It happened again.

Read on for more details, more photos, and something completely different.

So yeah, last night we had a bit of a storm blow through.  44MPH gusts I was told.  we knew the tarp was going to need replacement soon, its color was fading quick.  But I really thought it had one or two more storms in it still.  Based on where it tore I’m guessing the two small holes were enough to seed it’s destruction.  The TV antenna had fallen a few weeks ago in a wind storm.  I knew it was going to go since the wood is real soft on the side of the house there and the biggest screws I had didn’t seem quite big enough to hold it.  Need to get some good lag bolts and maybe a bit of epoxy to stregthen the old wood there as well before I put it back up.  It did move in the storm last night but I suspect that was more due to the tarp pulling it around than it tearing up the tarp.

Torn and shredded

Other view

Long view

On the plus side the cheap tarp we put up to replace the last torn original tarp held up just great.  But when I went up to the store we got that one at today the price had jumped from $37 to $50   And they can’t blame gas prices either since it looks like it has been sitting on the shelf since we bought that last one.  They only have one left though so I guess I should bite the bullet and go buy it.  Their tarp selection was much more limited this time than last despite the higher prices.

The storm also took out my new flag which I didn’t have time to take down first

Twisted 90 degrees and mangled.

Up is actually to the left in this photo…I forgot to rotate it before uploading and it appears the gallery in wordpress won’t let me rotate   The wind was strong enough to crack the wood and pull the screws out as well as mangle and bend the metal flag mount.

Up is up in this one.

There we go, with up facing up in this photo it’s a little more obvious what the damage was like.  I noticed nicer heavy cast flat mounts at Walmart the other day so I’ll probably get one of those as a replacement.  May have to get a friend with a welder help me make something a bit sturdier than my wooden insert though.

At least the light still works!

Now, as promised something completely different:

Softrock+Xtall v6.3 RX/TX

Backside, the Si570 is the silver chip near the center.

This is my latest little electronics project.  It’s a SoftRock+Xtall v6.3 created by Tony Parks KB9YIG.  It’s a software definced all band amateur radio receiver and 1 watt transmitter.  It’s only partly constructed in this photo…I’ll have finished photos up by the end of the weekend I hope.  The small daughter board is one of the 4 RX filter modules that have to be changed for various bands.  It comes with modules for 160m , 40/80m, 30/20/15m and the final for 15/12/10m.  Pictured is the 40/80 filter.   I probably won’t bother to bulid the 160m filter since I have no antenna for that band and no plans for one.  I build the 40/80 first since I the 30/20/15 and 15/12/10 modules are the ones I care most about so I figured I’d do the one I don’t care about first for practice.

Yes, I do already have 3 other softrock RX/TX kits and a couple of RX only kits.  I have the original 3 board stack that upgraded a v6.1 for 40/80m and a v6.2 for 20m that is still waiting for me to wind the last 7 inductors (and has been waiting nearly a year…I need to finish that.)  What makes this new one so much nifitier though is that little silver chip on the bottom – the Si570.  The Si570 is a programmable oscilator that gives this version of the SR full frequency agility.  Instead of being locked to 48khz on either side of the crystal this one can be tuned just about anywhere in the HF bands I could want.  It could theoretically even get up to 6m and possibly even 2m – but the switches that make up the mixer in the SR wouldn’t work at those frequencies so other methods would have to be employed.

The other reason I built the 40/80m RX filter first is that the kit only ships with the 40/80m TX PA and Filter.  The other PAF kits are still being tested to make sure they meet FCC requirements but should ship soon.  I’m also anxiously awaiting the new USB kit which I’ve pre-ordered.

You see, while the Si570 is programable there was no connection to the computer to command it in the v6.3 design.  Instead there’s a small microcontroller (a pic to be exact) right next to the 4 dip switches.  The 4 switches can be changed aroudn to select 1 of 16 different frequencies that the pic will command the Si570 to hold.  The USB kit will replace the pic microconroller with another small daughterboard which provides an i2c bus allowing a USB connection to the PC to command the Si570 giving full tuning ability.  The USB kit also gives a serial port which can be used to control the PTT line making hooking the SR to the computer much simpler.  You still need stereo audio in/out for the SR as well as audio out and mic in (necessitating either two sound cards or a 4 channel card like the Delta 44 I recently gave my dad due to the lack of 64bit Vista drivers) but overall the connections to the computer become much simpler and you get better frequency control.

I still have to finish assembling the PAF board and tuning this setup….so that’s on deck for this weekend.  Not a big hurry though since I’m holding out for the 20m PAF and the USB kit which should be here sometime in September.

So rather than write them off I moved them to our far back patio.  That’s where I setup the dartboard for parties, and the rest of the time it’s a nice secluded and quiet part of the yard.  The soft glow of the solar lights worked well out there.

And they did seem to work quite well for a few months.  Yeah, they weren’t all that bright…but that’s not because they didn’t charge well.  They were just cheap lights.  However a month or so ago once the summer sun really started to do it’s job I noticed that instead of lasting longer through the night the lights actually seemed to be having bigger problems – some had stopped coming on at all.  Assuming that the cheap nicad batteries in them had failed I brought one in and checked it out.  Nope, good full charge on on the battery…in fact a little higher than I normally would have expected from a nicad.   Checked the output of the charge circuit and it looked good too.

Doing any more digging would require disassembly of the light so I left it in my office, with the solar cell down against my desk until I could be bothered to go out into the oven, er I mean shed, and get the right sized screwdriver to disassemble it.  So there it sat for a week…or three…ok maybe a month.

Then a day or two I noticed something unusual.  When I shut off the lights in my office that day the light came on!  It didn’t do it again after that…but I assumed by then the battery had to be low, when I checked it today sure enough it was almost dead.  So I took the light back outside this afternoon and shoved it back into the ground.

I just went out and checked…and sure enough it’s working again!  Though it seems even more of the ones that had been working previously are now dark.

My theory is they’re simply getting TOO MUCH sun.  The batteries are getting overcharged and somehow preventing the circuit from kicking into drain mode at night.  I figure tomorrow I’ll round them all up and bring them to the dark for a few weeks for the batteries to drain then put them back out to start fresh.

I had been warned that it was possible to fry solar panels out here due to our overly abundant daylight…but figured these were out of the direct sun enough to deal with it.  I guess not.  Maybe more expensive solar lights would have smarter charge/drain circuity and could deal with it more gracefully.  But I guess until I can afford such lights I’ll just have to take these into the dark for a week or so every month until fall or winter.

And one of these days I still want to get some real panels up on our RV shade with a bank of batteries in the utility area behind my office.  I figure I could put the pump for our drinking water tank, the outside landscape lights, and my radios – maybe even some of my computer stuff on solar since they all run on 12v.  Just have to keep my eyes open for some deals, it’s not uncommon to find some older technology solar panels when snowbirds upgrade their RV’s.  And with sun like this I don’t need the newest most efficient panels to keep things topped up!