Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

That adalm-Pluto is crazy good for the price. Added to want list 

I got mine in pre-release, was 99$ at the time 

Here ya go bd... Now dooya feel better about the price in your neck of the woods...?

Kosmic, way to bring the suck. And rub it in. 

mnem
*toddles off for some daddy-dwagonlet time*

You should check DigiKey. it's 140$ US now they have like 300 in stock.

That's tempting... between that and the NanoVNA, could have a pretty sweet hobbyist-grade RF lab under $200.

mnem
 

[worsthorse]

Sorry to sort of sideswipe you guys.

Electronics and the internet both, it's a love hate thing.

I have a character flaw; unlike BD, I don't let things go.  Every failed repair stacks up, taunting me.

But that's all off topic.  This post is mainly for Worsthose, who I hope finds this well.

Quarantine day 30 something...NTSB hangar of the 561, this chassis was filthy


still a lot of work to do


this might be controversial, but you did indicate that you hoped it would be used, I hate cutting up the paint, but there was just no room



hmmmm, my usual image posting toolchain seems to have suffered "improvements" tonight, anybody else having to click through to get those?

That's awesome! I am happy to see how far you've gotten with it and no controversy as far as I am concerned. It's all about making it work.   

EDIT: damn, how much space do you have to work in?
 

[WastelandTek]

Sorry to sort of sideswipe you guys.

Electronics and the internet both, it's a love hate thing.

I have a character flaw; unlike BD, I don't let things go.  Every failed repair stacks up, taunting me.

But that's all off topic.  This post is mainly for Worsthose, who I hope finds this well.

Quarantine day 30 something...NTSB hangar of the 561, this chassis was filthy

......snip

Now that's dedication. But did you consider the Simple Green, hose down, bake option? Would have saved you the effort of the complete rebuild. And what about a set of plug-ins? Going to give them the same treatment? Tearing those down to parts I would think would be a total nightmare. 

I used my favorite water solvent, "LA's Totally Awesome!" (I kid you not) and it is.

Had to abort mid scrub actually as I noticed the marking paint was starting to loosen.

It has been drying 3 days now, the first afternoon in unseasonable sun, many days til HV at this rate.

Disassembled almost all the pots.  Cal switch soaked in vinegar for a good bit, also the illum lamps/sockets, one of which came apart destructively.  I have a line on some replacement bulbs onforum.

Way I figure it, no way I can process this pile of plugins without a good working frame.

In some ways, I think, I might be more suited for this world than the one we just left.

[tautech]

Todays .....well the last few day's job finally finished....repairs to the tractor bull blade. Chatting to a buddy about this welding job he said he Noah a guy with an ark welder. 

A whole 5kg pack of rods went into this.   

Anyways the old hard edge was busted in a couple of places and been repaired before so replacement time and the son's 14t digger had to lean on the blade to get it straight again before the mission to repair all the deep rust pits and redrill it for the new cutting edge bolt pattern. Just before a final wire power brush and a super heavy coat of PA10.

A good day's work right there.  Been dere, dunnat, burned the shirt. While I was wearing it.  Messy, sweaty, dag-nasty work that leaves you coughing up rust dust for days; can't count how many blade skegs & backhoe points I built up & coated with nickel and/or borium hardface as a youth. Doubtless a major contributor to my current breathing issues.

mnem
"Don't have enough metal to bolt that onto...? You have a welder; make the metal."~ old man Belmore

Blade renovations outta the way now and time to start looking at the next big task.....little stuff gets fixed all the time of course and not even worth the mention.

3 yard scoop with a very bent gooseneck that needs a complete rework as the crossbeam it's fastened to is a piss weak 7" box made from lengths of 4x3" unequal angle stitched together.  Replacement will be a very heavy walled almost square section I beam with the open sides filled with 3/8" plate.....bend that you bastards ! 
You can see how the gooseneck doesn't line up with the top of the bin and it looks like some twit has buried the cutting edge and then tried to lift it up with the 3pt linkage instead of backing up before he/she/twit did. 

