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Saguaro Lake Ranch

In my previous post, I said I would add some photos from Donna and Sini’s horseback trip and the Pass Mountain hike. A couple of the photos were transferred from Sini”s phone and the files were compressed and the images downsized. I couldn’t restore these very well, but I included them anyway.

They rode horses from Saguaro Lake Ranch Stables, located on the Salt River a short distance downstream from the Saguaro Lake dam. Sini is an experienced rider, but Donna hadn’t been on a horse in 30 years.

After their ride, they had a picnic lunch on the river.

They also made a side trip to Coon Bluff and saw wild horses.

The next day, last Tuesday, they hiked the Pass Mountain Loop Trail at Usery Regional Park. A light rain shower passed through the area in the afternoon – it was light enough not to be bothersome on their hike and it presented a nice rainbow!

They had a good time and it was a nice visit with Sini.

It’s been a fairly quiet week since then, I don’t have much to report. We had another repair/maintenance item here on our park model home. It seems like I’m spending more on repairs and maintenance here than I do on the motorhome!

When we had the new heat pump and ducting installed, they told me there was a water leak under the house. I took a look. It was a pipe leaking under the refrigerator about three or four feet from the crawl space entry. Monday morning, I called Jimmy Joe’s Plumbing and they said they could have a guy out that afternoon. Later, they called me and said he could be there by noon and he showed up a few minutes after 12:00.

I showed him where the leak was and he crawled under the house. He came out a minute later and said it was an elbow fitting that cracked. The pipe was capped off – it wasn’t attached to anything. He said he could cut the fitting off and re-cap the pipe. Sounded pretty straight forward and simple. Then he floored me when he said it would cost $265!

I asked him why so much? What’s the hourly rate? He said it wasn’t an hourly thing, the price was set because he had to crawl in the dirt under the house and work on his back. He said it’s something you don’t want to do, so you’ll have to pay me to do it. I wasn’t too happy, but he was right about me not wanting to crawl under the house. I couldn’t let the leak continue, so I told him to do it.

About 20 minutes later, I heard him closing off the crawl space entry. I went outside and found him standing out of sight behind his van, talking on his cell phone. He ended his call and said he would give me a break and “only” charge $205 for the work. Some break! He wasn’t even here for half an hour. I left a review for Jimmy Joe’s on Google and Yelp – maybe it’ll save someone else some coin.

On a happier note, I ordered a Yamaha soundbar for the TV in our Arizona room from Crutchfield on Sunday. It was listed at $199 with free 2-day shipping. It shipped Monday. Last night I noticed they had a price drop on this item – $20 off. I called their customer service this morning and asked about the discounted price. Kyle was the rep I spoke to and he said, “No problem, we have a 60-day price match guarantee – I’ll process a $20 refund.” Now that’s good customer service! Kudos to Crutchfield.

Donna bought a new slow cooker – it has all of the bells and whistles. She can program heat settings and timers. She used it on Thursday to make a new-to-us chicken dish – slow cooker brown sugar garlic chicken. She served it with crispy salt and pepper potatoes and fresh green beans. It was delicious!

Chicken with baby potatoes and green beans

Friday night she changed things up with a baked shrimp with fennel and feta dish. Another tasty treat.

It was the NFL Divisional playoff weekend, so we kept dinner simple so I could watch the games. It was still good food with carnitas (pulled pork) tacos Sunday night.

Carnitas tacos with baked jalapeno poppers

I bought a USDA Prime 2.3-pound tri tip roast – or is it a steak? – at Costco. I took a picture of it before I seasoned it as it’s important to know the grain orientation when you slice it. The tri tip cut has a change in grain direction from one end to the other and you always want to cut across the grain.

I seasoned it Sunday afternoon and put it on the Traeger Monday afternoon. I made a change in the way I smoked it. I dropped the temperature of the Traeger to 180 degrees instead of 225 and smoked it for 90 minutes. Then I increased the temperature to 225 degrees for another 30 minutes. At that point, I took it out of the Traeger and put it on a hot gas grill – 450 degrees. I seared each side for three minutes.

Donna served it with Brussel sprouts in a horseradish bacon cream sauce and baked potato with butter and chives. I love the tri tip flavor when it’s simply seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic.

