Yes, I do feel a bit regretful about the situation with certain types of vacuum tubes, and it has made me more selective about the gear that I get. Hope springs eternal that I will find that 1L6 I need in someone's junk box at a hamfest for a buck to get my Transoceanic back in the pink. A classic car enthusiast hopes to find that the little old lady who has a faded but sound 1957 Bel Air Ragtop in her old barn and wants only $500 for it. Every once in a while it happens, but not very often. Her lawyer has probably already told her that the car is worth 30 grand.
The current situation with the scarcity of certain vacuum tube types has prompted some innovation as well, but this conflicts with the desire for authenticity in an antique piece of gear. It is often relatively easy to clean up or refinish an old radio to make it look good on the shelf, and a cottage industry has sprung up to make reproduction knobs, bezels, and even eustucheons for some more popular antique pieces.
To make an old radio sing again often requires greater compromises, but tubes are usually not the main item that authentic workable replacements cannot be found, it is capacitors. Most of the capacitors found in radios from the late '30s to about 1960 used wax paper for a dielectric, and many of these, if not bad already, will often fail soon after being put back into service. Even "new old stock" capacitors that have been stored properly and never used go bad after a given time. It is the nature of the beast. Electrically equivalent parts with more durable plastic dielectrics are available at reasonable prices, and are not authentic, but are often used to repair old sets provided they are hidden under the chassis. At least tubes usually remain functional as long as they are not physically damaged after extended periods of disuse.
In all seriousness, the tube market today is relying on the sale of tubes that for the most part were made 50 years ago, or with tubes imported from the former Soviet Union or China. The Soviet/Chinese tubes have become a mainstay for hams running 1KW class linear amplifiers, and there is a steady market for types such as 4CX500, 3-500Z, and so on.
Sadly, for many antique radio restorers, the prices and lack of availability of certain tube types keep many promising projects on the shelves, and many of the radios that used those tubes are usually found stripped of them. A late '20s or early '30s console will almost always have the type 45 tubes stripped out.
At the same time, just about anyone who has acquired box lots of tubes will tell you that 90 percent of the tubes will never get used. A lot of these tubes were manufactured as replacements in 1960s era TV sets, and in a way were the first "integrated circuits", but have little use outside these roles. They were made by the tens of millions, but were made obsolete by the quick adoption of solid state circuitry in the 1970s. Few people collect or maintain 1960s era TV sets, but the old tubes stay around just as the 1mb memory sticks collect in many modern day geeks junk boxes. Other tubes, such as the combinations used in many '40s and '50s radios are available in adequate supply, either with tube vendors at hamfests or online for the forseeable future, or could be pirated from undesirable radios.
It is just too expensive to do small scale tube production to satisfy the needs of a few thousand antique radio collectors and amplifier restorers. Inquiries were actually made to one of the Russian manufacturers to start producing new Type 45 or similar tubes. A run of a few thousand would satisfy the needs of collectors for years, but the unit costs are as high or higher than buying New Old Stock where it can be found.
I have been somewhat inactive at the restoration game for a few years, but I remember when a major antique radio club looked into having one of the Russian or Eastern European manufacturers build some new highly sought after types, the combination of minimum quantities and unit cost would have risked tens of thousands of dollars, for a product that has a very limited market. Perhaps the ability to sell to a worldwide market easily, ala eBay might make it feasible today, but it would still be a risky proposition.
There are other tube types that would be welcome if they could be produced economically with a limited run, such as 7360, 1L6, and probably a couple of dozen other types. Perhaps a modern cottage industry could pick up the slack.
A basic feature of VOIP is that while you need some type of bandwidth for it to be available it does not have to be over any particular media, as long as the bandwidth and latency characteristics of the medium are adequate to support VOIP. This can be DSL, Cable, Fiber, or Wireless. DSL is simply a regular phone line equipped with the DSL Hardware at your home or place of business, and at the Telco switching office. DSL will work with VOIP, but so will typically a cable modem, or a WiFi connection to a high-speed backbone. In the first case, you need a phone line to get DSL to begin with. Most of the bandwidth on a DSL line is dedicated to data transfer, the amount of bandwidth dedicated to sending the voice data is only a small percentage, but brings in the lion's share of the revenue. In the second case, you can use your cable modem to run VOIP. No telco landline required, and you still get to have all the goodies of VOIP.
How the economics of VOIP work out for you depends on how you have your telephone service currently structured. If DSL is your only option for broadband, you are already paying for phone service. Unless a VOIP plan makes sense in terms of saving money in long distance calls or the like, then you probably won't save much money.
If however, you also have the option of getting a cable modem, or can hook onto a wireless connection to the net, then VOIP suddenly gives you the option of cutting the cord with the local telco. If you are spending $70 a month for a package of DSL, local phone line and long distance bundled together, then cutting the cord may suddenly make sense, especially if the marginal cost of getting cable internet is low, which may be the case if you already get cable in some areas.
Unless Verizon at least gets DSL to my doorstep soon, I will let their $65 dollar a month noisy excuse for a phone line become just another underground obstruction, and let the cable company bring me HBO, VOIP, and Broadband with the money I save.
Greenland, as well as much of Antarctica is covered by mile high glaciers, much of it indeed piled up on dry land. If much or all of this ice melts, the result will be much like dropping an ice cube into a glass of water, in that it will raise the level in the glass. If you own real estate in the Netherlands or much of the southeastern US, as well as other low lying parts of the world, you can kiss it goodbye under a rising sea level. Unfortunately, this also includes a number of large coastal cities, which will require their relocation inland to make way for the expanding coastal fishing areas. Our skyscrapers will make good structure for sheltering marine life, and will one day be on many sea captain's list of fishing hotspots. If the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers melt, the sea level could rise 200 feet. All of the current major seaports would be inundated, and cities on rivers even hundreds of miles inland would be at least partially inundated by the rising waters.
I was scared to go down there, but there was fresh bedding compound laid down that couldn't freeze. The basement wasn't even completely closed off yet, there was only a piece of plastic flapping over the outiside doorway. I also anticipated that there might be CO in the basement, so I got in and out as quickly as I could. The point is that a moment's inattention with one of those things can lead to disaster.
If I had to do it over again, I would have just let the Modular Home manufacturer lay down some linoleum, then do the tile work once I was in, the regular heating system was up and running, and the Occupancy permit was issued. As it was, I had to do all the tile work in bone chilling weather, while also trying to get ready to move. I overestimated the amount of work to do it.
Construction is a dangerous business at worst, and grueling work at best. I watched all phases of the house being built, and wonder how anyone makes it past the age of 40 with all of their parts intact and functioning, especially poured foundation crews and roofers. Those guys flirt with disaster every day. To think about it, I didn't see any roofers over the age of 40 up there either.
Not everyone can "rough it" for extended periods of time, and enjoy the adventure. Others, like my mom, who has serious repiratory problems would have a very difficult time getting along for more than a couple of days if the house was allowed to cool into the 40s. Like it or not, we are more dependent on technology than our grandparents were. Rather than electric heating and cooking appliances, they had coal or wood-fired stoves that frequently also sufficed as their primary heating source as well. Modern houses are set up to have constant electrical power, and the residents are actually worse off than they would have been 60 or 100 years ago, since most older houses had at least the vestiges of a non electical past. They also didn't need entertainment as much because they spent most of their time and energy just trying to survive. Research what modern technology has done for life expectancies over the last 100 years!
