A Crummy Commercial

Youtube served an old documentary on the cartoon TV show: Jonny Quest     It is a fan made film but well done, there were a number things I found out about the show: 1) Doug Wildey was the guiding force of the show not Hanna or Barbera.  He was a comic book guy not a cartoon guy and the art work shows that. 2) The music was composed and conducted by Hoyt Curtin, like many shows of that era the music was great 3) there were apparently subsequent Jonny Quest iterations but from a brief viewing they don't seem to be as good as the original. 4) Jonny was voiced by Tim Matheson when he was 16.  The other voices were familiar to any old time radio fan, one I recognized was Cathy Lewis who played some of the female characters (there weren't too many). 5) only 1 season of 26 shows (that'd be equivalent to 2.5 seasons of Rick and Morty ) 6) rewatching the shows there is a resemblance between Jonny Quest and Clutch Cargo although Jonny Quest was a much better show.  B...

Finally the Brewers won ! Losing 3 in a row to the Cubs was not good.    But they are back to 7 games ahead of the Cubs and they are the first team in MLB to 80 wins. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

Seems like another nifty tech oriented website is gone ?: http://www.bunkerofdoom.com/  Luckily there are a number of hits on the wayback: https://web.archive.org/web/20240521124557/http://www.bunkerofdoom.com/  On a related note, I heard about this software: https://www.httrack.com/  A way to fully copy a site to a drive and then be able to look at it offline.  Might be useful for backing up the Jackson Harbor Press site or maybe even for this blog ?  One thing about a wayback archive is that there are often "holes" - pictures just aren't always preserved.  I remember a friend challenging the notion of backups once:  "do you fully verify the backup ?"  -  honestly, no.  I've been subscribing to the concept: " do lots of backups and hope that the aggregate will have everything " :) Also, something weird happened to a couple of backups I did manually to the wayback of the blog: I usually do them on Saturday of the previous 7 days of blog ...

Recently I had gotten on the Nordic Track for under a minute when whoops !  My feet came out from under me - the strap had broken. The Nordic Track was a pretty ruggedly designed machine - meant to mimic cross country skiing motion.  There are two one way rollers under the skis which drive a flywheel.  The strap is a length of nylon webbing about 1 inch wide that rides in a groove on the flywheel.  The strap is wound most of the way around the wheel and is tensioned by a spring.  As the machine is used the strap rubs on the wheel generating warmth to the touch.  But this friction and heat must eventually break down the strap until snap ! Note that this is a much better system than the old stationary bike I had from AMF.  It just had an adjustable pressure roller on a wheel - eventually the wheel bearings heated up and froze. Here is a picture of the removed strap: Ebay still has listings for the strap: https://www.ebay.com/itm/255879679323  But $2...

I mentioned the roof at American Family Field leaking during the Brewer game in Milwaukee on 2025-08-09: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/08/two-highlight-videos.html  There were storms here on the island on that Saturday, too.  The power was out for about 1/2 hour in the late afternoon.  But before that there was a very close lightning strike near my house, flash and thunder at the same time and LOUD !  Luckily I had turned off the modem, computer, disconnected antennas and the phone line. But after the power came on I didn't check the outside and garage lights.  There is a long buried wire from the garage to a lamp near the mailbox.  It's on a ground fault circuit which usually trips during a storm.  But trying the lights a few evenings later (after resetting the GFI breaker) the lights were found to be dead.   The next day I checked and found these 4 dead LED bulbs: The three LED lamps on the left had been outside and they all rattle just ...

I was having trouble with a couple of weak stations.  The first was WDOR-FM, 93.9 MHz, the station I listen to the Brewers on.  One night the signal got noisier and noisier - then I realized that the rabbit ears (from an old TV set) with a shorting wire to make them a loop was the problem.  So I removed the shorting wire and then shortened up each each of the rods to 30 inches (half of the roughly 5 foot long antenna from 468 / 93.9).  This was audibly better ! BTW, I stopped trying to catch the Brewers games on the originating station, WTMJ 620 in Milwaukee (180 miles away) which isn't as strong as WDOR-FM in Sturgeon Bay (50 miles away). Next I was having trouble hearing my 11 meter thermometer beacon on CB channel 4 (27.05 MHz).  So I made up a quick indoor dipole by using the 468 / f formula again.  Made the dipole from some old twisted pair and the remaining skinny coax from MFJ. it was a nicely made thingy but I was never going to use it with an HT in...

