Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[beanflying]

Keeping the TEA Bodge level at Bay  2mm Acrylic single pass 10mm/sec @ 70% power, could run a bit less or go faster but it works.

If only the 3DP was as fast as Laser 

[Kosmic]

Canada Post says package will be delivered this Monday. USPS says same package will be delivered today. Package is currently sitting in JFK Customs. My suspicion is neither are correct but USPS is definitely off the mark.

Yeah was surprised that USPS was doing delivery during the weekend.

[Neomys Sapiens]

In the "Perception" pix I give the Wife an "A" for effort but an "F" for fail in her selection of beers. That's a Schlitz beer. Drop a few letters and "shit" is a better description. 

Edit....she could be passive aggressive and trying to poison him and then have a silent key sale. 

Seeing 'Schlitz', I also had a mental 'hurk'.

But on the silent key sale, you might be on to something. There is such a 'XYL' on ebay.de. I am watching a few items from her which would be very helpful, but her prices are high and her other conditions simply dissuasive.
That made me wonder whether she is now really hard intending on making good after living with a ham, or if she wants to punish the friends and associates of her deceased spouse as severely as possible.

[Neomys Sapiens]

Clearly for some Hams Hats are important 

I dunno, I would be put off slightly by that heavy clacking and burring of the ATU.

[bd139]

But on the silent key sale, you might be on to something. There is such a 'XYL' on ebay.de. I am watching a few items from her which would be very helpful, but her prices are high and her other conditions simply dissuasive.
That made me wonder whether she is now really hard intending on making good after living with a ham, or if she wants to punish the friends and associates of her deceased spouse as severely as possible.

There's one of them that has been going on for a while on ebay here. "100 scopes woman". Her husband had a quite frankly ridiculous number of scopes. More than any of us. I'm not sure if he buggered off with another woman or was dead or just dead to her but I don't think it was quite a good of an investment as she was hoping it was going to be or was promised it would be as most didn't sell or went for the starting price!

I keep a spreadsheet in case I am dead. My eldest knows the ebay drill.

[Kosmic]

I keep a spreadsheet in case I am dead. My eldest knows the ebay drill.

No need, just put me in your will, I will gladly take all your stuffs 

[Kosmic]

Seriously its not easy to integrate all the hording of someone else in your own stuff. I'm still sorting parts from the lot I got last week.

[bd139]

Yeah I've been promised the contents of an elecrtonics workshop which has about a ton of stuff in it. Not looking forward to that if I'm honest as it's all been futzed with. I might take a few select bits and get a house clearance person in. In fact I'm hoping that the relatives will all dive in it first and I'll just turn up later in the night and lift the bits I need out of the skip outside 

[Mr. Scram]

One man's treasure is another man's trash.

[Kosmic]

Yeah I've been promised the contents of an elecrtonics workshop which has about a ton of stuff in it. Not looking forward to that if I'm honest as it's all been futzed with. I might take a few select bits and get a house clearance person in. In fact I'm hoping that the relatives will all dive in it first and I'll just turn up later in the night and lift the bits I need out of the skip outside 

I would just take everything and sort later 

Pack everything in box and rent a van if you have to. You never know what's hidden in a pile of junk.

[Mr. Scram]

I would just take everything and sort later 

Pack everything in box and rent a van if you have to. You never know what's hidden in a pile of junk.

An excellent way of ending up with a worthless pile of junk.

[Kosmic]

I would just take everything and sort later 

Pack everything in box and rent a van if you have to. You never know what's hidden in a pile of junk.

An excellent way of ending up with a worthless pile of junk.

Personally I don't mind working a bit. As long as you get rid of what you don't need. Found 4 x Tektronix 1Ghz current probe like that. Was hidden with some other useless stuff.

[med6753]

Canada Post says package will be delivered this Monday. USPS says same package will be delivered today. Package is currently sitting in JFK Customs. My suspicion is neither are correct but USPS is definitely off the mark.

Yeah was surprised that USPS was doing delivery during the weekend.

USPS does have Saturday delivery as part of their normal operations. And if you have an Amazon Prime item and the 2 day commitment falls on a Sunday they will send out a special truck and deliver it. I've had that more than once.

[Mr. Scram]

Personally I don't mind working a bit. As long as you get rid of what you don't need. Found 4 x Tektronix 1Ghz current probe like that. Was hidden with some other useless stuff.

It depends. Just paying for things can often be less expensive than doing a few days of unpleasant work. I've started valuing my time a bit more and it's liberating.

[Kosmic]

Personally I don't mind working a bit. As long as you get rid of what you don't need. Found 4 x Tektronix 1Ghz current probe like that. Was hidden with some other useless stuff.

It depends. Just paying for things can often be less expensive than doing a few days of unpleasant work. I've started valuing my time a bit more and it's liberating.

I'm probably slowly becoming a hoarder 

[bd139]

Personally I don't mind working a bit. As long as you get rid of what you don't need. Found 4 x Tektronix 1Ghz current probe like that. Was hidden with some other useless stuff.

It depends. Just paying for things can often be less expensive than doing a few days of unpleasant work. I've started valuing my time a bit more and it's liberating.

Exactly that.

[Specmaster]

Seriously its not easy to integrate all the hording of someone else in your own stuff. I'm still sorting parts from the lot I got last week.

That's not an issue, I'll help him out as well [emoji4]

Sent from my POT-LX1 using Tapatalk

[bitseeker]

Personally I don't mind working a bit. As long as you get rid of what you don't need. Found 4 x Tektronix 1Ghz current probe like that. Was hidden with some other useless stuff.

  Nice score!

