A Crummy Commercial

Previously I blogged on the book: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/09/book-report-seven-days-in-may.html Then I did watch the movie.  As usual characters were moved around and melded together and everything was tightly cut down from the book.  But also I did noticed Ava Gardner: As the literalist a couple items from the movie struck me, first this mini-tracked vehicle used by Andrew Duggan and Edmund O'Brien: And behind John Houseman and Martin Balsam on the cabinet is a Zenith Trans-Oceanic: Here is one from ebay: I bet they weighed a ton but sounded great.  Here is another shot of John Houseman as the weaselly admiral with the Zenith in the back: "I only bet on sure things" My dream receiver in 1969 was the solid-state GE World Monitor which was similar to the Zenith Trans-Oceanic.   My reality receiver in 1969 was the tube Hallicrafters S-120.  I finally did buy a GE P2900a World Monitor on ebay in rough but working condition.   The two doors on the fro...

 I saw this picture of the Micamold XTR-1 transmitter on Faceoff.  Looks like a Novice rig sorta like the Ameco AC-1 but maybe a little fancier. Per this ad in April 1948 CQ Magazine (seen on ebay): The XTR-1 sold for $34.  That inflates to $423.25:   But the thing that caught my eye was that brass key.   Was that key ever actually used except maybe to tune up the rig ?  The first hard press and the key would tip back, we've all experienced that. Put that key on a base: wood - metal - phenolic - whatever, to keep it from tipping and moving.  And a wood base has the bonus of being warmer to the touch than that cold brass (because judging from the dust the key was held down on the brass base). Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

NASA scrubbed the launch of Artemis 1 again today (Saturday Sept. 3, 2022).  The reason was different, a hydrogen leak. A lot of the newer rockets have changed from liquid hydrogen fuel to liquid methane.  Tradeoffs exist depending on which fuel is used.  Hydrogen gives better performance but it's bulky and hard to handle.  Methane's performance isn't as good but it is easier to handle (temperatures aren't quite so close to absolute zero).  Methane does have one nasty property being heavier than other gases it will stay close to the ground.  If ignited, watch out ! (as Spacex found out in a recent Starship test in July 2022).  Hydrogen is lighter than nitrogen/oxygen so will tend to disperse up and away. But as Eric Berger says:  "hydrogen leaks": https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/years-after-shuttle-nasa-rediscovers-the-perils-of-liquid-hydrogen/ In the first year of the PBS program: NOVA there was a show about hydrogen's potential for the ...

Not sure exactly why but got an urge to read the 1962 book: Seven Days in May .  The book was also made into a 1964 movie starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Ava Gardner. This is a Washington DC type of book that was popular in that era that mixed politics and atom bombs.  I'm thinking of Fail Safe or Advise and Consent , maybe even Dr. Strangelove . People were really pre-occupied with atomic war then and rightly so.  The screenwriter of Seven Days in May was Rod Serling and of course his show The Twilight Zone had many takes on atomic war and the aftermath.  As time went along maybe we all made our peace with atomic war and just realized that worrying doesn't help.  But I suspect we are as close as ever to devastating war with a weakened remnant of the Soviet Union and an ascending China along with smaller states that also have or seek atomic weapons. The book is well plotted and engrossing look at a plan by a US military cabal to take over the govern...

 This was an interesting article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/nasa-will-make-second-attempt-to-launch-the-sls-rocket-on-saturday/ Bad sensor ?  Anyone who has owned a car knows about bad sensors.  And we've all waved something at a smoke detector after a cooking/toasting smoke event.  Nuisance trips from GFCI wall outlets, yup.   I hope that NASA is correct (and suspect they are).  I don't really know that much about sensors but it's got to be hard to verify that one inside of a big rocket is working correctly or not.  I think that current day rockets being designed have many advantages over ones from the 1970s (like the Artemis) due to the relatively small/cheap electronics that can be used.   Cheap video must be really handy for the engineers to add eyes/ears to potential problem areas.  Everyone could see stuff burning when Spacex was launching their Starship prototypes, but the engineers must have known whether the stuff on fi...

 I saw this blog post: https://www.edn.com/a-new-emi-threat where John Dunn mentions that electric cars don't even bother with AM radios due to all the electromagnetic interference from the on-board electronics. It seems like almost everything causes interference these days, I put up some videos on how the island co-op power meters on the house cause ham-band interference: http://wb9kzy.com/power.htm And don't get me started on BPL: http://wb9kzy.com/bpl.htm Thank goodness BPL imploded. But my most recent encounter with interference was during exercise.  I was listening to WNMU 90.1 FM and hearing some hash.  WNMU is never super strong here since it is roughly 80 miles away. Per this map from radio-locator.com the island is right on the fringe: Washington Island is just outside the blue ring, lower right But after I stopped exercising I noticed that when I turned off the Bluetooth on the mp3 player (cellphone) the hash went away.  Since Bluetooth occupies spectrum ab...

You know how it is, just when you need something urgently:  Stuff Happens In addition to selling the kits I sell books about Washington Island and also do a little printing for one of the local museums.  This museum stays open until Columbus Day.  They are out of two items I print for them.  So I had to buy a new printer cartridge because the last cartridge I bought pooped out after 400 sheets, thanks a lot HP !  This was partially my fault, I had bought the extra life cartidge but had been sent the regular cartridge.   Stuff Happens. The new cartridge arrived (from Ebay) and it was a new, genuine HP.  I tried using it and got this: perfect only for printing horizontal pictures of zebras ? Stuff Happens.     I will try to return the cartridge for a refund and buy a different one.  But this will take a few days and it's already been over a week since the order.  Pretty soon it will be Labor Day and Columbus Day is coming up. BTW...