Birth of the geek

It has been a quiet weekend around our house. Hannah's group arrived in Biloxi on Saturday after being on the road something like 22 hours. One of our student ministry interns sent back a picture taken in front of a memorial built by ABC's Extreme Makeover Home Edition, across the street from the beach. I understand that during the worst of the flooding, the water level was higher than the black structure you see in the background.

Back home, the heat wave has made the cats lethargic: they sprawl across the floor, feet up in the air in the most unfeline poses, oblivious to everything around them. It's 91° in Syracuse right now, but the afternoon is young. The weather discourages vigorous activity, so once the important chores were done (reattaching the whiteboard to Hannah's door, for example) I started the new ham radio kit.

Let's get one thing straight from the start: no, there is no need to send me plastic pocket protectors, and yes, I still plan to take showers. If I ever start going about in public with a pink day-glo plastic badge engraved with my call sign, a frequency counter hanging from my belt, and a red elastic armband that says OFFICIAL COMMUNICATIONS THROUGH AMATEUR RADIO, you have permission to give me a dope slap. The main reason I have never been particularly interested in ham radio, frankly, is some of the people who are. Probably the vast majority of amateurs are wonderful folks with a dedication to public service — but the self-important strutters who insist on having special access and privileges just make my skin crawl. Please, for the love of everything that's good, don't let me go there!

I went through the kit Saturday, checking to make sure all of the parts are present and undamaged. Counting 41 #4 internal tooth lockwashers is about the least fun part of the project, but it pays off: being familiar with the parts makes it less likely to accidentally install something in the wrong place. It's no fun at all to have to go back and disassemble things. The inventory was generally uneventful: everything was there, including several resistors with purple bands that were closer to gray. But I know that 5% resistors don't come in 480 ohms, so the subterfuge was only mildly annoying. Many of my company's objectives for this program involve basic skills like identifying parts and reading resistor color codes, but I've been doing that sort of work here every day for the last 24 years. Most of what I learned is that my eyes don't work as well as they used to, and that parts are smaller than they used to be.

Construction actually goes quite quickly, at least so far. I finished the first circuit board, the controller, Saturday afternoon.

The front panel board is about halfway completed. This is way too much fun, and reminds me of building Heathkits with Dad. We put together a stereo receiver with a digital frequency display when I was in high school, and my parents still use it. Not bad: the percentage of consumer electronics equipment still in daily service after thirty years is pretty low, and very little is user serviceable.

You know, I'm really starting to get excited about this. I wonder where they order those custom ball caps with the call letters...