Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016, 10:45 a.m. — Have a lot to post here today, so I won’t waste time.
PC GO BLOOEY! My primary office PC here at home up and died Thursday night while I was adding a second hard drive (2 TB). I thought perhaps I blew up the works, but my PC — a Dell XPS 8700 — is equipped with a power supply with a built-in testing feature.
Essentially, there’s an LED on the rear of the PS and a momentary contact button. Push the button to test the PS — if the LED lights, you’re good to go. If not, something’s loading the PS.
And good old Dell has a youtube video telling you how to troubleshoot using the test feature — which made it simple to isolate the problem as a dead power supply. I went to our local Radio Shack because I know they had aftermarket replacements and picked up the largest one they had. It was a simple fix, but I had to live without my PC for a full day — and the worry that it might be dead anyway. Ugh! Back up, back up, back up. Lesson learned.
Everything I own — digitally, anyway — is on this PC, so yeah, I was sweating it. I have a really nice 17-inch laptop, however I don’t have the software installed on it that I needed to do my work, and — of course — the licenses to authorize the software I have purchased was on the DEAD computer. Go figure!
WELCOME 389535. This 1979 Vibroplex Original DeLuxe was too good a deal to pass up. With a low Buy It Now price and inexpensive shipping, the key was partly disassembled but complete with the exception of finger and thumb pieces. I saw it not long after it was listed and even it was just a parts key, I couldn’t resist.
The key is from Vibroplex’s Maine era and has the glued-on nameplate (which was loose and as you can see, has been bent). The stuff that looked like rust near the label was dirt and glue gunk. The key cleaned up well, and awaits new finger and thumb pieces to be complete once again.
The seller also has listed a 1979 Vibroplex Lightning Bug DeLuxe that is absolutely perfect. Both keys were from a SK estate. The minimum bid on the Lightning Bug is $135 to start, which is way higher than the Original I bought. If I needed a Maine-era Lightning Bug DeLuxe, this would be the key I would have to watch (at least).
HDSDR & MY FT-2000. I have a very long entry regarding my recent RTL SDR dongle and installing it to replace my Yaesu DMU-2000, but I’ve decided to post it at another time (mostly because I’m not done fiddling with it to get it working the way I want).
The seller has a website, mypanadapter.com, which is fairly devoid of instructions (the CD I received with my “kit” was unreadable, and he does not have the instruction sheet as a download, which I think is the customer-friendly thing to do), but thankfully, he is super about responding to support queries. He emailed me the instructions and I was off and running.
The install requires you to connect a small coaxial cable to a cable inside the FT-2000; then you have to find a way to exit the cable from the case. This became decidedly more difficult when I realized that I had already connected (and heat shrinked!) the only end of the cable that would fit through the vents on the rear panel of the FT-2000. I had to cut off my just-shrunk heatshrink, route the cable, and then tape the connector in the radio to prevent shorting to group, etc.
So far I have the rig and HDSFR talking, with the panadapter function working, though not all of the rig control functions are working yet (sure its a setting somewhere).
FT2000RC. I also discovered some software that’s probably going to be as useful (maybe more so) than the panadapter — FT2000RC remote control software by DB3CB.
The software allows you to have local remote control of the rig, or remote from anywhere you have internet access. What I’m interested in is being able to access the radio from within our home network. This software is potentially more useful to me than the HDSDR software. I won’t have time to mess with it until this evening (perhaps), but once I set up the shack PC as the server, I’ll be able to connect other PCs in the house to it to operate the rig.
Well, the XYL has put all an all-hands-on-deck announcement, so I better follow the captain’s orders and get to battle stations. More to come, stay tuned.
73 es CUL de KY4Z SK …. dit dit …