Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

I'll leave bd to comment...

"The Radio Society of Great Britain, working in partnership with the NHS, has launched a new campaign called “Get on the air to care” to support the emotional health and wellbeing of 75,000 licensed UK radio amateurs – just some of the 3,000,000 worldwide."

You really know how to set me off don't you 

I'll leave it as per earlier, the usual 599 RST should stand for Racism, Sickness and Thanatophobia instead of Readability, Strength and Tone

It's funny. Now while the hams over here may look the same (filthy hobos in need of a bath) I don't get the impression that they suffer from the same phobias as yours. On the other hand....the 11 meter (CB) crowd? Definitely. 100X. 

[bd139]

Aye that's only because CB is dead here so they're all on 2m (not all licensed!) instead 

[mnementh]

Well, that was a fun evening.

SWMBO was in the mood to do toasted sandwiches tonight - and about a third of the way through the cooking, there came a plaintive cry from the kitchen ... the sandwich maker had died.

This poor thing was purchased in the 80's and I've kept it going.  This is the fourth repair I've done on the thing.  Problem was simple enough - thermal fuse had gone.  Just so happens I have suitable replacements in my component stash.  What I didn't have were suitable crimp connectors, so I had to "refurbish" the old ones with a drill bit that was too small for the chuck.  Found a good use for a piece of the centre conductor of 75 ohm coax.

The worst part of this was the oily residue that had accumulated inside the bottom cover.  That was gross and it was everywhere.  I gave that job to SWMBO.  My share was cleaning the wires that had been covered in it.

Anyway, new thermal fuse installed, unit reassembled, cooking completed and household fed.  Good for another 10 years!!  (Sorry - no pics.  They didn't rate in the list of priorities, sadly.)


Now I have to clean up the hurried mess created trying to complete an ad-hoc, top priority repair on a desk that was already in the middle of multiple other tasks.  Good grief ... how do I ever get stuff done in this pig-sty?!!   

That... is one of my favorite things about this Ender 3 clone; it is JUST THE RIGHT SIZE. Big enough to print useful things, but small & light enough (and everything is integrated, even the filament) that you can easily unplug it, pick it up and move it to another table or the closet when you need to space it occupies. And it has this convenient built-in carry handle. 

Had to go to local pharmacy to pick up my scripts. It's like an episode of the Twilight Zone out there. Everyone in masks. Stores now have plexiglass barriers or clear plastic strips hanging at the registers. Tick marks on the floor spaced 6 feet. Roads empty of traffic.

Freaking weird. 

Seriously...? This is just now happening down there..?!?  Been that way up here for almost 2 months now. No wonder y'all have more confirmed deaths than we have confirmed cases nationwide. (even considering population density, it is obvious that medically necessary response from your leadership has been abysmal)

[rant mode] Hold your Congress responsible; these bastards have no excuses, they've had unfettered control for 4 years now. Instead of "Making America Great Again" they're "Making America a (mass) Grave... Again." 

This is literally the most anticipated medical catastrophe in the last 100 years; the medical community and scientists have been warning us that it was coming since the 90s. Just like Hurricane Katrina and Andrew before that.

Science is NOT a "Anti-Corporate Conspiracy" and "Business As Usual" will be the end of us all. [/rant mode]

mnem
* currently fettling with Bits O' 3DP *

[med6753]

Aye that's only because CB is dead here so they're all on 2m (not all licensed!) instead 

I see. Makes sense. But it has been a LONG time since I monitored 2m so there's that possibility it's the same here.

[bitseeker]

No time for TE for a few days. Unfortunately my father-in-law passed away last night (due to covid-19) and I walked into a shit show at work that's going to last days today 

Oh, no! Sorry to hear, bd.

[mnementh]

a new swinging needle hp 400e arrived this week.  (because of oculus inspired jealousy)   (SNIP)  do i need any more analog hp voltmeters?   nope.

will that stop you from buying the next one that crosses your RADAR?   nope.

Aye that's only because CB is dead here so they're all on 2m (not all licensed!) instead 

I see. Makes sense. But it has been a LONG time since I monitored 2m so there's that possibility it's the same here.

