Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

Decided to go back to RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall yesterday as the weather forecast was good and the wind direction also was favourable in order to get some top shots of the F15's as they fly towards the group of photographers, some pilots will tip a wing to us those to give sought after top shots brilliantly lit in the early morning sunshine. The last 2 photos of the F15's show 308 with a wheel that failed to retract and that sent the base full scale emergency mode as the pilot frantically called out on his radio that he had repeatedly tried to cycle the landing gear a number of times to clear the fault without success. He had to fly around for about 25 minutes while dumping fuel to get to a safe weight for landing to minimise the risk of a major problem with the fuel. This problem was made worse for as his 2 drop tanks also refused to play ball so it meant the while his wing tanks could dump, his drop tanks could not and in the event of the other wheel not dropping, the plane would land on the drop tank risking a fire ball. 

In that 25 min period the pilot was able to manually crank the wheels  down and come in for a landing. Once landed, the plane was sent to a remote part of the airfield and was met by 2 fire engines and other emergency vehicles and the plane checked over. It was given the all clear to return to is hanger where I suspect engineers to repair were waiting to sort the issues.

After I went to Mildenhall because the sunlight then favoured that location because of the direct of its runway but only for a short period and there was a special ops Hercules doing a mixture of touch and goes and ILS approaches and was later joined by RAF C17 from Brize Norton of ILS approaches, and despite the pilot being cleared for the "option" meaning he could come in a full stop landing, touch and goes or high level fly though, he chose to do a series of high level, 2000ft fly throughs  Then was treated to what was supposed to be a pair of Ospreys doing circuits but one went tech at the last minute so only 1 took to the air for the circuit training and then I left as the light was fading fast and everything would be a virtual black shape against a bright sky 

I have provided links instead of thumbnails to maintain the level of details in them in case anyone wanted to make a wallpaper etc.

[URI]

June TEA is started:

Just won it:



for 107 eu shipped.

meh....

Why meh... ? Good price! 
I acquired those for a decent price, too, some time ago. Very handy, very helpful.

[Zucca]

Why meh... ? Good price! 
I acquired those for a decent price, too, some time ago. Very handy, very helpful.

Yes but I got I was second on those ones eBay auction: #224023271279 eBay auction: #224023267280  

[tonyalbus]

Oops i did it again
new month, new brick 

[tonyalbus]

Oops i did it again
new month, new brick 

it has a 10Mhz OUT on the back ... they think highly of its internal OSC...

[mnementh]

   just poked my nose in to see what was goin' on.  YIKES!!!   you guys sailed too far and have fallen over the edge!   i am outta' here.   

I get up to this?     Talk about images I can never "erase". That's just ... wrong.     

And for once, 'twerent MY fault! 

mnem
~ Here there be dragons. ~

[tautech]

Well. so far I can't complain about the service from Hermes, certainly in terms of speed nor keeping me updated. The Avo Model 8 Mk5, I purchased last Friday, was taken to their collection shop in Wellington on Saturday and the tracking just keeps on being updated and the latest is that it will be with me this evening. Only 2 questions remain at this point, 1 did the seller securely package this up to survive the journey, he assures me that he did. Second, will Hermes manage to deliver it to in one piece, that being said, our delivery driver is very diligent and so has always succeeded in doing that, and she seems to be a quite nice person who takes a pride in her job 

Wellington ?  NZ ?

Closer to me than you ! 

[mnementh]

No TEA for me today but I had a fairly expensive Ruida 6445G Laser controller and front panel arrive. Under a week from China so  and shove that up your Clacker UPS - still waiting for PCB's for 4 weeks from the USA   And what did I do with but TAKE IT APART before even putting power to it.

Lots of Quality goodies under the hood and looks well laid out and sensible in design. Only here if it interests some and those it doesn't please move on 

Those boards look to be well-made with some decent Chinese workmanship, time will tell when you install it.

Should be fine they produce the best and most featured of the Chinese designed and origin boards for Lasers and this one has been out in the wild for nearly a year. There is surprisingly little technical info out there on them and are generally treated as a black box by the industry. The Manual SUXS but that is to be expected I guess. 

Well done!  Smells suspiciously like BigtreeTech product. 

Do you think the obfuscation is deliberate, or more a matter of "Those who need to know already know, and we're too busy making stuff to make stuff to write up documentation..." ?

The latter, of course, is how the Western tradition of apprenticeship came to be. We could be looking at a new Renaissance; one that speaks Mandarin.

mnem
"The dragon has slumbered long and deep; but now she awakens..."

