Michael A. Terrell wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
TWT on VHF? VHF is 30 to 300 MHz and TWT are typically built for 300
MHz up which would put it in the 300 to 3000 MHz UHF range.

My bad, that ALTAIR installation is a wide band radar with what I assume
are multiple feeds. I really wish I knew more about it and had been able
to get in and see the operation. It's been 20 years and I remember the
fellow I spoke with telling me of the enormous power of the darn thing.
I do specifically remember being told that it used VHF frequencies in
some modes. There is a story of it being aimed at a Russian trawler that
hung around the islands. The tale speaks of the power being ramped up
until smoke came out of the boat which made a quick exit from the area.


That would be hard to do at HF or VHF since you can't focus the RF
into a tight beam at those frequencies, compared to a couple degrees or
less at microwave frequencies.


Have you seen the big dishes used by NOAA for their LEO wearther
satellites? I worked on the turnkey upgrade for their Wallops Island
installation that was built by Microdyne. It replaced a 20 year old
Harris microowave system and had to control their 100 foot dishes.

http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/brs/spind10.htm has a few pictures.

We also built the pair of tracking stations for the European Space
Agency. One fixed site, and the other mobile.


You obviously have had more experience with neater and higher power
stuff than I've had. Is it OK if I envy you? *snicker*


If you must, but I just like to trade war stories about equipment
that would make newbie techs retch or fill their drawers when they see
the size and the hazards involved. The sheer look of terror on their
faces is priceless! Like me standing on the HV power supply inside a
VHF high band TV transmitter so I can adjust the interstage coupling
while the station is on the air. The end of the cabinet was removed,
since it didn't have any interlocks, and i was standing on one of the
transformers. It was either do it that way, or spend days removing the
rear door, making a small adjustment, replacing the rear door then
firing it up to find it still had too much ripple in the video
bandwidth, shutting it down and starting over.




I've worked with a lot of high voltage power but there on the island
the highest power runs were 4160 3 phase. The superintendent I was
working with borrowed a wooden hot stick from the power plant crew.
Lucky thing he was wearing the high voltage glove set. I think his
hard hat popped off when his hair stood on end while we were plugging
in the transformers. Did you know that a slightly damp hot stick will
conduct electricity? Ya know shortcuts can be dangerous. This particular
guy got himself killed a few years later when he fell down a shaft in
Cairo while trying to change a lamp in a fixture on a big sewer project.
He decided he didn't need that pesky safety harness.

As far as that big radar goes, I know I wasn't hearing things. It will
operate in CW mode at VHF and UHF frequencies. Here's a link and I still
wish I had gotten a closer look at that thing.

http://www.smdc.army.mil/KWAJ/RangeInst/ALTAIR.html

TDD

On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:39:20 -0600, The Daring Dufas wrote:
NO EXCREMENT?! I was out in the Marshall Islands 20 years ago and
got to explore the old phased array radar installation on Meck
island at the Kwajalein Atoll. I think it had two power supplies
at one time but there was one left in what was called the Frankenstein
room, an incredible contraption that looked like the set of a monster
movie. I wish I still had pictures, darn.

I wish you still had pictures, too - I used to do a lot of exploration /
photography in old military places like that, but it's rare to find one
where it hasn't been stripped of equipment. Sounds like an interesting
place...

cheers

Jules

Michael A. Terrell wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
TWT on VHF? VHF is 30 to 300 MHz and TWT are
typically built for 300
[christmas presents]

The Daring Dufas wrote:

Some of those guys needed help tying their shoes but they could see
patterns in the raw data and dream in differential calculus. When
you were at Ft. Rucker, did you party in Enterprise? I tried to join
up twice, back when I was a damn hippie freak in college there was
this pesky draft thing going on and my contemporaries were shooting
toes off, claiming to be gay or running off to Canada to stay out of
Viet Nam. I wanted in The Air Force because they had the neatest toys
to play with but unfortunately I wound up 4F.


I registered for the draft at 18, and was given five separate 4F
medical ratings. Two years later I was drafted for my electronics
skills. Then I tested out of their three year course in broadcast
engineering while I was in basic training. I was told that no one else
at Ft Knox had ever passed that test without spending three years at Ft.
Monmoth. The average score was 22/110 and passing was 42/110. They
wanted me to fail and claimed the only copy they could find was missing
two pages, which happened to be 22 questions. I got 82/88,


Darn it, I was trying
to get in and all these goof balls were being dragged away screaming
and kicking. 10 years later I tried The Navy, I was sent to Maxwell
AFB where doctors told me to bend over so they could look up my butt
and they determined I was in perfect health but too nearsighted.


The Air Force is a stickler on good vision. My vision was about
20/200 & 20/400 when I was drafted. I can't legally drive without
glasses, and I needed a stereo microscope to do surface mount work at
the end.


I didn't get to play with all the neat toys in the military. No big
RADAR, no doomsday computers, no real live missile command, no ICBMs.
Darn it, I feel left out, I wanted to blow stuff up by remote control.


The infamous 'Inter City Beer Missile'? A local brewery ran
commercials in Cincinnati about their attempts to deliver their beer
faster, and one 'failed' idea was to use Inter City Beer Missiles. ;-)

Some of the newer weapons systems are remote controlled by Telemetry.
The smart bombs, with TV cameras are flown by remote control. Sometimes
the operator is half way around the world. Others are controlled from
planes or ground based personnel at a safe distance from the fighting so
the control hardware isn't captured.


This RCB2000 you're fond of, was it used to basically pick data out
of all of the RF (noise) coming from any transmissions by a missile,
satellite, aircraft or UFO? From looking at the information online
about it, I gather that you could use it to pick out two precise
slices of the spectrum to snag what you are interested in. Please, oh
master, instruct me. 8-)


I should be fond of the RCB2000. It was the last new product I
helped move from prototypes into production. It is a VME based system
with two digital receivers, the control computer, the digital combiner
and a spectrum display. Both receivers are tuned to the exact same
frequency, but fed from different antennas to reduce fading and dropout
on very weak signals.