I remember stories of my Dad having to harvest crops and pump water by hand, and all the men shovel the entire road out by hand in order to get the milk out during the winter. These days, even a two footer is cleared in a day or two. I am sure the men who toiled by hand to clear the road by hand would have welcomed this modern helping hand rumbling down the road.
I mentioned the cost of running a generator to air condition a medium-large house in the subtropical summer climate of southeast Virginia. In the dead of winter, it costs even more, and my parents opened their home up to their elderly neighbors who were not so blessed with emergency power when a severe ice storm knocked out power at Christmas time a couple of years ago for nearly two weeks. Summer without air conditioning is an inconvenience, but winter without heat can be life threatening, particularly to the vulnerable and sickly among us.
I had to do a lot of engine work to get it going (engine block was cracked at the intake port) and basicly rebuilt the engine onto a bare engine block I got off of Ebay that was once in a go kart. At least I got the generator for free.
After I got the engine put back together and running, I adjusted the frequency by plugging my DMM, which has a frequency function built into it into one of the outlets. I have it adjusted for about 63 Hz, but when I plug a 1500 watt test load into it (a toaster oven), the frequency drops to about 58 Hz. At about 2/3 full load, it will burn through a 2 1/2 quart tank of fuel in about an hour and a half, and needs oil added every other tankful. Fixing the oil leak will take more time and trouble than it is worth, so I keep a couple of extra quarts of 10W40 around for emergencies, as well as a 5 gallon can of gas.
If you are using your generator to run a heater, you might as well watch TV, as the power it consumes is mostly turned into heat anyway. A small TV uses about as much electicity as a 100 watt light bulb. I would advise using great caution when using propane, kerosene, or gas powered heating or lighting equipment indoors. Fumes and spilled fuel can ignite, and their use can generate Carbon Monoxide, and use up available oxygen in a poorly ventilated room. For the same reason, don't even think about running a generator indoors, or too close to an open window or doorway where the wind can blow the exhaust inside.
While my house was under construction, mostly completed, but before I had commercial power, I worked on a ceramic tile project in the evening using the builder's portable generator and a propane powered space heater in the basement. I accidentally shut the basement door, and after about an hour, I heard the heater flame out. It had used up most of the oxygen in the basement! I let things clear out for a half hour or so, but when I went to relight it, I was dizzy by the time I got back upstairs. Despite the freezing temperatures, it was necessary to keep a window open several inches to allow adequate ventilation, else I would get dizzy and develop headaches, early signs of Carbon Monoxide poisoning.
A 1500 watt generator here in the states is really too small to keep the vital systems in the house going (the icebox, a few lights, heating systems (on gas or oil only), plus the well pump, a TV and a computer or two.
Here is how energy requirements stack up for minimum comfort and survivability in a typical house. These are rough estimates YMMV.
Lights: 75 - 100 watts Incadescent each (try compact flourescents at 20 watts each)
19" Solid State TV: 125 watts
Desktop computer with 17 inch CRT Monitor: 300 watts
In this case, it will take a bare minimum of 4 Kw to keep a couple of lights on, heat up some instant oatmeal or canned ravioli, and run the well and the heating system. Of course, this will leave you with cold water, and you better not turn on too many lights, use the stove or any heating appliances.
I was able to piece together and get running a broken 2500 watt generator last fall for about $100 in parts. Hurricane Isabel took out my power for 3 days, and afterwards for months there were power failures whenever the wind blew more than 25 MPH. I figured I could power my TV, computer, a couple of lights, and the fridge, and get a fire going in the fireplace to keep warm. I ran the generator several times last fall, including 12 hours one evening after high winds took out the lines (again).
In reality, the UPS for my computer didn't get along well at all with the generator, and constantly cut in and out as the voltage sagged whenever the fridge cut on. The engine labored hard whenever the fridge cut on, which brings up another important point: Whenever a motor starts, it can draw up to several times its steady-state load, so you must figure in a decent margin of extra capacity when sizing your generator. Not for all expected surge loads simaltaneously, but enough to handle your expected load, plus the surge load of the largest motor you plan to start. In practical terms, the smallest generator that can really keep a home running even without electric heat, washing clothes, cooking on an electric range, elecrically heating hot water, etc. is in the range of about 7.5 KW. Also, if you live in the states, if you want to run any major systems on generator (air handlers, well pumps, heat pumps, etc, remember that these systems often use 240 Volts, rather than 120.
My experience on that windy and chilly night was still better than shivering in the dark without even a radio to keep me company, but it was still a major hassle running extension cords to lights, major appliances, and so on. It was also a major hassle attending to the generator to fill it with gas and check the oil every couple of hours, which meant going outside into pitch blackness and arctic chill to tend to the generator, and to load up on firewood.
My Dad OTOH, was in the generator business before he retired, and was able to get his hands on a used and broken 40 KW Onan diesel generator that he was able to repair. Now retired and living in an out of the way corner of rural Virginia, his generator has had to deal with power outages for up to two weeks at a time after severe ice storms and hurricanes knocked out power. The generator has enough power to run the entire 2200 square foot house, even the heat pump and central airconditioning. With the entire community of 7 houses on a community well however, nobody had water. During an extended power outage, this became a major problem, especially since most of the residents are retirees. Solution: Run 1,000 feet of underground cable from my dad's generator to the pump.
Cost of running the generator during the summer cooling season: About $300 a week for fuel
Chillin in front of the big screen while the neighbors are sweltering in the dark: Priceless
I agree totally about greed creating a shortage of bandwidth, both in land lines and over the air. Bandwidth on analog phone lines is limited to 3KC because of the limitations placed on it by the Telco's older multiplexing schemes, which deemed 3KC to be adequate for voice communications. I am currently beyond the reach of Verizon's desire to implement DSL technology, and pay $65 a month to call the Baltimore Metro area (I am 2 miles outside of the Metro calling area) and surf the net at a blistering 28.8, when the line noise isn't to bad and it doesn't rain or get too windy. Believe me, I have tried to get Verizon to fix it, but after 8 visits and 2 swaps of local pairs, I have given up. This is the effect of greed and legacy systems.
A bit off topic, Verizon is in serious danger of losing my business, on the land line anyway because I am seriously looking at Comcast, if they can bundle broadband with a VOIP solution and basic cable for less than $100 a month. Another option is Wireless Broadband, which is being implemented in many areas around here. Perhaps that will come before Verizon gets around to getting DSL out here. I also think about converting some of my AO-40 gear to a high power WiFi setup, and "find" a broadband connection somewhere on the horizon. A 3 foot dish can talk a long way.
For broadcasters, particularly for audio, spectrum is not nearly as compressible as it is for cell phones, public service radios, and so on. Broadcast radio stations are always on, and use bandwidth when they are. An example of this is how long it takes a near CD quality (192Kbs) MP3 to be downloaded over an analog phone line. A typical 4 minute 192Kbs MP3 runs about 6 megabytes, more or less, and will take about a half hour to download over a typical 33.6 dialup connection. Downloading streaming MP3 audio, compressed in both bandwidth and dynamic range suitable for real-time downloading over a dial-up internet connection results in audio about the same quality as you would expect directly over an analog phone line.