[Kosmic]

Personally I don't mind working a bit. As long as you get rid of what you don't need. Found 4 x Tektronix 1Ghz current probe like that. Was hidden with some other useless stuff.

  Nice score!

Was in there somewhere 

[mnementh]

That looks like those ancient exploding NiCd cells. I used to chuck them in a fire. That's what made them explode 

I do have to say that there's something nice about that little circuit. Looks neat and purposeful.

Well Elecraft are a bit of a let down on the sales front. So it says 1-5 days to dispatch so I left it 4.5 days of pressing F5 on their order status page and seeing "unfulfilled" and gave them a nudge. Turns out they held my entire order up because they ran out of free hats. I don't care about the free hat dammit. I bought a radio not a hat!  ... They're sending it Monday and sending the hat separately via USPS ground.  Their customer service is pretty good but the sales/dispatch process is opaque and a bit wonky.

Yeah, aside from the self-detonating 1st gen MMLC capacitor, it actually is quite elegant in its simplicity; I love the beauty of form following function. It does have me thinking about just getting 4 AAA NiMHs and dropping them in there; would double its runtime and probably brighter longer due to lower IR of modern cells. Just that for 2-ish watts, you can get so much more out of LED & LiPo.

Yeah... I think that's definitely one of those "sqweaky wheel gets the grease" situations. They probably defaulted to waiting for the hats unless you said something so they could save the $3 shipping. I don't imagine the profit margin is great on their little cottage industry; so myself I'd be inclined to let it slide.

Just have them put a note on your account to send the hat when you order other add-ons. You know you'll be back. 

   Clearly for some Hams Hats are important   

*inspects hat for obligatory foil lining*     *backs slowly away before the "whacker" gets on him*

   Keeping the TEA Bodge level at Bay  2mm Acrylic single pass 10mm/sec @ 70% power, could run a bit less or go faster but it works.

If only the 3DP was as fast as Laser 

Needs nickel-steel filister pan-head screws; or better yet, countersunk oval-head. Those zinc-plated philips washer-heads look horrible. 

mnem
Uh oh... SWMBO is asking for "help" with the laundry. I think I'll "delegate" to the oldest child.

[mnementh]

Canada Post says package will be delivered this Monday. USPS says same package will be delivered today. Package is currently sitting in JFK Customs. My suspicion is neither are correct but USPS is definitely off the mark.

Yeah was surprised that USPS was doing delivery during the weekend.

USPS still delivers regularly on Saturdays. FED-UPS delivers on Saturday in some densely populated urban areas. Amazon delivers Saturday and Sunday even out here in the suburban boonies of Houston.

Personally I don't mind working a bit. As long as you get rid of what you don't need. Found 4 x Tektronix 1Ghz current probe like that. Was hidden with some other useless stuff.

It depends. Just paying for things can often be less expensive than doing a few days of unpleasant work. I've started valuing my time a bit more and it's liberating.

Same here. My hoarding has cost me so much time... it is quite liberating to just stop and say: "Wait... what does Amazon have that might work?" I've gotten to the point now that if they have it, and IF I can scratch up the money... I don't even think twice. I just order it and cross the item off my to-do list.

It's only money. Time is far more valuable; a man's most precious resource. I'm learning more and more not to waste it. 

mnem
So what the eff are you doing in here old man? 

[Kosmic]

Some weeks ago, I got another piece for my instrument collection from ESI. This time it's a SV-194B Voltage Calibrator. It's a big voltage divider. You feed 500V or 1Kv in and you can select what you want on the output terminals. There is also a Tap to calibrate the input voltage to a standard cell. I guess I will need to find one of those 



After some tests I realized the resistors had drifted though. Will need to find a solution for that.

[med6753]

Speaking of wasting time. Working on this 7A24 vertical plug-in and while I've made progress I've pretty much come to the conclusion that this guy is unfixable.

Channel 1: I was able to get all switch positions working but it's overall stability sucks. Surprisingly none of the thin film attenuators are blown. All good...including channel 2. Seems I'm dealing with worn leaf switches again. No amount of careful cleaning results in consistent contact.

Channel 2: The DC/GND switch is hopelessly fubar'ed. Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. And I noticed that the gain between channel 1 and channel 2 is way off.

The thin film attenuators are held in with a clip. Here's one removed and showing the backside. Again, they are all OK. So in order to fix this guy I need a parts mule. Went out on Ebay and right now only 2 available. One looks like it was beat with a hammer and another missing parts but they want too much for it. There's no imperative to fix this one immediately so I'll wait. Going into the TEA closet to fix another day when a decent parts mule shows up.



   

[Neomys Sapiens]

That looks like those ancient exploding NiCd cells. I used to chuck them in a fire. That's what made them explode 

I do have to say that there's something nice about that little circuit. Looks neat and purposeful.

Yeah, aside from the self-detonating 1st gen MMLC capacitor, it actually is quite elegant in its simplicity; I love the beauty of form following function. It does have me thinking about just getting 4 AAA NiMHs and dropping them in there; would double its runtime and probably brighter longer due to lower IR of modern cells. Just that for 2-ish watts, you can get so much more out of LED & LiPo.[/b][/color]

Except it isn't. Looks very much like Siemens uncoated MKT (foil) capacitor.

[bitseeker]

Some weeks ago, I got another piece for my instrument collection from ESI. This time it's a SV-194B Voltage Calibrator. It's a big voltage divider. You feed 500V or 1Kv in and you can select want on the output terminals. There is also a Tap to calibrate the input voltage to a standard cell. I guess I will need to find one of those 

Neat. Added to POI.