I had to work with manufacturing engineering to improve our reflow
solder process, write a lot of test procedures, and build test fixtures.
I wrote a thick pile of Engineering Change Orders, and push them through
before it hit the production floor. The documentation for that radio
was about 1500 pages, with a lot of them 'D' size.
(22.0 by 34.0 inches)


Diversity receivers were used on HF during W.W.II where two or three
identical radios were used with separate wire antennas. The recovered
audio was mixed together so the strongest signal was heard at all times.


--
Offworld checks no longer accepted!

Michael A. Terrell wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
Some of those guys needed help tying their shoes but they could see
patterns in the raw data and dream in differential calculus. When
you were at Ft. Rucker, did you party in Enterprise? I tried to join
up twice, back when I was a damn hippie freak in college there was
this pesky draft thing going on and my contemporaries were shooting
toes off, claiming to be gay or running off to Canada to stay out of
Viet Nam. I wanted in The Air Force because they had the neatest toys
to play with but unfortunately I wound up 4F.


I registered for the draft at 18, and was given five separate 4F
medical ratings. Two years later I was drafted for my electronics
skills. Then I tested out of their three year course in broadcast
engineering while I was in basic training. I was told that no one else
at Ft Knox had ever passed that test without spending three years at Ft.
Monmoth. The average score was 22/110 and passing was 42/110. They
wanted me to fail and claimed the only copy they could find was missing
two pages, which happened to be 22 questions. I got 82/88,


I registered at 18 also and I didn't find out until 30 years later why I
was turned away from the military during the Viet Nam war. I was talking
with a friend who had been one of the top recruiters for the army and
according to him, the secret to staying out of Nam was "allergies". I
had stumbled upon the greatest secret of my generation and didn't know
it. It wasn't my extreme myopia, it was my damn runny nose!

Speaking of tests, I was 15 or 16 when me and my classmates were all
given this big military aptitude test ASVAB, I think it was and I
scored 98% which I thought was pretty cool because I was the only kid
in the whole school who knew what every tool shown on the test was and
used for. There was actually a "saw set tool" shown on the test. Why
a military test would have a carpentry tool on it struck me as a little
bit bizarre but I was a teenager and I knew everything. *snicker*

The recruit processing center I went to was in Nashville and I rode
a bus up there with several other young recruits and I will never in
my life forget this one guy who was the stereotypical Hillbilly farm
boy who had us all in stitches because he was so funny. I swear, he
looked like Howdy Doody and Opie morphed into one. When the office
personnel gave us all urine test cups, Opie exclaimed "I cain't ****,
I dun ****ed!" The recruiter told him to drink some water but Opie
kept going on about not being able to go, so we all told him to shut
up and gave him some urine. Opie was sent home, I don't know why but
I can guess.

TDD

Darn it, I was trying
to get in and all these goof balls were being dragged away screaming
and kicking. 10 years later I tried The Navy, I was sent to Maxwell
AFB where doctors told me to bend over so they could look up my butt
and they determined I was in perfect health but too nearsighted.


The Air Force is a stickler on good vision. My vision was about
20/200 & 20/400 when I was drafted. I can't legally drive without
glasses, and I needed a stereo microscope to do surface mount work at
the end.


I got my first eyeglasses when I was six and starting the first grade.
When the optician put my glasses on me for the first time, I looked
around and said "Wow, that's where all that noise is coming from!"

TDD

I didn't get to play with all the neat toys in the military. No big
RADAR, no doomsday computers, no real live missile command, no ICBMs.
Darn it, I feel left out, I wanted to blow stuff up by remote control.


The infamous 'Inter City Beer Missile'? A local brewery ran
commercials in Cincinnati about their attempts to deliver their beer
faster, and one 'failed' idea was to use Inter City Beer Missiles. ;-)

Some of the newer weapons systems are remote controlled by Telemetry.
The smart bombs, with TV cameras are flown by remote control. Sometimes
the operator is half way around the world. Others are controlled from
planes or ground based personnel at a safe distance from the fighting so
the control hardware isn't captured.



I find the UAVs to be a fascinating technology but I can't wait for
the UCAVs, that's going to be mind blowing in more ways than one. I
know there is a lot of stuff going on that us lowly civilians don't
know about but by gleaning information from technical publications
and little announcements by defense contractors I can guess at what's
coming.

TDD

This RCB2000 you're fond of, was it used to basically pick data out
of all of the RF (noise) coming from any transmissions by a missile,
satellite, aircraft or UFO? From looking at the information online
about it, I gather that you could use it to pick out two precise
slices of the spectrum to snag what you are interested in. Please, oh
master, instruct me. 8-)


I should be fond of the RCB2000. It was the last new product I
helped move from prototypes into production. It is a VME based system
with two digital receivers, the control computer, the digital combiner
and a spectrum display. Both receivers are tuned to the exact same
frequency, but fed from different antennas to reduce fading and dropout
on very weak signals.

I had to work with manufacturing engineering to improve our reflow
solder process, write a lot of test procedures, and build test fixtures.
I wrote a thick pile of Engineering Change Orders, and push them through
before it hit the production floor. The documentation for that radio
was about 1500 pages, with a lot of them 'D' size.
(22.0 by 34.0 inches)


Us blind people need 3 foot wide prints. Unless there is so much crap
on it that you still need a magnifying glass.