There is no free lunch here, but digital broadcasting is a great improvement over FM, which uses 200 Khz of spectrum per channel, 400 Khz spacing between channels in the same market, if you consider typical channel spacing to prevent adjacent channel interference. Digital broadcasting could in theory support several times the current density of radio stations in a given slice of spectrum. Increasing the number of stations that could broadcast in a given piece of spectrum without a degradation in audio quality could open up opportunities for radio stations owned by independent businessmen, nonprofit organizations and even hobbyists, rather than huge corporations that are compelled by their stockholders to squeeze every last dollar out of their investments.
Bandwidth is like real estate, and when the purchase price or the rent skyrockets, only the most profitable business models survive, at the expense of quality. A street level analogy to this is the difficulty of finding excellent restaurants within easy walking distance of the downtown business district. Restaurants in areas of very high rent are usually very expensive and mediocre quality, where you pay $30 for a decent lunch, or $10 for a stale cold cut sandwich with 1 oz of slimy meat, a flat soda, and a bag of stale chips. I once ate one of these lunches in a restaurant across the street from the DC Convention center. Unfortunately, radio in many urban areas resembles that $10 lunch. Content is bland and full of advertising filler.
Out in the small towns and away from the big city, or for that matter in some of the less expensive neighborhoods in town, that same $10 will buy a triple decker sandwich with over half a pound of meat and fresh toppings on freshly baked bread, enough fresh cut french fries to clog the arteries of a marathon runner, a bottomless soft drink, and an ice cream sundae for dessert. The same principle applies to radio. From my hilltop on the fringes one of the most expensive radio markets in the nation (Baltimore-Washington) I can tune up the band from 88.1 to 107.9 and not hear white noise anywhere on the band. I pick up the usual Clear Channel, Radio One, and Hearst Broadcasting outlets, and several major NPR outlets. In the chinks between the major stations, I can hear other stations from outlying areas in Western Maryland, Pennsylvania, and sometimes the Eastern Shore. Many of these stations are also Clear Channel clones, but tucked in the cracks are also a few gems operating out of small towns, with their fringe coverage penetrating into at least part of the metro area.
Vested interests (the current licenseholders) and a large installed base of legacy equipment (Hundreds of millions of FM Radios) will make this transition difficult. Current licenseholders stand to lose much of their investment in bloated license costs, and many will balk at spending lots of money to be early adopters of the new technology. Look how difficult, corrupted, and twisted the transition from NTSC to Digital TV has become.
Turning the ignition off does more than just killing power brakes/steering. Most keys have a steering wheel lock built in. Guess what! You won't be able to steer, so make sure you only turn it back to the first detent.
Overreving the engine in itself can be a safety hazard if you do succeed in downshifting into a lower gear. If the engine manages to hold together at 9,000 RPM rather than its 6,000 RPM redline, the sudden deceleration as the engine tries to match the transmission speed can cause the drive wheels to break loose, causing momentary loss of control. This is even more dangerous on a motorcycle, as it can result in a highside when the rear suddenly grabs hold after skidding along. If the engine seizes in the process of self destructing, this skid will continue until the vehicle stops or a driveline component lets go.
That being said, I will slam my car into Park if the brakes fail and I am carrening towards a busy crosswalk or headed into a ravine. Most newer vehicles won't go into park unless the brake pedal is depressed, so keep this in mind if you must attempt this maneuver. A manual transmission will generally be difficult to get into a gear which is seriously mismatched to engine speed, as the synchronizers will tend to lock the gear out. If you accidentally try to shift into first after redlining in second rather than hitting 3rd, the synchronizers in the transmission will tend to lock out the gate for first gear.
Gold in itself functioned as money in times past, due to its value because of its limited supply and the difficulty obtaining a larger overall supply of gold, which must be done at great effort. Because gold is also a durable commodity that can be easily molded into nice pretty status symbols, it has an almost universal appeal. A slab of meat may have great immediate value to a hungry man, but unless it is eaten immediately or refrigerated, it will soon go bad and become worthless. A person can trade his services for gold and then trade it for meat as he needs it. It becomes a reliable store of value, just as idealized money should. As long as the supply of gold remains stable, one who wants to obtain gold, either to enjoy its yellow glow or to trade it for needed services generally finds it easier to trade their labor for gold than to go out and mine gold for themselves.
Gold or any hard asset as a basis for money has one major flaw: it still a lot of takes real labor and effort to produce it, and there will always be those who will seek to obtain gold for themselves by attempting to mine it themselves. If the supply of gold was indeed fixed (i.e there is no gold around that can be economically mined), then the relative prices of goods and services will float relative to the value of the fixed supply of gold. All hell breaks loose when there is the prospect of individuals being able to economically mine gold for themselves and trade it for goods. History is rife with examples of the damage done to the earth and to the men and their families in pursuit of gold.
In the end, the increased supply of gold produced during the gold rushes meant that not only the value of all other goods and services rose in relation to gold, as its value dropped, but the absolute supply of those services available dropped as well. The opportunity cost for mining gold, which turned out to be a marginal proposition at best for the majority of miners was the value of goods and services that were not produced. Many of the '49ers sunk their life savings into mining ventures that usually didn't pan out well, and left families behind to tend to farms which were then neglected, factories saw skilled workers leave, or their production of say picks, axes, and shovels diverted to the production of gold, rather than building roads or helping farmers work the land. Railroad construction slowed as workers abandoned the hard work of building rail lines in pursuit of a quick buck mining gold. In the end the gold rushes made us all poorer in a real sense.
That being said, in the Gilligan's Island example, survival and comfort meant having an efficient way of trading goods and services, and a medium of exchange that was of fixed supply, in the sense that it was unreproducible. Any effort to increase the supply of the medium of exchange is futile in the Macro sense, because it would divert efforts from the production of needed goods and services. The Professor's preserved palm leaves needed effort to produce, and the supply could be manipulated. Mr. Howell's paper money could not be reproduced on the island, and also benefitted as a medium of exchange because it had perceived value, and it was already there.
Barring Mr. Howell's millions, alternative viable means of exchange could have been established by using any other portable and unreproducible item, such as a roll of tickets that may have been used to sell rides on the Minnow.
The network latency problem will have to be solved first. Of course you could do a troute to predict the average latency to get that bid in at just the last millisecond.
For most of my life, I have had a pretty cavalier attitude about environmental pollutants,and currently work around a lot of paper dust. I definitely knew I was very allergic to certain wood dusts, cat dander, and so on, but I also greeted similar stories of multiple chemical sensitivities with a grain of salt.
About 3 years ago, I got a really nasty respiratory virus that turned into pneumonia, which resulted in a trip to ER, kept me out of work for the better part of 2 weeks, and asthmatic for months afterwards. 7 months later, just as I was feeling good again, I got another bad cold that left me with even worse asthma for the entire summer, and into fall. For months, just driving near a sewage treatment plant, breathing cold dry air, a little more dust than usual, cooking odors, household cleaners, and yes, that new computer/tv/car smell would be enough to tighten my chest and leave me short of breath. Even today, though I am better about most things again, I can feel my chest tighten up when I smell for instance, a truck's overheated brakes out on the highway (which smells a lot like hot electronics). My logic tells me that the concentration of the offending irritants is miniscule, but odors have a way of directly triggering strange reactions sometimes.
