A Sudden Change Of Track

 Well, those of you who do follow my occasional bloggings will possibly be confused by the sudden change of title and bio! This is to reflect two things - Firstly, this is now the combined blog and any and all things will be in here. The Zaks Garden, Long Distance Walking blogs etc, will not be updated. Secondly, it reflects the huge life changes that i am currently undertaking - some willingly, others most definitely not asked for!

Rest assured, along with the more serious archiving of my day to day experiences and thoughts on these matters, there will still be plenty of random guff, details of faults and repairs, pics of chickens, and all the usual crackers rubbish you've come to expect!

So, whats all this about life changes? Well this last month has been a real crippler. First off, at the realization that my current job after 16 years, with the last likely major infrastructure project coming to an end, was something I could no longer hold any enthusiasm for, in fact, was beginning to actually loath, along with turning 45 and the thought that unless I break away and push myself out of this comfortable, slow but stressful situation and go after my ambitions, I was going to be stuck until the end of my career resetting GPRS comms fails and bemoaning the loss of the good old days of Black and Syncs, it was time to move on. 

Actually, although not impacted this year, its possible the current restructuring would have me out the door with nowhere to go within the next two years anyway! So, a little while ago, I started the ball rolling on a major career change...

...and applied for Teacher Training! I am now one of the 2021 cohort with White Rose Alliance, my DBS clearance complete, student finance arranged, bursary applied for. I wont say "all set to start in September" as that would imply I felt ready! I will say starting in September, and working towards being if not actually ready, then at ease with the prospect!

So, having finally been able to click that tempting "resign" button in Oracle HCM, I leave behind a 21 year career in Public Safety Radio (DTELS/ntl), and Terrestrial Broadcasting (Arqiva) at the end of July. No more weekend shifts*, no more 12h nights! Maybe i'll now be able to again know both which day it is and what date it is! This is a quite staggering leap though. Since leaving college with an OND in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, some 26 years ago, i've been employed continuously in engineering, ive only worn a tie for interviews, and a full suit for weddings and funerals! I now find I have to dress professionally, can no longer shave just once a week, and probably far more critically, can no longer use expletives as punctuation in conversation! (now thats going to take some getting used to!). I also have the prospect of suddenly dropping from the heights of 20% shift allowance pay monthly, to loans and bursary, paid in three installments, and considerably less in total!

Leaving at the end of the month gives me August to study and improve my subject knowledge. Oh, by the way, my specialism is to be Chemistry, though I suspect general sciences will be more core. However, I dont have much time even then! as August is rapidly filling up with voluntary work in school, charity walks, and a family holiday.

Ive already had cause to perform some deep personal reflection as a result of taking this chance. At yesterdays Induction meeting, I made rather an appalling faux pas during an 'apple throwing game', failing to recall and correctly handle an item of prior but critical information when put under pressure. No actual harm done, but it was quite upsetting for me to fail in such a way.

Personal reflection brings me neatly to the next matter, and why this month has been so bad for me. At the start of the month, I received, or perhaps should say obtained, some deeply personal and horrifically hurtful news. I dont wish to go into detail, suffice to say, my entire world view, emotional stability and core beliefs have been shattered. A month on, and im  essentially an emotional write-off. Some of this may come out occasionally in my writings. This isnt the sort of thing that will go away after a short while either, recovering from this may take me months, years, perhaps never. It could lead me into a whole new life direction.

Add then, the disruption to an expensive fence contract for over a week due to a dispute with the neighbours what resulted in having to be inspected by the local police wildlife officer; the failure of the £50 central heating pump which due to being for some bizarre reason buried in the kitchen floor has resulted in a £4000 new boiler; needing to swap the Buck Converter feeding my dashcams due to the old ones EMC failure wiping out the broadcast radio (so more upside down soldering in the passenger footwell); and the failure of the car boot to lock - that solenoid changed last time was siezed - its been a bit of a mixed month for me really.

So what now? Well, probably not every day, but i'll document on here how this all progresses. Some things, like how the training is going, might be detailed but moany. Others, might by necessity be vague and ponderous, but might help my overcome some issues, or at least make sense of them.

Changes to the BOINC farm

 Playing around with my old Samsung Galaxy S7 today to finally put it into the BOINC farm. Tests with it and the old Ace J5 running via a USB hub showed poor results - the hub simply doesnt pass enough current. It was at this stage I noticed that the J5s battery was badly swollen.

As luck would have it, I knew I had a spare Buck converter. So, the J5 is now powered directly from the 12V shack PSU via a DC-DC Buck converter and a pair of sensing resistors, same as the old dog currently direct powered. 

That makes 8 CPU cores running 24/7 under direct power, and a further 8 cores running 24/7 on USB on the S7.

At some stage of course the S7's battery will start to fail, and so another Buck converter will be needed. It makes sense then to now start looking at ways to make a much tidier job of the farm, and design a suitable mount to hold the devices, their regulators, and a dedicated SMPSU.

The only other awkward thing is working out which device is which on the BOINC stats pages!

Bugger - Always read the small print!

 Ordered the U10 MCP9801 temperature sensor IC for my mcHF transceiver. Arrived today, fair enough it was only coming from the next big town across, but still pretty quick all things considered. So, I thought i'd solder it in tonight.

Its at this point I realise that the chip ive ordered, is not the 8-SOIC SMD unit that fits the boards and that is just about within my soldering capability - but a damn 8MSOP package, otherwise known as a fleck of muck with legs.