I can understand your concern with the reflow soldering during the
manufacturing process, I'm sure that over the years you've had to
repair a lot of equipment with a problem as simple as a bad solder
joint. When I worked at a repair depot, the majority of the repairs
had to do with cold solder joints. I saw some of the strangest
problems. One day I had a UHF receiver that wouldn't work, after
a lot of butt scratching, I determined that a transistor was adding
capacitance to the circuit, the transistor tested good with a good
transistor tester that measured gain, leakage and whatnot but not
in the RF section of the receiver. I don't know what could have
caused it because I'm sure it was working when it left the factory.
Plated through holes on double sided and multilayer circuit boards
were another nightmare at the repair depot. With your involvement
in the RBC2000, I'm sure there are multilayer boards in it, how did
you address any potential problems with connections between the
layers?

TDD


Diversity receivers were used on HF during W.W.II where two or three
identical radios were used with separate wire antennas. The recovered
audio was mixed together so the strongest signal was heard at all times.



Oh, that's the combiner part! I see how it works now. Back in the good
old days when I did a lot of two way radio work both commercial and CB,
I would show people why their fancy antennas didn't work so well with a
simple field strength meter. The more antennas the better, right?
Wuts a lobe? Wadaya mean the signal is going that a way, I ort to be
able to get out reel good with all these dang new Super Dork Snorkel
antennas!

TDD

Jules wrote:
On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:39:20 -0600, The Daring Dufas wrote:
NO EXCREMENT?! I was out in the Marshall Islands 20 years ago and
got to explore the old phased array radar installation on Meck
island at the Kwajalein Atoll. I think it had two power supplies
at one time but there was one left in what was called the Frankenstein
room, an incredible contraption that looked like the set of a monster
movie. I wish I still had pictures, darn.

I wish you still had pictures, too - I used to do a lot of exploration /
photography in old military places like that, but it's rare to find one
where it hasn't been stripped of equipment. Sounds like an interesting
place...

cheers

Jules


I had a few souvenirs from the dump and one of them was an iron
core memory module that was small enough to fit in a missile. I
think I lost it in a move. Darn it, it was a cool item.

TDD

The Daring Dufas wrote:

Michael A. Terrell wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
Some of those guys needed help tying their shoes but they could see
patterns in the raw data and dream in differential calculus. When
you were at Ft. Rucker, did you party in Enterprise? I tried to join
up twice, back when I was a damn hippie freak in college there was
this pesky draft thing going on and my contemporaries were shooting
toes off, claiming to be gay or running off to Canada to stay out of
Viet Nam. I wanted in The Air Force because they had the neatest toys
to play with but unfortunately I wound up 4F.


I registered for the draft at 18, and was given five separate 4F
medical ratings. Two years later I was drafted for my electronics
skills. Then I tested out of their three year course in broadcast
engineering while I was in basic training. I was told that no one else
at Ft Knox had ever passed that test without spending three years at Ft.
Monmoth. The average score was 22/110 and passing was 42/110. They
wanted me to fail and claimed the only copy they could find was missing
two pages, which happened to be 22 questions. I got 82/88,


I registered at 18 also and I didn't find out until 30 years later why I
was turned away from the military during the Viet Nam war. I was talking
with a friend who had been one of the top recruiters for the army and
according to him, the secret to staying out of Nam was "allergies". I
had stumbled upon the greatest secret of my generation and didn't know
it. It wasn't my extreme myopia, it was my damn runny nose!

Speaking of tests, I was 15 or 16 when me and my classmates were all
given this big military aptitude test ASVAB, I think it was and I
scored 98% which I thought was pretty cool because I was the only kid
in the whole school who knew what every tool shown on the test was and
used for. There was actually a "saw set tool" shown on the test. Why
a military test would have a carpentry tool on it struck me as a little
bit bizarre but I was a teenager and I knew everything. *snicker*


My friend Don, a retired US Marine master Sergeant wouldn't find that
funny. He was a construction engineer. They built buildings, roads,
bridges and a lot of other things. They used everything from simple
hand tools to heavy equipment.


The recruit processing center I went to was in Nashville and I rode
a bus up there with several other young recruits and I will never in
my life forget this one guy who was the stereotypical Hillbilly farm
boy who had us all in stitches because he was so funny. I swear, he
looked like Howdy Doody and Opie morphed into one. When the office
personnel gave us all urine test cups, Opie exclaimed "I cain't ****,
I dun ****ed!" The recruiter told him to drink some water but Opie
kept going on about not being able to go, so we all told him to shut
up and gave him some urine. Opie was sent home, I don't know why but
I can guess.


I liked what happened when one guy had to see the head shrinker. The
first words of the his mouth was "Why do you hate your mother" The guy
laughed and said, "My mother is OK, but your mother is a lousy lay and
still owes me %50". The shrink threw a hissy fit and demanded that he
leave, right now.



Darn it, I was trying
to get in and all these goof balls were being dragged away screaming
and kicking. 10 years later I tried The Navy, I was sent to Maxwell
AFB where doctors told me to bend over so they could look up my butt
and they determined I was in perfect health but too nearsighted.


The Air Force is a stickler on good vision. My vision was about
20/200 & 20/400 when I was drafted. I can't legally drive without
glasses, and I needed a stereo microscope to do surface mount work at
the end.


I got my first eyeglasses when I was six and starting the first grade.
When the optician put my glasses on me for the first time, I looked
around and said "Wow, that's where all that noise is coming from!"


I was in the fifth grade when they finally listened, that I couldn't
see what was on the chalkboards. For years the teachers claimed that I
was lazy, and just didn't want to read them.


I didn't get to play with all the neat toys in the military. No big
RADAR, no doomsday computers, no real live missile command, no ICBMs.
Darn it, I feel left out, I wanted to blow stuff up by remote control.


The infamous 'Inter City Beer Missile'? A local brewery ran
commercials in Cincinnati about their attempts to deliver their beer
faster, and one 'failed' idea was to use Inter City Beer Missiles. ;-)

Some of the newer weapons systems are remote controlled by Telemetry.
The smart bombs, with TV cameras are flown by remote control. Sometimes
the operator is half way around the world. Others are controlled from
planes or ground based personnel at a safe distance from the fighting so
the control hardware isn't captured.



