wee plug from the main board, clean the excess solder off the pins and get it back together. Sounds good, but 3 of the 6 solder pads actually came detached from the main board with the plug! Lovely. After a few choice words, I scraped the lacquer off the traces where the pads had come off and tried again. It seemed to hold, but since I have not yet wired the CR-V for power, I had no way of testing my repaired repair. I finally "engineered" a passable power supply from a wall-wart power adapter and it turns out I actually got it right! Surprise, surprise--I guess I still know a thing or two about soldering. Yeah, right. Anyway, the other problem with the radio is that the display back light is burned out. The reason? You guessed it: all 4 micro-sized bulbs are burned out. They apparently burned out in groups of two which is strange given that, according to the schematic, all 4 are wired in parallel. Whatever the case, they are burned (verified with a 10X loupe) which means a trip to radio shack in my immediate future to obtain replacements and solder those in place.
Some of you (well, the two of you still reading) may be wondering why I would spend good money on a rig with two known issues. Simple: economics. The comparable current production model is approaching 4 bills. According to the reviews, it is worth every cent. This predecessor has just about 98.7% of the features on the current radio but because of these 'personality flaws' I was able to pick it up for 1/4 of the price. Which is still half of the going rate for this radio on the eBay. I don't expect it to last for ever, but it should get me through 'til I can get enough cashahol saved or scrounged to get a high-frequency radio and that, as you may recall, is why I started all this madness in the first place. Why even mess with spending $100 on a radio that could've gone towards that HF rig? Well, there are a lot of hams who chew the fat on the local (VHF/UHF) repeaters and they are usually (as with any hobby there are a few freaks out there) a very good resource for what works, what doesn't and what is actually worth that hard-earned dollar.
I haven't joined any repeater clubs yet, but I will be attending my very first hamvention this weekend! Yes folks; get out the pocket protectors and red suspenders 'cause it's time to get geeky! A great site which illustrates exactly what I'm talking about is www.hamsexy.com. It's a seriously funny look at those hams who've taken it "too far" maintained by, you guessed it, other hams. You should take a few to check out their galleries as they are immensely funny. I'm about out of things to type for now, so just to whet your whistle, I'll leave you with this hamsexy gem!
// posted by wayne @ 6/07/2007 03:08:00 AM