I have the DVD of Apocalypse Now Redux, with an additional 45 minutes of footage. For those who haven't seen the original, the movie was set in the middle of the Vietnam War, and centered around a Special Forces captain who was sent to assassinate a renegade Colenel operating in the jungles of Cambodia. Along the way it explores, ad nauseum, the absurdities of the war and how it was fought.
At about 3 hours in the original cut, I thought the original Apocalypse Now was a biting, though longish commentary on how not to fight a war. There were excesses for sure, but I thought the original held together well enough to make those excesses bearable.
Enter the Redux version (spoiler alert):
The extra 45 minutes centers around 2 additional scenes: The first additional scene centers around a muddy riverside supply depot, which had been all but abandoned, and forsaken by the powers that be. Its commander was killed in an attack two months previously, and the few remaining GI's occupying it were reduced to pimping out some Playboy bunnies who had landed there after an in-flight emergency. The boys on the boat exchange a drum of fuel for the bunnies' services, but the chicks were in lala land, the sex was empty, and was punctuated by a body falling out of a casket in all its gory detail. Enough to make you throw up, the scene dragged for 20 minutes.
Upriver, on the other side of the Do Long Bridge, our boys are looking to bury one of their own after an attack leaves on of the crew dead, when they happen upon a wrecked dock belonging to an old French Plantation. Another 25 minutes of dinner conversation in French about the war ensue, followed by the seduction the good captain by the plantation's matriarch.
By the time they reach the headwaters of the river to confront the Colenel, I am fast asleep.
If there is existing infrastructure nearby, they can tap into local phone or data lines, and the BS may be even lucky enough to get use of a T1 line, or even DSL to send VOIP. 1.6 Mhz of bandwidth will support a couple of dozen voice channels, and depending on the grade of DSL, much the same.
If the local terrestrial infrastructure is nonexistent, inadequate, or severely damaged, then the choice becomes microwaves. While the microwave relay stations are old tech, microwave relays are still used for many things, and if the option is available, then it would provide an alternative means of transmitting data. If there is no microwave link nearby, it might be possible to position a second or even third mobile relay station to get the signal where it needs to go.
Failing a practical path via microwave or microwave relay via earth stations, there is always the option of setting up a satellite link to do the job. Expensive yes, but it will work just about anywhere you can find open sky.
The point is, there is almost always a way to get the job done.
I have seen some of the local TV News trucks with their dishes fully deployed, which are based on something like a Ford E-350 Van. They have telescoping masts which deploy directly from the roof of the van, and look like they can be deployed and running within 30 minutes or so. Supplement the microwave dish for relaying video with a cellular array (the dish will still be useful to relay signals where there are no or inadequate onsite phone lines), and keep the equipment mounted in the truck. Their masts look like they can extend 50 or 60 feet, which can cover a couple of square mile area anyway.
I once saw one for sale at the Timmonium Hamfest, and wondered about its possibilities for roving.
I thought I had done a good job of protecting my station but took a hit last fall. I had my tower and masts tied together and grounded with a total of 6 8 foot ground rods, attached to the tower with #4 bare copper, being careful not to have any sharp bends in the wire. I ran the coaxes into a patch panel which was grounded by 1 inch heavy flat braided copper to my ground rod system. My equipment was plugged into a heavy duty UPS, which was off and disconnected from the wall, and all my antennas were disconnected. When I took the hit, I heard a loud snap in my radio room, lost my VCR and TV reception, but the lights stayed on.
Phone Line- Connection was charred at Network Interface. I was switched to a spare pair, but my phone became unusable afterwards when it rained. Verizon has been unwilling/unable to correct the problem. I have since moved into a brand new home next door, and the problem seems to have followed me here as well.
I suspect that lightning found its way in via the rotor control cable or phone line, I am not sure which (perhaps it was both). In any case, it caused a spike which caused my power supply to apply lethal voltage to my TS-440, and other equipment. I will add bulkhead fittings for my rotor controllers when I rebuild my radio room in the coming months.
Since I posted I can't moderate, but perhaps someone else can. Thanks for the updated information, I have an old C-band dish here that I was going to listen in on AO-40 with, but since it went Silent Key, perhaps I can find an alternate use for it.
I am just finishing up and getting ready to move into a new Modular house. They set the house in 1 day, about 2 1/2 months ago, and it took the equivalent of about 3 weeks work to make it almost ready to move into. The house has been languishing over a month in a nearly completed state waiting for power from my friendly neighborhood power company due to a string of mixups, delays and bureaucratic hassles. And I applied to hook up nearly 2 months before the house was set. I can hardly wait for the day that home electrical generation becomes practical.
I too had to learn to type at an early age, my poor handwriting was a side effect of ADD. I remember I started to type reports in 7th or 8th grade on an old Underwood, 10 years before I got my first computer. One of my teachers made one last ditch attempt to get me to write a report longhand, but in the margins drew a face with watery eyes and said go back to typing. My typed lab writeups in High School and College (still pre-computer) would consistently score a letter grade higher than their handwritten counterparts, regardless of content.
Another problem I have is that I tend to think faster than I write, and often have to use a ^ to insert words into previously written text, which makes my handwritten copy even worse. No problem on a computer, but hell when filling out a poorly designed form to begin with.
About the only thing I have found that can prevent my handwriting from degenerating into completely illegible scrawl is to print, and to try to manage the space I have available to write in, as I frequently have the bad habit of writing larger at the beginning of the line and try to squeeze it all in at the end.
C-Band operates in the 4.7 Ghz range, and predates current DSS systems, such as Direct TV et.al. It operates primarily in analog mode, with most of the channels of the newer systems, though sadly most commercial signals are scrambled these days. Most of the free stuff is things like religious broadcasters, HSN, QVC and their clones, public affairs stuff, and so on. Programming meant for other countries is sometimes not scrambled, and you sometimes find some interesting stuff. No it is not nearly as interesting as the days unscrambled wild feeds or even chipped videocipher units, but there is an occasional nugget out there for the C-band surfers.
C-Band signals with a good antenna look better than DSS because the signals are analog and operate on lower frequencies than the DSS Stuff. They suffer less from rain fade than the higher frequencies, and compression artifacts from the digital modes. My parents have a big dish I helped install in the late 80's. They retired to a rural area beyond the reach of cable and the nearest TV station was 75 miles away, so the big dish was really their only option then. It still looks great today, though if they had to start over from scratch they would opt for the small dish. They use a small dish for their motorhome when they travel, and a small dish for broadband internet.
That being said, the big dish's main drawbacks are its size, with 6 footers being the minimum to get a decent signal, and the fact that there are only 24 transponders on each satellite. This means that unless you want to install multiple dishes like the cable companies, you need a way to steer the dish, which adds a layer of complexity to the operation and maintenance of the dish.
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Yes, I do feel a bit regretful about the situation with certain types of vacuum tubes, and it has made me more selective about the gear that I get. Hope springs eternal that I will find that 1L6 I need in someone's junk box at a hamfest for a buck to get my Transoceanic back in the pink. A classic car enthusiast hopes to find that the little old lady who has a faded but sound 1957 Bel Air Ragtop in her old barn and wants only $500 for it. Every once in a while it happens, but not very often. Her lawyer has probably already told her that the car is worth 30 grand.