I find the UAVs to be a fascinating technology but I can't wait for
the UCAVs, that's going to be mind blowing in more ways than one. I
know there is a lot of stuff going on that us lowly civilians don't
know about but by gleaning information from technical publications
and little announcements by defense contractors I can guess at what's
coming.


Yes, some is amazing, but I had to leave manufacturing in late 2001
due to failing health. I really miss being able to work with state of
the art designs.


This RCB2000 you're fond of, was it used to basically pick data out
of all of the RF (noise) coming from any transmissions by a missile,
satellite, aircraft or UFO? From looking at the information online
about it, I gather that you could use it to pick out two precise
slices of the spectrum to snag what you are interested in. Please, oh
master, instruct me. 8-)


I should be fond of the RCB2000. It was the last new product I
helped move from prototypes into production. It is a VME based system
with two digital receivers, the control computer, the digital combiner
and a spectrum display. Both receivers are tuned to the exact same
frequency, but fed from different antennas to reduce fading and dropout
on very weak signals.

I had to work with manufacturing engineering to improve our reflow
solder process, write a lot of test procedures, and build test fixtures.
I wrote a thick pile of Engineering Change Orders, and push them through
before it hit the production floor. The documentation for that radio
was about 1500 pages, with a lot of them 'D' size.
(22.0 by 34.0 inches)


Us blind people need 3 foot wide prints. Unless there is so much crap
on it that you still need a magnifying glass.


Regular print on 'D' sized sheets. First generation copies from the
original, signed off drawings. No blueprints, we had a huge copier. We
created some test procedures and assembly drawings in color to simplify
parts of the manufacturing process.


I can understand your concern with the reflow soldering during the
manufacturing process, I'm sure that over the years you've had to
repair a lot of equipment with a problem as simple as a bad solder
joint.


We had two problems. The size of the solder balls was too coarse when
we moved from 1206 to 0805 and smaller, and the flux was wrong for fine
pitch SMD in our original paste solder. It took several samples before
we found what we needed. Then I had to slip in a sample roll of .015"
Ersin rework solder for the hand soldering. A lot of the ICs were on
..015" center to center lead spacing. That took a very steady hand, and
stereo microscope. After rework & the ladies in assembly found out
about it, they had to buy some for everyone, and bought over $1500
worth. The head of Manufacturing Engineering was really ****ed at me.



When I worked at a repair depot, the majority of the repairs
had to do with cold solder joints. I saw some of the strangest
problems. One day I had a UHF receiver that wouldn't work, after
a lot of butt scratching, I determined that a transistor was adding
capacitance to the circuit, the transistor tested good with a good
transistor tester that measured gain, leakage and what not but not
in the RF section of the receiver. I don't know what could have
caused it because I'm sure it was working when it left the factory.


Be glad you didn't have to troubleshoot hand built prototype boards
built by engineers. Some transistors can be damaged but not work in
a real circuit. ESD damage can cause all kinds of problems. RF FETs
are a real pain at times.


Plated through holes on double sided and multilayer circuit boards
were another nightmare at the repair depot.


There are different thicknesses of plating for PTH boards. Most
manufacturers use the lowest grade to save money. If it's a double sided
board it's not hard to run a piece of Kynar Wire Wrap Wire to bridge an
open trace, or run it through the PTH and solder it to both sides.


With your involvement in the RBC2000, I'm sure there are multilayer
boards in it, how did you address any potential problems with
connections between the layers?


Any defective vias, and the boards were scrapped. The VME cards were
17 layers. We paid damn good money for 100% testing, and the OEM was
liable for the cost of boards that were found to be defective after they
were stuffed. A couple boards cost $8,000 to manufacture, stuff & test.


Diversity receivers were used on HF during W.W.II where two or three
identical radios were used with separate wire antennas. The recovered
audio was mixed together so the strongest signal was heard at all times.



Oh, that's the combiner part! I see how it works now. Back in the good
old days when I did a lot of two way radio work both commercial and CB,
I would show people why their fancy antennas didn't work so well with a
simple field strength meter. The more antennas the better, right?
Wuts a lobe? Wadaya mean the signal is going that a way, I ort to be
able to get out reel good with all these dang new Super Dork Snorkel
antennas!

TDD


--
Offworld checks no longer accepted!

Michael A. Terrell wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
Some of those guys needed help tying their shoes but they could see
patterns in the raw data and dream in differential calculus. When
you were at Ft. Rucker, did you party in Enterprise? I tried to join
up twice, back when I was a damn hippie freak in college there was
this pesky draft thing going on and my contemporaries were shooting
toes off, claiming to be gay or running off to Canada to stay out of
Viet Nam. I wanted in The Air Force because they had the neatest toys
to play with but unfortunately I wound up 4F.

I registered for the draft at 18, and was given five separate 4F
medical ratings. Two years later I was drafted for my electronics
skills. Then I tested out of their three year course in broadcast
engineering while I was in basic training. I was told that no one else
at Ft Knox had ever passed that test without spending three years at Ft.
Monmoth. The average score was 22/110 and passing was 42/110. They
wanted me to fail and claimed the only copy they could find was missing
two pages, which happened to be 22 questions. I got 82/88,


I registered at 18 also and I didn't find out until 30 years later why I
was turned away from the military during the Viet Nam war. I was talking
with a friend who had been one of the top recruiters for the army and
according to him, the secret to staying out of Nam was "allergies". I
had stumbled upon the greatest secret of my generation and didn't know
it. It wasn't my extreme myopia, it was my damn runny nose!

