This is an exposing photo from the new club. I like to think how drastically it shows the growth from three weeks ago. Back then, anybody could have joined us and knew as much as we did. We plowed slowly through incredibly difficult topics for three hours today to study this antenna. Agent M and I are planning ahead to independent research without all that much help from the outside world.
Again, electronics dominated the day. We are in the process of standardizing all fittings where we presently have a hodgepodge of different couplers. It took one demonstration for us to switch completely over to digital calipers accurate the hundredth of an inch. Going on line to review what others are selling, we have already seen plenty of items where we could do better. We have narrowed our studies to bi-quad dipole and yagi antennas, the latter shown here.I’ve downloaded around 200 pages of articles on these particular antennas and I think all those authors went to the same school. They lapse into graphs and formulas far too early, before they have finished explaining to the death what works and why. I’ve always been leery of formulas that contain sines and cosines. Just tell me where the wires go and I’ll find the sweet spot myself. We need some straight talk about antennas and that book still needs to be written.
Agent M is as extraordinary as I was at that age, at least. He's destined to be a great club member. He’s got a complete workshop set up in the walkway between his house and fence. In the planter he’s got a whole crop of radishes and peas. He says I’m the first person who knew what the little leaves were. He does his own car work and has an inquisitive nature, though he tends to move too fast, often missing important points along the way. Incidentally, at 4:55 PM today, we finally connected at 231 kbps. All my updates were completed within 15 minutes.
Staci-O was up to practice tonight, so I scootered the 32 miles. We are far behind schedule; she didn’t put in the time little by little and is now doing the mad scramble to catche. By now, we should be out there, instead, we are still practicing intro and versions. No matter, we go on stage tomorrow night.
Things are moving too slow, we should have a full complement of tunes by now and ready to play out, whereas we are still running over the original twelve tunes. I now do twelve myself and that represents the only new material in several months. Yet this is far from the worst situation, hell, look at the Hippie, not one new song in six years. That reminds me, I looked at craigslist, a rare thing for me. The musicians section is totally taken over by commercial interests.
But there was a bass player advertising for a band, and it had me rockin’ with laughter. He is a west coast type obviously new in town and learning the hard way that all the mentally defective guitar players on the east coast have moved to Florida. It gives them a sense of belonging. The humor I see is that he has plainly been stung repeatedly and listed what he hated. He won’t be in a band soon, for that list was longer than mine.
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