The current situation with the scarcity of certain vacuum tube types has prompted some innovation as well, but this conflicts with the desire for authenticity in an antique piece of gear. It is often relatively easy to clean up or refinish an old radio to make it look good on the shelf, and a cottage industry has sprung up to make reproduction knobs, bezels, and even eustucheons for some more popular antique pieces.
To make an old radio sing again often requires greater compromises, but tubes are usually not the main item that authentic workable replacements cannot be found, it is capacitors. Most of the capacitors found in radios from the late '30s to about 1960 used wax paper for a dielectric, and many of these, if not bad already, will often fail soon after being put back into service. Even "new old stock" capacitors that have been stored properly and never used go bad after a given time. It is the nature of the beast. Electrically equivalent parts with more durable plastic dielectrics are available at reasonable prices, and are not authentic, but are often used to repair old sets provided they are hidden under the chassis. At least tubes usually remain functional as long as they are not physically damaged after extended periods of disuse.
In all seriousness, the tube market today is relying on the sale of tubes that for the most part were made 50 years ago, or with tubes imported from the former Soviet Union or China. The Soviet/Chinese tubes have become a mainstay for hams running 1KW class linear amplifiers, and there is a steady market for types such as 4CX500, 3-500Z, and so on.
Sadly, for many antique radio restorers, the prices and lack of availability of certain tube types keep many promising projects on the shelves, and many of the radios that used those tubes are usually found stripped of them. A late '20s or early '30s console will almost always have the type 45 tubes stripped out.
At the same time, just about anyone who has acquired box lots of tubes will tell you that 90 percent of the tubes will never get used. A lot of these tubes were manufactured as replacements in 1960s era TV sets, and in a way were the first "integrated circuits", but have little use outside these roles. They were made by the tens of millions, but were made obsolete by the quick adoption of solid state circuitry in the 1970s. Few people collect or maintain 1960s era TV sets, but the old tubes stay around just as the 1mb memory sticks collect in many modern day geeks junk boxes. Other tubes, such as the combinations used in many '40s and '50s radios are available in adequate supply, either with tube vendors at hamfests or online for the forseeable future, or could be pirated from undesirable radios.
It is just too expensive to do small scale tube production to satisfy the needs of a few thousand antique radio collectors and amplifier restorers. Inquiries were actually made to one of the Russian manufacturers to start producing new Type 45 or similar tubes. A run of a few thousand would satisfy the needs of collectors for years, but the unit costs are as high or higher than buying New Old Stock where it can be found.
I have been somewhat inactive at the restoration game for a few years, but I remember when a major antique radio club looked into having one of the Russian or Eastern European manufacturers build some new highly sought after types, the combination of minimum quantities and unit cost would have risked tens of thousands of dollars, for a product that has a very limited market. Perhaps the ability to sell to a worldwide market easily, ala eBay might make it feasible today, but it would still be a risky proposition.
There are other tube types that would be welcome if they could be produced economically with a limited run, such as 7360, 1L6, and probably a couple of dozen other types. Perhaps a modern cottage industry could pick up the slack.
Just the thing to run on 75 meter AM, once the BPL noise gets to be worse than summer lightning static.
A basic feature of VOIP is that while you need some type of bandwidth for it to be available it does not have to be over any particular media, as long as the bandwidth and latency characteristics of the medium are adequate to support VOIP. This can be DSL, Cable, Fiber, or Wireless. DSL is simply a regular phone line equipped with the DSL Hardware at your home or place of business, and at the Telco switching office. DSL will work with VOIP, but so will typically a cable modem, or a WiFi connection to a high-speed backbone. In the first case, you need a phone line to get DSL to begin with. Most of the bandwidth on a DSL line is dedicated to data transfer, the amount of bandwidth dedicated to sending the voice data is only a small percentage, but brings in the lion's share of the revenue. In the second case, you can use your cable modem to run VOIP. No telco landline required, and you still get to have all the goodies of VOIP.
How the economics of VOIP work out for you depends on how you have your telephone service currently structured. If DSL is your only option for broadband, you are already paying for phone service. Unless a VOIP plan makes sense in terms of saving money in long distance calls or the like, then you probably won't save much money.
If however, you also have the option of getting a cable modem, or can hook onto a wireless connection to the net, then VOIP suddenly gives you the option of cutting the cord with the local telco. If you are spending $70 a month for a package of DSL, local phone line and long distance bundled together, then cutting the cord may suddenly make sense, especially if the marginal cost of getting cable internet is low, which may be the case if you already get cable in some areas.
Unless Verizon at least gets DSL to my doorstep soon, I will let their $65 dollar a month noisy excuse for a phone line become just another underground obstruction, and let the cable company bring me HBO, VOIP, and Broadband with the money I save.
Greenland, as well as much of Antarctica is covered by mile high glaciers, much of it indeed piled up on dry land. If much or all of this ice melts, the result will be much like dropping an ice cube into a glass of water, in that it will raise the level in the glass. If you own real estate in the Netherlands or much of the southeastern US, as well as other low lying parts of the world, you can kiss it goodbye under a rising sea level. Unfortunately, this also includes a number of large coastal cities, which will require their relocation inland to make way for the expanding coastal fishing areas. Our skyscrapers will make good structure for sheltering marine life, and will one day be on many sea captain's list of fishing hotspots. If the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers melt, the sea level could rise 200 feet. All of the current major seaports would be inundated, and cities on rivers even hundreds of miles inland would be at least partially inundated by the rising waters.
I was scared to go down there, but there was fresh bedding compound laid down that couldn't freeze. The basement wasn't even completely closed off yet, there was only a piece of plastic flapping over the outiside doorway. I also anticipated that there might be CO in the basement, so I got in and out as quickly as I could. The point is that a moment's inattention with one of those things can lead to disaster.
If I had to do it over again, I would have just let the Modular Home manufacturer lay down some linoleum, then do the tile work once I was in, the regular heating system was up and running, and the Occupancy permit was issued. As it was, I had to do all the tile work in bone chilling weather, while also trying to get ready to move. I overestimated the amount of work to do it.
Construction is a dangerous business at worst, and grueling work at best. I watched all phases of the house being built, and wonder how anyone makes it past the age of 40 with all of their parts intact and functioning, especially poured foundation crews and roofers. Those guys flirt with disaster every day. To think about it, I didn't see any roofers over the age of 40 up there either.
Not everyone can "rough it" for extended periods of time, and enjoy the adventure. Others, like my mom, who has serious repiratory problems would have a very difficult time getting along for more than a couple of days if the house was allowed to cool into the 40s. Like it or not, we are more dependent on technology than our grandparents were. Rather than electric heating and cooking appliances, they had coal or wood-fired stoves that frequently also sufficed as their primary heating source as well. Modern houses are set up to have constant electrical power, and the residents are actually worse off than they would have been 60 or 100 years ago, since most older houses had at least the vestiges of a non electical past. They also didn't need entertainment as much because they spent most of their time and energy just trying to survive. Research what modern technology has done for life expectancies over the last 100 years!
