Building almost 30 trackers for the Dayton Hamvention was the usual maximum effort again this year. Mom being sick and later passing away definitely put me in a spot I've not looked forward to since she got sick about 5 years ago. I actually cut the wires for the LCD cables while pulling an all-night'r in her room when she was in hospice. I often found myself working on tracker builds in hospitals and at Mom's place the last few years to get them done. Rufus has been sick off and on the last year too which wasn't a time hogging thing but was a mental drain. My wife Sue, KB8AOF is still recovering from a stroke she had in Jan 2011. But things could be worse so we are thankful for the good that is happening. My fear is the worse is ahead... MUCH WORSE... FOR US ALL ! ! !
The good and bad of things is that we didn't sell more than 6 trackers at the AMSAT booth at Dayton this year. About 20 trackers were sent back to the AMSAT office after Hamvention. That stock lasted all summer and most the fall. The backlog of orders started to build about 6 weeks ago.
Back in April while I was heavy into the Dayton build I received a certified letter from the airport. Since I was behind on rent and they found hazardous materials (propane aircraft preheater that has been there for 30 yrs) they wanted me out in 30 days. This was definitely not the kind of news I needed just weeks before Dayton. I called a lawyer and let him handle it so I could focus on the build. We got the hanger rent taken care of and put it on auto pay but the stockpile of STUFF that had overflowed into the hanger surrounding the plane had to go. This STUFF had been accumulating for the last 10 years because my garage is full of STUFF. And the house is full of STUFF. My wife Sue has a key to the hanger so she started putting her STUFF in the hanger too! In the old days you just threw it all away. But today with eBay, Craig's list and Free Cycle you sell and recycle everything for $$$. A few of my ham friends tear old radio and computers apart and scrap the metals and plastic parts. Well this is a good thing but ITS VERY TIME CONSUMING. I dawdled all summer on this. AirVenture at the end of July puts everything on hold. Then the AirVenture afterglow (recovery) seems to consume August. Besides its the lazy hazy days of summer. Rufus got real sick over Labor day and the first day of my vacation that week started at the vets putting Rufus down. The leaves start falling in September too. The airport reminds me my hanger is still a mess... The fire inspector is well... pissed. But I find out I'm not the only tenant with a messy hanger. So now my days off are spent either at the airport cleaning the hanger or at home cleaning the garage. An old friend who has since passed left a bunch of stuff in the hanger that I had to clear out before I could get to my stuff. The leaves are now starting to make a mess. My next door neighbor never made it home from Florida this summer and it didn't look good for the fall either. He has a yard tractor with a rear bagger and he being a good neighbor takes care of my leaves too. Now with rake in hand I gotta do it. While helping my old friend Ken Baker with some of his machine shop projects he tells me he's a Husqvarna dealer and could get me a good price on new Husqvarna stuff. A few weeks later the leaves on my and the absent neighbors yard are getting worse and blowing all over the place. 20 years ago I didn't care about leaves or snow or the grass but now I'm anal about it. Now I don't have a house beautiful yard but I like to keep it maintained to a minimal extent. With winter looming and snow a threat and my snow blower all worn out an broke I,m starting to think about a new snow blower. Since last winter was great cause a lack of snow I figured we'd pay the piper this year. So I started looking at Husqvarna snow blowers... then thought of the leaves and Joe and his lawn tractor. Anyway I ended up ordering a (too) big Husqvarna lawn tractor with rear bagger and a 42" snow blower attachment. Way over kill but that's the way I do things. Now I hafta clean out a spot in the garage for this thing. That took two weekends. One of the obstacles in the garage were two file cabinets that have been there for 10 years waiting to become the pillars for my work bench top. Yep that work bench that has been the catch all table top for all kinds of stuff. It's been unusable at least since before the LVB tracker project started. I've been building trackers on a 2 by 4 foot folding table which actually worked out but always got junked up between builds. And since I haven't built since May it was junked up. With the garage needing to be cleared out the focus was on moving these filing cabinets. This ended up taking 3 weekends to accomplish. They're down here... the tracker building table is totally gone. Now all the stuff that was tucked in every conceivable space here in the basement has now overflowed into the patio and in plastic storage cases everywhere.
So now the LVB Tracker backlog is 10 trackers. One build... Last Wednesday I started building but the infrastructure I had used for the last 5 years was totally gone. Nothing is where it was. I usually start a build by stuffing circuit boards... COULDN'T FIND THEM. I did find the LCD cable wires that I cut last February so I started by crimping connector inserts onto the wires. Did over 1000 crimps.
After the first half hour my left shoulder started aching. I'd rest it in front of the computer and fall asleep. Yesterday after getting all the domestics done I spend the afternoon crimping. My shoulder started to ache then stopped and I got the crimping finished. Now the fun part of LCD cable building starts. The actual assembly. I COULDN'T FIND THE HOUSINGS. Found what was left from the last build but used them up last night. So today after getting past the domestics the project was finding the housings. FOUND 'EM in a box out in the patio. Also found the circuit boards. Spent the rest of the afternoon just before dinner finishing the LCD cable assemblies. Even though I found the circuit boards, building wire assemblies take longer so I decided to get that past me. First part is to cut wires. COULDN'T FIND THE CUTTING PATTERNS. That data was backed up but not current so I needed to recreate that data. COULDN'T FIND MY METRIC RULERS. Then fell asleep in front of computer. SUCKS TO BE ME!
Now we're back at the bench re-inventing the button assembly wiring. On the second pass and I think I have the numbers pretty much nailed dow. Hope this is the last roadblock the recent upheaval in my workroom will create but I doubt it.
