[VHFcontesting] [222Activity] 222 Night

N1BUG paul at n1bug.com
Tue Feb 15 21:12:05 EST 2022


I worked 6 stations tonight: WZ1V, W1GHZ, K1TEO, W1ZC, W1AIM, AF1T. 
Heard several times but could not work K1PXE.


Yeah, I missed the last two weeks. I had a surgical consult scheduled 
for Tuesday, February 1. Who would imagine at any time, let alone during 
COVID, being offered the procedure the day of the consult!? "Take it 
when you can get it" applies, but by the time I got home it was almost 
time for 222 Activity Night and I wasn't feeling up to it.

Thu/Fri February 3/4 we got 15 inches of snow. I spent Sat/Sun Feb 5/6 
digging out, throwing the stuff up over snowbanks that were already 8 
feet high. All that shoveling caused problems with my surgical site, so 
Monday February 7 I was getting that fixed up. Tuesday the 8th I was 
digging out yet again, this time definitely against medical advice but I 
have to keep up or I will get buried and they will be removing my 
remains in the spring! We've been having a good old fashioned snowy 
winter up here! I was too beat up by evening to even care about 222.

So this week I am healing nicely, it did NOT snow for a change and I 
managed to be on 222! As exciting as that is, even better news for me is 
that after spending much of the day recapping its power supply I 
successfully resuscitated my Agilent E8285A. It is one of the few pieces 
of test equipment I am fortunate enough to own, and one I have been lost 
without since it stopped working back in the summer. It was probably one 
or two bad caps, maybe a few, but I replaced all 29 on the power supply 
board since I had no proper way to determine what was good or bad and 
they were all 20+ years old anyway. It's a good thing I have hot air 
soldering capability. Otherwise I don't know if I would have managed to 
get the small vertically mounted boards off the main board to replace 
caps on them. They are attached to the main board by way of right angle, 
two row, 10, 12, and 14 pin headers and that main board is a thick two 
layer board. Hot air made easy work of that!

73,
Paul N1BUG
FN55mf



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