First of all, thank you for tuning in. I appreciate it.
I have been trying to get back on the air since SPRING, when we had a lightning strike which fried nearly all of my gear. It made it's way in through the powerline neutral when a pole got struck a few houses down the street.
The few things left unscorched were the turntables, an '80's Radio Shaft mixer and the TFT modulation monitor. The computers, all my processing equipment and the TX all got hosed. I've literally spent the past 6 or so months up to my eyelids chasing down fuzzy internet schematics, rare unobtainium parts and breathing solder smoke. It's been like all the repairs of my 30+ year career as a radio engineer were dumped into the last 6 months.
Some items were too far gone to repair, or I just plain got sick of trying to fix... An Optimod HF, Gates console, 3 CBS Labs procs, a Urei Modulimiter and EQ. Add to that a lot of non-radio electronics.
So, this is what I have running now:
Said RS mixer
Symetrix 422 leveller
Harris MSP 90 3-band compressor
CRL SEP 400a multiband processor
Rane 27 band EQ
CRL PMC 300a limiter
Yaesu FT757gx
TFT 923a Modulation monitor
MFJ (933??) cross needle bridge
inverted V 15' above a chainlink fence.
Computers are curbside picks. Not all software installed yet and most of my old SSTV and QSL files were lost. I'll get it all back together eventually.
I was running 20w dead carrier with -98% and +125% on the monitor. At one point I tweaked the positives to 133% but distortion was bad so I tweaked it back down to +120% or so. I'm not convinced the old Yaesu can take much more than that. Frankly, I'm amazed it does that!
And then, there are issues with ME. Our year started with another round of COVID and went south from there. What used to take me 3 hours now takes 2 months! I think COVID ate half my brain. Add in a couple falls, a hyperextended elbow, "frozen shoulder" syndrome, a few dozen shocks and a couple cardiac events, and I'm stunned I'm still even alive. Wife has had 3 surgeries and countless health troubles as well.
Oh, and we had 3 floods downstairs this summer. It's been just crazy around here.
As soon as I can I will get QSL's out. My Protonmail is full, despite having deleted all the spam. I'll probably have to set up another account because I really do not care to pay for email.
Topic: World Wide Basement Radio 6925 AM 2319 UTC 29th Oct. 2024 (Read 1218 times)
