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Showing posts from January 26, 2020

Upper Peninsula Michigan and Auction Win Outcomes

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I was up in Wisconsin and the UP (upper peninsula) in Michigan. It was a lot of driving after launching/landing in Appleton WI. I got an item off the bucket list by driving across the "Mighty Mac". Altough it was built in the late '50s. It is still the longest suspension span in the Northern hemisphere. It is a crazy long bridge with a crazy long suspension span. It was good to see the bridge in context of the seemingly endless forests of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan. The culture in the two haves of Michigan are noticibly different as you might expect. Great time meeting with folks both in WI and MI. The tractor I won in auction, seems to have paid off. This time I beat the odds. It was a really good deal. I have the "no-key, non-running, may have hydraulic problems, unknown hours" -auction win, running well with minimal cost and time. I have some more tweaks, maintenance and minor fixes but the major risks are gone.
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I guess I cant stop buying radio equipment. I found a good deal on a few pieces of test equipment I didn't have. I had to buy them. I bought an IFR FM/AM-1200S service monitor. It is a classic. It is mostly pre digital. I consider this unit to be an "argument breaker" as far as determining what exactly is happening on frequency. It is very good at determining sources of interference and it has practically every bit of test equipment in one package. And it is battery powered. I also bought a Rigol DG1022 Function/arbitrary waveform generator, a BIRD watt meter/dummy load and a variable transformer. The only regret is that the Variable transformer is not the isolating type. I will have to figure out if I can make it isolated. It is an important piece of test equipment for old vacuum tube radios.