The weather has been near perfect with daily highs around 70 degrees, clear skies and overnight lows in the 40s. The forecast calls for more of the same in the week ahead.

*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!

Making It a Keeper

I got busy last Friday. As I mentioned in my last post, Gleeson Mechanical was scheduled to replace our air conditioner/electric heater with a Day and Night heat pump. Things started off slowly as they didn’t show until nearly 10am, then they had to return to the shop because they forgot some necessary item. They didn’t really get started until nearly 11am.

The two guys they sent out were efficient and the installation was completed by 2:30pm. They did a good job and hauled the old unit, including all of the underfloor ducting away. We have a new heat pump, new ducting, new return box and a new thermostat. It works really well. The only gripe I have is this – I told them to be aware of the property line. Our lot is narrow – all of the Viewpoint lots are narrow. They placed the unit carefully, but they ran the evaporator drain line over the property line, creating a trip hazard for my neighbor when they walk the path to their back deck.

New A/C and condensation drain line on our neighbor’s walkway

Our neighbors, Steve and Deena said they weren’t concerned about the drain line.

Meanwhile I received a delivery. A few weeks ago, I ordered a set of hand wound pickups for my Stratocaster guitar from Adam Asmus (Tone Hatch Pickups). His site showed a two-week wait for the pickups to be wound and he shipped them exactly two weeks later from Norfolk, Nebraska. However, it took the USPS a week to get them past Omaha, Nebraska.

I went to work on it right away. I removed the pickguard and old pickups, then installed the new ones and soldered it all together.

Pickguard with original machine wound pickups

Tone Hatch pickups hand wound by Adam Asmus

I’m still tweaking the pickup heights, but these are very smooth sounding pickups with what I can only describe as a richer tone. I thought I would lose some output with these, but I don’t really notice a change in volume.

If you know me or have followed this blog, you know I like to build and play vacuum tube guitar amplifiers. The warm tone of vintage-type guitar amplifiers and the feel when you drive them hard can’t be duplicated in my opinion. Recently I started looking at vacuum tube stereo amplification.

Stereo amplification is much different than instrument amplification. In a guitar amplifier, a certain amount of distortion is desirable – you want the ability to increase the sound level of the guitar and create everything from a clean sound to an over-driven distorted, fat tone.

In stereo hifi amplification, you’re aiming for a transparent gain in sound levels while faithfully reproducing the original tones. I became intrigued by the idea of low-power, single-ended, class A amplification. I learned a lot from Steve Deckert’s website for his Decware amplifiers. I would love to have one of his Decware Zen Triode amps, but the cost of an entry-level Decware is about $1,000 and there’s a long waiting list to buy one – it could take eight months or more before I could have one built. He hand builds everything. This is only a 2.3 watt amplifier. If you wonder how 2.3 watts could drive a speaker, check out his website.

I did some looking around and found affordable alternatives made in China. These obviously don’t have the same build quality, but there are people who have documented the shortcomings and how to fix them and come up with a reasonably good sounding amplifier. After researching a bit, I decided to try an amp made in China by Douk Audio and sold in the US under the brand name, Nobsound.

There are two reasons I decided to try this amp – first, it’s affordable at $315 on Amazon. Then, most of the issues on this amp are documented and fixes are easy. It’s a hand-wired, point-to-point (PTP) chassis that’s easy to modify. I figured this would get me in the door of stereo hifi amplification without breaking the bank.

Nobsound 6P1 integrated stereo amp – photo from Amazon listing

They list this amp as a 6.8 watt amplifier, but I think that’s wishful thinking. It may be able to generate 6.8 watts of power, but the distortion level would be unbearable way before you got there. It’s really a 2 or 3 watt usable power amp.

Amazon delivered the amp on Friday and also delivered another product I needed for this amp. Douk Audio made a few questionable choices in components for this amp. Many of the early adopters of this amplifier complained of tubes burning out and if the rectifier tube burned out, they didn’t know how to diagnose and replace it – they just wrote it off as a cheap Chinese throwaway amplifier.