Just look at the green-teeth slobbering slack-jawed yutzes you have to wade through all over yoobToob when you search out anything related to any model of 'feng. It's patently obvious they all migrated there from Children's Band.

mnem
*fettle-fettle*

[med6753]

a new swinging needle hp 400e arrived this week.  (because of oculus inspired jealousy)   (SNIP)  do i need any more analog hp voltmeters?   nope.

will that stop you from buying the next one that crosses your RADAR?   nope.

Aye that's only because CB is dead here so they're all on 2m (not all licensed!) instead 

I see. Makes sense. But it has been a LONG time since I monitored 2m so there's that possibility it's the same here.

Just look at the green-teeth slobbering slack-jawed yutzes you have to wade through all over yoobToob when you search out anything related to any model of 'feng. It's patently obvious they all migrated there from Children's Band.

mnem
*fettle-fettle*

I have no interest in the Baofeng HT's so I haven't entered that swamp.     

[WastelandTek]

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!).

sigh, yeah...it used to just work, one more thing to do

[nixiefreqq]

a new swinging needle hp 400e arrived this week.  (because of oculus inspired jealousy)   (SNIP)  do i need any more analog hp voltmeters?   nope.

will that stop you from buying the next one that crosses your RADAR?   nope.

not a chance.  well........maybe one in a million.

[AVGresponding]

Dammit, I need to move to somewhere with cheaper shipping from the US   

How can no-one be bidding on this? It's beauuuuutifulllll     https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-3437A-System-Voltmeter/264698971453


This is either very overpriced, or I'm missing something important...  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-3581A-Wave-Analyzer-15-Hz-to-50-kHz/402199513994


This is just very overpriced:  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Thurlby-Thandar-TG102-2MHz-Function-Generator/254571881816

[bd139]

I got outbit on one of those HP system voltmeters last year.

Not paying £211 for postage 

Also £195 for that POS TG102. Horrible things. Almost always knackered switches.

[tggzzz]

I'll leave bd to comment...

"The Radio Society of Great Britain, working in partnership with the NHS, has launched a new campaign called “Get on the air to care” to support the emotional health and wellbeing of 75,000 licensed UK radio amateurs – just some of the 3,000,000 worldwide."

You really know how to set me off don't you 

All I did was follow the flashing arrows to the bullseye you have painted on your posterior

[AVGresponding]

I got outbit on one of those HP system voltmeters last year.

Not paying £211 for postage 

Also £195 for that POS TG102. Horrible things. Almost always knackered switches.

Yeah, mad crazy postage, that. Make it fifty bar and I'd bite in an instant.   

Clearly the fg seller wants to be in the "10x overpriced club" that too many oscilloscopes end up in.

@Specmaster, fugging pdf is too big, even compressed. I'll have to post each page as a .jpg   

[tautech]

......................
One thing I learned on that build... suck it up & put up with the weight of proper welding gear; none of that "Oh, I'll just wear my apron & rancher's gloves" stupidity.  "Welder's sunburn" happens a lot quicker than you think at those currents... and you best be wearing a #12 or #13 lens (or equivalent auto-helmet), or you're gonna wake up next morning feeling like somebody poured sand in your eyes. 

What's it; end of summer there? You may want to wait until it's closer to the "brisk cool" of fall; if y'all get that kind of season over there in Kiwiland... 

mnem
*tzzzt... tzzzzzt... tzzzzzzzzzt-tzzzzt...*

Oh yeah, done enough over the years to have had a dose of the most unpleasant arc eye and several doses of welder sunburn !
Worst is sitting welding and wearing baggy shorts and before you know it the lily white tender flesh up near the nether regions has turned pink !  and ouch !
Requests to her indoors to rub it better return ....self inflicted, no sympathy !  Well you have to try ! 

Autumn here but only the odd day is cool enough to donn heavy protective gears but at least the fire risk around the shed is gone so the cutting torch will see some light of day and with the helmet on you're now not always sniffing for the clues you've set the place on fire !
Got an auto darkening helmet now but although it was a cheap one the fixed lense one never get used now as auto helmets are my new awesome. 

