Remember the Last Thing That You Did
lou giovannetti (KB2DHG)
on
November 16, 2009
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I operate most every day. I live in a condo and have a G5RV dipole up on the roof at about 23 feet on a mast. I have a winch to hoist the antenna up and down as to provide maintenance and ease of repairs. The coax comes down from the ladder line and there is a connector just outside my window. Whenever the weather gets bad or a threat of lightning I can quickly unscrew the connector and disconnect the antenna from the radio. In real bad windy weather I can lower the entire antenna down and disconnect it. When I go on vacation I do just that. Lower the antenna down and disconnect it from the radio.
I recently went on vacation and prior to leaving that morning I had a few QSO's and everything was well, I returned from vacation, cranked up the antenna and screwed the coax back together. And that is when all hell broke out? I could not get the antenna to tune up no matter what I did? I looked at the antenna and made sure everything was normal there. I even measured the legs of the antenna to see if anything had changed. I was going crazy?
The frustration got the better of me and instead of taking the simple approach I freaked out and disassembled the entire antenna and put new wire up. Still I could not tune the thing up?
So I sat around scratching my head and then tried to remember what was the very last thing I did after my last QSO?
It was unscrewing the coax. So I again took a look at that connector and got a meter set it for continuity and guess what? It was grounded! Yea! The coax became detached from the connector and the stranded part of the coax was touching the center wire by one strand. I guess from screwing and unscrewing so many times the connector just gave out? So Lucky for me I had a new connector in the shack, I cut the coax, soldered the new connector on and ALL is well.
A simple fix but my panic made for a frustrating day. This all sounds so stupid and I even feel funny writing this article. BUT I do so in hopes of helping any of you who might acquire a problem that can easily be remedied by keeping a straight head and putting the puzzle together before panic sets in.
So if you get a problem that you just can't understand, just try to remember what was the last thing you did before the problem occurred. It worked then it didn't? It could be something stupid as it was in my case.
The rule to follow is to always remember what was the last thing you did before the incident happened. It very well can lead you to the source of the problem...
Good Operating to you all my radio friends. I hope this little article helps you...
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by W9PMZ on November 16, 2009
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Welcome to the world of troubleshooting!
73,
Carl - W9PMZ
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by N4MJG on November 16, 2009
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sound like fun replacing,been there done that !
73
Jackie
N4MJG
WWW.N4MJG.COM
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by N1OU on November 16, 2009
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We can all identify with this one! Panic sets in and logic flies out the window. Nine times out of ten its something very simple and often obvious. Great reminder to put the brain in gear!
73
Gordon, N1OU
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RE: Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by AB0RE on November 16, 2009
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A real ham would erect a new antenna, buy a new radio and tuner, check all the connections in the shack, have a nervous breakdown and undergo months of therapy, and THEN check the coaxial cable on the antenna-side. :-)
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by W4LWZ on November 16, 2009
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I spent many years doing field service on medical equipment, x-ray, CT scanners,and MRI scanners. Nothing is more frustrating than performing maintenance on a working piece of equipment and finding that it won't work afterward. I learned long ago to check the last thing I did. Usually I found the problem, plug disconnected, switch in the wrong position, etc.
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by W0ZRK on November 16, 2009
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thats ok lou....i was op. 20 meters one day, using the internal tuner in my yaesu ft-450. the next morning i found myself not able to tune 75 meters with my mfj 993b tuner like i usually could. i looked at a bunch of other possible probs. first, then realized the outboard & ft-450 tuners were fighting each other! i now always look to see if the 450's tuner is on! oh well, live, laugh & learn i guess!!... 73 ! Tom
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by W0ZRK on November 16, 2009
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thats ok lou....i was op. 20 meters one day, using the internal tuner in my yaesu ft-450. the next morning i found myself not able to tune 75 meters with my mfj 993b tuner like i usually could. i looked at a bunch of other possible probs. first, then realized the outboard & ft-450 tuners were fighting each other! i now always look to see if the 450's tuner is on! oh well, live, laugh & learn i guess!!... 73 ! Tom
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RE: Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by K5END on November 16, 2009
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.
If they hadn't dropped the code requirement this sort of thing would not be happening.
:)
Just kidding.
Someone was bound to say it, right??