There are a couple of reasons this happened. First of all, Douk Audio sends these amps to North America for Nobsound with the same power transformer used in China. The thing is, China household voltage is nominally 110 volts. In North America 120 volts is the norm and it’s not unusual to see 122 or 124 volts at the wall outlet. The power transformer at 120 to 124 volts was supplying higher than specified voltages throughout the amplifier, killing vacuum tubes.

To counter this, I ordered an APC Line-R 1200-watt regulated power supply. It has three settings for the output voltages and can handle up to four devices connected to the output totaling 1200 watts. One of the settings is 110 volts. I measured an actual 108 volts with the 110 preset on mine. This should be fine. This unit costs about $60, so now I’m $375 into the project.

I connected the amplifier through the APC unit and connected my Celestion Bookshelf 8-ohm speakers. These aren’t the highest efficiency speakers and I hoped I would get enough volume out of them. Speaker efficiency is rated with a specification called sensitivity. A one watt, 1kHz signal is applied and the sound pressure level (SPL) is measured one meter from the center of the speaker. My speakers are rated at 89db – the minimum sensitivity recommended by Steve Deckert for low-watt use.

I was surprised! The amp sounded decent and had no problem driving the speakers. But, there was more to do. The vacuum tubes supplied with the amp were mostly good quality Russian military grade surplus tubes. This included the rectifier tube – I think Douk Audio figured they could address the rectifier failures by upgrading to the Russian tube instead of the cheap Chinese tube originally used and I hear is still in use in the China market. This would get them past the warranty period.

The power tubes are very cheap Chinese tubes. The Chinese tube is designated 6P1 and is a copy of the Russian 6P1P (6П1П in cyrillic). The tubes supplied with the amp are poorly made with a dirt-like contaminate visible inside the glass tube envelope. It’s like looking through a very dirty window. I tried scrubbing the glass with steel wool to see if it was on the outside – it’s the inside of the tube! I ordered two matched pairs of 6P1P – EV (6П1П-EB in cyrillic). Although this is a single-ended tetrode amp, it’s unusual in that two tubes are wired in parallel for the output of each channel – thus the need for matched pairs. This cost $60, so now I’m $435 into it.

I bought these tubes from an outfit called Riverstone in California. They are new old stock Russian military surplus made in 1985 and 1987 at the Svetlana factory in Saint Petersburg, Russia. This plant was built by RCA in 1937. The EV or EB suffix indicates an extended-life, ruggedized tube and these have the OTK quality control codes.

Cheap, contaminated Chinese tube on the left, NOS Svetlana tube on the right

No major tube manufacturer makes these tubes anymore, just a couple of small Chinese companies do. Luckily, there are large stockpiles of the NOS Russian high quality tubes still available. The change in output tubes made a huge difference in sound quality. The frequency range was extended, reproducing higher highs and lower lows, the difference was dramatic.

But wait, there’s more. Douk Audio has another design flaw. In the power supply, they used two 150uF electrolytic capacitors – one after the rectifier tube and one following the choke. For the rectifier tube, this is bad news. I’m guessing they did this to simplify inventory and cut costs by stocking a boatload of capacitors of the same value. The thing is that larger, higher capacitance filter capacitors to smooth ripple in DC current can be a good thing. But, there is a limit and too much isn’t necessarily better. The rectifier tube is a Russian 5U4C tube which is equivalent to the RCA 5Z4. RCA’s datasheet specifies no more than 40uF – the Brimar datasheet for this tube is more conservative and specifies 33uF maximum. Well, 150uF is too much and places undue stress on the rectifier tube.

So, I ordered a Vishay Beyschlag 22uF 450 volt electrolytic capacitor made in Austria from Digi-key to replace the 150uF Chinese one. I also ordered four high-quality Solen 0.22uF (220nF) 650 volt capacitors made in France to replace the no-name brand Chinese coupling capacitors. With tax and shipping, it was another $30 – making this project cost a total of $465.

Weird colorshift in this photo – this is the original circuit and the power transformer is clearly marked 110V

Correct color temperature – new capacitors installed – 22uF filter cap is the blue one on the center/right – coupling caps are the black ones

The wiring and solder connections inside the amp are tidy and impressive. I expected to reflow bad solder joints, but I didn’t find any bad ones. The cap replacements took me a lot longer than I anticipated. I told Donna this was because, in my usual fashion, I spend extra time looking for a part or tool I had in my hand a few minutes before. This can add 10-15 minutes to the job. Then I spend time looking for a small fastener or item I dropped and spend another five or 10 minutes on my hands and knees looking for it.