[mnementh]

Decided to go back to RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall yesterday as the weather forecast was good and the wind direction also was favourable in order to get some top shots of the F15's as they fly towards the group of photographers, some pilots will tip a wing to us those to give sought after top shots brilliantly lit in the early morning sunshine...

Some gorgeous shots there Spec. Thanks for taking the time to share. 

mnem
"Let's light this candle...!"

[med6753]

F15 drama: sounds to me that if he was unable to get the gear down and drop the wing tanks his only other option would be to go over the ocean and eject. Belly landing with full drop tanks would be very bad karma.  

[mnementh]

Yesterday installed Ubuntu on USB drive to salvage data on a broken Mac HDD and copy them to a FAT32 windows external drive.   It was funny.

Funny...?   

*plops a traffic cone on Zucca's head*

Go stand in the corner and think about what you've done here.   

mnem

[tonyalbus]

Oops i did it again
new month, new brick 

it has a 10Mhz OUT on the back ... they think highly of its internal OSC...

Looks pretty normal X-tal OSC to me... imight want to have a 10Mhz in ;-)

[Cerebus]

Well. so far I can't complain about the service from Hermes, certainly in terms of speed nor keeping me updated. The Avo Model 8 Mk5, I purchased last Friday, was taken to their collection shop in Wellington on Saturday and the tracking just keeps on being updated and the latest is that it will be with me this evening. Only 2 questions remain at this point, 1 did the seller securely package this up to survive the journey, he assures me that he did. Second, will Hermes manage to deliver it to in one piece, that being said, our delivery driver is very diligent and so has always succeeded in doing that, and she seems to be a quite nice person who takes a pride in her job 

Wellington ?  NZ ?

Closer to me than you ! 

I'd imagine he means the original Wellington in Somerset, England, not one of the colonial knock-offs. (I swear, the English speaking peoples have the least imagination when it comes to naming new places.)

[Ice-Tea]

Oops i did it again
new month, new brick 

it has a 10Mhz OUT on the back ... they think highly of its internal OSC...

Doesn't matter how awfull it is. If you distribute it amongst all the gear, then measure back the synthesized frequencies that meter will be bang on 

[Specmaster]

Just did a quick search on YT to see if anyone had been at Lakenheath recently and shot any video and stumbled across this link, who was there last week. This was shot from the viewing bay and this chap has I believe a mobile home and sets his video camera up on a tripod and he shoots from the roof of his camper in order to clear the high fence. I do't go there, I shoot from a forest entry point to the left of those hangers.

[Specmaster]

Well. so far I can't complain about the service from Hermes, certainly in terms of speed nor keeping me updated. The Avo Model 8 Mk5, I purchased last Friday, was taken to their collection shop in Wellington on Saturday and the tracking just keeps on being updated and the latest is that it will be with me this evening. Only 2 questions remain at this point, 1 did the seller securely package this up to survive the journey, he assures me that he did. Second, will Hermes manage to deliver it to in one piece, that being said, our delivery driver is very diligent and so has always succeeded in doing that, and she seems to be a quite nice person who takes a pride in her job 

Wellington ?  NZ ?

Closer to me than you ! 

I'd imagine he means the original Wellington in Somerset, England, not one of the colonial knock-offs. (I swear, the English speaking peoples have the least imagination when it comes to naming new places.)

You are quite correct.

[Cerebus]

Do you think the obfuscation is deliberate, or more a matter of "Those who need to know already know, and we're too busy making stuff to make stuff to write up documentation..." ?

I suspect the problem is simply the one experienced worldwide by anybody managing anyone that looks anything like an engineer - getting the little bastards to write the documentation up, preferably with less than three spelling mistakes and two grammatical errors per sentence, and that's in their first language. About the only time I've ever had to issue threats to my own staff was to get documentation completed adequately.

[Specmaster]

Hermes update, no parcel received but tracking states it was delivered at 4:02pm and the attached photo is of my neighbours house, who is not in, so I popped round to if the parcel was on the doormat, nope, the parcel is not there. Currently, trying talk to Hermes to find out what they are going to do about it 

[mnementh]

Do you think the obfuscation is deliberate, or more a matter of "Those who need to know already know, and we're too busy making stuff to make stuff to write up documentation..." ?

I suspect the problem is simply the one experienced worldwide by anybody managing anyone that looks anything like an engineer - getting the little bastards to write the documentation up, preferably with less than three spelling mistakes and two grammatical errors per sentence, and that's in their first language. About the only time I've ever had to issue threats to my own staff was to get documentation completed adequately.

Yeah, that's definitely the latter of the two motivational (demotivational...?) archetypes.

