It was a busy Saturday for me. Not so much for the others but I was going all day and my accomplishments were , well… not all successful.
First thing was out for my walk – got in 3 miles by 8:00 AM, and it is not an easy 3 miles I do when I walk. First I so south about a 1/4 mile then turn east and face this short hill.
That is maybe a little over 100 yards to just get you heart pumping good, great warm up for the rest of the walk.
When you cross that hill you have a long way down. The only problem with that is you have to go back up all that part that you went down.
This is on the way back and I have already done a little over 2.5 miles and now I have that damn hill to climb. I guess it may be between 100 and 300 feet of elevation climb in that 1/4 mile we see here. By the time I get to the water tower I still have a 1/4 mile to go but I am sweating and puffing and remember all my joint aches by then…
After this I had some water, and wanted to go get breakfast. Wife had set to walk with her friend at 8am so I hauled here do the park for that. They like the park because it is covered in the trees, and seems cooler and the trail is relatively flat. I would have to walk 2 hours to get the same exercise I get here in less than an hour. My choice, get it in and put a little stress in it. ?
Anyway I waited and then we went to breakfast when they finished.
Yea, I know we wasted all that walk in eating it up but hey, it is a weekend and we used to go out for breakfast every Saturday when we lived in the trailer… I will not comment in where and what we had, suffice to say it was not oatmeal, my normal fare.
When I got back I got up on the barn roof and worked on the weather station rain gauge. Lately when the wind blows over 25mph (which it can do often here in Oklahoma) it records rain- I call it wind rain with no clouds). Anyway on inspection I find that the shelf (plastic) for the gauge is cracked at the back. That crack is probably because I put the sending unit (which is pretty heavy for that light weight plastic shelf) on the side and when it got to bouncing it had cracked the back corner and was allowing it to bounce even more. I took the sending unit (which also has a solar collector and batteries in it) off and mounted it on the roof like the one for the wind anemometer. That took the weight off the shelf and then I tied up the corner so it would quit bouncing and that may have stopped the “wind rain” occurrences. We will have to wait and see during the next big wind. It was pretty hot on the roof by the time I got done with that and I was glad I had done it early but wished I had done it 2 hours earlier.
After that I got the mower out and headed back up to the park to help mow that. I had noticed the neighbor mowing when we got back from breakfast but by the time I got up there it was done, although I went on and mowed up the entrance to the neighbor hood. A few of us have started that as the City will not and the development owners are not doing it. I started that a couple of summers ago when the wife complained the grass was so high at the entrance that you couldn’t see a car coming on the street until you were nearly out in the street. So for safety I went up and moved the corners off. over the past years or so one of the neighbors closer to the entrance has been moving it (he is retired) for the same reason, his wife complained and he has kept moving the grass back a bit further every time. I offered to do it but I seem never to be here when it is needed so I miss out. This time I just did it early.
After the mowing I stopped to talk to the neighbor that usually mows it as he just got home from town and he was appreciative that some one else was jumping in. He then showed me his other projects. He does stained glass, wood work (fine stuff like desks and china cabinets, and his back yard has a huge pond with waterfall and is just beautiful. You can see he puts a lot of effort into his yard. I should have taken pictures but again, wasn’t thinking about it just gawking at all he has done.
When I got home I snacked a lite lunch and headed back out to work on a project I had started last year. I had gotten the plans to build a noise filter for my HF radio in the Jeep. Those damn jeeps are as noise as they come. Anyway I found the plans for one at KB1MVX filter. It has also been relisted here and has been published in QST. It was easy enough to build but installing it in a jeep with so little room became an issue. Here is where I was working to get it in:
Here is the IC-706 on the floor, it normally mounts up on the dash to the upper left in the picture and this is all laying below the picture above.
I found that I am not near as limber as I used to be and reaching over, under and around in this small areas it pretty hard. Not to mention it was 100 degrees out there today and this was in the shade. I did however get it in and all wired up and all that put back out of the way and actually drove the jeep later to get a root beer float at Sonic. The outcome???
It did get rid of the whine but didn’t get rid of the spark wire popping and some other small noises that run it up to S7 when the engine is running? Guess I need to get back in and check all the grounds again. I am sure the one on the antenna is not real good as it would not tune up on 80 meters and that has indicated in the past that the ground at the antenna is weak. I am also sure that the ground to this new filter box is not as good as it could be. I reflected on that when I hooked it up but it was getting late, I was damn hot, my back was hurting from bending and kneeling on my knees, not to mention they hurt so I buttoned it up and figure I will have to go back and redouble all the ground work again. Oh well the exercise of building the filter was fun and didn’t take too long. I plan to build one more for the motorhome (I have another 706 that goes in there when we are out) as it has some other noised in it and this may help filter out some of that noise so we shall see. I have the parts ready , just need to take the few hours it takes to wind the wire and put it all together. the install will be a bit easier there as I have a lot more room to work.
Like I mentioned we went out for a root beer float after all this and then did a little drive around to some of the spots we had not been in a while. you can see my route on arps.fi. While out got this picture of the big storms building up in Kansas and heading to the SE. We were listening to the ham repeater out of Tulsa talking about the tornado near Pawhuska at the time. It was clear where we were but the clouds to the North and NE were spectacular.
After the little detour drive we got back home and I was pooped but finished up this post and had my shower and headed off to bed.
Tomorrow, my Dad plans to come over for a visit. He likes our steak houses better than the ones in Enid and it is Fathers Day so we will treat him. He is starting to worry about his driving and we are not sure how much longer he will be making solo trips out so it is good for him and we will treat him to the steak.