I remember stories of my Dad having to harvest crops and pump water by hand, and all the men shovel the entire road out by hand in order to get the milk out during the winter. These days, even a two footer is cleared in a day or two. I am sure the men who toiled by hand to clear the road by hand would have welcomed this modern helping hand rumbling down the road.
I mentioned the cost of running a generator to air condition a medium-large house in the subtropical summer climate of southeast Virginia. In the dead of winter, it costs even more, and my parents opened their home up to their elderly neighbors who were not so blessed with emergency power when a severe ice storm knocked out power at Christmas time a couple of years ago for nearly two weeks. Summer without air conditioning is an inconvenience, but winter without heat can be life threatening, particularly to the vulnerable and sickly among us.
I had to do a lot of engine work to get it going (engine block was cracked at the intake port) and basicly rebuilt the engine onto a bare engine block I got off of Ebay that was once in a go kart. At least I got the generator for free.
After I got the engine put back together and running, I adjusted the frequency by plugging my DMM, which has a frequency function built into it into one of the outlets. I have it adjusted for about 63 Hz, but when I plug a 1500 watt test load into it (a toaster oven), the frequency drops to about 58 Hz. At about 2/3 full load, it will burn through a 2 1/2 quart tank of fuel in about an hour and a half, and needs oil added every other tankful. Fixing the oil leak will take more time and trouble than it is worth, so I keep a couple of extra quarts of 10W40 around for emergencies, as well as a 5 gallon can of gas.
If you are using your generator to run a heater, you might as well watch TV, as the power it consumes is mostly turned into heat anyway. A small TV uses about as much electicity as a 100 watt light bulb. I would advise using great caution when using propane, kerosene, or gas powered heating or lighting equipment indoors. Fumes and spilled fuel can ignite, and their use can generate Carbon Monoxide, and use up available oxygen in a poorly ventilated room. For the same reason, don't even think about running a generator indoors, or too close to an open window or doorway where the wind can blow the exhaust inside.
While my house was under construction, mostly completed, but before I had commercial power, I worked on a ceramic tile project in the evening using the builder's portable generator and a propane powered space heater in the basement. I accidentally shut the basement door, and after about an hour, I heard the heater flame out. It had used up most of the oxygen in the basement! I let things clear out for a half hour or so, but when I went to relight it, I was dizzy by the time I got back upstairs. Despite the freezing temperatures, it was necessary to keep a window open several inches to allow adequate ventilation, else I would get dizzy and develop headaches, early signs of Carbon Monoxide poisoning.
A 1500 watt generator here in the states is really too small to keep the vital systems in the house going (the icebox, a few lights, heating systems (on gas or oil only), plus the well pump, a TV and a computer or two.
Here is how energy requirements stack up for minimum comfort and survivability in a typical house. These are rough estimates YMMV.
Lights: 75 - 100 watts Incadescent each (try compact flourescents at 20 watts each)
19" Solid State TV: 125 watts
Desktop computer with 17 inch CRT Monitor: 300 watts
Microwave Oven: 1200 watts
Oil Burner/Air Handler/Heater Controls 500-1000 watts
Well Pump: 500 watts
Refrigerator: 500 Watts
In this case, it will take a bare minimum of 4 Kw to keep a couple of lights on, heat up some instant oatmeal or canned ravioli, and run the well and the heating system. Of course, this will leave you with cold water, and you better not turn on too many lights, use the stove or any heating appliances.
I was able to piece together and get running a broken 2500 watt generator last fall for about $100 in parts. Hurricane Isabel took out my power for 3 days, and afterwards for months there were power failures whenever the wind blew more than 25 MPH. I figured I could power my TV, computer, a couple of lights, and the fridge, and get a fire going in the fireplace to keep warm. I ran the generator several times last fall, including 12 hours one evening after high winds took out the lines (again).
In reality, the UPS for my computer didn't get along well at all with the generator, and constantly cut in and out as the voltage sagged whenever the fridge cut on. The engine labored hard whenever the fridge cut on, which brings up another important point: Whenever a motor starts, it can draw up to several times its steady-state load, so you must figure in a decent margin of extra capacity when sizing your generator. Not for all expected surge loads simaltaneously, but enough to handle your expected load, plus the surge load of the largest motor you plan to start. In practical terms, the smallest generator that can really keep a home running even without electric heat, washing clothes, cooking on an electric range, elecrically heating hot water, etc. is in the range of about 7.5 KW. Also, if you live in the states, if you want to run any major systems on generator (air handlers, well pumps, heat pumps, etc, remember that these systems often use 240 Volts, rather than 120.
My experience on that windy and chilly night was still better than shivering in the dark without even a radio to keep me company, but it was still a major hassle running extension cords to lights, major appliances, and so on. It was also a major hassle attending to the generator to fill it with gas and check the oil every couple of hours, which meant going outside into pitch blackness and arctic chill to tend to the generator, and to load up on firewood.
My Dad OTOH, was in the generator business before he retired, and was able to get his hands on a used and broken 40 KW Onan diesel generator that he was able to repair. Now retired and living in an out of the way corner of rural Virginia, his generator has had to deal with power outages for up to two weeks at a time after severe ice storms and hurricanes knocked out power. The generator has enough power to run the entire 2200 square foot house, even the heat pump and central airconditioning. With the entire community of 7 houses on a community well however, nobody had water. During an extended power outage, this became a major problem, especially since most of the residents are retirees. Solution: Run 1,000 feet of underground cable from my dad's generator to the pump.
Cost of running the generator during the summer cooling season: About $300 a week for fuel
Chillin in front of the big screen while the neighbors are sweltering in the dark: Priceless
I agree totally about greed creating a shortage of bandwidth, both in land lines and over the air. Bandwidth on analog phone lines is limited to 3KC because of the limitations placed on it by the Telco's older multiplexing schemes, which deemed 3KC to be adequate for voice communications. I am currently beyond the reach of Verizon's desire to implement DSL technology, and pay $65 a month to call the Baltimore Metro area (I am 2 miles outside of the Metro calling area) and surf the net at a blistering 28.8, when the line noise isn't to bad and it doesn't rain or get too windy. Believe me, I have tried to get Verizon to fix it, but after 8 visits and 2 swaps of local pairs, I have given up. This is the effect of greed and legacy systems.
A bit off topic, Verizon is in serious danger of losing my business, on the land line anyway because I am seriously looking at Comcast, if they can bundle broadband with a VOIP solution and basic cable for less than $100 a month. Another option is Wireless Broadband, which is being implemented in many areas around here. Perhaps that will come before Verizon gets around to getting DSL out here. I also think about converting some of my AO-40 gear to a high power WiFi setup, and "find" a broadband connection somewhere on the horizon. A 3 foot dish can talk a long way.
For broadcasters, particularly for audio, spectrum is not nearly as compressible as it is for cell phones, public service radios, and so on. Broadcast radio stations are always on, and use bandwidth when they are. An example of this is how long it takes a near CD quality (192Kbs) MP3 to be downloaded over an analog phone line. A typical 4 minute 192Kbs MP3 runs about 6 megabytes, more or less, and will take about a half hour to download over a typical 33.6 dialup connection. Downloading streaming MP3 audio, compressed in both bandwidth and dynamic range suitable for real-time downloading over a dial-up internet connection results in audio about the same quality as you would expect directly over an analog phone line.