I just don't get that... the documentation was always my favorite part of the project, really; the dénouement. My chance to disappear into my cubby for a day or three and collect my thoughts into a single list of "What you should know..." type stuff and put it all on paper before moving on to the next project.

Especially the "Theory of Operation" parts... even though I often was only peripherally involved therein; I enjoyed collecting the information and putting it all down in a cogent form.

Maybe they all just let me do it so they wouldn't have to... 

Of course, the time to do such things is now a nonexistent commodity. "Management" types don't understand that "human multitasking" is entirely a bullshit construct; it assumes one actually HAS "unused clock cycles" to split off to another task. This is functionality which the human brain just isn't wired for; it's designed for single-focus serial processing. When a human being tries to do "multitasking" it means they're not giving their full attention to ANY of the tasks at hand, and NONE of them are accomplished properly or proficiently.

Either that or the person in question is fulfilling multiple essentially useless roles each of which requires near-zero mental horsepower. 

Oh, right... we WERE talking about management types, weren't we...? 

mnem
*sigh*

[mnementh]

Hermes update, no parcel received but tracking states it was delivered at 4:02pm and the attached photo is of my neighbours house, who is not in, so I popped round to if the parcel was on the doormat, nope, the parcel is not there. Currently, trying talk to Hermes to find out what they are going to do about it 

Short version:   

mnem
*casts a prayer to Ifni for Spec's sanity*

[Specmaster]

Hermes update, no parcel received but tracking states it was delivered at 4:02pm and the attached photo is of my neighbours house, who is not in, so I popped round to if the parcel was on the doormat, nope, the parcel is not there. Currently, trying talk to Hermes to find out what they are going to do about it 

Short version:   

mnem
*casts a prayer to Ifni for Spec's sanity*

Thanks, you have just started me in the land business....how did you say? Simple say I, you just gave me a couple of achers (acres) 

I have just spotted a note on the delivery docket that states the parcel was put in their shed, well there is a little shed like thing by their door but I have not looked in there because of a certain other neighbour who thinks they he owns the street and he hates my guts because I complain about him parking his many vehicles right out mu front wind, where I want to my own car. He would just create all kinds of hell for me as he is there watching all the time. So I have printed the delivery message from the tracking site and will take that with me when my neighbour returns as proof that they have a parcel that belongs to me. 

As to Hermes chat service, useless, ffing bastard shuts at 4PM, 2 minutes before the parcel was delivered FFS.

[URI]

Why meh... ? Good price! 
I acquired those for a decent price, too, some time ago. Very handy, very helpful.

Yes but I got I was second on those ones eBay auction: #224023271279 eBay auction: #224023267280  

Ok, now I understand you.
Yes, these 16047As still go for real money most of the time because they're still usable on current instruments.
And the original new parts.. you're money is used better for bargaining lots of "classical" TE than for throwing it out of the window for only a few new parts.
Those have no soul.      

[mansaxel]

Oops i did it again
new month, new brick 

it has a 10Mhz OUT on the back ... they think highly of its internal OSC...

If agreement rather than correctness is sufficient, the option to share one clock, regardless of precision, is sometimes useful. One has to not forget one's an island, though.

Typical broadcast sync situation, BTW.

[AVGresponding]

Even when they're well serviced, you expect an occasional issue with a 40+ year old vehicle...
A C-130 overflew the depot I was working at today, at a few thousand feet. They occasionally fly NOE where I live, which is quite exciting, and a bit noisy!   


It seems very much to luck of the draw with these delivery companies. I have great RM service, bd seems to get terrible service. DPD are usually good here, Hermes a bit variable (despite the same apparent driver), no problems with UPS.
No doubt it helps a lot that I have a few geographic factors in my favour; it's quite a "nice" area, my doorstep isn't easily seen casually, and I live on a reasonably steep hill, so if you're nicking a boat anchor from my doorstep you'd better be very fit!   


My ultrasonic bath arrived today, DOA, but as it was sold as parts anyway I can't complain. Internal fuse has popped, but I want to check some components before I put another in and try it.
No skid marks or exploded semis visible, but if anyone knows what sort of readings I should get from the transducers I'd appreciate it. Getting OL on ohms, and around 4nF on capacitance (87V).
I may have to desolder some things to test, either the transformer has really low resistance, or maybe the IGBTs are failed short.
 

[med6753]

When I was a kid our local AFB (Now Stewart Airport) had a whole squadron of these big turkeys. C-119 "Flying Box Car". They used fly over the house at only several hundred feet in formations of a dozen of more. The damn house shook.