Flying

Saturday morning I was walking Rufus (BOO) and something hit me.... THE WEATHER WAS FANTASTIC!!! Clear blue, cloudless skies. Nice mild temps and virtually no wind. My first thought was I SHOULD GO FLYING SOMEWHERE!!! I remembered there was a massive high over the Great Lakes that would provide good weather almost everywhere I could fly to. Maybe I could visit Jim, WB8AZP in Michigan? Be nice to goto Oshkosh and work on the AirVenture preparations ... NAW JUST STAY HOME... Breakfast at the grill and you need to recover stuff from Sue's hard drive (that you'd been putting off for a week)...

So after returning from breakfast I got dug-in downstairs in the basement. Sue told me there was a message on the phone for me. Chuck Hoisington from EAA chapter 9 in Columbus called looking for help. The chapter was having a Young Eagles Rally at Madison County airport. They had 40 kids and 2 planes. He was looking for planes and must have pretty desperate since I had only flew with them once and only one load of kids. So I took BOO for a walk then called him back... it was 12:30 just after lunch... I told him I probably couldn't get there till 2pm... He said there will probably still be kids there. So I told him I'd head out.

I guess I need a crisis any more to do the things I usta just LOVE to do... Everything fell in place... Plane started right up and I go to Madison County by 2:30pm. Took a little longer than I thought 1 hour and 2 tenths. I flew two loads, 6 kids total. AND IT WAS GREAT. Girls are the best because they are not afraid to express themselves. The younger ones just won't shut up... which is good cause when they stop talking they're probably gonna get sick. They were sisters and it hit me hard that their parents would let all their kids go with me, a stranger, flying.... Almost enough to make me chicken out. But I sucked it up and we had a great flight. The next bunch were 3 brothers... WE'RE COOL... Guys just don't talk and that sucks. The younger boys were in the back and a few times I had to ask on the intercom if they were still there. But after takeoff they all loosen up a bit. One from both groups asked "Will the landing be hard"? "Hope so"!
Gotta keep them guessing. After we landed one of the youngsters in the back said "This is the best day of my life" and his quiet older brother who rode up front with me, a real quiet kid, told his parents he wanted to come the next time for a ride. So that's all the thanks I need. Just to know you did something special for someone.

It was GREAT flying on Saturday... Wish I could do more... Gas cost almost 200 bucks.

73's
Mike, WB8CXO

3:15am

Well it's now 3:15am and I'm still up pecking this out on my new iPhone. Yes, new iPhone. I'm one of those who can't afford one but got it anyway. So now among all the other distractions that clutter my life here's another... AT $60.00 A MONTH! Now I know why iPhone users have terse emails. Where the onscreen keypad is a vast improvement over typing on a cellphone, it's an effort,at least for me,to use the keyboard. But I must say the iPhone is most impressive. And the reason I didn't buy into one two years ago still holds true... THE AT&T CELLULAR NETWORK STILL SUCKS. The iphone's weakest link. Not to mention AT&T did their best to PISS OFF their current iPhone customers with incredibly STUPID upgrade pricing. And they wonder why employees won't talk to customers... Nuff said. The iPhone rocks! 3:32am. Good Night!

LVB Tracker - 11 days till Field Day

This morning we are shipping 10 trackers to the AMSAT office. They should arrive Thursday. And we're shipping 1 tracker to a ham in Florida who needs it for Field day.

No matter how early I start I still can't seem to finish. Easily distracted by emails and the things they spawn I end up staying up late to get things shipped.

Oh well... Good Night/Morning

3:05am

LVB Tracker - 13 days till Field Day

12:25pm We are at the Crooked River Grill enjoying a late breakfast. We all slept in this morning after we got the dogs walked/fed and the kitties fed. IT WAS GREAT ! ! !

When I get home will begin a major push to get 10 trackers built, tested and shipped by Monday or Tuesday. Followed by the remaining 15 from the latest build of 25.

THERE WILL BE NO TRACKER BUILDING FOR THE REMAINDER OF JUNE AND THE ENTIRE MONTH JULY!!! If another volunteer would like to fill that gap please call me 330-603-6922.