There is no free lunch here, but digital broadcasting is a great improvement over FM, which uses 200 Khz of spectrum per channel, 400 Khz spacing between channels in the same market, if you consider typical channel spacing to prevent adjacent channel interference. Digital broadcasting could in theory support several times the current density of radio stations in a given slice of spectrum. Increasing the number of stations that could broadcast in a given piece of spectrum without a degradation in audio quality could open up opportunities for radio stations owned by independent businessmen, nonprofit organizations and even hobbyists, rather than huge corporations that are compelled by their stockholders to squeeze every last dollar out of their investments.
Bandwidth is like real estate, and when the purchase price or the rent skyrockets, only the most profitable business models survive, at the expense of quality. A street level analogy to this is the difficulty of finding excellent restaurants within easy walking distance of the downtown business district. Restaurants in areas of very high rent are usually very expensive and mediocre quality, where you pay $30 for a decent lunch, or $10 for a stale cold cut sandwich with 1 oz of slimy meat, a flat soda, and a bag of stale chips. I once ate one of these lunches in a restaurant across the street from the DC Convention center. Unfortunately, radio in many urban areas resembles that $10 lunch. Content is bland and full of advertising filler.
Out in the small towns and away from the big city, or for that matter in some of the less expensive neighborhoods in town, that same $10 will buy a triple decker sandwich with over half a pound of meat and fresh toppings on freshly baked bread, enough fresh cut french fries to clog the arteries of a marathon runner, a bottomless soft drink, and an ice cream sundae for dessert. The same principle applies to radio. From my hilltop on the fringes one of the most expensive radio markets in the nation (Baltimore-Washington) I can tune up the band from 88.1 to 107.9 and not hear white noise anywhere on the band. I pick up the usual Clear Channel, Radio One, and Hearst Broadcasting outlets, and several major NPR outlets. In the chinks between the major stations, I can hear other stations from outlying areas in Western Maryland, Pennsylvania, and sometimes the Eastern Shore. Many of these stations are also Clear Channel clones, but tucked in the cracks are also a few gems operating out of small towns, with their fringe coverage penetrating into at least part of the metro area.
Vested interests (the current licenseholders) and a large installed base of legacy equipment (Hundreds of millions of FM Radios) will make this transition difficult. Current licenseholders stand to lose much of their investment in bloated license costs, and many will balk at spending lots of money to be early adopters of the new technology. Look how difficult, corrupted, and twisted the transition from NTSC to Digital TV has become.
Turning the ignition off does more than just killing power brakes/steering. Most keys have a steering wheel lock built in. Guess what! You won't be able to steer, so make sure you only turn it back to the first detent.
Overreving the engine in itself can be a safety hazard if you do succeed in downshifting into a lower gear. If the engine manages to hold together at 9,000 RPM rather than its 6,000 RPM redline, the sudden deceleration as the engine tries to match the transmission speed can cause the drive wheels to break loose, causing momentary loss of control. This is even more dangerous on a motorcycle, as it can result in a highside when the rear suddenly grabs hold after skidding along. If the engine seizes in the process of self destructing, this skid will continue until the vehicle stops or a driveline component lets go.
That being said, I will slam my car into Park if the brakes fail and I am carrening towards a busy crosswalk or headed into a ravine. Most newer vehicles won't go into park unless the brake pedal is depressed, so keep this in mind if you must attempt this maneuver. A manual transmission will generally be difficult to get into a gear which is seriously mismatched to engine speed, as the synchronizers will tend to lock the gear out. If you accidentally try to shift into first after redlining in second rather than hitting 3rd, the synchronizers in the transmission will tend to lock out the gate for first gear.
Gold in itself functioned as money in times past, due to its value because of its limited supply and the difficulty obtaining a larger overall supply of gold, which must be done at great effort. Because gold is also a durable commodity that can be easily molded into nice pretty status symbols, it has an almost universal appeal. A slab of meat may have great immediate value to a hungry man, but unless it is eaten immediately or refrigerated, it will soon go bad and become worthless. A person can trade his services for gold and then trade it for meat as he needs it. It becomes a reliable store of value, just as idealized money should. As long as the supply of gold remains stable, one who wants to obtain gold, either to enjoy its yellow glow or to trade it for needed services generally finds it easier to trade their labor for gold than to go out and mine gold for themselves.
Gold or any hard asset as a basis for money has one major flaw: it still a lot of takes real labor and effort to produce it, and there will always be those who will seek to obtain gold for themselves by attempting to mine it themselves. If the supply of gold was indeed fixed (i.e there is no gold around that can be economically mined), then the relative prices of goods and services will float relative to the value of the fixed supply of gold. All hell breaks loose when there is the prospect of individuals being able to economically mine gold for themselves and trade it for goods. History is rife with examples of the damage done to the earth and to the men and their families in pursuit of gold.
In the end, the increased supply of gold produced during the gold rushes meant that not only the value of all other goods and services rose in relation to gold, as its value dropped, but the absolute supply of those services available dropped as well. The opportunity cost for mining gold, which turned out to be a marginal proposition at best for the majority of miners was the value of goods and services that were not produced. Many of the '49ers sunk their life savings into mining ventures that usually didn't pan out well, and left families behind to tend to farms which were then neglected, factories saw skilled workers leave, or their production of say picks, axes, and shovels diverted to the production of gold, rather than building roads or helping farmers work the land. Railroad construction slowed as workers abandoned the hard work of building rail lines in pursuit of a quick buck mining gold. In the end the gold rushes made us all poorer in a real sense.
That being said, in the Gilligan's Island example, survival and comfort meant having an efficient way of trading goods and services, and a medium of exchange that was of fixed supply, in the sense that it was unreproducible. Any effort to increase the supply of the medium of exchange is futile in the Macro sense, because it would divert efforts from the production of needed goods and services. The Professor's preserved palm leaves needed effort to produce, and the supply could be manipulated. Mr. Howell's paper money could not be reproduced on the island, and also benefitted as a medium of exchange because it had perceived value, and it was already there.
Barring Mr. Howell's millions, alternative viable means of exchange could have been established by using any other portable and unreproducible item, such as a roll of tickets that may have been used to sell rides on the Minnow.
The network latency problem will have to be solved first. Of course you could do a troute to predict the average latency to get that bid in at just the last millisecond.
For most of my life, I have had a pretty cavalier attitude about environmental pollutants,and currently work around a lot of paper dust. I definitely knew I was very allergic to certain wood dusts, cat dander, and so on, but I also greeted similar stories of multiple chemical sensitivities with a grain of salt.
About 3 years ago, I got a really nasty respiratory virus that turned into pneumonia, which resulted in a trip to ER, kept me out of work for the better part of 2 weeks, and asthmatic for months afterwards. 7 months later, just as I was feeling good again, I got another bad cold that left me with even worse asthma for the entire summer, and into fall. For months, just driving near a sewage treatment plant, breathing cold dry air, a little more dust than usual, cooking odors, household cleaners, and yes, that new computer/tv/car smell would be enough to tighten my chest and leave me short of breath. Even today, though I am better about most things again, I can feel my chest tighten up when I smell for instance, a truck's overheated brakes out on the highway (which smells a lot like hot electronics). My logic tells me that the concentration of the offending irritants is miniscule, but odors have a way of directly triggering strange reactions sometimes.