We got this for free from a buddy that had great plans for it but did bugger all with it so it's worth spending a bitta time turning it into something usable. It also has a hydraulically driven chain elevator using long link snig chain and the sprockets that drive it are also worse for wear.

Anyways you should get the idea of this project in yella looking through/past my homemade extension boom pump in the foreground....it won't be a 5 min job that's for sure but will allow me to crank up the 400A welder some rather than trying to prevent blowing hole in piss thin steel. Progress pics sure to follow. 

[beanflying]

So I was able to buy a small bottle of Denatured Alcohol and there was pure IPA on the shelf Late on a Saturday afternoon in Country Oz at the Hardware Shop and most importantly Peak TP appears to have passed  along with whatever verbal social media diarrhea caused it. 

Still hoping the hoarders Garages burn to the ground or the stacks topple over on top of them

[tggzzz]

hmmmm, my usual image posting toolchain seems to have suffered "improvements" tonight, anybody else having to click through to get those?

The first image is from the browser I usually use, which uses noscript to avoid adverts and more serious annoyances.

The second image is from a more plain-vanilla browser, and it still looks crap.

Solution: attach the images to your posts, so we aren't dependent on the continuing business model of random websites (photobucket anybody!).

[tggzzz]

Sorry... didn't mean to put ya on the spot there. It's just frustrating to find everything you thought you knew about something like this was wrong, but still not be able to find out what is the right answer. 

No problems!

[bd139]

Definitely done with amateur radio. Radcom just turned up and went straight in the recycling after rolling my eyes at the "VDSL interference" text block on the front page

[mansaxel]

hmmmm, my usual image posting toolchain seems to have suffered "improvements" tonight, anybody else having to click through to get those?

I had to enable javascript execution for imgur.com to even see that there was something. My site sanitizer plugin (µMatrix) does not look upon such frivolities with anything even remotely approaching approval unless its properly kicked somewhere it hurts, and rightly so.

If I ever cause such, please direct the kick at me, instead of blindly allowing even blinder javascript includers (aka UX people) from forcing your poor browser to execute excrement form the cesspools of the Internets.

Not that I'm angry or anything, just a tad annoyed

[bd139]

Yeah sorry about that. This one is my doing 

[mansaxel]

Definitely done with amateur radio. Radcom just turned up and went straight in the recycling after rolling my eyes at the "VDSL interference" text block on the front page

Our equivalent over here has had a long and pretty serious article on EMC, co-written by some clued amateurs, the interference hunters at Elsäkerhetsverket (Electrical Safety Authority) and the technical manager of the local utility company where they went on a hunt and found a couple of isolators on a utility pole intermittently drenching the entire HF band in crap.

[nixiefreqq]

confess to being an old geezer, and it took me a month to get discord working on this thinkpad yoga 11.

was just informed it will be necessary to load zoom in order to attend a local planning commission meeting.


will it be painful?  any advice?



ps   am thinking of changing my online name to "the commish".......or maybe "rufus t firefly"

[bd139]

Definitely done with amateur radio. Radcom just turned up and went straight in the recycling after rolling my eyes at the "VDSL interference" text block on the front page

Our equivalent over here has had a long and pretty serious article on EMC, co-written by some clued amateurs, the interference hunters at Elsäkerhetsverket (Electrical Safety Authority) and the technical manager of the local utility company where they went on a hunt and found a couple of isolators on a utility pole intermittently drenching the entire HF band in crap.

Now that's reasoned. All we get usually is some old luddites whining about all technological progression causing QRM on 80m so they can't exchange weekly ailment reports/

I've invented a new RST scale for this

R = Racism
S = Sickness
T = Thanatophobia

was just informed it will be necessary to load zoom in order to attend a local planning commission meeting.

will it be painful?  any advice?

Zoom is pretty painless. We use it for school / work here despite the security panic going on around it at the moment. Just hit https://zoom.us ... go to "join a meeting" and follow the instructions. Alternatively you will probably be sent a link to click that'll do it all magically.