At the end of the day, I have a very delightful little single-ended class A vaccum tube amp for under $500. Can’t beat that! Last night I was listening to an acoustic guitar piece by Ronnie Earl and the sound reproduction was so clear, I realized I could hear his fingers sliding along the strings on chord changes! It was like he was sitting in front of me playing his guitar. Now that I know this amp is a keeper, I’ve ordered back-up vacuum tubes to have on hand, although these Russian military grade tubes should be long-life items.

Tubes and VU meters on the Nobsound glowing in the dark

On Sunday, our friend Sini flew in from San Diego. Donna picked her up at the airport and they had fun plans for the next few days. They made it into a girls retreat by renting a room at the Westgate Painted Mountain Resort and planned hiking and horseback riding activities. Last night, we all went to Baja Joe’s for a Mexican seafood dinner – Sini’s treat. Thanks, Sini!

Donna took Sini back to the airport this morning. I’ll add some photos of the hike and horseback ride in my next post as this is getting too long already.

Speaking of seafood – as I stated above, Friday was a busy day, but Donna topped it off with a dinner of walnut crusted tilapia with broccoli on the side.

The weather has remained pleasant with daily highs around 70 degrees and overnight lows in the upper 40s to 50 degrees. The mornings have had some high clouds that burn off before noon, but yesterday, we had some sprinkles of rain. It wasn’t much – I was on the pickleball court giving my coaching clinic and we managed to play through the short, light shower. The week ahead doesn’t show any significant changes.

Three Quotes and a Decision

In my last post, I described problems we were having with the heating, ventilation, air conditioning of our park model home. I had the air conditioner/forced air heater repaired and also needed to have a 50-amp breaker installed in the power pedestal.

Park model homes in Arizona are considered “mobile” units although you cannot just hook up to a truck and drive them away. This designation changes some aspects compared to a regular sticks-and-bricks home. For one thing, we obtained the title for our unit from the motor vehicle department. Another aspect is the electrical supply to the home.

Our park model is fed electricity from SRP – the local power utility – through Viewpoint and is distributed to each site through a power pedestal just like an RV site. When we had the breaker replaced in the pedestal, I saw one of the 50-amp receptacles feeding power to our unit had a broken housing. There are two 50-amp receptacles in our pedestal – remember, each 50-amp receptacle has two legs of 50-amp current available for a total of 100 amps. With two receptacles, we have a total of 200 amps of electrical service.

The housing of the receptacle is formed from bakelite – a synthetic resin – the first form of plastic invented in 1909 and still used for its insulating properties. Bakelite is easy to form and cheap, that’s why it’s still used. However, it can be brittle. Anyway, the bakelite housing had a section broken off right where the round ground lug is located.

We had another issue with the pedestal. It’s about 34 years old and was placed in a hole in the ground – no concrete surround, just dirt. This results in corrosion and ours is badly corroded around the base. I’m a little concerned about it breaking off at the base and falling over. We placed a work order with VIewpoint – the management of Viewpoint is responsible for upkeep of the pedestal and main power supply to our park model.

They had a maintenance guy come out to look it over. He seemed to think we had nothing to be concerned about. I pointed out the broken receptacle and he said, “That’s common – it’s no big deal, that’s just the ground.” I thought “no big deal…just a ground?”

I pointed out to him that it was potentially a very big deal. With no support of the sleeve for the ground lug, the sleeve could very well have loosened and end up corroded with poor contact to the ground lug. That would mean part of our household circuit was ungrounded. The purpose of the ground is to have an low-resistance path for unwanted electricity to the negatively charged earth.

If the ground lug didn’t have good contact, we may not have that path to earth. Let’s consider a defective appliance like a toaster. If the toaster developed a short to the chassis and/or metal cover, the electricity should be delivered through the ground. This shorted circuit would draw a very large current and trip the breaker, thus telling us we had a problem.

