In addition to getting back on the pickleball courts, we’ve tackled a few projects here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. I agreed to take on pickleball coaching sessions again this year, so I need to knock some rust off my game. I played last Friday and again Monday and yesterday. Donna’s been a regular at the tennis courts but she came out for pickleball yesterday. I played two games against her and her team prevailed both times.

Donna ordered some solar powered LED light strings and proceeded to hang one set across the front of our car port.

She strung up another set with smaller LEDs on the railing of our rear deck.

I finally put up the end-fed horizontal antenna for my ham radio. This antenna works on 10, 20 and 40-meter bands with a MFJ 939 antenna tuner. It took a couple of attempts to get it mounted right – I underestimated the weight of the coil trap and balun – or I overestimated the strength of the fiberglass electric fence posts I used to mount it. It sagged terribly. Another trip to Tractor Supply and I was able to reinforce the mounting posts. All is good now.

I also put the wheels back on Midget-San and made it road-worthy. I turned the key to the “on” position and allowed the electric fuel pump to run for about 30 seconds. Then I pulled the choke knob and hit the starter. It fired right up! I warmed it up and was thankful that I had put Stabil fuel stabilizer in before I filled the fuel tank for storage. When I did that, the drive back from the gas station was enough to run stabilized fuel throughout the fuel system and carburetor bowl. I took a test drive – ran it long enough to get all of the fluids up to temperature and put some fuel through the carburetor. It ran like a champ!

Yesterday, Donna tackled a tough project. She cleaned and organized our shed which serves as our laundry room, tool storage and my ham shack! I should have been out there helping her, but I had a major distraction.

I mentioned the guitar amplifier kit I ordered. It was coming from Canada and I had some trepidation after reading a few online horror stories regarding Canada Post. I didn’t need to worry. They estimated an arrival date of October 14th and turned the package over to USPS on Saturday, October 9th. Yesterday, I received notification that it was delivered to the Viewpoint post office!

We can only pick up packages here at Viewpoint between 11am and 1 pm. It was 12:30 pm when I saw the notification. I took Donna’s bicycle and high-tailed it to the post office. When I was given the package, I realized I made a mistake. It was rather large and weighed about 25 pounds. As I held it under my right arm and tried to mount the bike, I must have been a sight to see. There were a few people at the parcel pick-up window and they all stopped what they doing to watch me.

I managed to get on the bike without falling or dropping the package – barely. Once I got rolling I was okay – I balanced the package against my right thigh. Luckily I didn’t have to pedal very hard to get back home. As I reached the end of the 1600 row and approached our driveway, I now had another issue. I had to stop and make sure I got my left foot down without dropping the box or falling to the right – the 25-pound box had me seriously off balance.

I called out to Donna – she was in the shed. I managed to get my left foot down and she relieved me of the package. Job done! I started unboxing the kit right away.

The cabinet work is outstanding – I didn’t expect anything less from Trinity Amps.

Inside the cabinet, I found the 120-page builder’s guide and a bags of components and hardware. This is going to be a challenge to build. As you can tell by the number of control openings on the front and back of the cabinet, this is a complicated circuit. It will be the most complicated amp I’ve attempted.

The first task was an inventory of all of the parts and comparing it to the bill of materials list. This is more tedious and time consuming than you can imagine. There are many different types and values of resistors and capacitors needed to build an audio amplifier.

I don’t trust my eye to read the color stripes on resistors to determine the values – the colors seem a bit off at times. I measure each resistor with a multimeter and group them together by type and value and tape them to a sheet of cardboard with the value written next to them. Then I do the same with the capacitors – I measure each one with an ESR meter, group them and tape them to the board.

When I start building, I’ll verify the value of each component before I solder it in place. The value and type of resistor coupled with a capacitor is how an amplifier is “voiced.” These components create filter circuits that attenuate certain frequencies while allowing the desired boosted frequencies to pass. This is how the tone of amplified sound is created.

The amplifier I’m going to build is based on a Dumble Overdrive Special circuit. I think it’ll be a great companion amp to the Ken Fischer Trainwreck type amp I built nine years ago. The stories behind these amps and their creators is interesting and I’ll write a post about them soon.

Donna cooked up a favorite dish last week. It’s chicken Lombardy and she served it with brown rice and asparagus.

The weather has been favorable. On Monday, we had gusty winds in the afternoon and evening as a cold front moved in. Yesterday’s high was only 71 degrees. We expect to have highs in the mid-70s today and tomorrow before we warm back up into the mid-to-upper 80s by the weekend.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!