What has society come to? (school closed)

Here is rant to my team at work today about school closings:

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It is a little cold in Minnesota today so they decide to start canceling school in
many of the various school districts.




I am fairly young… but “back in my day” they would NOT close schools unless the building
burnt down or the snow drifts were taller than the plow trucks/tractors. I was taught
as a child that we here in Minnesota are hearty folk that enjoy and embrace our winter
season. (Wow…. I do sound like a grumpy old man.)

So what is the big deal with -27F air temp and a wind child of -41?  (Ok that
is from the next town 10 miles west of me.) My home weather station went “off scale”
when the temp exceeded -30 at 7:30am in my rural Meeker County location.

It appears that monsters 1, 2, and 3 (also known as Jacob[10], Ben[8], and Joe[6])
will be home with dad today. I will be WFH with the monsters at other end of the house
as I have a full day booked with conference calls.

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So one of my peers on the east coast responded with this:

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So the moral of the story... it warmer at the South Pole in the summer than it is
in the winter in Minnesota.

Geocaching 2009-01-11

Ben has been talking about wanting to go out hunting for a Geocache. I finally got
around to doing a bit of research to figure out the details of the sport. I was familiar
with the overview but needed some details to get us going.

Today we decided to go out and hunt for two local caches in the middle of the deep
freeze that we like to call winter.

The first was for: Kings
Town on the Crow by yoteman (GCZJ19)

After trying to find a place to park the car (LOTS of snow) and then hiking over to
the coordinates we fumbled around in the snow for about 10 minutes looking for the
cache. Ben found it on his own even though it was completely covered with snow.

Ben the treasure hunter

The pill bottle blends into the background

Some tokens

Some other hunters in the log

The second hunt of the afternoon was for:

Sir
Francis by Lloyd family (GC130VD)

After about 10 minutes of walking around and looking right at the spot we figured
it out. It was covered by enough snow that we used a small emergency shovel to dig
it out.



The proud hunter

Nice link in the in lid!






I think that we swim here in the summer... hmm.

Here are a list of some of the Geocaches near our home:

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?lat=45.197533&lng=-94.316649&dist=25




Overall a pretty fun afternoon hiking around in the 10 degree weather. Ben was pretty
excited about this hobby after todays adventure. I have to think that is is more fun
in the other thee seasons.



We plan to try to look for some more caches next weekend.

K2 SSB Module - Day Two

I spent about an hour this morning winding T1, T2, RFC1, and RFC2. It all went fine
other than I probably trimmed the leads a little bit shorter then needed initially.
This made feeding a couple of the connections thru the board a little tougher
than it needed to be.

Completed SSB board

T1

T2

RFC1 - gives you an idea how small RFC1 & 2 are!

RFC2 (same size component as RFC1)

Time to clean up the bench for the day and then load up some stuff before I head to
the metro for the day. With a little bit luck maybe I can get some bench on Sunday
to install the board into the K2 and do some testing.

K2 SSB Module - Night Two

I spent about 2 - 2.5 hours working on the SSB module tonight. The rest of the capacitors,
all of the resistors, the ICs & sockets, diodes, transistors, and crystals
are soldered into place.

The major remaining step is to wind the 4 toroids and mount them on the board. I hope
to try to tackle that in the morning before driving into the metro for the monthly MNQRP
Club meeting. (Or at least that is my plan)

I will probably be in the metro all day running errands, going to the meeting and
having dinner. Maybe with some luck I can try to mount the board into the K2 on Sunday
if time permits. (Busy plans for Sunday as well.)

K2 SSB Module - Night One

I started working on the SSB module tonight. A year or two ago I would have thought
that this was a big project. Now it is not a big deal at all. I spent about 60-90
minutes tonight sorting the parts and installing the capacitors.

From the flatbed scanner:

From the digital camera:

It is amazing how fast you can work once you get into a rhythm. I wish that I had
started this kit Monday night. Maybe with some luck I can get it working by this weekend.

The internal ATU is the next kit after this. It is sitting on the bench next to this
kit.  :-)

K2 - Day Twenty Five - Complete

K2 SN 06114 is complete as of today. OK... I should say that main kit is complete.

I already have the SSB and ATU kits sitting on my bench. Depending on work and family
timing I hope to start the SSB kit this week.

K2 - Day Twenty Four... sort of

I have lost track of how many days I have spent 30-60 minutes here or there trying
to track down a low power/Hi Current issue.

It turns out that I had two issues:

1. Low power... about 4-6w instead of 14-15w. After looking at and touch every component
in the PA Bias and PA circuits it looks like there was something wrong with T4. I
am not sure what... but the problem has been resolved.

2. High Current... looks like L16 and/or L17 in the Low Pass Filter was the problem.
I removed them and rewound them.

I spent about 6 hours working on the radio today. (About 4 hours of testing... about
2 hours of construction/repairs.)

I am happy to have a working radio. I hope to be able to spend a little time tomorrow
tweaking up the 10m/12m power levels and then button up the radio.

I am ready to move on to the ATU and SSB module kits next.  :-)

Faster

My ISP did some tower work last Friday to resolve some of the performance and outage
issues that my area has been experiencing.



For some reason things are sluggish this AM even though the speed test looks ok.

Sheer Pin

Here is a better photo of what the sheer pin looks like.

Sheer Pins

I was not sure why my new 50" snow blower as pushing more snow than it was blowing
yesterday. As it turns out the two sheer pins let go.  The only thing moving
snow was the second stage auger.

I had some spares so it was not a big deal to fix it in my heated garage. I think
that I will stop by the hardware store today and pick up some spares. --It is supposed
to snow again tonight.