Insulation

My ham radio room within the detached garage is dust proof but it is not insulated.

The dust proof part was fairly easy. There are no windows to “leak dust into the room, I “taped and mudded” the wallboard seams, and I I caulked the edges of the wallboard at the floor. After a month, a dust cloth picks up very little dust…probably just what I bring into the room on my clothes and shoes.

I am finally getting around to adding the insulation to the room. Without insulation, the room was uncomfortably cold in the winter, often below 0C, and uncomfortably warm in the summer, often over 40C. I do have an electric heater in the room, but it is not “strong” enough to warm the room to more than 4C-5C degrees above the outside temperature.

There are (obviously) four walls and one overhead space that I need to insulate. Three walls will accommodate R13 insulation and one wall can accommodate R19 insulation. The overhead can accommodate R38 insulation.

I need seven rolls of R13 insulation, four rolls of R19 insulation and four packages of R38 insulation batts. Unfortunately, the store only had three R13 rolls in stock. I bought what they had, ordered the rest, and spent an hour installing the insulation that I could bring home.

Even with what I have completed so far, the heater can now bring the room temperature about 10C degrees above the outside temperature.

One the insulation is complete, I will need to figure out how to cool the room in the summertime. My calculations indicate around 18,000BTU of cooling capacity will be needed to adequately cool the room. This includes the extra (approximately) cooling capacity needed to remove the heat generated by the older “vintage” tube type ham radio gear in the room.

Reminders…..

….that I’m getting old…..

Our daughter is engaged to be married. I remember, twenty-eight years ago, marveling at her; an infant just minutes old.

I now receive US Medicare medical insurance. This began in the month of my 65th birthday.

I “re-manufacture” firearms ammunition for myself. There are data books that provide the information needed to do this and new editions of the data books are typically published every 2-3 years. I decided to make some new ammunition for my target pistol and for some reason I checked the dates of the books. The latest one I own was printed in 1999.

My wife and I have been putting up more pictures that have been in storage. One of them was a (37 year old) wedding picture. In the picture, I have a full head of dark brown, almost black, hair and no “turkey waddle”. That is far different from now.

Another picture was of Pest, the cat that adopted me while I was earning my electrical engineering degree. That picture was over 40 years old.

I used to be able to do run 6 minute miles for 15 miles and carry on a limited conversation. That is no longer the case. I still run, but my times are far slower, my distances are far shorter and even at the slower pace, I can’t carry on a conversation.

And, finally……

ET (evil twin) called to complain about getting old. She’s younger, but at this point in our lives, I suppose those 20 minutes don’t really count. 🙂

On the plus side, I’m no longer a “wage slave”, so I can decide what projects I want to work on. Some “consulting work” is free, some is paid, but all are very fulfilling.

Kind of Tired

We (my wife and I) are a bit tired.

First we both had a quite bothersome cold. In the middle of that, we *had* to make two trips, spaced four days apart, to the “big city, Then, three days later, we had to make an unexpected trip to the “big city”. Then the next morning after we arrived home from the last “big city” trip, we had to make another unexpected trip to the “somewhat big city”.

Normally the trips to “big city” are four hours each way and trips to “somewhat big city” are two and half hours each way. On all the the trips, there was a lot of the time where driving conditions were so bad (fog, ice, snow, animals on the road) that we were driving at less than one third as fast as the posted speed limit. So what normally would have required seventeen hours, took almost thirty hours.

Driving when conditions are good is slightly tiring. Driving when the conditions are poor is tiring. Driving when the conditions are poor and one is sick….that’s TIRING.

We are starting to feel better, but it will take a day or two to get back to normal.

We do have to go into town today, and have several things to do; pay for the propane that was delivered yesterday, pay the company that picks up our trash, pick up the mail at the post office, and pick up and pay for the parts needed to complete the preventative maintenance to the generator. So, we should only be gone for a couple of hours. 🙂

Handloading

Today I spent a couple of hours to assemble ammunition for my target pistol.

By assemble, that is what I mean.

