LVB Tracker - 33 days till Dayton

Good thing I check the countdown clock for Dayton. I keep thinking I have plenty of time and the guy on the right shoulder reminds me "no you don't"

We have 33 days till Dayton Hamvention!

This morning I had Physical Therapy. So the morning, for the most part, was shot! Got home around 11:30 and came downstairs to the radio man cave to see what was going on. The mac mini comes on in the morning and starts tracking satellites and there's always a little email to look at. I could smell something cooking and soon Sue was down with grilled cheese sandwiches. She is so good and the first casualty of the LVB Tracker project. So thank her, not me!!!

After lunch I really wanted to get to work on trackers but had one obstacle that I really needed to get done. A tracker user in Australia was getting the dreaded EEProm message when powering up his tracker. We don't know what causes it and a new pic usually fixes the problem. So I really needed to get a pic flashed and sent out. Due to my own stupidity this took 3 trips to the Post Office and about 2 hours time. But I got the pic out and was able to get to work on trackers about 3:30pm. An hour later the Rufus wanted his walk and not too long after that dinner at the Crooked River Grill. I am currently doing the dirty work. Building LCD cables and button assemblies. All the wires were cut on Wednesday. Thursday ended up being a goof off day. Today, Friday I began stripping and crimping contacts onto the 1104 wires cut on Wednesday. Usually I do one process until it's done then do the next process. In February when I built 20 lcd cables I did the stripping for one size wire (of 11 sizes) then crimped the contacts on. I sorta broke up the monotony of this job and every time I'm faced with it it's harder to do. So this afternoon I stripped the first 94 wires and then crimped on the contacts. Then I had a thought... How do I know all the wires that were cut correctly? Would be a bummer to crimp 94 wires, of any group, 188 expensive contacts applied only to find out the wires wouldn't fit. So I stripped and crimped one sample of each size wire then built an assembly.... worked great. But you never know. So during the CAVS game I was able to finish crimping the first group then started the next group and finished it after the CAVS lost... So that is 376 stripping functions followed by 376 crimping functions. I wonder if this will cause carpel tunnel syndrome? 752 hand movements, whatever you call it... I should at least end up with strong hand muscles. My left shoulder seems no worse for the wear.... We'll see what happens after the weekend. Hoping to have 94 lcd cables completed by Sunday evening.

Good night!
11:27pm