A Crummy Commercial

I had some temperature beacon trouble at the remote location.  When I tried listening Sunday morning all I heard was a carrier - it turned out to be my beacon was key-down.  The beacon has been running  24 / 7 / 365 for years without a problem.  Here's a picture: The old Knight CB talkie is OK, the wall wart seems OK.  But the beacon in the tin is NG.  It is a PIC based beacon which reads and transmits the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit every 10 seconds or so.  I also used an op amp to scale the LM-34 sensor voltage and an external voltage reference for the PIC A/D.  There is also a piezo at the lower right which clicks in time to the Morse. Diagnosis:   Is the keying transistor bad ?  It is a 2n7000 MOSFET.  I tried replacing it.  The beacon worked BRIEFLY but then went key down again. Then it dawned on me: what about the jack ?  There is a 3.5 mm stereo jack to the Knight CB which brings ground, +9V and the keyin...

Sometimes things go right two Sundays in a row, last week both the Brewers and Packers won: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/10/similarities.html This week, the Packers beat their rival, the Bears, 31-7.   Played at noon, sunshine, windy day at Lambeau.  Just really a no doubter, amazing.  The Bears had their run game taken away by rapid long bomb throws by the Packers.  The Packers kicker, Smack, got squirrely and missed field goals and an extra point though.  The Bears were missing players, mainly the QB Williams, but so what ?  Every team is missing players - smile of satisfaction number one. Then in the evening the Brewers beat the Dodgers, 2-1.   The only home run ? by Brewers 2nd baseman Brice Turang, no answers from the Dodgers.  The Miz didn't look super sharp but good enough.  Remember that the Dodgers swept the Brewers last year in the NLCS, not this year !  Smile of satisfaction number two ! It was a good Sunday to waste insid...

1) Forma Scientific clipboard: I got this freebie clipboard sometime in the 1980s or 1990s while working at GTE.  Legal size, it was an OK clipboard but just recently I heard a "clink" sound when picking it up.  I found these two pieces on the floor of one of the springs for the clip: Where am I going to get a replacement for that spring ?  I'd have to make one - the clipboard still clips but once the other spring breaks that'll be about it.  Although I do have some of these Boston clips: We'll see how it goes. 2) I went over to Mann's Store on Saturday morning.   There were many cars by the Farm Museum on Jackson Harbor road for the cider pressing event.  So on the way back from the store I decided to take the scenic route down Town Line road.  Here is probably the biggest elm tree on the island: Saturday was a windy day When I was a kid there were thousands of these trees in the Milwaukee area.  Imagine them on both sides of the street with...

Hearing that Mike Ditka died the first thing I was reminded of was this:  I am still living in the Chicago area, so 1993 or before, watching the NBC NFL either pre-game or post-game show.  Ditka is one of the guys behind the desk - this might have been his first broadcast.  He is chewing gum.  I suppose they wouldn't let him smoke ?  Anyway the host "throws" it over to Mike for a comment and there is dead silence.  A couple of heart beats later Ditka says something like: "I almost swallowed my gum !"  What a dope ! I tried looking on Youtube but didn't find any videos - probably just as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Ditka Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I went in to Mann's Store on Thursday.  I noticed that they had the new sale flyer displayed.  But none were left, Thursday is the new Wednesday !  Any Mann's shopper in the winter soon learns that the cupboards are often bare the afternoon of the 2nd day after the truck delivery.  I was informed that the flyer was online at the same old stand: https://www.mannsgrocery.com/WeeklyAd/Index/ Here's the first "new" Mann's sale flyer: kind of a cram job at the bottom but OK Four Color !!  I didn't see a PDF downloadable version but it's fairly easy to download the two JPG files from the page source.  The two picture files are much smaller than the previous PDF file of the sale flyer, so that's a win overall.  The sale now runs from Wednesday to Tuesday, previously it was 6 days, Monday to Saturday. The last Mann's sale flyer I saw was from the week of September 7-12, 2026, roughly a month ago.  The weird thing is that as a consumer I buy less IF I d...

I never knew that Tommy Lee Jones has been selling canned coffee (Boss) in Japan for decades !: source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk7oj6_qj3I   source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8xRT_UlyTM Seeing that Tommy Lee Jones frozen face I couldn't help but think of Buster Keaton (here with one of his dogs): I guess the moral is: never smile, ever ! and you will be a success even if you work with scene stealing dogs. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I was pleased to get some kit inquiries recently, I had several promises of "checks in the mail".  The first one arrived yesterday.  When I went to create a mailing label I was shocked: The price on this 4 oz parcel sent USPS Ground Advantage to the southeast US from the Island was $8.24 !  On October 3rd the rate was $5.58.  8.24 / 5.58 = 1.48 or roughly a 50 percent increase.  How will anyone on Ebay be able to sell a postpaid item for less than $10 ? A Bing search revealed this: The six percent lie: it's more like 48 percent for kit parcels   My kit customer only paid $6 for shipping so that's $2.24 out of my pocket to send this order :( I've raised shipping to $9 per order immediately (1.5 times the old $6 rate).  The new USPS rate is supposed to be temporary but I suspect it will be made permanent in 2027 :( http://wb9kzy.com/shiphand.htm The $90 bribe windfall mentioned yesterday will cover any shipping shortfall in orders that were mailed befor...