[nixiefreqq]

Definitely done with amateur radio. Radcom just turned up and went straight in the recycling after rolling my eyes at the "VDSL interference" text block on the front page

Our equivalent over here has had a long and pretty serious article on EMC, co-written by some clued amateurs, the interference hunters at Elsäkerhetsverket (Electrical Safety Authority) and the technical manager of the local utility company where they went on a hunt and found a couple of isolators on a utility pole intermittently drenching the entire HF band in crap.

Now that's reasoned. All we get usually is some old luddites whining about all technological progression causing QRM on 80m so they can't exchange weekly ailment reports/

I've invented a new RST scale for this

R = Racism
S = Sickness
T = Thanatophobia

was just informed it will be necessary to load zoom in order to attend a local planning commission meeting.

will it be painful?  any advice?

Zoom is pretty painless. We use it for school / work here despite the security panic going on around it at the moment. Just hit https://zoom.us ... go to "join a meeting" and follow the instructions. Alternatively you will probably be sent a link to click that'll do it all magically.

thanks!

after xmas let my subscription to arrl and qst lapse after 34 years.  how many articles do you need to read about building a 2m jpole?

[Specmaster]

@beanflying Yeah its much the same over here now, most shops have reasonable stocks of TP. The main problem now is the social distancing with all the big shops imposing strict numbers of shoppers in the store at any time and the huge great queues everywhere waiting for your turn to enter the shop, it turns a shopping spree into half a day event now.

[beanflying]

Bit disappointing locally with some treating it like a social outing with the family with kids in tow. People stopping to chat in the isles or carparks. Locally we only have 5 confirmed cases in 30,000 but it seems the less venerable's care factor is reducing quickly

[med6753]

Definitely done with amateur radio. Radcom just turned up and went straight in the recycling after rolling my eyes at the "VDSL interference" text block on the front page

So they drank the kool-aid?  Oh well, what can you do? 

File under today's  While highly unusual this is not unheard of for Mid-April. Wake up this morning to this surprise. The grass is already green (in fact needs first mow), the flowers blooming, the trees budding. And we get this.  It will warm up today and it will be gone. It's not even pretty. It just makes a mess. 

   

[med6753]

@beanflying Yeah its much the same over here now, most shops have reasonable stocks of TP. The main problem now is the social distancing with all the big shops imposing strict numbers of shoppers in the store at any time and the huge great queues everywhere waiting for your turn to enter the shop, it turns a shopping spree into half a day event now.

Starting yesterday in New York State wearing a mask in public is now mandatory. However, there's no "penalty" or fine if law enforcement catches you without one.

[BU508A]

Definitely done with amateur radio. Radcom just turned up and went straight in the recycling after rolling my eyes at the "VDSL interference" text block on the front page

So they drank the kool-aid?  Oh well, what can you do? 

File under today's  While highly unusual this is not unheard of for Mid-April. Wake up this morning to this surprise. The grass is already green (in fact needs first mow), the flowers blooming, the trees budding. And we get this.  It will warm up today and it will be gone. It's not even pretty. It just makes a mess. 

I'm realy jealous about this. We have here sunshine for weeks and this is a real pita imnsho.   

[med6753]

You want this? Come and get it. I'll take your sunshine. 

Shit....it just started snowing again. 

[Kosmic]

You want this? Come and get it. I'll take your sunshine. 

Shit....it just started snowing again. 

Nice sunshine and the snow is nowhere to be found over here 

[BU508A]

You want this? Come and get it. I'll take your sunshine. 

Shit....it just started snowing again. 

Really, if I could, I'd really do it. If it doesn't rain in spring, the summer will become a nightmare. Just look what happened in Down Under.

[bd139]

Some quick fun 



(deleting comments is rate limited for ref which is why you have to spread them out )

[med6753]

You want this? Come and get it. I'll take your sunshine. 

Shit....it just started snowing again. 

Really, if I could, I'd really do it. If it doesn't rain in spring, the summer will become a nightmare. Just look what happened in Down Under.

We have had a very wet Spring so don't expect any issues over the Summer.

[bd139]

The only thing that worries me about the summer is a bit of sun turns everyone into lunatics.

Finally got some TE on the watch list!!!