Now, let’s suppose that the ground lug had poor conductivity. There’s no path to ground, so the chassis is charged with electricity with place no to go. Excess current isn’t developed, so the breaker doesn’t trip. The toaster sits there on the counter charged with electricity and if you happen to be unlucky enough to touch it, you become the path to ground. The current would flow through your hand and body and exit from your feet. Bad news.

He said he would get an electrician out to fix the receptacle. I wonder how many people here bought into his thought of the ground being no big deal – he said the broken bakelite was common, right? A guy from Flatiron Electric came out on Tuesday while I was giving pickleball lessons. He talked to Donna and went back to the pedestal. He came out a short time later and told Donna he would have to return the next day. He admitted being a new guy and I think he got a scare – the pedestal is daisy-chained with several others and the input lines remain hot when you work on it. You can only break the connection between the pedestal and the house – to break the feed line would mean disrupting power to a whole row or more of houses.

I confirmed Donna’s suspicion – she said the guy looked a little shook up when he left. I found half of the outlets in our Arizona room weren’t working. I found a tripped ground fault circuit interupter (GFCI). He must have shorted a hot lead and tripped the GFCI. I bet it made a big spark before the GFCI tripped!

He came back yesterday morning and got the job done. He must have had a lesson or two the afternoon before, because he replaced the receptacle fairly quickly, without incident.

New receptacle in power pedestal – note the corrosion

I neglected to take a photo of the old, broken receptacle before it was replaced.

On Tuesday, we also had Brandon from Gleeson Mechanical come out to give us a quote on a new air conditioner/heating unit. He spent more time looking everything over than the previous two contractors we got quotes from. In the time between the quote from Liberty last Friday and Gleeson on Tuesday, I did more research.

I was initially inclined to go with an electric heat strip for winter heat. I was a little skeptical about a heat pump. This was because the heat pumps we have on our motorhome don’t work very well when the temperature is below the mid-30s. This only happens occasionally here in Mesa, but we do have the odd frosty morning here and there.

What I found was my assumption based on the motorhome wasn’t a good one. The units on our coach are 20 years old and are much smaller than a residential unit. The technology has improved over time and current heat pumps remain efficient until the temperature drops below 25 degrees for an extended time. This doesn’t happen here. A heat pump costs a few hundred more initially, but it’s more energy-efficient and will save on utility bills.

Gleeson Mechanical gave us a quote for a 2.5 ton Day and Night brand heat pump with new ducting. The price was $4,800 – this is $900 more than the quote from Liberty, but it’s an apples-and-oranges comparison. Day and Night is a brand from Carrier Corporation – a well-respected brand of heat pumps with a track record for quality and reliability. Liberty quoted a Broan 2.5 ton air conditioner with an 8kW heat strip. Broan is a brand name under Nutek. I can’t find much in the way of favorable reviews for their products.

The first quote we received was for a Day and Night 3.0 ton air conditioner with an 8kW heat strip and it was $5,500. My research indicated this unit was too large for the air space in our park model home and inefficient. Also, the labor charge was high, so we wrote that guy off.

At the end of the day, I figured paying the extra $900 up front for the Day and Night 2.5 ton heat pump over the Broan will pay off in lower utility costs and peace of mind for a quality product. Gleeson will come out tomorrow and do the installation.

The weather has been very pleasant this week with daily highs in the low to mid 70s and overnight lows around 50 degrees. It looks like more of the same in the coming week with overnight lows dipping to the mid 40s. The new heat pump should cope well with that.

New Year Surprises

Well, we’re a week into 2022 already and I can hardly bring myself to write the year as 2022. The last two years have been a little tough on everyone with the covid restrictions. I’m hoping for a better 2022, but we’re off to a rough start.

Last weekend – New Year’s Day – had the coldest nights of the season. Saturday and Sunday nights were clear with lows in the 30s. Wouldn’t you know it, our heating unit went out on Saturday afternoon. We made do for the weekend with space heaters, but it was far from ideal.

Our central heat is integrated with the air conditioner unit. It’s not a heat pump, it has what’s called an electric heat strip. The hot air is forced through the same fan and ducting that the cooling unit uses. Donna had a referral to an HVAC guy, but it turned out he had retired. He referred us to another guy that was able to come out before noon on Monday.