OK, so it is the same device electrically, but theres no way im ever going to be able to fit the thing! So, the correct 8-SOIC unit is now ordered, at a few pence more cost, from the exact same supplier. Probably not even worth the hassle of trying to send it back!

mcHF Build Progress

 Ive not done much updating on this project, but it is coming along.

I now have the LPF toroids wound and installed, going by the specified number of turns. There is a lot of info out there about these, and much of it seems contradictory. No matter, i'll see how the transmit performs per band and if needed will adjust these coils later.

One problem I had was how to mount the static discharge neon lamp. I didnt like the idea that some had used of milling out the shielding plate and putting it on the 'wrong' side of the board, but also wanted the BNC rather than SMA RF connection. So, I carefully cut away some of the plastic body of the BNC in order to be able to solder the neon bulb in place.

As luck would have it, I discovered that the supplied enameled wire is self-fluxing, which makes it a lot easier to do a reliable joint.

Another trick ive used is to solder the nuts onto the tabs of the TO-220 power transistors and regulators. This makes them captive, and so removes a very tricky step in trying to hold the nut, and transistor, in alignment with a hole inside the case, while the screws are inserted!

And, so far, this below is my progress. All the sockets, switches, encoders, the LEDs, TFT display, latching relays, and LPF toroids are fitted. I decided to solder the display direct. Hopefully that doesnt turn out to be a mistake later!

 I still have the transformers to wind, the VSWR bridge to build, and the power semiconductors to install. I intend installing the temperature sensor for the oscillator, thats on order and should be here in a few days. A small bridge of copper will link it to the oscillator package for best temperature monitoring. I also dont wish to remove metal from the shielding plate, so one of the 220uF 16V SMT electrolytics will have to be replaced, ideally if I can find one on a surplus board or in my SMD stock, with an equivalent in the little square tantalum packages.

Ive already had the ferrite cores out of the bag and given them a good going over with a sanding block to remove any sharp edges, which are notorious for cutting into the enameled wire and causing shorted turns. I also need to look at and if required make the modification to the wiring on the PCB for the VSWR bridge, where I believe one of the windings is connected in the wrong place. This is a design flaw but should be simple to correct.

So far, apart from the lack of a fixed, standard build manual for the version, ive only noticed one gripe - it doesnt have enough LPF and BPF sections! Meaning its lower frequency limit is about 2MHz without excessive harmonics. I appreciate its designed to be very compact, but we have access to 10 amateur bands, so just 4 sets of filters is insufficient really.  5 or 6 sets of filters would have been much better, in my opinion.

Either way though, im looking forward to being in a position to try it out!

Toms 2nd Clock Project

 After the success of Toms first little Chinese clock kit, this week we moved on to the second. This is the SH-E 879 kit. A somewhat bigger PCB than the last one, 6 digits, and battery back-up, plus an on-board 5V regulator.

We spread the build over several days, tying it in to his home schooling. Each part of the build including me explaining what the component is and does, and why. Starting as always, with the least heat sensitive parts. We had a slight problem when one of the oscillator load capacitors pushed its PCB pad up, so that section of track had to be linked out.

Tom knows that I insist on a specific orientation of parts to ensure component values can be easily read. He managed to put two resistors in the wrong way, but electrically this doesnt matter so ive let him off!

And so today, he completed the build, I checked the soldering for dry joints, missing joints, jumps and splashes. All looked good.

And - it didnt work!

We spent ages trying to find anything amiss. In the end, Tom left me to fault find. After quite some time, I discovered that one out of the four 3mm LEDs, actually fits the opposite way to all the others! After changing this around, and repairing the now broken track that it connected to, I had the four LEDs lit. But still no clock function! The microcontroller Vcc pin voltage was correct, the ground pin had continuity to ground, all the bus pins showed expected voltages, even the clock pins looked right! I was about to break out the 'scope, when I thought to check how the chips reset line operated. It turns out reset on this is active high, rather than low as is usual. So for the processor to run, the reset line should be low, which it was. The microcontroller was in fact the only component that Tom didnt install - I fitted it due to the risk of bending the pins...

...I decided to pull the chip - oh, bugger! Guess which one and only leg had got bent under? Yep, the bloody reset pin!

So now, after fixing my own cock-up, its working. We havent yet played with the one and only button to find out how to set it. Two things im unhappy with though - 1, for some reason there is a 10k resistor over the diode that feeds the back-up battery onto the Vcc rail, this looks like some sort of charging attempt, but the coin cell is non-rechargeable. I wasnt going to fit this resistor, and only did so just in case I was missing something in the fault finding! I'll likely remove it later. And 2, the four 3mm LEDs are far too bright! They are current limited by a 470 ohm resistor, I think maybe 1k or so would be more sensible, and reduce the current draw a little as well.

But on the whole, another successful kit build by Tom.

RH Electronics Arduino Geiger Counter - Testing

 A few notes on this kit. I had hoped that it might be operable at 3V, but a test of this showed it doesnt. The LCD backlight works, and the unit generates a series of three bleeps as if starting, but there is no display. There is HV to the G-M tube, so it looks like its maybe just on the edge. Perhaps 3xAA to provide a 4.5V supply would work.

Anyway, I found out a USB power bank that was actually charged, and connected it up. To do so I had to piggyback the Geiger Counter onto the power terminals of a little digital clock kit that the power bank was connected to. But the kit powered up successfully, displayed its start up splash message, and went to work.

