A lot going on this week……………………………………………

As always, first the chronology:

1/31/21 – Sunday – Up late.  Downstairs to do the blog.  Upstairs for lunch.  Did some chores around the house then took a 20 minute nap.  Cleaned up and out to Gary’s for the afternoon get together.  Home, picked up Kathy and off to Applebee’s for dinner.  Made a couple stops at Cracker Barrel for Kathy to look at ear rings.  Home and usual evening routine.

2/1/21 – Monday – Up at the usual time and usual morning routine.  Got Kathy and I appointments to get our eyes checked in March.  Played radio awhile but bands where really unusual.  Had lunch then out to the shop and did the maintenance and cleanup on the mower deck.  Finished that up and got my grease gun working again.  Over to the house and took the VHF/UHF radio out of the Chrysler.  Brought it inside and did a soft reset to get it working again. Ready to go back out in the car.  Had dinner then usual evening routine.

2/2/21 – Tuesday – Up at the usual time.  Down to play radio.  Made a couple contacts but bands where bad.  Changing very fast.  Carburetor arrived for generator and was wrong size.  Researched and ordered another one.  Had lunch.  Out to put the radio back in the car.  Back in and tried to play radio but being back in the warm put me to sleep so I took a nap.  Up and chores.  Kathy came home and we had dinner.  Usual evening routine.

2/3/21 – Wednesday – Up at the usual time.  Down to play radio.  Worked Olivia for a couple hours.  Worked on the IC-735.  Kathy was out shopping.  She came home and I helped her put things away.  Then out to O’Charley’s for dinner.  Home and usual evening routine.

2/4/21 – Thursday – Up at the usual time.  Cleaned up and out for hair cut and to the card shop for Valentine’s Day and Anniversary cards.  Home and played radio.  Snack for lunch printed out Direwolf documentation.  Took a nap.  Out for errands and over to Mike and Julie’s place for Carter and Chloe’s birthday party.  Had dinner, opened presents and had ice cream cake.  Home and usual evening routine.

2/5/21 – Friday – Up a little early.  Cleaned up and out to pick up my son-in-law Mike at Daughtery’s garage.  He was having some work done on his Land Rover.  Brought him to the house and made bacon, egg and cheese sandwichs on hard rolls.  Chatted till his car was done then took him back and dropped him off.  Ran some errands and home.  Did some banking and spent the rest of the day researching communications protocols associated with Winlink.  Took a short nap this afternoon.  Dinner and usual evening routine.

2/6/21 – Saturday – Up at the usual time.  Did some chores then downstairs to try and understand how the new carburetor works.  Spent a lot of time researching that.  Did some work on the IC-735.  Made a bunch of digital contacts on HF.  Kathy went shopping.  Had dinner and usual evening routine.

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Now the particulars:

Things have not been simple relative to the carburetor replacement on the portable generator. The first one I ordered that looked exactly like the one I had with slightly different dimensions did not fit. I was really convinced they had the dimensions wrong. How could they build two carburetors that looked exactly the same and be slightly off on dimensions. They did. I went back to the computer and the only one I could find with the same configuration has a solenoid on the bottom with wires coming out. I did extensive research and found out that it was the newer style carburetor and that solenoid cut off the fuel supply inside the carburetor to avoid flooding and back fire. That’s a great thing but my generator doesn’t have a 12 volt system to engage the solenoid. So I think I can modify it to work. Success will depend on having space under the carburetor to accommodate the added feature. We will find out when the weather gets a little warmer.

I did get out to the shop on Monday. Kathy came out and helped me lift the mower deck up on the saw horses. I got it all nice and clean. No rust so had no painting to do. Lubricated things well and it’s all ready to go back on the tractor for mowing in the spring.

The HAM radio in the Chrysler stopped working last week so I took it out on Monday. Brought it in the house to look at it and everything pointed to the microprocessor. So I did a soft reset and that fixed the problem. I was glad that was all I had to do but it pissed me off since I could have done it easily in the car without removing it. Tuesday I put it back in and everything is good now.

Spent several hours on my ICOM IC-735 this week. Found a connection problem that stopped the RIT indicator light from working. Narrowed down the metering issue to a 4066 IC chip. I figured while I had it apart I would replace the IC chip and the lamps that provide the back lighting. I ordered the lamps I need and will order the IC chip this coming week. Hopefully another couple weeks and that will be done.

Kathy has been commenting that she would like to go back to O’Charley’s for dinner some Wednesday for dinner as they have free pie for dessert. So we went this week and won’t be back. The food was bad, the pie was still frozen and it was expensive. We could have gone to one of our usual hangouts and then gone to Country Mart and bought a pie for a lot less and it would have been much better. Lesson learned.

I have been interested in getting a thing called Winlink working. It is essentially an email service that uses HAM radio. Boaters, people that live in RVs and others that don’t want to be tied to traditional Wifi interconnects like it. All you need is a computer and HF radio. The software does the rest. I don’t like Windows and that is a problem since most of the software is written for Windows, not Linux. I have been able to get Winlink express to work on Linux and it can send and receive via telnet with a host. But now I need to get a program that will interface with the Winlink express and the sound card in a computer and send the data over an HF radio in the correct format. I was hoping Direwolf would do that but I’m not sure if that is going to work. I have a couple other options to pursue and will continue my endeavors as time allows.

The big event this week was Carter and Chloe’s birthday party.

And here they are. 12 years old now. Next year they will be teenagers and in another 4 years they will be learning to drive. Wow, does time fly. Kathy kept the kids on Thursday and I went over for dinner. They wanted meat ball sandwiches so Kathy did that in sauce and cooked some spaghetti. So most of us had spaghetti and the kids had their meat ball sandwiches. Carter wanted a ice cream cake from Dairy Queen and Chloe wanted Strawberries. So that’s what they got. Also got presents and were very pleased with the evening. For some reason Chloe had a silly spell. Not sure what got into her but she was having fun. Carter was Carter. Not much difference.

With the weather so cold here this week I stayed inside most of the time. Played radio when I had nothing else to do. Spent a lot of time working digital modes to various people I have chatted with in the past. It’s a good bunch of people that work digital modes. They like to chat about things and you get to learn about them. My friend Jesus in Cuba turned 80 this week and I got to chat with him on his birthday. He is still working as the Radio Spectrum Coordinator for the country of Cuba. His wife made all his favorite foods for lunch on his birthday so he was a happy camper. It was good to chat with him this week.

That is it for this week. As always, hope this finds everyone safe and well. Please stay that way. And I will blog at you again next week.