IT'S SATURDAY AGAIN ! ! !

You know how much you hate winter? I hated it a bunch this time. I think we had our first big snow before Thanksgiving and lots cold... I mean 10's and 20's cold for weeks. But winter is the best time for electronic projects.. like.. the LVBTrackers ! ! ! the forever project. We are just finishing up the last of 200. Anyway... winter seems to drag on then all of a sudden... IT'S MARCH ! ! ! WINTER IS ALMOST OVER! Dayton Hamvention is barely 2 months away. And we need at least 30 trackers just for Hamvention... at least that's what we sold last year. So what happenned all winter? I think I only got 20 built all winter? A constant backlog which I hope we finally get in front of with the next shipment of 10 due to go out Monday. Then we will start on the push for Dayton. Perhaps 40 trackers to be built. OMG. SO WHERE DID THE WINTER GO... OR WHY DIDN'T I GET MORE DONE DURING THE WINTER?

I seem to only do blogs on Saturdays. Cause maybe I have more time? dunno. So be it!

Last Sunday we started to assemble trackers and found out we were about to run out of 4-40 nylon machine screws. They are used to attach the lcd display to the PEM fasteners. We chose nylon so we didn't hafta worry about anything shorting out. Checking back in time we last ordered 400 last June. 400 will build 100 trackers. That's about right but I bet there is still a bag of them somewhere around here. So we got online and ordered a bunch from Digikey


We also ordered some Thermal Pads. They go between the 7805 voltage regulator and the heat sink. I have been using white silicone grease... sorta old fashioned. David Forbes uses them on his Scope Clock. I built one last year and thought it was a neet idea. A little pricey but I hate messing with the silicone grease and whenever you can remove an undesireble task from a marathon project, it's money well spent. And the parts arrived on Wendesday. But I had class that evening so we didn't work downstairs.

Thermal Pads in a Digikey bag.

And it's Saturday morning... Rufus is walked... The cats are fed. All the dogs got Beneful which they just love... The doxies were taken outside. And it's 9:21 TIME FOR BREAKFAST. Oh.. I got 2 trackers wrapped up. 6 down 4 to go. We will also get into the newly arrived tracker boxes from Ten Tec. And we have company! Michael and Jordan from across the street spent the night. So we will have 6 for breakfast. The boys just love breakfast.

Ten-Tec does a great job on our cases. They are AMERICAN AND PROUD OF IT!!! Couldn't even get them to use metric PEM fasteners. Oh well... still a good product.

Off to breakfast.

BEAUTIFUL SATURDAY, the rest of the story.

11:45 am est

Back from Breakfast. Had a great time with Barb and Dick Fournier, Dave Woskowski, the owner of the Crooked River Grill and all the regulars.

Now it's time to make a dent into the next 10 trackers....


12:34 pm est:
10 displays ready for drilling

10 displays drilled and idc connector soldered


close-up of display and idc connector... EXCITING ISN'T IT !!!

12:48pm est: It took almost 30 minutes to do the blog!

Next step... prepare the DIN cables.

1:47pm est
Din cables are done but I made the mistake of turning on the tv to unload the dvr. It's almost full and I need to view some of the things recorded. So it slows down the process a little.

in the protective plastic bag



out of the bag

with the connector contacts crimped on

2:10pm est: Conan is distracting me with his last show. But now I think we are ready to start assembly! Hungry... might get a sandwich.


Lunch


3:54 pm est: Well I was done building the first tracker of the current lot. But as it goes there is always distractions. My Mom called. Seems Betty's computer is still not right. Betty is in her middle to late 80's and loves to play online card games. Her kids bought her a second computer, a Gateway that runs Vista. VISTA SUCKS! This computer constantly goes into la la land. It's so slow... If I was a computer manufacturer I would refuse to sell my computers with Vista. I work for at&t and they are not going to deploy Vista... what does that tell you... am I wrong. Oh I've talked to folks who have no problems but they are computer literate. If I had my way she would have an apple or an intel box running linux with a good GUI. All she does is this card game and email. You would think Microsoft could come up with an OS that would do those things... So I need to make a visit tomorrow to see what I can do. But if this goes on any longer I'm going to do something drastic. I don't have the time, and I've spend HOURS over there trying to find what's wrong. If it's Vista it's going to go.

Course then after I got off the phone with MOM, BOO was ready for his walk. So we are back from that so let's look at building a LVB Tracker (once all the parts are ready)

First we start with the case. Shown above is the bottom and top of the case as received from Ten Tec. They do a great job fab'ing the cases for us.
First we stick the feet on the bottom. Took me about a half-hour looking for the cardboard jig I use to easily place the feet in the right place. One more to stick on seen on the pic above.

Then the grommet goes on the back for the DIN cable.



Next the LCD display is installed using 4 nylon screws.




Then the button assembly.

Next the pcb is installed with the lcd cable

Finally the DIN cable is installed.

The finished tracker. Takes about 15 minutes.

Next the tracker is connected to either a Yaesu G5400 or G5500 rotor for testing. It might test for minimum of 5 to 6 satellite passes or stay on all night or track for a day. I depends on where we are in the build. If I'm at end of the build trying to make a deadline it will be 5-6 satellite passes. Sometimes I change the time on the computer keep those 5-6 satellite overhead.

5:55pm est. Break for dinner....

BEAUTIFUL SATURDAY

Well sort of... Woke up this morning to a downpour and thunder in the background. The great thing about it is the WINDOWS WERE OPEN... all night... Well at least the one in BOO's window. And was he loving it. BOO just loves his window. It's a giant bay window we put in years ago for plants and things. Well BOO took it over shortly after he started living here back in 1997.

So the dogs have been walked and fed. My email is done and the auctions are progressing. R1500 scanners are real popular overseas. I've had shipping requests as far as Vladivostok, Russia including Brazil, Spain and BC Canada.

Heading to breakfast. 09:20am est

PROGRESS FINALLY

After floundering for a week after loosing last weekend to the dog, we have made some progress.

Besides going to class on Wednesday I can't remember what happened to the other evenings. I remember falling asleep in front of the computer. Should never get in front of that thing. Goto the work bench first.

Ah the memory is returning... To help offset nightmarish money problems, I've begun to sell off unused stuff on eBay. Spent some of Sunday and Monday listing things. Then Thursday I had to re list one of the items due to numerous errors. So between selling and sleeping the week evaporated.


We have button assemblies and lcd cables... see above.






Button Assembly


















LCD Cable



















Tonite, Friday after finally getting downstairs after dinner, taking the doxies out and walking Rufus (BOO) I finished building the button assemblies. The LCD cables were finished about 3 weeks ago. As I'm writing this I'm realizing I need to find a way to focus on this project and fill in the gaps.

Anyway... If my wife the dogs and cats let me I hope to be testing trackers this weekend. Tomorrow we'll start by processing 10 lcd displays.

CAVS got beat by Boston while I'm writing this..... depressing.

This blog takes too much time... It might have to go. There's no real benefit.

Later

LVB Tracker PARTS PROBLEMS

FEBRUARY 26, 2009

Ran into a part problem. We use Mountain Switch MS-402-Red for the LVB Tracker.


They are used for the UP, DOWN, CCW and CW buttons seen above in a diamond pattern.

Historically they were ordered from Mouser who had the best price. Back in January... yep January... TWO MONTHS ago. See, even winter goes fast. When we ordered parts from Mouser they back ordered 339 of the 400 I ordered. Last week I checked with Mouser and they expected to be back in stock on 3-20-2009. Well that didn't settle too well. So after about 20 minutes of searching the web for a new source I checked Jameco. Well they had them in stock... don't know why they didn't show up in the search. Ordered 340 and they arrived today, Friday 3-6-09. Way things are looking we might not need them that soon but if I didn't get them now we'd end up waiting on them....

LVB Tracker PARTS PROBLEMS Feb 26, 2009

This post is out of sequence but it is part of the story so if you are still with me (unbelievable) I'm gonna tell it.


The 4 push buttons we use on the Tracker are made by Mountain Switch p/n MS-402 Red. Historically they were ordered from Mouser. I think they are a few cents cheaper there too. The last order to Mouser they were only able to ship 61 switches. This allowed me to build 16 button assemblies.