I have connected it up to my spare BOI-33 G-M tube using 1/4inch fuse clips. This is equivalent to the perennial SBM-20 tube.  My test source is  my trusty old WW2 radium faced pocket watch. The kits red led lights at a count rate above 50 CPS (counts per second), while the blue one flashes for each detected pulse. The top button when held switches between CPS and the bargraph display, and the uSv/h (microsieverts per hour) and CPM (counts per minute) display. The bottom button mutes/unmutes the sounder.

Two video clips show both display modes in action.

So, what next? Well, decide on a case for it, decide which tube (s) to build into the case, how to switch between them, what battery supply to provide (this means testing the 4.5v 3xAA or 3xAAA option, and possibly doing the 78L05 mod), what sort of connector to use for the interface output (9-way D type? Or 3.5mm stereo jack?) and what connector to use for an external probe. I probably wont put a switch for the HV voltage, as all my tubes work on 400V except one, and this kit cant provide the 1.6kV for that one!

On the whole, its been a pleasant build, and its a nice little kit. I would say its a tad overpriced, and the lack of an on-board regulator is a poor oversight. Suggested improvements for the manufacturer -  Add an on-board regulator, make the component pitch fit better (maybe it needs a couple of extra mm of board space!), include the proper battery connector, and move to a Molex type connection for the HV rather than the screw terminal, and add a brightness control preset for the LCD. Oh, and add an option to display the PWM values and measured HV voltage.

Update! - Ive had chance to test using a 4.5V supply. Rigged up with 3x AA cells in a 4x AA holder (one place shorted out with a croc clip jumper), the Geiger Counter works flawlessly. Depending on the current drawn, most of which will be for the LCD back-light (so modifying it to have a variable resistor to set the brightness is sensible) i have no doubt it will also work perfectly well on 3x AAA, which is not only a heck of a lot cheaper than a PP3, but easy enough to fit in a case.

Testing again with 3V, the issue is not with the counter itself, which by the flickering LED and rapid clicking, works fine at 3V (the ATMEGA328 microcontroller can go down to 1.8V) but with the HD44780 LCD driver ICs, which need more than 3.3V to run.

RH Electronics Arduino Geiger Counter - Build

 With not being at work today, only supervising my youngests home schooling, and needing something to relax me and take my mind off other worries, Ive had time to build the RH Electronics Geiger kit.

I will discuss a few issues ive found with it in due course.

The first task was to solder the connections between the main board and the LCD board. To do this, I decided which side to put the pins on, put the connectors together, sandwiched them between the two PCBs, fastened the boards together with the pair of stand-offs supplied, and soldered them in. This meant that I could then remove the screws, and separate the two boards, with the connectors now in perfect alignment. Note that there are four unused pads on the LCD board, and three pads below on the main board - dont connect these together!

Now, with the boards separated and the LCD safely back in the box, the resistors were installed. Here I found the first bugbear - the spacing between the holes is very tight with the size resistors supplied. This wasnt a big problem with the low voltage side, but the HV 10Mohm resistors are even bigger, and had to be installed as you can see in the photo below. Ive 'zig-zagged' the measurement chain resistors to help them fit more neatly and to offset the nearby bare metal leads.

While fitting the resistors another pet hate came to show itself - most of the silk-screen part numbers get covered up by the components! There is a layout diagram available to download, but I still personally dont like it. Also, why the diagonal parts? I can only think that this was done for some aesthetic rather than electrical reason!

Next up were the right-angled header pins, which allow for 5V supply connection and the TTL interface lines, and also the 400/500V selection jumper. Along with those, the IC DIL socket, push buttons, and clock crystal were fitted at this stage.

With the build coming along nicely, time for the ceramic capacitors. Here I found that the pitch of the holes on the PCB was much smaller than the pitch of the preformed leads on most of the supplied capacitors! All but the two 22pF for the crystal required their leads reforming to fit, an annoying and fiddly task that shouldnt have been necessary if the correct pitch parts had been supplied.

And with the ceramics fitted, next went in the electrolytics (note that the polarity symbol on the PCB is tiny!) and the inductor. The inductor needs its leads bending at a right angle so that it can lay flush to the board, as shown.

At this point - i stopped for lunch! (beans and sausages on toast, if anyones interested).

So, after lunch, the semiconductors were installed. Three transistors and three diodes. One of the transistors is a high voltage MPSA44 which drives the inductor to generate a high voltage pulse, which is then multiplied by the diodes. Here also, it was found that the pitch was insufficient for the diodes to be mounted flush, and so these are also positioned vertically.

Almost done! The two LEDs, one red, one blue, but both unlabelled and clear cases! Luckily my multimeters diode test function is capable of lighting LEDs, otherwise I would have had to find out my LED tester! I decided to mount these a little proud of the board. The buzzer and the screw terminal for the G-M tube connection went on next, and then finally the high voltage capacitors.

After a careful inspection of the board and my solder work, I decided I was happy with it and would now insert the microcontroller. Several rounds of check and recheck here to be absolutely certain it went in the right way around, and that no pins got bent under.

Now, there is space and pads for a battery connector, but no pins or socket supplied. So one was found out from my stock of components. Its a bit of a tight fit, such that it couldnt be disconnected with the LCD board fitted.

Here though is my big disappointment with the design - there are ample connections for ground and 5V on the header pins, so why have a 'battery' connection? 5V batteries are not exactly common! There is ample space on the board, and in fact already suitable filtering and bypass capacitors, for a 78L05 regulator to have been built in! That would have made the 'battery' connection a much more practical 7 to 30V battery input! (I wouldnt recommend running one at 30V though, it will get rather warm! But a 9V PP3 or a 12V supply would have been great for the sake of a single extra TO92 package!). I will probably make this a modification once the unit has been thoroughly tested.

