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.