Happy Belated Easter

Happy Easter.

It's 3:15am. I'm not still up from the night before. I've been asleep. Now I'm awake. My body thinks it's an hour later, which is still completely unacceptable, but alas, here I am.

I've spent a few days in VK5, returning yesterday as I listened to a local VK5 repeater relay the WIA news as my journey commenced. 

A few things happened whilst across the border. 

The first was I intended to finish the engine run in on the Nitro RC car. We went out to the local sale yards given it was Good Friday so it was quiet and no one around. 

For the brief period of trying to keep the car at 25% throttle only, it was fun. Then there was what Elon Musk might call an unsheduled disassembly. 

The power in the old 11m AM transmitter kept cutting out - bad contacts in the batteries it would seem. Rolling them around would make them come back. Fine if you had the bottom cover off.  This was problematic in that the car last signal with the throttle higher than 40% - it's difficult to control as it is on account of there being no real "feel" to the throttle on the controller. Once the signal was lost, I couldn't cut the throttle.. or turn it. Resulting in it colliding with a gutter before trying a vertical ascent. 

The impact caused the throttle to open right up, the silencer/exhaust to fly off, the bogan air filter to fly off, the bolts in the engine mount to all come loose (one vanished), the battery holder (4xAA) to split apart.. inside the battery box that survived, and me to need to run some distance to get to it to cut the fuel before the brand new engine turned to liquid. 

I put it back together once the engine cooled only to discover that the steering went from intermittent then finally just stopped.

A lot of fiddling onsite with limited tools and I couldn't progress.

I returned to my parents place and started to go over the car in depth. As soon as I pulled out the steering servo, I popped the cover off and I could smell the magic smoke. 

 It looks like the wiring on the servo has been (poorly) re-soldered in the past. and the impact may have caused a short to occur. My testing of the controls then probably cooked it. 

This lead me to a couple of new purchases:

- A new servo. Despite it's age, the model is still produced. Not terribly cheap, but at least I shouldn't have any drama for a while.

- A new radio kit. The new ones are 2.4GHz, and I've opted for li-ion. This is by no means a base model radio kit. It's a 3 channel digital system with LCD panel, and a programmable failsafe. The failsafe seems to be a standard now. I see why. I don't need the third channel, but there are kits for cutting fuel off that can be wired into additional channels, so that might be a future upgrade. Given the need for 12 AA batteries in the existing radio, I suspect the change to lithium ion will pay for itself soon enough. 

The XYL called me on Saturday and said that her father was in the backyard when my flagpole mounted dipole experienced its own unscheduled disassembly event. 

Investigation yesterday upon return has confirmed that the cheap rope that came with the flag pole has disintegrated. Rubbing it gently results in it turning to dust. The far end has gone, and the side closest to the house is still up for now. 

I've ordered some polyester yacht rope as a replacement. Polyester seems to be recommended for its strength, durability and UV resistance. I really didn't need this expense after the weekend, but anyway. It's still cheaper than the RC car repairs. I might take this opportunity to spray the dipole centre piece with surface spray. Spiders seem to love it up there. It has 450 ohm ladder line running up to it - it really doesn't need any help to make it look more unsightly. 

We did go fishing on Saturday as well. And by we, I really mean my parents and my son. My little one had never been before, and much like myself, wasn't terribly interested in the whole fishing idea. My folks now are determined to "make memories" with the kids while they still can. My mother has health issues that won't improve, and it's there prerogative to make the most of it. My mother lost her mother to bad health when she was 59. My mother's 61. The reason for the visit to VK5 was based around this - my little man is staying there for a few days while she's still up to looking after him. He's a handful so I'm not entirely sure there will be too many of these little holidays left. COVID-19 robbed them of a year they had planned to be here to see the kids frequently. It also took from them a significant portion of my fathers superannuation value resulting in him needing to continue working when he'd planned on starting to do other things.

Whatever opportunities they have now will be made the most of. I lost the only grandmother I knew when I was 14. At 4 years old, it's unlikely my son will be quite so fortunate. I'd been with my grand mother only a day or two before she passed, and she'd seemed to be "fine" then. That was the first loss I ever experienced and it took the person I was closest too. As a kid, you don't really value the opportunity to have those moments until they're gone. Then you have a life time where you're left to consider the value of just one more chat, one more hug, one more "I love you", and finally the cruelness of time puts you in a position when you get to watch this coming, knowing this time, not only are you going to go through it again, but you're going to bring another generation through this harsh reality of life and you can't protect them from this pain.. this cycle of life and death.