As far as making errors, well, I heard everyone does that. I never have. <cough, cough>
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by KI6DKC on November 16, 2009
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I had something similar happen this weekend while I was making some jumpers to go from the amp, tuner, and SWR meter. I was checking continuity before soldering them up and having a problem. Took them apart and couldn't see anything. Threw out the coax and started again only to have the same thing happen. Checked the PL259 to see if they were mismanufactured. Took them apart again and then noticed the one little strand from the center that got bent over to make the bad connection.
Twice I nearly drove myself crazy trying to get my Yaesu 1802 to hit the repeater. It would work on some but not others. I checked the frequency, offset, PL tones, and everything was correctly programmed into memory. Finally after nearly ripping out my hair I realized that although I had programed the PL tones in, I had not turned that function on.
One time I actually did a complete reset on that radio just because I couldn't get out. Turned out to be an antenna problem that I missed in the first go around but because I got fustrated and in a hurry I did a complete reset and lost all my stored memories. Boy did I feel stupid when it still didn't work and I found the real problem.
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by N0AH on November 16, 2009
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I remember one day when operating on VK9L in 1998 when I disovered I just cold not hold onto the mic. I realized that the last thing I did was make a diet shake from babana peels and it kept causing my thumb to slip of the mic key!! Imagine that......I should have left that darn diet book at home!!
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by KT8K on November 16, 2009
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Sometimes it's nothing at all (or "absence of mind") that makes us nutz.
Signals from my ground-mounted HF9v (8 65' radials + 8 33' radials) were down versus my fan dipole at 50+ feet ... way down ... and I thought sure the several-year-old buried coax had experienced water incursion. I ran a temporary coax cable out to the antenna and hooked it up, but signals were still way down. I checked the tuning on the antenna, inspected it thoroughly, trimmed away nearby tree branches, did a lot of head scratching, spent hours ... still no explanation.
THEN I realized that (A) a ground mounted vertical would probably be a couple of S units down from the high dipole anyway, and (B) when I was comparing signal levels the radiation angle on the bands I was looking at were probably pretty high - another S unit or two of disadvantage for the vertical.
In the end I realized there was nothing wrong at all - the results were entirely predictable. If I had checked on bands that were just coming in or going out, with low angles of radiation, the vertical would have probably been quite close to the dipole and I wouldn't have noticed a problem. Like the "church lady" said on Saturday Night Live ... "Never mind ..."
Best rx & 73 to all de kt8k - Tim
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by G0GQK on November 16, 2009
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Why do some people feel the need to advertise themselves ?
G0GQK
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by K1DA on November 16, 2009
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At least once a year a solar storm kills propagation for a day or so on the low bands. Setups get torn apart because someone couldn't hear what they heard yesterday. Before tearing up your station, check using a known source like your calibrator - though your new digital wizzbang may not have one or look for someone within groundwave range.
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by KB3IBT on November 16, 2009
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The last thing I did was tell my wife I needed a new radio....maybe an FT-9000!!.....but seriously, sometimes I forget that whenever there is a lightning storm I unplug all the coax going to the shack, and you know the rest of the story!
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by HAMMYGUY on November 16, 2009
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Lou,
While I got a chuckle out of your story, I'd never have the brass danglies to admit it. The bottom dwellers from rec.radio.misc are going to be swimming up to the surface to give their unbiased opinions.
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by QRZDXR2 on November 16, 2009
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Wait till you found out you forgot to plug in the power cord. (grin) only kidding
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by N1HOS on November 17, 2009
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We all forget and even more when we get older.
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by N6AJR on November 17, 2009
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My favorite one is the "forgot to switch the antenna switch" number. I have a 3 ele steppir , a sloper and a gap voyager.
invariably I will trun on the steppir and set ti to the band of mchoice, and point it where I need it, and the have the radio shut down for high SWR. It usually takes me about 5 minutes for the thought to sink in to switch to the correct antenna. duh.
The other one is to change bands while operating Split and wonder why the radio won't tune on the new freq, untill you remember to "unsplit" the radio, and get it to tx and rx on the same band.
Yes, there are many ways to spell brain fart :)
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by AA4PB on November 17, 2009
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Its not a bad idea to keep a notebook of changes you make to your station. That way you don't have to try and remember what you did last - you can look it up and have a documented date/time.