Speaking of tests, I was 15 or 16 when me and my classmates were all
given this big military aptitude test ASVAB, I think it was and I
scored 98% which I thought was pretty cool because I was the only kid
in the whole school who knew what every tool shown on the test was and
used for. There was actually a "saw set tool" shown on the test. Why
a military test would have a carpentry tool on it struck me as a little
bit bizarre but I was a teenager and I knew everything. *snicker*


My friend Don, a retired US Marine master Sergeant wouldn't find that
funny. He was a construction engineer. They built buildings, roads,
bridges and a lot of other things. They used everything from simple
hand tools to heavy equipment.


The recruit processing center I went to was in Nashville and I rode
a bus up there with several other young recruits and I will never in
my life forget this one guy who was the stereotypical Hillbilly farm
boy who had us all in stitches because he was so funny. I swear, he
looked like Howdy Doody and Opie morphed into one. When the office
personnel gave us all urine test cups, Opie exclaimed "I cain't ****,
I dun ****ed!" The recruiter told him to drink some water but Opie
kept going on about not being able to go, so we all told him to shut
up and gave him some urine. Opie was sent home, I don't know why but
I can guess.


I liked what happened when one guy had to see the head shrinker. The
first words of the his mouth was "Why do you hate your mother" The guy
laughed and said, "My mother is OK, but your mother is a lousy lay and
still owes me %50". The shrink threw a hissy fit and demanded that he
leave, right now.



Darn it, I was trying
to get in and all these goof balls were being dragged away screaming
and kicking. 10 years later I tried The Navy, I was sent to Maxwell
AFB where doctors told me to bend over so they could look up my butt
and they determined I was in perfect health but too nearsighted.

The Air Force is a stickler on good vision. My vision was about
20/200 & 20/400 when I was drafted. I can't legally drive without
glasses, and I needed a stereo microscope to do surface mount work at
the end.


I got my first eyeglasses when I was six and starting the first grade.
When the optician put my glasses on me for the first time, I looked
around and said "Wow, that's where all that noise is coming from!"


I was in the fifth grade when they finally listened, that I couldn't
see what was on the chalkboards. For years the teachers claimed that I
was lazy, and just didn't want to read them.


I didn't get to play with all the neat toys in the military. No big
RADAR, no doomsday computers, no real live missile command, no ICBMs.
Darn it, I feel left out, I wanted to blow stuff up by remote control.

The infamous 'Inter City Beer Missile'? A local brewery ran
commercials in Cincinnati about their attempts to deliver their beer
faster, and one 'failed' idea was to use Inter City Beer Missiles. ;-)

Some of the newer weapons systems are remote controlled by Telemetry.
The smart bombs, with TV cameras are flown by remote control. Sometimes
the operator is half way around the world. Others are controlled from
planes or ground based personnel at a safe distance from the fighting so
the control hardware isn't captured.


I find the UAVs to be a fascinating technology but I can't wait for
the UCAVs, that's going to be mind blowing in more ways than one. I
know there is a lot of stuff going on that us lowly civilians don't
know about but by gleaning information from technical publications
and little announcements by defense contractors I can guess at what's
coming.


Yes, some is amazing, but I had to leave manufacturing in late 2001
due to failing health. I really miss being able to work with state of
the art designs.



I told a young lady dispatching for a corporate repair service we do
service calls for that I wished I was 50 again. I started having some
circulation problems with my legs back around 2000 or so due to high
blood sugar. I fixed the blood sugar problem but I'm still working
on the damage that was done. There's no way I could hold down a regular
9-5 job because of the pain so I work as hard as I can when I can. I
refuse to take pain meds when I'm going to be driving or climbing
ladders, as a result, when I get home, I'm really hurting. I explain
to folks that "My hair hurts, my toenails itch and my eyeballs are
squeaking." That makes it hard to get any sleep. I ran a couple of
service calls today that had me on my feet for 6 hours or so and I'm
paying for it now. I refuse to just lay down and do nothing because
if I did, I'm sure I'd wither away so I keep on trucking. Hell, it
only hurts when I quit moving!

This RCB2000 you're fond of, was it used to basically pick data out
of all of the RF (noise) coming from any transmissions by a missile,
satellite, aircraft or UFO? From looking at the information online
about it, I gather that you could use it to pick out two precise
slices of the spectrum to snag what you are interested in. Please, oh
master, instruct me. 8-)

I should be fond of the RCB2000. It was the last new product I
helped move from prototypes into production. It is a VME based system
with two digital receivers, the control computer, the digital combiner
and a spectrum display. Both receivers are tuned to the exact same
frequency, but fed from different antennas to reduce fading and dropout
on very weak signals.

I had to work with manufacturing engineering to improve our reflow
solder process, write a lot of test procedures, and build test fixtures.
I wrote a thick pile of Engineering Change Orders, and push them through
before it hit the production floor. The documentation for that radio
was about 1500 pages, with a lot of them 'D' size.
(22.0 by 34.0 inches)

Us blind people need 3 foot wide prints. Unless there is so much crap
on it that you still need a magnifying glass.


Regular print on 'D' sized sheets. First generation copies from the
original, signed off drawings. No blueprints, we had a huge copier. We
created some test procedures and assembly drawings in color to simplify
parts of the manufacturing process.


I can understand your concern with the reflow soldering during the
manufacturing process, I'm sure that over the years you've had to
repair a lot of equipment with a problem as simple as a bad solder
joint.


We had two problems. The size of the solder balls was too coarse when
we moved from 1206 to 0805 and smaller, and the flux was wrong for fine
pitch SMD in our original paste solder. It took several samples before
we found what we needed. Then I had to slip in a sample roll of .015"
Ersin rework solder for the hand soldering. A lot of the ICs were on
.015" center to center lead spacing. That took a very steady hand, and
stereo microscope. After rework & the ladies in assembly found out
about it, they had to buy some for everyone, and bought over $1500
worth. The head of Manufacturing Engineering was really ****ed at me.