He quickly found the problem. I was guessing the blower motor had fried as I smelled an electrical burnt odor much like what I would expect if the motor winding had shorted. Luckily it wasn’t that – it was a corroded connector that created excessive resistance and burned the feed wire to the blower motor. That was an easy fix, but the bad news was, it didn’t solve the problem.

When the wiring burned it also took out the double pole 50-amp breaker in the pedestal. The good news was, he had a replacement part on hand and fixed the power pedestal. More bad news was his bill – he charged a total of $450 for the repair, which I felt was excessive, but I didn’t complain, I just paid him.

He also gave us a quote for a replacement air conditioner with a heat strip – a Day and Night 3 ton unit for $5,500 installed. I told him I would have to think about it. Our current air conditioner unit is over 30 years old and it’s not a matter of if it goes out, it’s when. Looking inside the unit, I believe that will be sooner rather than later.

I set appointments for two more replacement estimates. In the meantime, I did some research to help me understand my options. The first estimator came yesterday from a Phoenix outfit called Liberty Heating and Cooling. He looked everything over and recommended a 2.5 ton unit with an 8kW heat strip. This was more in line with what I thought we needed. He included a prefabricated concrete pad – our current unit has a 6kW heat strip and is mounted directly on the ground. His quote came to a total of $3,900 – much better than $5,500.

I’m a little concerned about the quality of the unit they use though. The brand they install is called Broan. These are made by Nortek, the parent company of several brand names. Most of the reviews I’ve read aren’t positive, but it’s a small sample size.

We’ll have another local company, Gleeson Mechanical, come out on Tuesday to give us a quote. They use several brands and all are top notch. I’m curious to see how the price stacks up – I expect it to be somewhat higher than the Broan unit, but it may be worth a little extra for higher quality and reliability.

I had another issue that doesn’t make for a good start to 2022. On Wednesday, I had an appointment with a dermatologist. I had a couple of skin issues I wanted to get an opinion on. I ended up getting a full body scan. I had some pre-cancerous lesions on my face which he froze. But the bigger deal was a spot on my back that appeared to be basal cell carcinoma. He took a biopsy and yesterday, the pathologist confirmed it’s cancerous. I’m not overly concerned about it. Basal cell carcinoma usually isn’t very aggressive – it’s a slow growing tumor and can usually be found and treated before it spreads.

Unlike my previous bout with cancer (I wrote about it in a series of posts here), this was detected early. The lesion is only about the size of my pinky fingernail. I have an appointment in a couple of weeks to have it removed. Dr. Kessler will cut or scrape a small divot in my back and cauterize it. Hopefully that’s the end of the story. Basal cell carcinoma does have a high rate of recurrence, but it moves so slowly that it can be detected.

As always, Donna has been feeding me well. Our New Year’s Eve meal was special. We had an outstanding lobster mac and cheese on a half shell from Hancock Lobster in Maine. And that was just the starter! We also enjoyed some lightly fried squid and veggies with tzatziki. A great way to end 2021.

On New Year’s Day Donna fixed a pasta dish called Quick Ragu with Ricotta and Lemon. It was on the spicy side – she’ll adjust the recipe.

On Mondays during the football season, Donna knows I’ll be watching the Monday Night Football game, so she keeps it simple. Fish street tacos are a quick and easy dish and I can easily eat them while watching the game. We love fish tacos and Donna makes a great sauce for them.

Another tasty dish was a beef ragu over spaghetti squash.

Beef ragu over spaghetti squash with fresh grated parmesan cheese

The weather here took a turn for the better over the last few days. The week leading up to the end of 2021 was relatively cold and wet. I mentioned the cold, clear nights last weekend but by mid-week we had highs in the upper 60s and hit 72 degrees yesterday. Overnight lows were in the 40s. The forecast calls for more pleasant weather and relatively warm nights of 50+ degree lows until the middle of next week when we might see some rain showers.

Christmas Treats

Christmas has come and gone here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort, just like it has everywhere else. Most of the residents here spread the Christmas spirit by decorating their homes. Some of the streets go as far as adopting a theme which everyone more or less follows. The management provides a tram – a small train with open cars pulled by a small tractor. People get on the train at the lot in front of the office and it takes them on a tour of the facility to look at all of the lights and decorations in the evening.