Another modification i may make, is to make up a ribbon cable for the LCD. As it is, the unit is small but chunky, which might make fitting it into a suitable case for portable use tricky. Likewise, when in a case, the LEDs will have to be moved off board. The buttons of course can just be paralleled with a pair chassis mounted.

Because the G-M tube connection is by a screw terminal, whose screws are hidden under the LCD board, I have only carried out a basic functionality test so far.

 Details of testing and results will be in the next post!

RH Electronics Arduino Geiger Counter

 Feeling a little flush (this being before I was suddenly hit with an expensive DEFRA poultry housing order!) and really not liking doing my own coding, I decided i'd give the RH Electronics Arduino IDE Geiger Counter kit a try. ( https://rhelectronics.net/store/arduino-ide-geiger-counter-dosimeter-diy-kit-with-lcd.html ).

I placed the order for this on the 10th of December. Coming from Isreal, the package arrived on the 4th January.

The shipping label clearly shows that it was dispatched on the 12th, so considering the Christmas period and all the other disruption to postal services at the moment, I dont think thats bad going.

Inside the box, which was well sealed, the kit itself was securely shrouded in bubble wrap, and although there are no detailed instructions for the build, the included schematic is clear and relatively easy to understand. Its perhaps not a beginners kit as it stands, as putting it together does require a reasonable knowledge of the components and how to read the schematic.

The actual electronics package of the kit consists of the LCD module in its own wrapping, and all the other parts in a small self-seal bag. There is hardware supplied for mounting the LCD. Not supplied is a G-M tube or mounting hardware for it. A G-M tube could easily double the cost of the kit! The LEDs and buttons are PCB mounted - these will have to be reworked when the unit is fitted into a case. 

The circuit also runs on 5V and there is no on-board regulator. Personally I think this is a bad oversight by the designer, and a low drop out 5V regulator should have been included. I will see if the unit will run reliably on 3-4.5V (2 or 3 AA cells), if not then I will modify it with a 5V regulator for a 9V PP3 battery.

The circuit uses a clever PWM HT generator driven by and feedback monitored from the ATMEGA328 microcontroller, but otherwise the G-M electronics are pretty standard. All the clever stuff is done in software. LEDs and a buzzer are included for the traditional 'geiger counter' feel, and it is capable of driving 400v and 500v tubes with just a jumper change. This will work with all my tubes except the alpha tube, which requires 1600v. A header is provided for serial comms to other devices.

I plan on including a socket to connect an external tube (probably my huge STS-6), as well as the internal one(s).  With a suitable switch, I plan on installing a standard SBM-20 tube and the tiny SI-19 tube within the case.

mcHF - Making A Start

 Ive spent some time recently on just feeling my way around the physical construction of this radio. Its a very compact unit, so it makes sense to take the time to really understand how it all goes together.

Im now in a position as to confidence to make a start. Since I have been learning the construction of the case, it made sense to install the loudspeaker first, since that requires the absolute least work! But even this was a learning experience, as it taught me that there are a few of the Japanned machine screws that are just that little bit longer, and seem to be intended for mounting the power components. 

Having watched several peoples videos, read as much of the .io group files and posts as I can, and found and joined a Facebook user group, Ive got a good idea how it all fits, and a number of pitfalls. For instance, it looks as though one of the holes in the RF screen will need widening to accommodate a tall capacitor. Theres a little trickiness as well in installing the ESD protection neon lamp, as its board holes are underneath the BNC connector!

So, later, I will install the neon, the BNC, and the various connectors and switches. With these in place I will be able to see better where and if the RF screen requires adjustments!

1:48 Merlin Helicopter Build Restarts

 With so many long term projects, Ive finally pushed myself to bring out the Merlin. My boys bought me this as a present a couple of years ago now, and for various reasons it was shelved awaiting better times.

Part of the problem is with the paints. I wouldnt normally do a 1:48 scale, I much prefer 1:72, which are large enough for me, without too much fiddly detail. On a 1:48 kit, especially one of an aircraft with multiple projections (antennas, scanner optic, lamps, Pitots etc) there is an immense amount of tiny parts each with their own painting requirements. Its possible to spend a lot of money on paint to do no more than one or two brush strokes! But since it was a present from my boys, I couldnt skip anything!

Much of today has been spent doing very fine exterior parts, antennas etc, and building the tail rotor. Dozens of parts painted, assembled, installed, and apart from it now standing on its own wheels - it looks no further on!

Clocking On to Kit Building

 Two packages arrived for me today. One was my long awaited (ok, not long at all, ordered last thursday!) mcHF Transceiver kit. More, probably much more, on that later!

The other contained two items, both simple, low cost electronic project kits to build with Tom. In this case, they were the two different clock kits. Hence the post title...

As with most of these cheap Chinese kits, documentation is rather sparse, consisting of a parts list and schematic, and in the case of one of them, a layout diagram as well, plus a fare bit of 'instructions' in the form of ideograms!

But, these kits have come on in quality terms recently, now, the PCBs are generally excellent, if sometimes a little unconventional (who else has built Pixie CW transceivers with all the tracks on the same side as the components?) and the silkscreening on both boards shows not only the part number and placement, but also the value. Armed also with the schematic.... sorry, circuit diagram (im appalled with myself for the level of Yankish I find myself talking these days!) building these things is a doddle, ideal for a beginner.