Last I heard there were 8 orders waiting at the office. I'm hoping the demand will slack off for a couple months. I need to do too many things around the house and I will be at AirVenture the last week of July. 12:32pm

1:01am Amidst numerous interruptions 10 trackers are built and are under test. They will be shipped Tuesday arriving at the AMSAT office on Thursday.

1:03am. Good Night

LVB Tracker - 14 days till Field Day

12:25pm Beginning to process lcd displays. This involves drilling out the mounting holes to 7/64" so the 4-40 nylon screws will work with the pem fastners installed on the case. Then the holes are cleaned. To finish a 16 pin idc connector is soldered in place.

12:40pm FLASH - - - Cannot find lcd displays! Did we take them to Dayton? Hope not! Resuming search.

12:50pm FOUND LCD DISPLAYS. Looks like we have 44 left. We will use 23 since there are two left over from the Dayton build.

1:34pm Holes in the lcd displays have been drilled out and de-burred. We are also multitasking a Outlook Export dump on my wife's laptop.

2:21pm LCD Displays have been processed and ready for installation.

4:37pm DIN cables have been fabricated. This is great... as I finish one more task another is born! I guess this is progress. The din cable process is quite mechanical so I listen to the radio to distract me from my task. As I think I realize there still are things that I took to Dayton that I will need next. I AM SO TIRED IF LOOKING FOR THINGS!!!

It's time to walk Rufus (BOO) then dinner.... 4:42pm

LVB Tracker - 15 days till Field Day

Today among lots of collateral activity we finished cleaning the boards and did the preliminary voltage tests. We do the voltage test because one time a regulator put out 12 volts and fried a pic and the max232 chip. So we pretest.

3:47pm Beginning PIC insertion.

4:24pm PIC's are installed. Option jumpers installed. Boards are serialized. Next Rufus gets his walk then dinner is at 5:30pm. I hafta drive Sue and Michael to the ballgame in Akron after dinner so I won't be back to work till around 7pm.

Building 25 LVB Tracker printed circuit boards is like going on a long trip with your kids! There's always a little voice saying "are we there yet"? After about 10 boards you start looking to see how many are left. Finishing one task brings on the next. Maybe it's more or less fun than the last task.

THE CIRCUIT BOARDS ARE FINISHED and ready for assembly!!!

LVB Tracker - 16 days till Field Day

1:56pm Making reasonable progress and currently taking a break from construction. We are soldering the idc connectors. 7805's are next and then flux removal. We hope to have working boards by days end.

4:50pm The last parts have been mounted on the pcb's. Flux cleaning is next followed by voltage tests, pic insertion and firmware flashing. Hopefully we will have 25 pcb's finished tonight.

We made a dreadful error of going upstairs this evening for ice cream. Sitting down in my recliner and getting dogged in by Mork, the dachshund on top of the blanket, and fell asleep.

LVB Tracker - 17 days till Field Day

Got downstairs just before noon time Wednesday. Escaped a road trip into Akron and a trip to the hospital for x-rays of my knee and probably a trip to the store. I won't feel good about doing anything else until the tracker pcb's are finished. There is a weather front strung between two Low Pressure systems bisecting the state of Ohio. Rain showers and thunder storms are dancing along the front. Looking at radar right now might be the only time today I could get the grass cut so that might happen.

Anyway I did get the 9 electrolytic caps mounted, clipped and soldered in about 1 hour and 45 minutes. Normally I would mount the parts first then solder then clip. This time I mounted, soldered and clipped each board individually. While this may not be the most efficient way to do it the varying work takes the boredom out of the task and I'm still ready to go. It seems to be a more refreshing way to do it. Will keep this in mind for the next build. 2:23pm

8:15pm Dog is walked, dinner is finished and the grass is cut.

9:45pm Q1 - Q4 npn transistors mounted, clipped and soldered.

LVB Tracker - Countdown to Field Day

The verbose entry about my Dayton Hamvention experience got lost in Blogger space. You have been saved.