Computers are the worst. People have a problem so they change some setting. That doesn't fix it so they change another setting - and another - and another - and another. Pretty soon they are completly lost and have no idea what has been changed. The next step is to reformat the hard drive. About that time they realize that they have no idea where they have put the Windows CD and don't even know they ever had a drivers CD :-)
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by K6AER on November 17, 2009
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This won’t be a problem when you get older. You will have so much equipment you will leave it all connected and the connectors will last forever.
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by W3DCB on November 17, 2009
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I do that sort of thing all the time in the shack and I always feel stupid. I work in medicine and I can not make those mistakes at work and I never have and I don't ever plan on it...But, get me home in the shack and there I go!
73
Daniel Baral
w3dcb
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by AK8V on November 17, 2009
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Hey Lou,
I think I know just what you're talking about! Can't say that I have ever made a missstake!
73
Ray
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RE: Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by WB6DGN on November 17, 2009
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I made a mistake ONCE! I thought I made a mistake!
No! It doesn't just happen to us older folk. In my early twenties, fairly new to radio, I began to tune a converted commercial FM receiver to a new ham operating frequency. All went well until I left for a short while to do something else. I went back to the radio, and try though I may, I could not get it to receive a signal no matter how high I set the signal generator. I must have monkeyed with that radio for 3 or 4 hours before I, not so gently, set it aside! The next day I went down to the bench to pick up where I had left off and the first thing that caught my eye, sitting right on the side of the bench, was the first oscillator crystal that I had taken out of the radio before I went to run my errand the night before. I spent all of that time trying to get the radio to work WITH NO CRYSTAL IN IT. After plugging the crystal back into the radio it tuned up in 5 or 10 minutes just as it was supposed to. This discovery did not bode well for my self esteem as an upcoming radio tech. WHAT IS THE LAST THING I DID, would have saved me many hours of frustration and done wonders for my self esteem.
Tom DGN
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by WB6DGN on November 17, 2009
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"Why do some people feel the need to advertise themselves ?"
Because we're not afraid to admit that we're human. Try it sometime; it's liberating.
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by WB4TJH on November 18, 2009
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I thought that guy named "Murphy" only followed ME around....I guess he lives at your house too. But that's the real world of ham radio. We have two laws in radio: Ohm's Law and Murphy's Law. Ohm's I can handle; but Murphy's is something else.
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by W3JKS on November 18, 2009
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An EHam would post a bad review of the radio, the cable, and the antenna all the while carping about how bad propagation has been. :-)
73s,
john W3JKS/AAT3BF/AAM3EDE/AAA9SL
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RE: Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by AE6RO on November 18, 2009
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Amazing how that lil' ol' connector loosened its own strand and shorted itself out while you were on vacation. Oh, I know. It just happened.
Yeah, right. 73, John
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RE: Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by KB5ZXM on November 19, 2009
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Quit using connectors for hf , stick the center conductor in the hole, put a hose clamp on the braid, and shorts will go away if you apply enough power.
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by KD4LLA on November 19, 2009
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I also use a G5RV, it has been up for over nine years. As it is directly over my house I never disconnect it due to storms. Why you ask? Well, if lightning hits the house, it will also take out my radio.
Reminds me of the old "why put fire sprinklers in a library?" How many books will be left after a total loss fire?
Mike
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RE: Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by WA8MEA on November 19, 2009
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Wait until you have this happen INSIDE your rig with an SO-239!
I have an old Icom IC-745. Kept getting an intermittent until one day, I couldn't get anything below a 3+ to 1 SWR. Tried several jumpers from the rig to the coax switch. Still had problems. I thought it was the coax switch. So I fooled with that, using a wire brush to clean, re-soldered connections inside the switch. STILL didn't operate right.
Then I noticed that my SO-239 was turning when I was plugging in the PL-259 jumper. Opened up the rig and sure enough....I had twisted and turned enough times that the cap between the rig and the ground side of the SO-239 had been broken off.
I replaced with an SO-239 that was bolted in place with two nuts/bolts....instead of the single nut over the SO-239 threads.
Fixed! And no problems since.
(When we get to power supplies some day, I'll tell you about the little thin film inside the Icom 745 that sits between the supply and the chassis and is suppose to act as an insulator. It deteriorates and cases shorting of the supply, just about the same way many computer power supplies are built....and fail.)