Christmas decorations viewed from our front steps

We had a fairly quiet Christmas Day. Our Christmas dinner included a honey-glazed spiral-cut ham. I sliced russet potatoes which Donna made into a very tasty side of au gratin potatoes and I cubed a butternut squash that she sauteed with fresh ginger and spices. Cubing a butternut squash was harder than I expected! She also made green beans tossed with shallots cooked in butter. And for dessert, she made Nanaimo Bars, a Canadian Christmas treat (recipe here). Donna fixed three plates that she delivered to three different homes where she assists the elderly residents. They live alone and were very appreciative to have a home-cooked Christmas dinner. She also delivered Nanaimo Bars to some of our neighbors.

Christmas Eve was about as wintery as it gets around here. The temperature only reached 59 degrees and an inch and a half of rain fell! We exchanged gifts on Christmas morning – I gave Donna a pair of diamond stud earrings that I bought online from Blue Nile. She gifted me with a nice set of Sony noise-cancelling headphones. I spend a fair amount of time on YouTube lately and these headphones are a treat.

We’ve had several wet days with heavy overcast since Christmas and I’ve only been out once for pickleball. Donna managed to get out for tennis a couple of times and also played a round of golf on the nine-hole Executive course. My days have revolved around reading and practicing guitar – I’m working on learning some new material. I ordered a Christmas gift for myself – a set of custom hand-wound pickups for my Strat-type guitar. They’re being made by Adam Asmus (dba Tone Hatch Pickups) in Norfolk, Nebraska and I’m looking forward to getting them in a week or so.

Last week, we watched the Beatles documentary, Get Back, on Disney Plus. It a three -part film with about 6 hours of running time culled from over 150 hours of film recorded in 1969. It was interesting to watch their creative process as well as the tensions that developed in the group at that time. It was well worth paying for a month of streaming Disney Plus.

Before Christmas, I made a batch of my signature Japanese fried rice. Donna grilled shrimp for a simple, delicious and savory dinner.

On Christmas Eve she kept it simple – we were gifted a delicious clam chowder from Hancock’s in Maine. And the day after Christmas, she made green chile pollo street tacos. She tried something new with the chicken filling, it was a different seasoning on the chicken and it was topped with a green chile sauce she made. They were outstanding.

After Christmas, we had our fill of leftover ham including ham sandwiches and slow cooker beans with the ham shank. Donna gave us a break from the ham with another new chicken recipe. She split chicken breasts into thin fillets, pan fried them and made a sun-dried tomato and cream sauce topping. It was very good!

Chicken with sun-dried tomato and cream sauce, zucchini spirals on the side

It’s hard to believe today is the last day of 2021. Tomorrow a new calendar year begins. It looks like we’ll be off to a relatively cold start – the forecast calls for clear skies with temperatures in the mid to upper 50s over the weekend before we begin warming up next week. After taking a holiday break, I’ll resume the Tuesday afternoon pickleball coaching clinics next week.

Short Days, Cold Nights

Today is the winter solstice – December 21, 2021. This is when the south pole of the earth is tilted closest to the sun and the north pole is farthest away due to the inclination of the axis the earth rotates around. Thus, in the northern hemisphere we have the shortest amount of daylight today while in the southern hemisphere, it’s the summer solstice and they have the longest amount of daylight hours. For the next six months, our daylight hours will increase daily – yay!

I haven’t posted lately as things have been fairly low-key around here. We attended a Christmas celebration at Kelly and Frank Burk’s house. We had good food, drink and great company for a fun-filled afternoon. They had a white elephant gift exchange and also a game played with dollar bills and Donna won the jackpot which she has used to make Christmas donations.

About a week ago, I found something on Amazon that seemed like a good idea. I’ve been kicking around the idea of adding a looper pedal to my guitar rig. A looper pedal is a foot-operated switchbox containing a digital recorder. You step on the switch to start recording as you play and hit the switch a second time to stop recording. With this, you can record some chords for a song’s rhythm, play it back through the amplifier and add a lead to it or any fills you want to layer over it as it plays back in a continuous loop..