On the subject of instructions, or lack thereof, we come to the mcHF. This open source (and hence much copied) Software Defined QRP HF Transceiver is of course intended to me a foundation from which modifications and developments can be made. Trouble with that of course, is that it means there is no one, single, immediately relavent set of instructions for building it!

Thta doesnt bother me really, but I am a little apprehensive as to how to be sure that some essential error correction of modification hasnt occurred that im unaware of! Much of this though is just the need for me to trawl all the available data, of which there is considerable, and find the pertinent info.

The photo above shows the mcHF kit removed from the box but not yet the rest of the packaging. One the left is the anti-static packaging containing the two PCBs. As these are pre-populated with the SMT components, I have not yet opened this up to look, and will only do so when I have them on the anti-static bench. The two packets in the center contain the 'though-hole' parts, the top pack the parts for the RF board, which comprises, hardly surprisingly for a transceiver, a heck of a lot of toroids and binocular cores to wind, plus connectors, relays and the like; the bottom pack is the parts for the User Interface (computer/AF) board, and is mostly connectors and switches. To the bottom right is the LCD display, and above right the metal case and hardware pack.

I intent to construct this sloooowly! Although there are not that many parts involved, the boards are complex, and although I expect that the pre-population should be good, my first two tasks will be to carry out a complete inventory, to ensure I have all the supplied parts, and a thorough detailed inspection of the PCBs, looking for any defects, errors, dry joints, solder splashes etc. This is not intended to detract from the kits production - i dont expect to find anything! - But with such a complex system, an hour spent with a magnifying glass ans continuity tester could easily save many many hours of confused fault finding later!

New Fence Challenge

 After serving 20years of my Arqiva sentence for crimes against communications technology, I was awarded a long service payment, which has gone almost in its entirety on the cost of materials for replacing the 30ft run of fencing alongside the patio.

I wont go into the rigmarole of actually purchasing the materials, but suffice to say i was rather miffed to be told that Wickes wouldnt deliver them because 'they are heavy', yeah no shit!

So after roping my brother in law Chris and his van into the job, im now armed with around a tonne of concrete posts, gravel boards, postcrete and fence panels.

And so the build begins! The first task, was to remove the old fence. This was made from pallet wood nailed to 3x3 posts attached to those gawd awful 'metpost' fence spikes. Most of this was rotten, so it was just case of pulling it all to bits. This was when I discovered that the previous job had been done by Randolf Scott on a rare day off, or at least by some other bloody cowboy. The post spikes had been concreted in!

Most of yesterday was used up in hammering, chiseling, pick-axing etc the block for the first post of the run. To make the job much more technically challenging, the fence runs in a narrow raised  area between a single thickness retaining wall, and a lower, panel fence owned by my neighbour - neither can risk being damaged! On top of this, the first post needed to go right at the side of the house wall.

Having eventually removed the concrete block and the post spike, and dug the hole to the required 2ft depth, the next task was to transfer, on my own, a 45kg 8ft concrete post from the drive, around the corner, down a step, to the hole. Knowing I couldnt lift the post entirely by myself, I eased it up one end at a time onto a barrow! It was then slid directly off the barrow and into the hole.

Because of the location of the house wall, I have no easy access to the other side of this post! So, the first pour of postcrete was done with the post leaning out at 45 degrees and held up on the shaft of the pickaxe. As soon as the concrete mix was in, one of the old timber posts was positioned on the other side, one on the nearside, and the concrete post pushed up into position, checked for level and plumb, and the timbers adjusted to support it.

This post will need another pour of concrete at some point, and some of the old fence planks have been cut down and placed in the hole to act as shuttering for the next pour to prevent the excessive sized hole taking up too much concrete. Exactly how im going to get it around the back, behind a 6ft high post next to a 10ft high wall, in a space only accessible from next-doors garden and then only if I remove some of their fence, well, i'll improvise that job later!

And so today, with one post in place, the job continues, in the intermittent rain, of removing the rest of these bloody awful post spikes and the concrete surrounding them!

Binoculars and other Disappointments

 Well, we finally had a clear enough night to allow me to properly test the Celestron Skywatcher 20x80 binoculars. Sadly, they have proved to be faulty.

Having worked out that to mount them on the threaded fitting of the telescopes tripod required the removal of the 70mm 'scope's OTA (Optical Tube Assembly) and the rotating of the binos onto the mount, as neither the binos threaded fitting or the tripods fitting could be actually 'screwed', i was finally in a position to take a look at some suitable astronomical targets - Mars and the Moon.

Well, the collimation error is such that the two images were out of alignment by around a third of the width of the moons image! To make things worse, this was the vertical alignment - horizontal collimation can (on older, not brand new!) binos be sorted with Conditional Alignment. Mars was two totally separate planets!

So, these are going back! I guess this is where I find out just how good the customer service at Carmarthen Cameras is!The Amazon return system only gave me a refund option, not a repair/replace, and no pre-paid shipping, so im going to be out yet another tenner (on top of the extra tenner that the bloody binos cost in the first place!) in sending them back.

Another disappointment this week was to find that my missing bottle of Zolcal-D to treat Grace for he soft shelled eggs, is clearly never going to arrive! The seller hwes-758 racked up almost 400 negative feedback in the last month alone, and most of their positives were actually complaints! They are now ive just seen no longer a registered user. I can only think that they have been running some sort of interest rate scam - hold the money until forced to refund, if you do that with enough peoples money you make on the interest, although i cant see it being an effective scam at the present bank rates! Looking at other listings for this product, it looks like they are playing this game with several user names!

