Text 26138, 132 rader
Skriven 2012-02-29 14:33:38 av Richard Webb (1:116/901.0)
  Kommentar till text 26093 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
Ärende: Popular echo?
=====================
Hi Roy,

On Tue 2012-Feb-28 10:48, Roy Witt (1:387/22) wrote to Richard Webb:

<snip>
 RW>> the only reason I carry it.  AS for weather, I do actually
 RW>> read a lot of that data that's posted.

 Roy>> Unfortunately, you have to have a reader do that for you. OTH, I
 Roy>> use the Weather Channel's version in my browser.

 RW> I mostly look at some of their long range stuff nationwide,
 RW> and some of the stats.  The poster used to do a lot of other marine
 RW> forecast stuff there, but slowed up on that, which is kind of a
 RW> disappointment.

RW> Interesting to note that posting weather reports in Fidonet is like
RW> posting the history of 1990s weather. When you see it in Fidonet,
RW> it's yesterdays news.

 RW> I've actually used it for vessels heading for one of those places on
 RW> ham radio, although for areas right off NOrth America I get that
 RW> stuff from noaa web, thanks to Mark Lewis it ends up in my inbound
 RW> where my automation slices dices and processes it to make it
 RW> presentable for me to read on the air, either by dumping off to my
 RW> braille embosser when it worked,

Roy> Damn that's got to be a lot of work...I just got a Kindle Fire and
Roy> 'todays' local weather is the first thing I look at right after
Roy> putting on my pants. When I'm finally fully dressed for the day, I
Roy> see what the weather is like in such places as where my sister lives
Roy> in northern Illinois, where my youngest daughter lives in
Roy> Okeechobee, FL and where my son lives in Denver. Then I look at the
Roy> weather in Berlin, just to make my day that much better, even if it
Roy> is only 15 degrees warmer here than it is there. Not lately! 8^)

I do the noaa wx radio thing first thing in the morning,
it's programmed in memory of my ht, and the dual band rig on the bench here, so
I punch it up, let the Rottweiler out
while listening to what it's telling me.
Actually the slice and dice of incoming noaa data is all
done by automation.

<snip>
RW> Hmmm. No one else around who can help you fix it?

Maybe, if I knew somebody around with all the right tools,
and waht the specs are supposed to be.

 RW>  IT is intermittent printing a couple dots out of the cell, iirc dots
 RW> 1 and 2.  I was hoping it was just a matter of swapping out a
 RW> solenoid or something cool I could do on the bench here, but the tech
 RW> at the company told me not hardly.

Roy> Well, he's a service tech, so he's going to make that assumption so
Roy> he can make a buck. Adjusting a pin stroke can't be all that
Roy> difficult, if one has the tools and a pair of eyes to see what's
Roy> going on.

And knows what it's supposed to be when all's right with its world <g>.  That's
sorto f what I was thinking too, this
ain't rocket science, it's mostly mechanical.

 RW> After they swap out the bad components they twaek the thing, use a
 RW> micrometer to look at dot height and make sure all's copacetic, and
 RW> he'll get a complete checkup and going over with that $1k.
<snip>
Roy> I don't see how a micrometer would help, perhaps a depth-mic would
Roy> make that job easier. I recently moved my verticle mill into my
Roy> garage and could probably set your braill machine up on the mill
Roy> table, use a dial indicator and set the stroke of all pins to the
Roy> same height when fired. Having an X-Y table movement that would be a
Roy> piece of cake to do.

YEp, I'm sure that's what he was meaning.  Guy and I had a
nice conversation, he's a ham also, family from nEw ORleans.

Roy> I wouldn't have any clue as how to fine tune it though.

And that's what you get for your $1k.

Thing is, I could put another $1k with it and get one of the newer consumer
machines, (had one and it was junk) but this
one's built like a tank.  Naturally being a braille embosser there's a lot of
different mechanical stuff going on, and
it's got to be built tough.  This thing is, when brand new
was $5k, and the only people using them were institutional
users.  Serial number's permanently in braille on the
printing plate, and he could tell me exactly when this thing was made, etc. 
The unitis 20 years old, and until recently
was chugging along churning out braille flawlessly.  iT is
definitely worth repairing.


 RW>> I do read railfan, it's gated from misc.transport.rail.americas, and
 RW>> there are actual humans there carrying on conversations.
<snip>
 RW> Yep, there again I mostly follow the technical threads over
 RW> there in rf.

Roy> One thing that would interest them is that here in Texas, San
Roy> Antonio and now New Braunfels have 'quiet' crossings on all major
Roy> highways and streets.

YEah I bet. Back where i grew up lots of folks complain
about that with the Burlington NOrthern coal trains that go
through town in the middle of the night.  Doesn't matter in
Burlington Iowa though, even if you're farther by road from
the tracks, the town's built on three hills, and the tracks
go down the valley, and of course the sound of that whistle
blows up the hills rather nicely, no matter what the time of year <g>.
I just got used to it, was part of the background noise.

Roy> It used to be that the 5am southbound train would blow his way
Roy> through town. And I mean 'blow' as in hanging on the horn pull chain
Roy> and never letting go.

YEp, they do that still there.

What i used to find more annoying, especially for awhile
when I was running small recording studio out of my house in WEst Burlington
was when the railroad engine maintenance
shops were stress testing engines.  They'd wind those guys
up and have them pull, I think against each other and see
what breaks, but that high pitched whine combined with a bit of the low
frequency rumble, couldn't do any work at all
when they were doing that, and they averaged about one night a week doing that
for awhile <g>.
 Regards,
           Richard
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 * Origin:  (1:116/901)