When I worked at a repair depot, the majority of the repairs
had to do with cold solder joints. I saw some of the strangest
problems. One day I had a UHF receiver that wouldn't work, after
a lot of butt scratching, I determined that a transistor was adding
capacitance to the circuit, the transistor tested good with a good
transistor tester that measured gain, leakage and what not but not
in the RF section of the receiver. I don't know what could have
caused it because I'm sure it was working when it left the factory.


Be glad you didn't have to troubleshoot hand built prototype boards
built by engineers. Some transistors can be damaged but not work in
a real circuit. ESD damage can cause all kinds of problems. RF FETs
are a real pain at times.



I'm used to working on stuff I've never seen before. Heck, I sometimes
think if a flying saucer broke down, somebody would call me and ask me
if I could fix the darn thing. One thing that really burns me up is when
I don't get called first, "Oh this guy was cheaper but he couldn't fix
it." I was straightening out a computer system for a trucking company a
while back and the fellow told me he had to get some billing out and
didn't have time for me to finish up. I told him "This data is corrupt,
whatever you do, don't try to open this application, DON'T CLICK ON
THIS." You can guess what the idiot did. I had spent hours getting that
system back up.

I remember years ago, I repaired a 20kw Delco generator on a crew boat
that had a narrow range thermal intermittent problem with the voltage
regulator. It wouldn't work when cold, it wouldn't work when hot. It
would only work when the temperature was around 85°F. I pulled the
regulator assembly, took it to the island TV repair shop where I set
it up to bench test it and discovered a defective FET. There was no
exact part available so I tried one meant for a TV set and the darn
thing worked great. I've seen a lot of narrow range thermal intermittent
problems in solid state engine control systems for some odd reason.
Once again, this was something I'd spent hours working on because there
was no replacement within 2,300 miles. The boat developed a cooling
water leak on one of the V12 diesel engines and when the boat captain
told the superintendent, the boss said "Screw it, run it till it quits!"
The leak got worse and sprayed salt water all over the generator and
that electronic regulator I'd spent so much time repairing. I don't
know if you run into or have experienced this sort of nonsense in your
career but doggone it seems to happen to me much too often. It's very
frustrating to work your butt off to fix a problem and have someone
come along and destroy all your hard work.

Plated through holes on double sided and multilayer circuit boards
were another nightmare at the repair depot.


There are different thicknesses of plating for PTH boards. Most
manufacturers use the lowest grade to save money. If it's a double sided
board it's not hard to run a piece of Kynar Wire Wrap Wire to bridge an
open trace, or run it through the PTH and solder it to both sides.


With your involvement in the RBC2000, I'm sure there are multilayer
boards in it, how did you address any potential problems with
connections between the layers?


Any defective vias, and the boards were scrapped. The VME cards were
17 layers. We paid damn good money for 100% testing, and the OEM was
liable for the cost of boards that were found to be defective after they
were stuffed. A couple boards cost $8,000 to manufacture, stuff & test.


Diversity receivers were used on HF during W.W.II where two or three
identical radios were used with separate wire antennas. The recovered
audio was mixed together so the strongest signal was heard at all times.


Oh, that's the combiner part! I see how it works now. Back in the good
old days when I did a lot of two way radio work both commercial and CB,
I would show people why their fancy antennas didn't work so well with a
simple field strength meter. The more antennas the better, right?
Wuts a lobe? Wadaya mean the signal is going that a way, I ort to be
able to get out reel good with all these dang new Super Dork Snorkel
antennas!

TDD


I hope your health improves and you are able to pass on your expertise
to a younger crowd of techies because I'm afraid that discrete component
board level repair is becoming a lost art. I wish I had a kid to whom I
could pass on what little I know and the kid could take that knowledge
and expand upon it and pass it on to others. I remember when I was a
kid and being desperate for information on how things worked. I was
always getting into trouble for taking things apart.

TDD

The Daring Dufas wrote:

I told a young lady dispatching for a corporate repair service we do
service calls for that I wished I was 50 again. I started having some
circulation problems with my legs back around 2000 or so due to high
blood sugar. I fixed the blood sugar problem but I'm still working
on the damage that was done. There's no way I could hold down a
regular 9-5 job because of the pain so I work as hard as I can when I
can. I refuse to take pain meds when I'm going to be driving or
climbing ladders, as a result, when I get home, I'm really hurting. I
explain to folks that "My hair hurts, my toenails itch and my eyeballs are
squeaking." That makes it hard to get any sleep. I ran a couple of
service calls today that had me on my feet for 6 hours or so and I'm
paying for it now. I refuse to just lay down and do nothing because
if I did, I'm sure I'd wither away so I keep on trucking. Hell, it
only hurts when I quit moving!


There is no reason for your symptoms. Medicine today has a huge arsenal of
pain-relief medicine.

Consider the first five seasons of "House." Dr. Gregory House ate Vicodin
like gumdrops and still managed to direct others in the operation of
complicated machinery (CAT-scan machines, spoons, etc.) while he, himself,
drove a motorcycle back and forth to work.

A fairly new drug, Lyrica, has been found effective against diabetic
neuropathy. It causes some people to walk into walls, so be careful, but the
hallucinations are worth it!

Ibuprophen is a good choice for those moments. Doesn't mess
with your brain.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..


"The Daring Dufas" wrote
in message ...


There's no way I could hold down a regular
9-5 job because of the pain so I work as hard as I can when
I can. I
refuse to take pain meds when I'm going to be driving or
climbing
ladders, as a result, when I get home, I'm really hurting. I
explain
to folks that "My hair hurts, my toenails itch and my
eyeballs are
squeaking." That makes it hard to get any sleep. I ran a
couple of
service calls today that had me on my feet for 6 hours or so
and I'm
paying for it now. I refuse to just lay down and do nothing
because
if I did, I'm sure I'd wither away so I keep on trucking.
Hell, it
only hurts when I quit moving!

