TEK NET 20221002
The Henderson Amateur Radio Club is pleased to present our Tek Net every Sunday evening, starting at 8pm local time (0300 UTC).
The audio portion of the Tek Net will be found on the Henderson Amateur Radio Club Repeater Network (RF). The audio may also be accessed via Echolink (W7HEN-R node 740644) and Allstar (node 44045).
The audio will refer to this page, so that the listener can more fully understand the concepts as they are presented.
All are welcome!
Past Tek Nets Available Here
Tek Net Comments or Suggestions
October 2, 2022
“Horror stories from the bench”
A few weeks back we discussed how it would be fun to hear some of the stories that folks have about “fixing” stuff.
This is inevitable, due to the fact that there is electricity involved, clip leads popping off, meter probes too long, soldering irons with grounded tips, metal tools and who knows what else that can sneak into a seemingly simple project and turn it into an instant disaster.
I’ll start out with my worse disaster that has been in the closet since 1986 (36 yrs), never to be mentioned to anyone until tonight.
So…. put your mind to work and get your thoughts together, this should be fun.
Horror Story #1
From Earl Lizardi WB6AMT
During the 1980’s I was repairing, installing and servicing commercial two-way radios in San Diego from my fully equipped mobile service van.
Getting a company to switch over to my repeater service from Motorola was common practice between service shops, folks were always looking for a better “deal”.
I had received the new transmit & receive channel elements for a new Towing company’s Motorola Mitrek dispatching base station, I was going to do the frequency change out at my shop after their office closed and would be delivering it back first thing in the morning, so there was a minimum of down time.
It was raining a light drizzle so it would be much more comfortable to do the work on my bench in the garage ( which had a heater) instead of in the service truck.
Total time spent swapping the channel elements and setting the transmit & receive frequency with the service monitor was about 20 minutes….done deal.
I reached over and grabbed the top cover to slide it back on the radio when the unimaginable happened.
A steady stream of water came from above directly into the radio that is still powered up! It was like a garden hose was turned on.
This created sparks, smoke from burning components and very strange noises from the speaker…then nothing.
I mean really nothing…the shorted power supply finally tripped the breaker to the garage.
There I sit for a moment in the dark, wondering what happened?
Well, this old house had a wooden garage door that was 2 car wide. Such a wide heavy door had a bit of a sag in the middle when in the up position, quietly letting all the rain water gather in the this giant wooden salad bowl.
When the water reached the edge of the door the path that it took led directly over and down into the radio.
To describe my mental condition at that point was beyond words.
Now what do I do? What would you do?
This was a brand new customer who I just talked out of being a Motorola customer (who’s radios and repeater were working just fine) and come to my service which will be much better.
The next few hours were frantically spent trying to assess the damage and attempt repair…no luck, this radio was very dead.
Now my thoughts now go to how can I get a radio to the customer in the morning, knowing the dispatch base station is the heart of this 12 truck towing business.
Checking the shelves of radios for a Mitrek was no help either, however I did know where there was a Mitrek base station.
In my office was a new (2 week old) 100 watt, $1800 base station on my business frequency.
The only thing to do was swap radios, do a channel element exchange and no one would be the wiser.
I would save face with the new customer and give me time to fix this mess.
Did this 20 minute frequency swap between radios go smoothly for the second time in one night…of course not!
Their radio was a 25 watt radio, when I connected my 100 watt radio in the chassis, and got his power supply back online, the transmitter wouldn’t transmit, now what!
Well the power supply in the 100 watt radio was much bigger current wise than the 25 watt radio’s, so now we’re putting the radios back into their own chassis so the darn thing will work.
Luckily the base station chassis were the same size, so the top cover fit my radio’s chassis and I was able to slide their cover on to my radio’s cabinet.
Total time from start to finish that night ….over 7 hours.
Does this story have a happy ending?
Yes,
I delivered the radio first thing in the morning and told the owner that I would be back in a couple of weeks to Re-calibrate the frequency channel elements after they have aged for a few weeks, that was standard procedure with new crystals to make sure they were within the FCC’s channel specifications.
I was able to repair the radio and the power supply during that time.
Doing the 20 minute frequency swap again in 2 weeks went smoothly and I never left the garage door up ever again when it was raining.
Total time invested in this one service call was almost 29 hours and many days.
Horror Story #2
From Shane Huston KG7QWH
I went in for a job interview at a company and was met by a man working as the temporary Network Administrator.
I’m thinking to myself, “This is not a good sign.”
After the intro’s, he describes the current network design for each of the 11 remote office locations across the country and the LV Head Office.
Each of the offices has user desktops and 1 server – ALL with static IP addresses on live Internet addresses.
He asks me what I thought…. I respond, “Can you say DHCP and Firewalls?”
In further discussion with my would-be boss, I’m told the previous IT Manager was a Novell networks guy, not a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, and was let go for some shady operations.
Worst starting nightmare I ever walked into.
If you have a Horror story to share, send it to me. If tonight is a success and you folks want more, we will do this again in the near future.
Until next time… 73
DE WB6AMT