So, while I await ebay refunding me (have to wait until wednesday!) I ordered it from Amazon for a couple of quid more and it arrived next day!

Automotive Wiring Is A Pain In The Arse!

 Given a normal bit of desk or rack mounted 12v powered equipment, fitting a simple fused changeover relay would take me around 5min, and that includes working out the wiring route and tying it into the loom.

Exactly the same task, but on my car? Well, after 2 hours I'd found somewhere to mount the relay, and got the control wire through the bulkhead! and thats with the wire running parallel with the already routed bloody thick high current cable for the transceiver!

The purpose of this relay is to kill power to the transceiver when the ignition is off. As it currently stands, I can easily leave the radio on without noticing, with the result that I go to set off for work after 4-5 days off, and the battery is flat!

So, a 30A relay and a suitable tap into the switched supplies is needed. A few quid. But far more hassle! First of course, I had to find a suitable switched supply! The dashcams are fed from the switched feed to the wiper motor controller, which being an 'add-a-circuit' type piggy-back fuse holder connection, actually covers up several fuse positions! Luckily, Ive found that F44, a 3A feed to the cars audio system, is accessible. An extra 100mA or so on this wont hurt, and it keeps all the audio/comms systems on the same main circuits.

Then, where to mount the relay? This needs to be close to the battery, but of course cannot be on it! The nearest available secure place I could find was a hole on the corner of the EMU housing! Turns out the aluminium housing of the EMU is floating! Neither grounded nor as best I can determine isolated! Luckily the mounting bracket of the relay is isolated, but it means a longer wire run from the relay coil to ground at the battery negative terminal.

So with this selected, the tedious and trying task of getting a guide rod through the bulkhead rubber gasket was next. The rod in question being a 1.5mm stainless steel antenna rod. Thin and flexible to do the job, but none the less a real pain when single manned. Without an assistant, it was a case of push a few centimeters, climb out the footwell, into the engine bay, look but mostly feel for the end of the rod, and repeat, until such a time as I could finally grip and pull the rod far enough to attach the wire, without damaging anything else close by - cables, hoses etc! With the single 5A wire (blue) taped to the end of the rod, and an ample estimated length payed out from the spool, came the nerve wracking task of pulling the rod back though the bulkhead into the footwell beside the fusebox, hopefully without losing the end! Well, it took considerably more force than expected to get the bulge of the joint through!

So now, I have the relay fitted in place, hand tight, the control wire fed through, crimped and connected to one side of the relay coil. The ground connection wire is crimped and connected to the other side of the relay coil, has the eyelet crimp attached, but it tied up and taped ready to be attached to the battery negative terminal later. The fusebox end of the control wire is unterminated, and the positive high current connections are currently a loop of 30A wire crimped and attached to both of the relay contacts! This is because A - I dont have the bloody 'add-a-circuit' fuse module to complete the control connection, and B - Ive run out of bloody butt-joint crimps to complete the high current wiring with!

And so the circuit will stay in this state, as will the passenger side footwell and seat, which are littered with tubs of crimps, fuses, wire, tools etc, as well as the temporarily removed, but still full, glovebox itself, until such a time as I can get to my automotive parts supplier. Which could be hours, might be days.

And all this came about because im stuck in the house awaiting a delivery, and I also had a blown brake light to replace!

Conditional Alignment

 Gawd, that sounds like some form of sexual psychoanalytic technique! But, its actually a way to fix buggered binoculars!

Binoculars, like other optical systems, have a number of parameters that have to be in tip top alignment  for them to work properly. Some, such as chromatic aberation, coma, etc, are inherent to the glass itself and can only be solved by buying the best. But others are a physical alignment issue. In particular - collimation.

Ive come this because I decided to give away one of my pairs of 10x50 binos. Back-yard astronomy is a great and relatively simple hobby to get into for a youngster, but many people make the mistake of jumping straight to a telescope and are disappointed when the images they see are nothing remotely like what the press tell us they should be. Sorry, but nothing you can buy at amateur level is going to give you views like what are published in magazines and on the web from the Hubble space telescope or the myriad of astrophotographs created by allowing software to 'stack' hundred upon hundreds of long time exposures! Buy the biggest possible mirror in your budget, lets say thats a 8" dobsonian - and Andromeda will still be a vague fuzzy oblong! Sorry, thats how it is! Combined with the tiny field of view which makes actually finding the thing you want to see difficult in the first place, and its no wonder so many give up!

But it shouldnt be like this. The night sky is amazing - even if all you can see are the brighter navigational starts from a light polluted city. Its the way people are introduced to it that makes all the difference! Dont go out and buy a telescope! Go out, and buy - a planisphere! Or a simple, beginners level star atlas. Then - simply go out, and look up!

Of course, just looking denies you some of the more easily found wonders. But a pair of binoculars will reveal a plethora of amazing sights. Even for me, the sheer background of the starfield when using a pair of simple binos to look into the Milky Way is astonishing.

So when a work mate mentioned their daughter was interested in the night sky and wanted a telescope, I asked if they had any binos. With the answer being no, I decided my spare pair would perhaps give the young person a much better start into the hobby.

Now, This left me with my ancient Miranda 10x50s, that I bought when I was about Sams age, and still at school, and the cheap Bressers of Sams. This is when, in deciding to check them over, I found that Sams had been sat beside a bottle of aftershave, and all the rubber had gone sticky! I also found that the collimation was so far out that there may as well have been two of everything! So, how to fix?