[AVGresponding]

Well, every cloud and all that... scored 4 9.6V 2500mAh NiCd packs from frogeyes (type of emergency light), 3 look good, and two 300VA 240V pri, 12V sec toroidals (one slightly baked) from the site we're building the temporary morgue.
Also a couple of single point LED em fittings, LiIon rechargeables in them are toast, but they're pretty high output and the diffuser/lens
 on them is a good corridor pattern.
Might be able to find a few more; most have been removed, but there are some more difficult to access places where they're still in.

The site is a recently decommissioned leisure centre, and in fact if they'd waited about 3 weeks, we'd still have mains.

As it is we're having to fit new boards and cables, since we can't trust anything existing due to vandalism etc. And powering it off diesel gennies...  I go to sleep each night with a nasty cough and the stink of diesel exhaust in my nostrils, despite changing clothes etc.
These little gennies are only 6kVA, temps while we get wired, and then the nice folks at Aggreko are bringing us a proper containerised 300kVA jobby.

The effing retards that "manage" us have really been pissing me off. Big list of extra PPE and procedures for preventing the spread of COVID-19 while we are building this shit, which they promptly invalidate by not providing enough welfare to maintain "social distancing", not supplying soap, hand sanitiser, or paper towels.
But we have a crap-ton of masks, gloves, and paper suits (which no-one uses). They even got some special red paper suits, hard-hats with full face shields and told us to wear them. We told them to fuck off.
The local medical bigwigs came to see how we are doing with their new facility, and just laughed like I did when they saw what the management were trying to get us to wear.
It's not ebola ffs...  "it has the same effects" was the reply I got when I said this. At this point, I realised the only brain cells in the room were mine, and stopped bothering.

Next event of them pissing in our faces and telling us it's raining came when we were told that our other sites would be reopening next week.
Are these "essential"? No. Will we be going back to work? No. We will take furlough, and tell them to "gfy".

/rant

@Specmaster, even trimming off blank and non-essential pages, there's 28, so two posts needed...

[AVGresponding]

4503 service manual part 2   

[Specmaster]

@AVGrespondingm regarding the TG102, that is stupidly high price, I paid considerably less than that for a mint TG120 (£40) 2 years ago.

[AVGresponding]

@AVGrespondingm regarding the TG102, that is stupidly high price, I paid considerably less than that for a mint TG120 (£40) 2 years ago.

Forty bar is what I paid for my Black Star Jupiter 2000. It was a purely emotional purchase, as I'd used one back in my workshop engineer days back in the 90s.
In practice, it's an hilariously wobbly signal source, but at least it has the same case design as my other Black Star and Thurlby stuff.
I just need to remember to not turn it on, and spoil the illusion!   

[bd139]

Jupiter 2000 was the FG I took to university with me. I was the only one with a lab in the halls 

[Specmaster]

Jupiter 2000 was the FG I took to university with me. I was the only one with a lab in the halls 

And you used your privileged position to torture some poor little unsuspecting capacitors into total submission didn't you 

Holy shit balls it's Saturday and I totally forgot Discord session, I was so engrossed to fathom out this 4503 which is still coursing problems with calibration and drifting 

[tautech]

Holy shit balls it's Saturday and I totally forgot Discord session, ......

Limey slacker ! 

[beanflying]

 

[mnementh]

I just got back from the Px and the grocery; peeked in to hear Pat & Saskia gabbling about old vs new DSOs and found FireFlump didn't wanna talk to my mic, so I bailed. meh.

mnem
*toddles off to go walkies with the kiddles*

[tautech]

Bit early for you Bean ? Know where you might find a good coffee ?

[Specmaster]

I just got back from the Px and the grocery; peeked in to hear Pat & Saskia gabbling about old vs new DSOs and found FireFlump didn't wanna talk to my mic, so I bailed. meh.

mnem
*toddles off to go walkies with the kiddles*

Sometimes it might be just like the forum itself, topics that you feel you can contribute to and other times something that dosen't float your boat and thus can add basically very little if anything to the discussion