Today’s club meeting was discouraging despite the hard work accomplished. You see, even with the most carefully controlled experiments in ideal laboratory conditions, we still cannot get any measurable signals off any antenna that we built. Yet we’ve examined store-bought models and they are the same or inferior. Our meters are set to detect a ten thousandth of a volt and we get nothing. (Shown here is a T-shaped brace to hold a wire antenna, you can make out the multi-meter and soldering iron.)
Mind you, we are looking for an inferred value. Only by accidentally reading an article on a different topic did I find a sentence that stated that the antenna collects a voltage. After studying 60 antenna documents and examining 200 photographs, we are still unable to find firm information on this matter. We concluded we might be hooking the leads up wrong, so we tried every possible combination before calling it a day.Thus, we continue working on the tanking circuit to see if we can get any resonating frequency, and as a backup, build a small amp by attaching the signal to a transistor base and on to a meter. The solution to this has baffled us ten days now. What do you suppose the answer will be once we find it? Meanwhile shame on so many authors of books on antennas that never provide any real help.
I’m watching “Band of Brothers” again, this time on the new DVD player that Dave-O gave me. It’s a DVD recorder but he didn’t know how to use it. One day America will make a real war movie. Meanwhile, the Germans always stand around in groups and shout Teutonic oaths to give away their positions, refuse to post sentries, and when the shooting starts, are conditioned to run back and forth across the line of fire while ignoring available ground cover.
The fact is the Germans never had anything like the vast stocks of equipment always shown. And as the Allied armies advanced, the German forces began to consist of raw recruits surrounding the ever-shrinking numbers of late-war veterans “of diabolical efficiency”. All one hears is how they were defeated but nary a word about the kill-ratios of such units. It must have been so gruesome it is covered up to this day. The Russians lost over 81,000 men taking Berlin. It wasn’t the German girl scouts managed that.
My dangerous times amount to driving a scooter at rush hour once or twice a month. Which reminds me, I drove all ten miles to downtown Ft. Lauderdale y’day at 4:00 PM and the road was almost empty. Times are tough. You know, I yet may decide to go live in that town. Careful you know what you are doing, that is one town you may live in a nice neighborhood, but not what you have to drive through to go somewhere.
I’ve even noticed that I’ll live precariously when it comes to finances now that I have steady income. I have some emergency funds, but I’ve gotten lax with my operational cash. In March this year, I let that cash drop to $19.65, something I haven’t risked in decades. Guaranteed income changes one’s thinking. (The difference here is that I recognize and document such things.)
The records kept here show that AA batteries are a bad item to purchase in Florida and the worst place to buy them is at Big Lots, followed closely by Publix. The best before dates such as 2016 are fictitious. The worst brand is Kodak, then ordinary Duracells. Kokak product is basically a waste of money, lasting one hour in my camera where a good set of batteries lasts up to six months. Eveready makes a battery called “Super Heavy Duty”, also labeled 2016, that isn’t worth throwing out. Most of these batteries come in a re-closeable package. Recloseable by whom?
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