I'm with you. Not many people can really fix anything, now
days. One friend of mine does circuit board repair (runs a
Macintosh computer store). He's resoldered circuit board for
me, one time for a refrigerator. Also looked at a RF cable
for the video projector at church.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..


"The Daring Dufas" wrote
in message ...


I hope your health improves and you are able to pass on your
expertise
to a younger crowd of techies because I'm afraid that
discrete component
board level repair is becoming a lost art. I wish I had a
kid to whom I
could pass on what little I know and the kid could take that
knowledge
and expand upon it and pass it on to others. I remember when
I was a
kid and being desperate for information on how things
worked. I was
always getting into trouble for taking things apart.

TDD

And, they don't have the common sense to wrap it in a towel,
and let it drip instead of spray.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..


"The Daring Dufas" wrote
in message ...
Michael A. Terrell wrote:



I remember years ago, I repaired a 20kw Delco generator on a
crew boat
that had a narrow range thermal intermittent problem with
the voltage
regulator. It wouldn't work when cold, it wouldn't work when
hot. It
would only work when the temperature was around 85°F. I
pulled the
regulator assembly, took it to the island TV repair shop
where I set
it up to bench test it and discovered a defective FET. There
was no
exact part available so I tried one meant for a TV set and
the darn
thing worked great. I've seen a lot of narrow range thermal
intermittent
problems in solid state engine control systems for some odd
reason.
Once again, this was something I'd spent hours working on
because there
was no replacement within 2,300 miles. The boat developed a
cooling
water leak on one of the V12 diesel engines and when the
boat captain
told the superintendent, the boss said "Screw it, run it
till it quits!"
The leak got worse and sprayed salt water all over the
generator and
that electronic regulator I'd spent so much time repairing.
I don't
know if you run into or have experienced this sort of
nonsense in your
career but doggone it seems to happen to me much too often.
It's very
frustrating to work your butt off to fix a problem and have
someone
come along and destroy all your hard work.

TDD

HeyBub wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
I told a young lady dispatching for a corporate repair service we do
service calls for that I wished I was 50 again. I started having some
circulation problems with my legs back around 2000 or so due to high
blood sugar. I fixed the blood sugar problem but I'm still working
on the damage that was done. There's no way I could hold down a
regular 9-5 job because of the pain so I work as hard as I can when I
can. I refuse to take pain meds when I'm going to be driving or
climbing ladders, as a result, when I get home, I'm really hurting. I
explain to folks that "My hair hurts, my toenails itch and my eyeballs are
squeaking." That makes it hard to get any sleep. I ran a couple of
service calls today that had me on my feet for 6 hours or so and I'm
paying for it now. I refuse to just lay down and do nothing because
if I did, I'm sure I'd wither away so I keep on trucking. Hell, it
only hurts when I quit moving!


There is no reason for your symptoms. Medicine today has a huge arsenal of
pain-relief medicine.

Consider the first five seasons of "House." Dr. Gregory House ate Vicodin
like gumdrops and still managed to direct others in the operation of
complicated machinery (CAT-scan machines, spoons, etc.) while he, himself,
drove a motorcycle back and forth to work.

A fairly new drug, Lyrica, has been found effective against diabetic
neuropathy. It causes some people to walk into walls, so be careful, but the
hallucinations are worth it!



I have a drug problem or more correctly, I have a problem with drugs.
I don't like taking anything. I'm very resistant to anyone or anything
controlling me. The same goes for for being dependent on anyone or
anything. I don't like anything that interferes with my control, dulls
my senses or alters my perception of my environment. Back in the good
old days, my fellow Hippie Freak friends thought I was weird because
I've never consumed an alcoholic beverage in my life, never smoked
anything legal or illegal or taken any illegal or recreational drug. I
won't take anything unless I know what it is because I've had physicians
damn near kill me with drugs. That's the psychological component of my
drug problem. The physiological component of my problem with drugs
causes medical practitioners look at me like I was a Martian. Drugs
don't work on me as they do other people. The dosages of pain medication
it takes to have any effect on me will put a "normal" person in a coma.
This has doctors thinking I'm some kind of drug addict when in fact, I'm
not taking anything. The last time I was in the hospital I was being
tortured with tiny doses of pain medication and it's impossible to get
the medical staff to understand. My physician friends are so terrified
of the DEA that they are reluctant to write prescriptions for high doses
of pain medication because it would make them appear to be drug pushers.
There are drugs that work for me but I don't like the way they make me
feel in the doses that affect me. I'll never understand people who will
purposely take something that alters their mind or turns them into
Jello, it's beyond me. Oh, I like the TV show "House" but it's a TV show
not real life. I've seen too many lives, careers and businesses ruined
by drug addiction. The show did give a somewhat true depiction of a high
functioning drug addict but it's still just a TV show.

TDD

On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:34:29 -0500, Stormin Mormon wrote:

I'm with you. Not many people can really fix anything, now
days. One friend of mine does circuit board repair (runs a
Macintosh computer store). He's resoldered circuit board for
me, one time for a refrigerator. Also looked at a RF cable
for the video projector at church.

I hate soldering surface-mount stuff by hand, though - and doing those
kinds of repair only works when it's not some unobtainable custom part
that's failed.