I suppose in a year this post will cause me to yawn but right now it's just amazing to me how the Brewers keep winning.  If the other team makes even the slightest mistake the Brewers will take advantage. still not used to the automatic runner though when the Brewers win Youtube serves highlights some call him Mona, I call him Supersub with a pinch hit, first pitch, 3 run homer  The Athletic has been mentioning the Brewers recently: One thing that I see sometimes on the highlights: The fielders have cheat sheets, apparently the hit charting is insanely good - I wonder if Ted Williams could have hit .400 with this kind of fielding aid in use ?   MLB put up a highlight reel:  source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge1ZWXZJo_I    I heard a snippet from a Jack Paar radio show (August 3, 1947) https://archive.org/details/Jack_Paar_Show/1947-08-03_0010_-_Jack_Paar_Show_the_-_Buying_a_House.mp3       where he mentions that the Dodgers had won ...

I've got a couple of SHARP WWVB clocks - actually three but one is dead.  The one I have in the basement started acting up, some segments of the LCD are missing: The bad one is on the right.  The problem is with the DAY (should be WED) and the tens of minutes (should be a 4).   Here are closer but fuzzier views: Good clock bad clock I checked the AA cells, they are both Energizer Lithium which read over 1.7 volts as do the cells in the good clock.  I got out the dead clock mainly because taking it apart wouldn't hurt anything and to see how the LCD was connected to the clock chip.   I was expecting some kind of pressure-elastomeric interconnect but these appear to be bonded together with some kind of stick-em like double sided tape or conductive glue or ??  Anyway it doesn't look like there is a way to just swap the LCD easily.  The back of the clock has the WWVB receiver: see the green-red wire near the hole ?  that was intended to bring the piez...

I did a search using Duck Duck Go for:     pn5179 ham radio circuit schematic (I just happen to have a bunch of PN5179 transistors in the junkbox). And one of the links was: https://www.edaboard.com/threads/pn5179-equivalent-transistor-needed-for-construction.259327/  where I saw this: Ah, the little guy with the hammer !  That's from the QRP Popcorn blog.  So I tried looking at the QRP Popcorn blog and got this: Some of the QRP Popcorn pages are found almost completely intact on archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20241226034145/http://qrp-popcorn.blogspot.com/2022/10/some-analog-ic-gilbert-cell-mixer-notes.html  But I noticed that on some other pages, pictures and diagrams are missing, bummer ! BTW I also tried a search for: "Discrete BJT Transformerless Feedback Amp" (the title on that PN5179 circuit) and nothing - I was interested in seeing his comments on the circuit. Also, I didn't see any of his videos on Youtube either.  I'm hoping it's j...

Mentioned that the previous Youtube sign-in workaround seemed to be broken: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/07/youtube-sign-in-workaround-broken.html  I have been using mostly US servers for the VPN mainly for Bing.  If Bing senses you are outside the US it will shift your points to whatever is given in that country.  But since I've given up on Bing I tried a Netherlands server today and the Youtube videos started to play without having to sign-in. the black background at the top indicates a private window - in other words: no persistent cookies I do have to express thumbs up or down on cookies though but that's not a big deal.  Firefox erases the cookies anyway. Also there are the commercials in Dutch which are generally short but can't be skipped.    But overall, it's nice to be able to see Youtube videos without having to give up the VPN or having to pollute my regular Youtube feed. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

The Brewers beat the Pirates 14 to nothing.  At the end position players were pitching on both teams.  Maybe MLB needs a mercy rule ? Here was the last time the Brewers made it to 11 in a row: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/07/alas-no-free-burgers-in-milwaukee.html  And the semi-obligatory lyrical schadenfreude: Sometimes it's fun to be on the winning side ! 2025-08-13 afternoon, Lucky Strike Extra: Burger Time ! A preview of the fare: The official pronouncement: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDTcdEcLMoc  The numbers: Basking in the warmth of the streak and the season - pretty soon it'll be COLD and miserable.  So warp a little of this around your finger and remember, Chuck :) 2025-08-14 update: The Crispy Brothers present: 8-15-2025 update (they spotted Cincinnati 8 runs but still came back to win, amazing): Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm