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....