Well, the sticky rubber was solved by rubbing a load of talc into it! Its not perfect, but pretty much the best I can do without the impossibility of replacing the rubber parts.

The collimation is something that I dont have the equipment to do fully, but it is relatively simple to do what is called 'conditional alignment', this is where the collimation is corrected, for the specific interpupilary distance in use. In other words, it fixes it for anyone whos eyes are the same distance apart. This is done by very carefully adjusting the prism adjustment screws hidden just under the rubber covers! I have done a 'rough and ready' job on these, entirely by trial and error with them focused on a pylon some 10 miles away. A more accurate alignment could be done using specialist Bahtinov masks, which are a form of grating, but I cant be bothered with the expense or difficulty in making my own, for a cheap pair of binos.

Anyway, these are the pair Tom was using up on the hill, and he assures me the images were sharp and not doubled, so it seems to be good enough for now.

The Sky At Night

 is, generally, cloudy. Sods law really. With my interest in most things waning, i find myself coming back to what has long fascinated me - the night sky. Despite a rigorous scientific background and a moderately deep understanding of the heavens, im still able, perhaps more so simply because i understand them so well and dont have to resort of mindless fantasy fiction (otherwise known as 'religion'), to be amazed by what can be seen.

To this end then, I decided now was a good time to improve my astronomy capabilities. Having decided on a budget and considered long and hard as to what kind of instrument I wanted to go for - do I go for the greater light gathering of a big Dobsonian mounted reflector, or the easier aiming of a slightly smaller set of optics on an equatorial mount, etc - I made a choice. Only to find it out of stock, in all variations, everywhere!

It seems, which people unable to go out and about as they used to due to the pandemic, that people are choosing to try out the more solitary pastime of amateur astronomy, and the shops are simply running out of stock! Such strange knock-on effects are starting to become apparent in many widely diverse activities, such as the famous flour shortage as everyone took to home baking!

So the telescope has not yet been upgraded, but I did manage to get my 2nd choice instrument. I had made a selection of the Celestron Skymaster 20x80 binoculars. These were a great price from my preferred supplier. Now, im going to briefly mention these and my recent experience. This is simply a statement of my experience and I dont wish it to be taken as anything but. My preferred supplier is Rother Valley Optics. When i dealt with them before in the shop i found them very helpful, and being a great price and a 'local' indepenant supplier wished to use them again. Having to do so online though, I found my enquiry regarding suitability, which included a very basic 'beginners' question, to be answered rather briefly, with none of the personal insight I would have expected from a friendly amateur astronomer. Also, my order for the binoculars was subsequently cancelled and refunded with no more than a note to 'check stock levels next time', no query as to whether I wished to hold on back-order until the stock came in. All in all I was somewhat disappointed by the experience. I do appreciate that these are difficult times, but as they say "civility cost nothing, young man!"

Instead, my order was re-placed through Amazon, with Carmarthen Cameras. This cost me £8 more, but at least they had stock! Having no direct contact with the store, I can only report on the fact that they arrived quickly, and the packaging while not substantial was adequate.

Now, these binos are not pocket eyeglasses! They are huge! Ideally they should be mounted on a tripod, but my only spare one is a lightweight one for the SLR and rather flimsy. Nevertheless, myself and Tom took a stroll up the local hill yesterday to test them out. My main concern was ensuring that they were properly collimated, the slightest error in collimation and they would be on their way back to the shop! Much testing on very distant objects and I can say, at least within the limits of my own horrendously myopic and astigmatic vision, that the collimation is good. The arm strain as a result of hand holding them for an hour not so good! A couple of targets proved remarkable for testing these, one was a lucky chance of a hot air balloon over York, which to the naked eye was just noticeable as a dark balloon shape, in Toms 10x50s as a dark blue balloon, and in these as a dark blue balloon with a yellow and blue checkered top section! The other was a pair of aircraft warning lights (this of course was mid-afternoon) somewhere in Leeds city center. Not even the building they were on was visible in the 10x50s!

On the night these arrived the sky was clear and I did have a chance to play for a few minutes before it clouded over. Its been overcast since! But the main joy of the trip up the hill yesterday was teaching Tom how to use binoculars! With the light weight cheapo Bresser 10x50s that i'd just repaired (so far out of collimation that there was literally two of every object! and the rubber sticky from alcohol degradation that needed talc rubbing in), I spent some time to teach Tom properly how to set them up, starting with Interpupilary distance, followed by eye relief, and dioptre setting, then focusing. I think the excited shouts and comments can be taken as confirmation that he enjoyed the experience!

One thing ive realised though, is that I dont have anything I can comfortably sit/lay out in the garden on to observe! Im hoping that with it now being autumn, cheap sunloungers might be on discount somewhere!

No Enthusiasm

 Ive not posted on here for quite some time. What with the Covid-19 lock-downs, the unprecidented and unbelievable scene of the control of the nations radio and TV being effected by dispersed engineer-operators working from home (myself included - I carried out one of the initial tests of the system), the travel restrictions, the cancellation of fairs, rallies, and other events, and then the sheer confusion and inconvenience of returning to working from the office....

...I just cant be bothered!

This is true, I seem to have lost all enthusiasm for not just radio and electronics, but pretty much everything other than reading and taking long baths. (this is itself is nothing unusual - ive lost interest many times before, however those times have usually coincided with life events, for instance losing interest in radio during the years I serviced public safety radio systems) The only odd thing is that this time, the loss of enthusiasm is making me anxious.

