Slugging on

The Memorial Day weekend was a big weekend for me.

I had a friend drive 300 miles to help me work on an antenna. Not just any antenna, one that I can use to bounce radio signals off the moon with. It will take a pair of them, and they are each thirty feet long.

During the weekend; we cut metal, welded metal, painted metal, drilled holes in metal. We also machined metal to within a thousandth of an inch.

My friend started out reenforcing the antenna support. He started at the bottom and did things I would never have thought of. I wanted to start in the middle and work my way out. If you start in the middle, no matter which way you go you’re going in the right direction. It’s good to get feed back from someone else and use that feed back. His ideas worked and the support stub tower support is much more stable than before.

Next we needed to get the antenna to hold its position. It was bobbing around in the wind, and I get a lot of 10 mile an hour wind here. Down came the old elevation rotor. Next came the problems with the pillow blocks (big bearing) that will hold the elevation shaft. The holes in the pillow blocks bearings were too small by 20 thousandth of an inch. The elevation shaft was 7 thousandths over sized. That’s 27 thousandth interference. The bearings are harden steel. It’s not going to fit or go together with the equipment I have. I would need a 12 foot long bed on the lathe to take off the material from the elevation shaft or a precision grinder to open up (widen) the pillow block bearing holes. That harden steel is difficult to work.

Compromises were made. Things were put together. Three days of intense work were accomplished. This is a lot like writing.

Then after my friend went back to his place I installed a new faucet in the bathroom and a new reverse osmosis unit under the kitchen sink. The faucet took three and half hours of laying under the vanity and struggling with hard to get at pipe fittings.

The reverse osmosis unit took five hours of laying on sharp edges of kitchen cabinets struggling with corroded fittings.

After that I was in no condition to write a blog post last Monday.

Its taken days to get back to writing. I’m back and writing. I’m sore, bruised and I disliking plumbing more than every.

Stay strong, write on.                    Professor Hyram Voltage