While the pistol shown in the picture is caliber .308 Winchester, I was loading ammunition for the same model pistol in caliber 7mm BR Remington.

7mm BR Remington is sort of an orphan. I don’t know of any company that manufactures ammunition in that caliber and even getting empty brass cartridge cases can be difficult. Several times I’ve had to resort to converting cartridges from .308 Winchester to 7mm BR Remington…an arduous, highly technical and time consuming process. Besides the cartridge cases, everything else is standard.

Last week, a friend found someone selling actual unused 7mm BR Remington empty brass and I had them buy “all they had”; 20 empty cases.

So, today I used the empty brass to assemble ammunition.

Generator Maintenance

This morning, after it warmed up (to 37F/3C degrees), I started to do the normal maintenance on the generator. I thought the local store would have the parts in stock–oil filter, fuel filter, crush washer for the oil drain bolt, air filter–but they have to order them. The parts will arrive next Tuesday, so I only got part of the work completed.

I changed the oil and drained the fuel tank. For longer term storage, one needs to drain the carburetor, otherwise the gas will degrade, and turn into a thick “goo” that will clog the carburetor. I spent the next 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get a screwdriver onto the screw that, when turned, allows the fuel to drain from the carburetor. Unfortunately the required screwdriver needs to be a precise (non-standard) length that costs $31. Removing the air filter housing, a 5 minute process, allowed me to use a “normal” screwdriver.

The fuel in the generator was put into the truck.

Kept outside under a shelter is 20 gallons/75 liters of gasoline for the generator. So that the gasoline doesn’t become stale, each week I put a container of gasoline into the truck’s fuel tank and then refill the container with “new” gasoline. It works out that the gasoline for the generator is never more than a month old.

This all goes back to my “mantra” for backups; in this case backup power. My mantra is that the backup system needs to be more reliable than the primary system because when you need it, you *need* it and you need it *now*. The fresh gasoline and generator maintenance ensures that when I do need backup power, I will have it.

-15C

The transmitter that I brought home needs “a shower” to get rid of the dirt and dust that has collected in its cabinet. The problem with doing this now is the temperature. This morning, it was minus 15C degrees and later in the day, it might get up to freezing.

Removing all the electronics stuff from the cabinet is easy. Working with wet hands when it’s so cold is “not so easy”. So, I will probably put this piece of equipment aside until late May or early June.

I have lots of other stuff to keep me busy.

I just saw an electric utility truck drive by. It looks like they are repairing the service drop at the neighbor’s house. When I walk the dogs, I look at the power lines as I walk and if I see something wrong, I’ll report it to the utility company. I reported this one about an hour ago.

It’s around -8C right now, with some wind. I’m going to walk down there with a thermos of hot coffee and offer it to him when he is finished with the repairs.

It’s Home

I, and the transmitter, are home. The transmitter is in the garage and my first priority is to make a wheeled platform for the transmitter so I can move it around by myself when all the heavy components are reinstalled into the cabinet.

Once the platform is finished, I will start the cleanup, inspection, testing, checking that it works on its current frequency of 1260kHz, and then complete modifications needed to make it transmit in the ham radio bands

In case anyone is wondering, I do not have a license to transmit on 1260kHZ, so I can’t connect the transmitter to an antenna to test it. Instead, I will be using what is called a “dummy antenna”. The dummy antenna’s function is to appear to the transmitter to be a regular antenna, but not allow a signal to be broadcast over the air.

For what it’s worth, I have modern equipment that is of similar capability…the new stuff weighs around 50 pounds/22kg and is about the size of a file folder box.

To me, restoring the older radio equipment and then using it, is not much different than restoring an older car and then driving it around town. I happen to do both.

Call Me Crazy

Tomorrow morning I will set out on several day long road trip to northeast Utah to pick up a late 1960s vintage, no longer needed, not even as a spare, 1000 watt AM broadcast radio transmitter. When I get it home, it will be converted to operate in a ham radio band. The transmitter is free, other than the cost of going to get it and haul it home.