So I will just say HAMVENTION WAS GREAT! Thursday morning worked as an Inside Exhibits Floor Manager for DARA and helped set up the AMSAT booth in the afternoon. Thursday evening Jim, WB8AZP helped me assemble LVB Trackers since I had only 10 ready for sale. Thanks Jim!!!! Friday pulled floor manager duty in the morning. The folks in the AMSAT booth sold all the trackers available by the time I reported in for booth duty. So I left early and went back to the hotel room to finish building more. 12 hours later I had 27 trackers ready for sale... at 3:30 am. Saturday morning 4 more hours of Floor Manager duty for DARA.... Boring as it was all in East Hall... My schedule was changed so I ended up staying there for my second shift. Then back to the AMSAT booth for some booth duty. It was great to see Richard and Owen Garriot while they were there but I was just an observer... no quality time... Saturday night nobody mentioned any dinner venues so I ate at Arbys, did the hot tub and chilled the rest of the evening. Sunday I was a free man... No booth duty or DARA duty so I milled around the inside exhibits spending some time in the OARC booth talking to Jim, WB8AZP. I almost bought an Icom IC-880 Dstar radio but I don't really use the ones I have now and didn't need to spend big money this year. Trip back home was successful and it was GREAT to be back home.

So now it's been almost a month since Hamvention and I find myself in the same situation I was in before. BUILDING LVB TRACKERS!!! 12 trackers did not sell at Hamvention and were shipped back the the office to fill pending orders there. But... last I heard there are now 13 pending orders!!!! 13 PENDING ORDERS. And at least one ham indicated they need a tracker for field day. So the theme for our blogs for the rest of June will be a countdown to field day. And as before the blogs will report on the progress of the latest LVB Tracker build.

Currently we are assembling 25 circuit boards.

Sunday resistors R1 thru R4 were mounted, soldered and clipped. That doesn't sound like much but it took quite an effort to get stuff back in order to resume manufacturing. Remember much that is manufacturing went to Dayton to finish the last build of 40 trackers. Well actually it was 39. One of the trackers failed final test with the dreaded EEProm error.

Monday resistors R5 - R7, R13 - 16 and diodes D1 - D7 were mounted. Something happenned that took me away from the project and I never returned.

Tuesday, Mondays work was soldered and clipped. R8 and R17, C3, C4, C11, C14 and RV1 were mounted and clipped. Mounted and soldered the machined sockets which is the biggest nasty part due to all the soldering. As mentioned in earlier blogs 25 boards are too many to do at one time but from here on out I think that is how we will do it since they come packaged in bricks of 25 and the demand seems to be there for the moment. Also mounted the 4mhz crystal and reset switch. Manufacturing note: Don't mount the RV1 pot until after the ic sockets. Remaining tasks for pcb construction are:

+ electrolytic capacitors (9) compl Weds, 6-10
+ idc connectors (4) compl Thurs 6-11
+db9 connector (1) compl Thurs 6-11
+transistors (4) compl Weds, 6-10
+7505 voltage regulator (1) compl Thurs 6-11
+7505 heat sink (1) compl Thurs 6-11
+remove flux from pcb (25) compl Friday 6-12
+preliminary voltage tests (25) compl Friday 6-12
+pic insertion (25) compl Friday 6-12
+option clips installed c compl Friday 6-12
+boards serialized compl Friday 6-12
+pic firmware flash (25) compl Friday 6-12
+usb module insertion (25) compl Friday 6-12

pcb's finished... compl Friday 6-12

Remaining tasks till trackers are ready for shipping

+lcd display holes drilled/de-burred (25) compl Saturday 6-13
+idc connectors soldered to lcd display (25) compl Saturday 6-13
+idc connector contacts crimped to din cable (25) compl Saturday 6-13
+final lvb tracker assembly. (25)
+test on G5500 or G5400 rotor and PC running SatPC32 (25)
+close case, clean and wrap for shipping (25)
+pack and ship (25)

This week I'm on vacation. It's a go nowhere vacation so there are things to do around the house:

+clean gutters
+cut grass compl Weds, 6-10
+misc gardening
+take truck to dealer for service compl Thurs 6-11
+re-frame breezeway doors
+clean hot tub and get it back in service
+stay off feet to let arthritis racked knee heal.
+go see Star Trek movie if it's still playing
+put up two collinear antennas so the repeater will be heard somewhere.
+remove clutter from your work space (where trackers are built).
+clean back patio

Plus thousands of other things ignored over the years.

This is the last time I'm going to think about it. Good thing Sue lets me put things off to build trackers..... for now.

Going to bed 2:18am