Another wealthy, Christian, former Airman, "family values" conservative Governor form Texas wants to be president... oh yay.

funny:

 

 

lol. wtf.

 

!!!

 

 

 

Fadammit...

 

 

Oxy acetylene is some serious ****. Probably didn't realize the full extent of the danger at the time, but we used to fill balloons with oxygen and acetylene and let the wind carry them into a fire... BIG BOOM! Even a small balloon, and standing 75' away, you could see a shock wave flatten the short grass as far away as we were standing. A very fast, powerful explosion. Knowing what I know now, I shudder at the thought of doing that. A little static discharge, and it's goodbye face, hands, and whatever else is nearby.

 

 

 

 

 

This is what I spent 2 hours of my morning doing today. Always have to stop and admire the view, it's really fairly beautiful. Wanna go up there during 4th of July sometime!





















Received a phone call last night that a repeater I maintain has started to malfunction. Over the last year I've been concerned that it wasn't operating correctly because during drastic and humid temperature fluctuations the machine's performance degrades significantly on receive sensitivity, like to the point where a 70 watt transmitter at line of sight is almost completely covered with noise on the output of the machine. Checked the frequency of the duplexers hasn't drifted way off, phasing harness on the cans are in good condition, 1.19:1 SWR, pulled the receiver board and swapped it with a new one... Nothing obvious presented itself as the cause of the issue and performance has changed drastically over the course of this week which was odd because it's colder than ****! Normally only heat messes with it.

The tower is a good 230' climb to inspect the heliax feedline, termination, and the dipole phasing harness. Once I reached the top I decided to cut away and inspect the connector on the heliax. Stripped off the vulcanized rubber wrap to expose the 3m tape when I noticed the connection wasn't solid, it would move side to side! The RF connections on this feedline and antenna system are not ideal, nor were they installed by me.. The phasing harness on the antenna has a male type "N" connector factory installed, but the feedline has a PL-259 which was DIY'd onto some 1/2" heliax coax so they used a Type-N female to PL-259 Male adapter in the middle. Note the picture of the two pieces disconnected, the shiny sleeve on the lower part of cable should be permanently installed on the adapter, which is still connected to the top cable. Guess the high winds we had last spring put enough stress on it to rip the sleeve off and break the connection.

Long climb for an easy fix. Thankfully I got the organization to budget me enough money to install some 7/8" Heliax proper with correct connectors and a better installation come spring time...

 

Do you ever get to the top of something your climbing and realize you forgot something on the ground?

 

Thankfully no, I've never done that. Long time ago I worked for the cable company and frequently left something in my truck not realizing it until I had gaffed up a 30' telephone pole.. It wouldn't surprise me if it did happen, but I made a checklist before climbs now.

My biggest fear about climbing.. Since my gallbladder removal in 2005 I have to be VERY careful about what, when, and where I eat something. Certain foods at certain times of the day lead to an emergency need to visit a bathroom in the immediate future. This can come anywhere from 5 minutes to 1 hour after eating, and its never one specific food item or type of food I can identify causes the issue. Wow I'd be in trouble if that happened.....

 

The sad part is that I actually understood every word of that.

The weird part is that with "big" transmitters, we'd be quite happy if we only saw 70 watts reflected at the output. With 20-30 Kw TPO, that'd be a hell of a good match.



Well, the folks on the ground might be.

 

When suddenly, cat!

 

 

1930 Daytona
Sig Haugdahl and his rocket car







1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition
Check out the chain drive to the rear wheel and notice that is the only braking device as well. Early Mack trucks were the same way. If the chain jumps or breaks you have no brakes.