Personally I'd much rather electronic stuff was twice the size (like it
used to be), but at least easy to fix - but I'm in a minority there and
most folk want stuff as small as possible and who gives a crap when it
breaks as they can just buy a whole new one... :-(

cheers

Jules

The Daring Dufas wrote:

I have a drug problem or more correctly, I have a problem with drugs.
I don't like taking anything. I'm very resistant to anyone or anything
controlling me. The same goes for for being dependent on anyone or
anything. I don't like anything that interferes with my control, dulls
my senses or alters my perception of my environment. Back in the good
old days, my fellow Hippie Freak friends thought I was weird because
I've never consumed an alcoholic beverage in my life, never smoked
anything legal or illegal or taken any illegal or recreational drug. I
won't take anything unless I know what it is because I've had physicians
damn near kill me with drugs. That's the psychological component of my
drug problem. The physiological component of my problem with drugs
causes medical practitioners look at me like I was a Martian. Drugs
don't work on me as they do other people. The dosages of pain medication
it takes to have any effect on me will put a "normal" person in a coma.
This has doctors thinking I'm some kind of drug addict when in fact, I'm
not taking anything. The last time I was in the hospital I was being
tortured with tiny doses of pain medication and it's impossible to get
the medical staff to understand. My physician friends are so terrified
of the DEA that they are reluctant to write prescriptions for high doses
of pain medication because it would make them appear to be drug pushers.
There are drugs that work for me but I don't like the way they make me
feel in the doses that affect me. I'll never understand people who will
purposely take something that alters their mind or turns them into
Jello, it's beyond me. Oh, I like the TV show "House" but it's a TV show
not real life. I've seen too many lives, careers and businesses ruined
by drug addiction. The show did give a somewhat true depiction of a high
functioning drug addict but it's still just a TV show.


I take Gabapentin for Diabetic neuropathy. I haven't seen any side
effects, and it allows me to use my left hand for my cane without losing
the feeling. The same for driving. At one time I couldn't drive more
than ten minutes without losing the feeling in both hands. It doesn't
alter your mood, and isn't addictive. All it does is that the edge off
the pain so you can function. It comes in different dosages. The only
thing I don't like is that you have to take it three times a day so
there is a small amount in your bloodstream at all times. It takes a
little while to work, so you can't just pop a handful and expect
results.


--
Offworld checks no longer accepted!

The Daring Dufas wrote:

I told a young lady dispatching for a corporate repair service we do
service calls for that I wished I was 50 again. I started having some
circulation problems with my legs back around 2000 or so due to high
blood sugar. I fixed the blood sugar problem but I'm still working
on the damage that was done. There's no way I could hold down a regular
9-5 job because of the pain so I work as hard as I can when I can. I
refuse to take pain meds when I'm going to be driving or climbing
ladders, as a result, when I get home, I'm really hurting. I explain
to folks that "My hair hurts, my toenails itch and my eyeballs are
squeaking." That makes it hard to get any sleep. I ran a couple of
service calls today that had me on my feet for 6 hours or so and I'm
paying for it now. I refuse to just lay down and do nothing because
if I did, I'm sure I'd wither away so I keep on trucking. Hell, it
only hurts when I quit moving!


The same with me. I have a lot of trouble sleeping any set schedule,
so there is no way that I could work full time. I keep busy repairing
computers to give away, do a little free consulting and tech support for
a business owned by some friends. Anything to keep busy.


I'm used to working on stuff I've never seen before. Heck, I sometimes
think if a flying saucer broke down, somebody would call me and ask me
if I could fix the darn thing. One thing that really burns me up is when
I don't get called first, "Oh this guy was cheaper but he couldn't fix
it." I was straightening out a computer system for a trucking company a
while back and the fellow told me he had to get some billing out and
didn't have time for me to finish up. I told him "This data is corrupt,
whatever you do, don't try to open this application, DON'T CLICK ON
THIS." You can guess what the idiot did. I had spent hours getting that
system back up.


That is where I would have burnt the files to a disk before letting
them get near it again.

I was talking about fixing a TV transmitter, having never seen the
inside of one before. Hell, the only thing I had ever done at a TV
station before that was be on a kiddy TV show while I was in Elementary
school.

I read a couple thousand pages of equipment manuals for the equipment
at that station, starting the first night on duty. After that, I knew
the basic configuration by heart when I had the first failure.


I remember years ago, I repaired a 20kw Delco generator on a crew boat
that had a narrow range thermal intermittent problem with the voltage
regulator. It wouldn't work when cold, it wouldn't work when hot. It
would only work when the temperature was around 85°F. I pulled the
regulator assembly, took it to the island TV repair shop where I set
it up to bench test it and discovered a defective FET. There was no
exact part available so I tried one meant for a TV set and the darn
thing worked great. I've seen a lot of narrow range thermal intermittent
problems in solid state engine control systems for some odd reason.
Once again, this was something I'd spent hours working on because there
was no replacement within 2,300 miles. The boat developed a cooling
water leak on one of the V12 diesel engines and when the boat captain
told the superintendent, the boss said "Screw it, run it till it quits!"
The leak got worse and sprayed salt water all over the generator and
that electronic regulator I'd spent so much time repairing. I don't
know if you run into or have experienced this sort of nonsense in your
career but doggone it seems to happen to me much too often. It's very
frustrating to work your butt off to fix a problem and have someone
come along and destroy all your hard work.


I was used to the older techs destroying things because their
training was 20+ years out of date.


I hope your health improves and you are able to pass on your expertise
to a younger crowd of techies because I'm afraid that discrete component
board level repair is becoming a lost art. I wish I had a kid to whom I
could pass on what little I know and the kid could take that knowledge
and expand upon it and pass it on to others. I remember when I was a
kid and being desperate for information on how things worked. I was
always getting into trouble for taking things apart.


The VA gave up on my health about five years ago, when they granted
100% disability 14 days after I had to file.

The two local electronics vocational courses were dropped several
years ago. The only people who express an interest in electronics don't
want to learn to solder, or any math so there isn't much that you can
teach them. They think that a couple hours of being shown how to use a
meter is all they really need to become experts.


--
Offworld checks no longer accepted!