The transmitter weighs 1,100 pounds/500kg with all the heavy transformers in the cabinet so it is a “heavy beast”. Removing the various transformers from the transmitter reduces the weight to about 600 pounds/275kg which will make the job of moving the transmitter far easier. When the transmitter was shipped from the factory, the transformers were in separate crates so that when the transmitter arrived on site, the transmitter could be put into position (two people could do this will little difficulty) and then the heavy transformers installed.

I suppose it could be installed at a radio broadcast station, but, as I said earlier, it will be converted to operate in one of the ham radio bands. Ham radio bands have been allocated throughout the radio spectrum and one is near enough in frequency to the broadcast channels, that making the modifications to make it operate in that particular ham band “not trivial, but not difficult”.

AM (amplitude modulation) is an old technology that is more than 100 years old but it still works as shown by the AM broadcast stations. In the ham radio bands, AM has been replaced by far more efficient forms of transmission…..still it is fun to “step back in time and do it like it was done many decades ago”.

Seven Days of Projects

For the past few days I’ve been working on many small projects.

Doors.  The house has “settled” slightly and 3 doors would not close, or would not latch, or both.  A Dremel tool with a burr on the end took care of extending the opening in the striker plates by a tiny amount so the door would latch.  For the doors that would not close, a belt sander with a 40 grit belt removed enough wood for the doors to close without sticking.

The concrete pad adjacent to the house has a low spot that causes water to collect right next to the house.  I used a concrete bade in a circular saw to cut three shallow groves in the concrete and then used a chisel to make a 1/4 inch deep “trench” in the concrete.  The water no longer collects next to the house.

Electric stove.  I have wired an electrical outlet in the garage so I can use the old electric stove when I’m cooking “fancy meals”.

A floor lamp.  Before we moved, there was a very dilapidated looking wooden floor lamp.  I removed the old gel finish, sanded out the dents in the wood, and then used a penetrating wood stain, followed by a “hard wax”.  It looks awesome now.  

November 24

I’ve been cleaning the house in preparation for friends coming over for Thanksgiving dinner. It is raining outside, which means lots of mud and dirt is being brought into the house, and that means lots of effort to keep the dirt/mud out of the carpet.

Shortly after midnight on this date in 1983, my fiancee died. She had been undergoing a very brutal treatment regimen that ultimately was unsuccessful. When she “left”–the words the hospice nurses used–I was angry, frustrated, heart broken, confused and upset. I’m sure there were many other emotions swirling around in my mind as well.

After she died, I don’t think I ever went thorough a denial phase…before yes…after no. The anger also left fairly quickly, but the confusion and heartbreak lingered on for several years. The confusion was equal amounts of “What do I do now?” and “Why did our friends disappear?” The first part was answered by my promises to my fiancee to keep on living. The second part took a long time for me to decide on an answer. What I decided was that no one among our friends had dealt with someone their own age dying and didn’t know what to do or say, so they stayed away for fear of making things worse.

What got me out of this whole mess was three friends. I’m still in close contact with two, but I’ve lost contact with the third. At the time, in 1985, when I met all of them, I was desperately, and probably irrationally, afraid that the “don’t know what to say/do….disengage” would happen all over again, so it was many years before I told them about my fiancee. The other reason for not talking about it was that I was also afraid I’d “start crying in my beer”. So I kept quiet.

While time has healed my broken heart, like a repaired cup having a barely visible crack where the pieces were glued back together, my heart has a barely noticeable crack where the pieces were put back together. And, like the crack forever remaining visible on the cup, the faint crack will remain in my heart. I suppose this is good as it means I still remember. When people die, they live on in memories and only “completely die” when no one remembers them.

One of the people coming over for Thanksgiving is one of the three friends. I invited the other friend over as well, but she and her husband are preparing Thanksgiving dinner for her elderly parents. In the past year, both of her parents have had multiple extreme health issues, all with an extremely poor prognosis, and she is thinking that this may be the last Thanksgiving with them.

I understand.