Man.. I'm getting slack

I appear to be getting slack at this blogging bit. A month since my last update.

Following on:

The Malachit SDR - is now its own little unit, complete with a battery and speaker. Sadly though, it's about 10KHz out of whack which is a bit unfortunate. I need to look into ways to see if I can calibrate it from being that far out. I know how to fine tune it, but this is a bit much!

It does also get overloaded fairly well. It's currently sitting at 26.957.500.. I know, not HAM land, but about where I could pickup one of my son's Kmart toy walkie talkies at 27MHz. It's connected to the vertical, which is probably a bit too much for it. I'm transmitting FT8 on 40m via the dipole and I can see it on the scope.

On FT8 - I've not had a lot of joy with contacts of late. My last being in the Ukraine some days ago. Despite lighting up the PSK reporter like a christmas tree, my CQs were unacknowledged as were my responses to others. 

I haven't done much on the SSTV side - I tend to use the quality of images received from known sources as an indicator of conditions. When the "regulars" are coming through poorly, I figure there isn't much point. If the chaps with far more power and better antennae are struggling, then I haven't got much hope. 

The guitar projects:

The Samick restoration project:

I had this one complete then I redid it. I could never quite carve the shape of the pick guard to match the body, so it's a bit ghetto. I had it playable, but didn't much care for the tone. The strings also didn't line up with the poles on the Squire Infinity pickups. On top of that, after about a day once the neck started to settle, it became clear that the fret replacement I did would need to be redone. The fret wire I used was too thin (by .2mm) and I was winding up with buzzing. 

I also determined that the nut was done for a needed replacement. 

To solve these problems, I ordered a set of "hot rail" style Wilkinson pickups as these don't have poles, and a new nut. The pickups were shipped from China and have been installed. The nut is supposedly coming from somewhere in VK and I'm still waiting. 

My first bass kit:

The "Thunderaptor". 

This has been fun, but I didn't sand enough initially for a guitar that wasn't going to have layers of paint on it. Still, fun times. 

It's taken over a month so far and isn't yet finished. 

I've effectively stripped all of the components and replaced with better quality so only the timber is left. 

The components together are worth about 4 times what the kit is worth, but those the are the components that matter. 

I started putting the hardware on it yesterday after a couple of weeks letting the oil harden, then giving it a gentle polish and wax. I've avoided trying to get too much of a shine on it. 

The biggest disappointment is the balance - it's quite simply top heavy - there isn't enough weight in the body to counterbalance the neck, so it slips down. That's fairly problematic. I've tried some ideas on changing the strap anchor points but that doesn't seem to help. I'll need to put some more thought into how I can get some weight into the body to help balance it. 

At the moment the only thing left is to put the pickups in. They've made it to VK from the United States, but like everything else, it's stuck with Australia Post. That's the last part of putting this together. Once that's done, I can put the new black strings on and focus on the set up and get it playable. 

Getting close, using the kit strings to see what the action is like. 

The Jurassicaster:

The Jurassicaster is a Straticaster HH style guitar built on someone elses disappointment - basically it's a returned custom kit that didn't meet this expectations. Looking at the grain of the wood, I can see why. It's boring. For my purposes, that's fine. It's going to be painted. Then coated with Jurassic Park and Jurassic World stickers, then clear coated into oblivion. 

It's a cheap kit - and again, the "upgrades" have cost more than the kit itself is worth. If I build it, it's going to be "different", and there's probably a Jurassic theme to it - the guitars are branded Jurassic Axe, so it's a thing. 

This build with be an exercise in painting and finishing - the stickers add a lot of texture that I'm going to have to deal with, so I'm likely to need a lot of clear coat so I can flatten the body out to a nice, smooth finish. 

The body will be black. The pick guard (currently white), will become black. The neck will probably not be black. I want to put a decal on the headstock, so I may just clear coat it. 

The kit parts of this kit will also be used in other kits - the bridge will go to the next guitar build as will the stock tuners. 

Unfortunately, this kit was shipped from Perth on 20th August. It arrived in Melbourne a couple of days ago, and still hasn't made it here, so 3 entire guitar builds are held up due to this one late shipment. 

The 3D Plasticaster:

I printed a guitar. No, seriously. Then I filled it, sanded it and painted it. Sadly I painted it with a satin that's way too close to gloss. Matt would have been a better choice. 

This guitar was never going to get a fine finish on it. Too many layer lines from the printer, too much surface to work on and me not wanting to put that many hours into it. 

Since this pick, it has the neck installed - that required some trimming to fit properly and it's all a bit of guess work until I get the bridge from the kit above to finish this off. 

The pickups are from the Samick restoration, though I suspect I'm going to run into the same problem - the poles probably won't line up well with the strings. I'm not sure I care yet. Once I get some strings on it and set it up and put an hour into playing it, I might get an idea if I want to spend any more time or money on it.

In other news:

Our TCL TV died recently. The backlight let go. Talking to a couple of repairers, they mentioned TCL don't provide many parts and they wouldn't even bother trying. 

Given the lockdowns, I ordered a new TV. Which sadly was shipped from WA. At some point in transit it appears that someone tried to fold the box up a little. Not entirely obvious until you saw the mess inside:

This was pretty disappointing given it's the most expensive TV I've ever puchased. It's no bigger than the last one, but the last one was a warranty replacement for the TCL before that, so I suspect the world was telling me something about TCL. Also a good reason to extend the warranty (don't start - I used to sell plenty of them.. and I also made a lot of claims for people using them). 

The retailer was great. They're attempting to source more local stock direct from Sony. They also don't want this one back. Which is good and bad. Good in that I get a spare remote.. and I'm going to strip the backlight setup out and see if I can retro fit it into the TCL somehow. If I can get it going again, I'll replace the decade+ old TV in the bedroom.

I was really looking forward to getting that installed. We've been without a TV in the lounge for a couple of weeks. I had a steroid injection in my shoulder a week before and I went through a period of days with bugger all sleep, so not having a TV to stare at was not enjoyable.