I pulled apart the TV, Guitars, FT8 and the Future

So, I'm still without a working TV in the lounge room. That saga continues.

The retailer at least didn't want the broken one back and asked me to dispose of it. 

I figured the first thing I'd do was see if by chance it looked like I could salvage anything from the backlight that might fit into the old TCL.

It appeared not, so I started trying other ideas, such as getting the LCD panel out of the TCL to see how it might go in the Sony. Sadly, it cracked whilst trying to move it, so it was a bust. 

If nothing else, it all filled in an hour or so. I did salvage some parts out of the Sony and put them on eBay. 

Guitar world:

Pretty quiet here at the moment. The Thunderaptor bass is still awaiting its pickups to arrive. They've been in Melbourne for 2 weeks and moved no further. 

I made some changes to the bridge. The kit posts caused it to sit about 3mm above the body which was making the action way too high even with the bridge wound right down. I wound up using a bolt of the same thread to screw into the holes enough to get the posts to lift, then packed the holes with a screw dropped in head first. I screwed the bolt down again was able to lift the posts out. 

I took to the holes with a stepper bit and managed to countersink just enough to fit the posts down flush. This made a huge difference when the bridge was reinstalled. It was now living up to its name of "Full Contact Hardware". I had to bring the action up a bit, and all done without any need for shimming the neck. 

There is a little relief added to the neck though as there was a little vibration in the lower frets despite being relatively flat. 

Overall the necks in pretty good shape - after sitting for a few days though it's clear that I need to bring the action up a little more. Noodling with it last night I discovered that the 2-4th strings are buzzing up around the 15th fret through to the end of the board. I may get around to adjusting that out before I put the intended strings on. 

The nut has moved a little which isn't great. It appears to have changed angles to deal with the headstock angle. It's not slotted into this neck - its sitting on the end. When I strip it out to install the bridge, I'll knock it off and file the string slots using the original plastic nut as a guide then put it back on. 

The balance of this instrument was bad - I wound up moving the strap lock from where I had it on the body to the top of the neck slot. I'll find something to cover the hole at some point. This change has given the body some balance, but it's still too light. I've got a set of 200g truck tyre weights. I'll pad the cavity with one or two once the electronics are done just to balance it up. 

For the uninitiated - if a guitar is unbalanced, the weight of the neck can cause unintended.. and usually.. rapid...  drops to the ground. From a playing perspective it's not great as the balance relies on your left hand taking the weight. If you let go, it goes with it. It also puts a lot of additional pressure on your hand, arm and shoulder to keep it up. It sounds minor given the neck weight is negligible, but it takes its toll fairly quickly. Playing fast is where it impacts you the most. 

Still, I'm getting there with this build. Going back over the early photos, it's amazing how much the body has changed colour as the stain has vanished into the timber. It's certainly not as red as it was. 

The 3D printed guitar is finished, albeit with only 5 strings and needs some setup work. The longer I leave the neck alone, the better chance I've got of seeing how stable it really is. At the moment it can detune fairly quickly. It's hard to know how much of that is the no-name brand kit tuners on it (these can slip which is why I hate cheap tuners) and how much is just the materials settling under tension.

The Jurassicaster is being coated. It's a huge job trying to bury that many stickers. I've inhaled way too much hydrocarbon, and my garage is layered thick in a coating of solvents from the multiple cans of clear coat I've already used. I am getting closer. I need to give it a few days between sanding to see where I'm up to. 

The Samick Stratocaster refurbishment is complete. 

It's playable and it works. The new pickups actually sound pretty good. It's not quite perfect. The tremelo makes it difficult to keep in tune - that's always been an issue with it. I'm hoping giving it some time to settle again, it might become a little more stable and keep in tune. If not, I may just need to tweak it a bit. The action is not bad and it seemed to intonate reasonably well. 

I did have to add some relief to the neck - I'd replaced the horrid first fret as it was cut and dead. When I replaced it, it was better, but the second fret was then dead. It wasn't in much better condition than the first fret so I replaced it but it was still dead. Adding a little relief made all the difference. I would point out that I'd already levelled the neck and redressed the fretboard, so I wasn't keen on repeating that process.
 

HAM:

I've done some FT8 on occasion. The G90 has been off for a while as the vertical is currently connected to the Malachit that I really haven't had time to play with since I discovered how far out of whack it is.  At some point I need to look at changing things around so I can get everything back the way it was, and look at what I can do with that Malachit.

I managed to get a few FT8 contacts in the US on 40m in September and I pulled of a Ukraine as well. All the US contacts were on the grey line. That doesn't always work for me, but there was a night there where I was kept pretty busy. 

I did receive my renewal letter from The ACMA the other day, so I guess that means that I'm almost at my 1 year anniversary of being a HAM. I had intended on upgrading my license by now, but it's been a year of distractions. 

I think the distractions have been in no small part to do with keeping my sanity given I've been largely at home since March 2020 and I've never really been one to handle sitting around doing nothing.  I need to be doing "things", and as time has progressed, I've needed those things to be away from my desk. Even in pre-pandemic times, it'd be rare that I'd be at my desk for any more than an hour or two before I'd need to find something to do somewhere else, even if it was just for 15 minutes. I'm not sure what gives out first - my attention or my body.

I've done a lot of new things in 2021, plenty of which I wouldn't have thought 12 months ago that I'd do. I'd not say that I'm good at any of them, but they have brought about learning new skills and they've given me things to focus on during a time when I'd otherwise feel like I was stuck in an insane asylum. 

COVID19:

Things are getting interesting as the VK3 cases rise rapidly, in no small part thanks to people doing the wrong thing on the weekend of the grandfinal. 

There's a point coming soon where these numbers will look low and their importance carries less weight than it does now. 

Something we can learn from Singapore - a high density population of < 6 million, with over 80% double vaccinated rates is that the rate of infection is still high. The vaccination after all doesn't stop the spread. It's just there to prepare our immune systems to deal with it when we inevitably get it - because that's potentially the difference between us having an annoying sniffle and us being in the ICU with a machine helping as breathe in some hope of keeping us alive only to suffer ongoing side effects that we now call Long COVID. 

At some point we'll need to stop caring about infection rates; as soon as we open up when we hit the magic 80% number, the infection rates will sky rocket.  The likelihood of those antivaxxers and hold outs getting infected will go up exponentially. Hospitals are already overloaded and under pressure. It's going to get a lot worse, and any one not vaccinated will be a large part of that problem regardless of whether they subscribe to conspiracies or otherwise just flatly refuse to have it just because the government told them to. 

It's not an entirely bleak picture; there will be a new normal. Some people will receive Darwin awards for their stubbornness and some of them will somehow survive and continue on with 5G and other idiotic conspiracies (usually while they carry a mobile phone and refuse the see the irony). 80% of us will just go about life. The lockdowns and isolations will need to stop for us soon - it can't not. 

It's not sustainable to lock people away when they have an infection long term - it works while we're trying to roll out a vaccine, but after that it's pointless. Much like any other cold or flu - it'll likely become a case of  stay home if you're unwell, and come back when you feel better.  Anyone who isn't vaccinated  - that's their problem. 

Eventually we'll get there. Personally, I'm just looking forward to the VK5 border opening so I can see my parents again, and I suspect they're looking forward to making up lost time with our kids. In 1 year from now, I'd also like to be preparing for a week on the side of Mount Panorama instead of being stuck at home. The world is off axis when I don't undertake that ethanol-enriched ritual each year.

As anti-social as I am, even I'm looking forward to "going to work" just for the change in environment. That won't last long, but still. If nothing else, my work desk is far tidier and far less cluttered.