I still have many projects on the go, but I just cant bring myself to get on with any of them. I do recognise that this is a detrimental aspect of my mental health, although im rather glad that it isnt manifesting itself in the form of panic attacks! Oddly, as a result of working from home using telephony headsets and with without people close by, my telephobia has actually improved. I seem somewhat more confident and able to use the phone with less hesitation and worry, even, I feel, to perhaps having a bit of time out portable with a nice bit of HF combat net radio!

Of course, much of my current state may be attributed to the drugs im using to control other symptoms. These include some rather potent controlled substances, plus a few 'special' molecules, and are helping me overcome the insomnia, and settling down the Willis-Ekbom. Unfortunately they are also allowing me to observe and analyze life from a 3rd person perspective.

I do feel that I need to get back into some level of radio though. Not from the shack though I feel, but perhaps portable, a little SOTA maybe. Little by little myself and Bob M1BBV have managed to find slots to get a little walking in, so a few SOTA activations may be on the horizon. If nothing else, I need to get out and have some time in the wild open countryside.

I just need the motivation and inspiration to get started!

There will be more interesting posts eventually, I assure you (whoever you are, although I doubt I have many 'followers') but for now, like almost everything in life, its a case of keeping distance, and waiting.

No go on the 5V SLAB

Well, the SLAB that was reading 5V has definitely had it! Initially, it looked good, and I was able to transfer it to my Accucel charger. But then, the voltage started to drop, even on charge.  It was always unlikely that this one would recover.

The one reading 10V, I was much more conservative with the water (about 2ml per cell), and have left this on the slower charger. Its still only taking a very low current, just a handful of mA, but this is steadily increasing.

So, who knows?

Refurbishing dead SLABs?

I use quite a few 12V 7Ah Sealed Lead Acid batteries (SLABs), which I normally obtain as surplus due to routine replacement in UPS equipment. Recently, this source hasn't been available due to the pandemic, and I find myself with one usable battery and two dead ones.

The two dead ones are reading 5V and 10V. Shaking the one reading 5V, it audibly rattled! Clearly, it wasnt as wet in there as it should be!

So, I thought i'd try and refurbish it! The lid of these is lightly glued on, and it was fairly easy to prise it of using a sharp chisel. Under the lid, the cells are closed off using pushed on rubber caps. These easily lifted off, revealing the plates of the cells, all but dry!

As it happens, I had a bottle of de-ionised water on the shelf in the workshop. Using a syringe, ive refilled the cells up to the top, and then gently sucked the excess out of the filler holes. This proved to be a rather messy job, so a roll of paper towel was kept handy to mop up any spills and splashes.

With each cell refilled, the caps replaced, and the lid put loosely back on, it was time to try it on the charger. For this, I am using my 'semi-intelligent' SLAB charger, and monitoring the current into the battery using a multi-meter. This showed the current rapidly ramping up! Ive left it for now as the current was passing 60mA and climbing. A check of the battery voltage showed it to have risen to well over 7V at this point.

Whether the battery will recover enough to be useful, who knows. Its certainly worth a try.

Now, one thing to note - I have added more water to this first test battery than required. There is a reason for this - I dont know yet how easily the glass matting absorbs the water. It may be that it takes several hours to do so. Supposedly, the correct amount of water is just enough for the matting to appear wet.  I will top up the second battery more slowly and observe.

The first battery had dropped to about 6.5V over the 7h since I stopped charging. On restarting the charge, the current input was up at 400mA and rising. The charger can supply 1.5A. As it is now daytime and I can keep an eye on it, I will allow it to charge during the rest of the day and see how it does. For safety, it is in a plastic box and covered with paper towels.

Off-Grid BOINC research computer proof of concept

Quite some time ago, after a mobile phone upgrade, I hard wired a Buck converter module to the battery terminals of a Samsung Galaxy S7, removed the SIM card, and left it crunching numbers as part of the BOINC project, sat in the corner of the shack powered by the main station PSU. In its steady operating state with no display lit, it consumes about 130mA, which is probably less than the operating current consumed by the big linear PSU powering it!

My plan has always been that my main BOINC contribution should be independent of mains supply, so, after a slight debacle involving a fraudulent sale on ebay of a 100W solar panel with 30A charge controller, which when tested was shown to be a 20W panel and the controller hardly built for 10A, I have a solar panel and charge controller with which to set up a proof of concept... and half my money refunded!

The concept is simple. The BOINC phone and its Buck converter connect to the charge controller load terminals, a 12V 7Ah SLAB to the battery terminals, and the 20W panel to, well, the panel terminals of course! Unfortunately, the only battery of this size I have remaining in an operational state is the one used to power the under stairs lighting! This has been borrowed temporarily. It will be replaced for the time being with a 25Ah beast that just happens to be doing nothing.

The whole lot is in a position where it will receive a decent amount of south facing sun through the day - on my eldest boys windowsill! He wont mind - its already covered in IT and computer parts!

Some tests on the phone showed a peak current at start up of about 450mA, and a steady operational current (computing but display off) of about 130mA. This with a fully charged and 100% capacity 7Ah battery should last several days. At full sun output, the 20W panel should be capable of charging a 7Ah battery in around 5h. So in theory, this set-up should be able to operate 24/7. Of course, this battery is not new and far from peak condition!

If it operates without shutting down in the middle of the night using this battery, then I can have confidence in it operating well with a better 2nd hand unit, which I will have to scrounge up another time!