73, Bill - WA8MEA
http://HamRadioFun.com
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by VA7LLB on November 19, 2009
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I have two examples of this. First, just after installing an LDG AT-1000 antenna tuner, I attempted to tune up my Carolina Windom 160 antenna. Try as I might, it would not tune and the SWR was maxed out. I was stuck. When I bypassed the tuner and connected the antenna directly to the radio, the SWR was not that bad. Why was the tuner so far out of whack? Finally, I read the instruction manual for the AT-1000 and found out I had been trying to tune on the Antenna 2 input, where I had the antenna hooked up on Antenna 1. One button push later and everything worked as planned.
The second example happened last summer when I was visiting an area about 300km away. I programmed a local repeater into my VHF mobile rig so I could use it and check into a local net. I made sure I had the correct tone, negative offset etc. When I got there and tuned into the repeater, I had no problem hearing it. When I called in myself, I found others had difficulty hearing me. I was very close to the repeater itself so I presumed the problem was my antenna, which I had recently damaged. I swapped out the antenna with a friend who had a spare. I still had the same problem. I re-checked my settings. Tone was correct, negative offset - check, mic settings OK. Still the problem persisted.
After spending the better part of a day chasing this down, it turned out that I had inadvertently changed the offset so that it was not 600khz but 0khz. The display still indicated negative offset, but it was actually running simplex. A quick adjustment and everything was back up and running. Clearly I accidentally changed this setting when programming in the new repeater, but I didn't think to go back and look at this when looking for the solution. I could have saved myself a LOT of work with a 10 second menu change.
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by N0YXB on November 20, 2009
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Great response, WB6DGN! There's nothing wrong with helping others learn from our mistakes.
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by OLLIEOXEN27 on November 23, 2009
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SS has to be the dumbest contest ever. I started losing my voice just listening for half an hour. All that work and no DX! What's with all the information that had to be exchanged? Surprised they didn't ask for social security numbers. All that to win a T-shirt saying I was a stupid idiot one afternoon. SS seems like a contest thought up by the Obama adnministration to get information on right wingers. Even my 7 year old nephew thought it was dumb and he is gung ho on getting a license.
oli
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by AB0RE on November 23, 2009
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Oli,
You're way wrong. If you get a clean sweep (all 80 sections) you're actually permitted to purchase a keepsake mug for $12 (you don't get a T-shirt, hehe). :-)
That being said I had a blast during sweepstakes this year. Different folks, different strokes, I guess.
73,
Dan / ab0re
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by W7KO on November 25, 2009
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Ok My problem is at my advanced age I can never remember where I put the antenna. Here is what I do when this kind of thing happens. I look at the last thing on the desk. And then head off to the store and buy a new Amplifier! There is no problem that more power can not fix. Maybe I'd offer more suggestions but now the computer is lost.
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by N6HPX on November 26, 2009
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the problem in my case is I have to jot it down and come back 3 to 7 months later due to my travels for the US Government. If I disconnect anything or change a setting I usually leave a message next to it, but my kids have the habit of moving things like signs.
73 from the coast line of japan
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Remember the Last Thing That You Did
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by NO6L on November 28, 2009
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This brings to mind some pointers concerning diagnostics that would apply here.
Check the cheap and closest things first. Fuses, PL-259s, external speakers, mic cords, power cords and wall sockets are examples.
Never trust your instrumentation. I lost count long ago how many times I've been elbow deep in equipment checking voltages and come across a "dead" circuit, only to find my test probe crapped out. If you find a dead circuit, check the voltage in a place you know is active, like the 12V power connector going into the equipment. And always keep a cheap DVM, for example, and extra test leads on hand to verify your bench DVM. Of course, you're not going to keep a second service monitor on hand, but you would not use that near as much as the DVM, either.
Check your batteries! I know a guy, who'll remain nameless here, who sent a very heavy ETO Alpha to a tech, in the mid-west, from California, all because the 9V batteries in his peak reading Bird were dead. At this point, if need be, review my above paragraph. This includes wattmeters. If you use an expensive one like a Bird, get a cheap Dosey to verify it if you have an issue.
Use the most important troubleshooting tool in your shop, your brain. If you have wire antenna issues, for example, and you don't see broken, dangling, mutilated wires on your roof, it seems logical not to replace them and look elsewhere for your problem.
Lesson learned, I guess.
Catch ya' down the log...
73
de NO6L
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