LVB Trackers - Good News

My wife Sue pissed me off when we got home from dinner so I just went to the basement to chill. Better than staying upstairs being pissed. So I started cutting wire for 20 LCD cables with the Olympics on a monitor just to my left. Cut 240 little white wires before 10pm. Hum... Still early... So I decided to start the strip an crimp operation. Did 60 of them and decided to call it a night. Being this is part of my hobby I forget it's still work. Then wonder why I'm so tired. Two jobs on 6 hrs sleep doesn't make it. Duh! Went upstairs and crashed in my chair with Mork. And it was a good day!

This morning got up and blew snow before work. Missed breakfast, shower and was late to work to boot. But my little spot on earth is better for it!!!

Hoping the best for your day!

LVB Tracker - 6 shipped today

In spite of the Olympics distraction and just being plum tired I shipped 6 trackers out today. Really wanted to ship them Wednesday (yesterday) but I fell asleep while doing emails. I haven't done that for a while.

Right now I'm trying to get a headache or fever or something... just feel sorta blah. Hoping it the lack of food as I didn't take time to eat a proper lunch... just snacked from my bag.

So if I feel up to it I will start cutting wires to make more LCD cables. The next build will be for 20 trackers and I'm short about 15 lcd cables.

Will get my shoulder operated on next Wednesday, March 3rd. This will just about take me out as far as building trackers. That's why I'm gonna build lcd cables now. It's something only I can do easily and is one of 2 parts that I hafta manufacture. Anyone can stuff parts on circuit boards so that will be left for last. My wife Sue wants to help so now I will let her. Hopefully in a month I will be allowed to use my left arm and can start the build for Dayton.

Remember folks... This is the last batch of 100 trackers I'm building. Another volunteer will hafta pick up the ball.

LVB Trackers - Olympic Update

In spite of the major distraction of the Olympics the last week or so tonite I finished 30 button assemblies and assembled 4 of the 5 trackers that will ship out next.

Actually I enjoy building more when there is something interesting going on in the background. A favorite TV show, Cleveland Indians or Cavaliers ball game or just a radio in the shack scanning the local repeaters. In fact I've been doing this so long I remember building trackers during the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Hopefully these 5 trackers can ship Wednesday. Will start on a 20 unit build Thursday. Hopefully there will be no insurmountable interruptions.

Was to two eye doctors today and kicked butt at work to get all my work done. My eyes feel like they have been ridden hard, put away wet so I'm going to bed.

11:32pm

LVB Trackers - Olympics

I love the Olympics ever since I watched Dorthy Hamill win gold at the 1976 Olympics. So amidst all the other distractions I'm trying to watch the Olympics while building trackers.

The five trackers shipped last week finally arrived at the AMSAT office delayed by the snowstorms out east.

And now I've developed floaters in my left eye! And I thought the floaters in my right eye were gonna drive me nuts. There is nothing I can do about this so I hope to control the desire to go nuts.

Monday night I started building button assemblies. Figured I could build 30 pretty quick. I'd rather build about 100 but that might take all week and since I am still behind in deliveries I'll hafta balance what I do to get trackers built and shipped out to AMSAT. Hope to get another 5 out next week. Then we'll start building up circuit boards using the last batch of 100 that arrived recently. Remember... this is the last 100 trackers I will build. If you want a good project let me know. And if you want a tracker get in now!

12:45am Off to bed...

LVB Trackers - 5 shipped

A day late but 5 trackers will ship tomorrow. And I'm still behind probably 15 trackers. I am working on the next 100 trackers. They will be my last. Hopefully the demand will fall off. This is way too much work.

There is a little slip of paper that gets shipped with each tracker. It provides just enough information for the user to go online and find the info needed to get the thing working. The project needs an all inclusive user manual. But someone has to write it. I am not a good enough writer to produce something of quality and it would take me forever to learn how to use the tools. If I'm not building trackers I'm doing something else that didn't get done. In other words I don't have the time to write. Anyway, I'm packing trackers for shipping and ran out of that little strip of paper. And guess what? My laser printer was not working... Its been broke for weeks. Now I need it to print this little paper and to print the shipping labels. So off to Office Max I go and $91 and odd cents later I have a yellow toner cartrige. Yea, I only need black but the printer will not print with empty cartriges... only almost empty ones. It's only something!

So tomorrow I start building some button assemblies so I can build more trackers.

Thanks for reading this!

73's Mike

LVB Trackers - back to building

After dozens of interruptions, the last being 2 feet of snow that had to be handled yesterday, I'm assembling trackers. Will ship at least 5 tomorrow if I need to stay up all night. Including one that is being returned for repair. This tracker ran just fine on my test rotor and pc running SatPC32 but I did notice the front of the usb module was working its way loose. This is something I feared from the start. Initially thought the friction of 24 pins would keep the module firmly plugged in. But when a usb cable is plugged in to the b connector it adds several inches of leverage to the module. If you push down on the cable you can pop the front of the module right out of the connector. I thought about several ways to fix this but didn't come up with just the right fix till this morning while on the bench. The workshop environment must of inspired the right thought. I also decided to fix another weakness, din cable twisting. If you twist the din cable enough the connector will come unplugged. It's an easy fix but if I can prevent it all the better. And it only adds about 5 minutes to the assembly process. Now if I could only do software.

So back to work... don't want this blog to steal too much assembly time. Besides if I get done I can watch the Super Bowl.
3:26pm

The tracker uses 4 Miyama push button switches. Initially used to calibrate the tracker to the rotor they can also manually control the motion of the rotors. Today during testing I found a bad one. First failure of this part in over 1,350 installed. Dunno if that is bad or good but I am definitely glad we haven't had more. It will take 15-20 minutes to replace the switch.
6:05pm

Failed to ship... Spent evening time with family! Family First!