I have the DVD of Apocalypse Now Redux, with an additional 45 minutes of footage. For those who haven't seen the original, the movie was set in the middle of the Vietnam War, and centered around a Special Forces captain who was sent to assassinate a renegade Colenel operating in the jungles of Cambodia. Along the way it explores, ad nauseum, the absurdities of the war and how it was fought.
At about 3 hours in the original cut, I thought the original Apocalypse Now was a biting, though longish commentary on how not to fight a war. There were excesses for sure, but I thought the original held together well enough to make those excesses bearable.
Enter the Redux version (spoiler alert):
The extra 45 minutes centers around 2 additional scenes: The first additional scene centers around a muddy riverside supply depot, which had been all but abandoned, and forsaken by the powers that be. Its commander was killed in an attack two months previously, and the few remaining GI's occupying it were reduced to pimping out some Playboy bunnies who had landed there after an in-flight emergency. The boys on the boat exchange a drum of fuel for the bunnies' services, but the chicks were in lala land, the sex was empty, and was punctuated by a body falling out of a casket in all its gory detail. Enough to make you throw up, the scene dragged for 20 minutes.
Upriver, on the other side of the Do Long Bridge, our boys are looking to bury one of their own after an attack leaves on of the crew dead, when they happen upon a wrecked dock belonging to an old French Plantation. Another 25 minutes of dinner conversation in French about the war ensue, followed by the seduction the good captain by the plantation's matriarch.
By the time they reach the headwaters of the river to confront the Colenel, I am fast asleep.
If there is existing infrastructure nearby, they can tap into local phone or data lines, and the BS may be even lucky enough to get use of a T1 line, or even DSL to send VOIP. 1.6 Mhz of bandwidth will support a couple of dozen voice channels, and depending on the grade of DSL, much the same.
If the local terrestrial infrastructure is nonexistent, inadequate, or severely damaged, then the choice becomes microwaves. While the microwave relay stations are old tech, microwave relays are still used for many things, and if the option is available, then it would provide an alternative means of transmitting data. If there is no microwave link nearby, it might be possible to position a second or even third mobile relay station to get the signal where it needs to go.
Failing a practical path via microwave or microwave relay via earth stations, there is always the option of setting up a satellite link to do the job. Expensive yes, but it will work just about anywhere you can find open sky.
The point is, there is almost always a way to get the job done.
I have seen some of the local TV News trucks with their dishes fully deployed, which are based on something like a Ford E-350 Van. They have telescoping masts which deploy directly from the roof of the van, and look like they can be deployed and running within 30 minutes or so. Supplement the microwave dish for relaying video with a cellular array (the dish will still be useful to relay signals where there are no or inadequate onsite phone lines), and keep the equipment mounted in the truck. Their masts look like they can extend 50 or 60 feet, which can cover a couple of square mile area anyway.
I once saw one for sale at the Timmonium Hamfest, and wondered about its possibilities for roving.
I thought I had done a good job of protecting my station but took a hit last fall. I had my tower and masts tied together and grounded with a total of 6 8 foot ground rods, attached to the tower with #4 bare copper, being careful not to have any sharp bends in the wire. I ran the coaxes into a patch panel which was grounded by 1 inch heavy flat braided copper to my ground rod system. My equipment was plugged into a heavy duty UPS, which was off and disconnected from the wall, and all my antennas were disconnected. When I took the hit, I heard a loud snap in my radio room, lost my VCR and TV reception, but the lights stayed on.
After the storm I tallied the damage:
1 motherboard fried
1 modem fried
1 VCR Main fuse blown - (was repaired)
1 Yaesu G5400B rotor box - (repaired blown regulator)
1 Ham-M Rotor box - blown fuses (repaired)
1 Astron 50 Amp supply Blown regulator circuit (awaiting repair)
1 Kenwood TS-440 Major damage-may be totalled
1 Fax machine (toast)
Phone Line- Connection was charred at Network Interface. I was switched to a spare pair, but my phone became unusable afterwards when it rained. Verizon has been unwilling/unable to correct the problem. I have since moved into a brand new home next door, and the problem seems to have followed me here as well.
I suspect that lightning found its way in via the rotor control cable or phone line, I am not sure which (perhaps it was both). In any case, it caused a spike which caused my power supply to apply lethal voltage to my TS-440, and other equipment. I will add bulkhead fittings for my rotor controllers when I rebuild my radio room in the coming months.
Bruce N3LSY
Since I posted I can't moderate, but perhaps someone else can. Thanks for the updated information, I have an old C-band dish here that I was going to listen in on AO-40 with, but since it went Silent Key, perhaps I can find an alternate use for it.
I am just finishing up and getting ready to move into a new Modular house. They set the house in 1 day, about 2 1/2 months ago, and it took the equivalent of about 3 weeks work to make it almost ready to move into. The house has been languishing over a month in a nearly completed state waiting for power from my friendly neighborhood power company due to a string of mixups, delays and bureaucratic hassles. And I applied to hook up nearly 2 months before the house was set. I can hardly wait for the day that home electrical generation becomes practical.
I too had to learn to type at an early age, my poor handwriting was a side effect of ADD. I remember I started to type reports in 7th or 8th grade on an old Underwood, 10 years before I got my first computer. One of my teachers made one last ditch attempt to get me to write a report longhand, but in the margins drew a face with watery eyes and said go back to typing. My typed lab writeups in High School and College (still pre-computer) would consistently score a letter grade higher than their handwritten counterparts, regardless of content.
Another problem I have is that I tend to think faster than I write, and often have to use a ^ to insert words into previously written text, which makes my handwritten copy even worse. No problem on a computer, but hell when filling out a poorly designed form to begin with.
About the only thing I have found that can prevent my handwriting from degenerating into completely illegible scrawl is to print, and to try to manage the space I have available to write in, as I frequently have the bad habit of writing larger at the beginning of the line and try to squeeze it all in at the end.
C-Band operates in the 4.7 Ghz range, and predates current DSS systems, such as Direct TV et.al. It operates primarily in analog mode, with most of the channels of the newer systems, though sadly most commercial signals are scrambled these days. Most of the free stuff is things like religious broadcasters, HSN, QVC and their clones, public affairs stuff, and so on. Programming meant for other countries is sometimes not scrambled, and you sometimes find some interesting stuff. No it is not nearly as interesting as the days unscrambled wild feeds or even chipped videocipher units, but there is an occasional nugget out there for the C-band surfers.
C-Band signals with a good antenna look better than DSS because the signals are analog and operate on lower frequencies than the DSS Stuff. They suffer less from rain fade than the higher frequencies, and compression artifacts from the digital modes. My parents have a big dish I helped install in the late 80's. They retired to a rural area beyond the reach of cable and the nearest TV station was 75 miles away, so the big dish was really their only option then. It still looks great today, though if they had to start over from scratch they would opt for the small dish. They use a small dish for their motorhome when they travel, and a small dish for broadband internet.
That being said, the big dish's main drawbacks are its size, with 6 footers being the minimum to get a decent signal, and the fact that there are only 24 transponders on each satellite. This means that unless you want to install multiple dishes like the cable companies, you need a way to steer the dish, which adds a layer of complexity to the operation and maintenance of the dish.