I found a tiny pedal that was more than just a looper – it also had drum tracks. With this I could set up a drum beat, play rhythm over the drum beat and record it all to have a backing track for lead work. And this pedal from Flamma was inexpensive on Amazon. I ordered it and had it two days later.

Flamma drum-loop pedal – quarter is there for scale, this pedal is tiny

It didn’t take me long to figure out why Amazon had these for such a low price. It was a low-quality unit – it was noisy, introducing static, hiss and hum to the signal and the drums were hard to program and set tempo on it. That’s what I get for basing a buying decision on price and a few reviews. I was able to return the pedal for a full refund just by dropping it off in the original manufacturer’s packaging at a UPS store. Amazon issued the refund within a day of me dropping it off!

I learned something else from this purchase. Although a looper is still something I want, the drum backing was something that’s really helpful when you’re playing music alone. I did some research and bought a much better drum pedal. I ordered a Beat Buddy Mini 2 from Sweetwater Music and had it two days later. This cost more than twice what the Flamma from Amazon cost and it doesn’t have a looper, but it’s a quality unit.

This drum machine is much more versatile and easy to set up. The drums aren’t just synthesized sounds – they recorded actual professional drummers playing various patterns and rhythms. It doesn’t crackle, hum or hiss either.

Last Saturday, Donna played in a tennis tournament here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. I went to watch and tried to take photographs, but it wasn’t working out too well. From the spectator area, the players on the courts were backlit by the sun and I couldn’t get to any other vantage point.

Donna and her partner won their match in two straight sets. Later, Donna went to a tennis club social hour dressed in her Santa suit and beard – I forgot to take a photo. But, she had this one on her phone with one of her tennis friends in Santa’s lap.

Donna has our place decorated for Christmas, so we’re lit up at night.

Donna’s Christmas decor – angel with a flute and reindeer.

Donna is really spreading Christmas cheer by playing traditional Christmas songs on her clarinet with backing tracks on our patio between the entry and car port. The other day, a woman stopped by saying she had to find the source of the music she heard from two blocks away.

We’re remaining healthy and eating well. Here are a few dishes from the past couple of weeks. First up, Donna tried a new grilled chicken recipe for Asian-style chicken breasts with grilled bok choy.

A couple of days later, she tried a different take on chicken thighs, slow cooked in a crock pot with loads of garlic, carrots and white wine.

Crock pot chicken, garlic and carrots with white wine

On Friday, I put a six-and-a-half-pound pork shoulder – a cut called pork butt – on the Traeger wood-pellet fired smoker/grill for about eight hours at 225 degrees. I wrapped it in foil for the last two hours, otherwise it would’ve taken about 12 hours to reach an internal temperature of 198 degrees and risk drying out at that point. Wrapped in foil, it retained moisture and reached 198 degrees relatively quickly.

The pork was cooked perfectly – the shoulder blade bone slid out of the meat easily and I pulled it apart with Bear Paw shredding utensils. Donna made cole slaw and corn bread muffins from a recipe she got from our friend Georgia Eaton in Maine.

The last plate is another chicken thigh variation – garlic butter chicken served over spaghetti squash.

As I said, it’s the winter solstice meaning we have officially reached the winter of 2021-2022. It was definitely winter weather last week and the overnight temperature here in the desert dropped into the 30s. The rest of the month looks like we should have overnight lows in the 40s and highs ranging from the low 70s today and tomorrow before dropping back into the 60s for the next couple of weeks. We may have rain for Christmas. I’ll close by wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

A Quick Trip and A Shot

I mentioned in my last post that Donna was heading to San Diego to visit her sister, Sheila. I dropped her off at the airport a week ago on Thursday morning. She had a short, enjoyable time there. Friday she went hiking with Sheila on the Los Penasquitos Canyon Trail.

This trail is in the Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve – a park jointly managed by the city of San Diego and San Diego County. There’s a parking/day use fee of $3. They hiked the trail to the waterfall – a hike of about seven miles. The preserve is located north of the Mira Mesa neighborhood and straddles the city limit. It follows the Penasquitos Creek which flows from Poway Creek in the east to the Pacific Ocean near Torrey Pines. Here are some photos she took on the hike.

There’s a small gravesite along the trail with a headstone for John Eichar dating back to 1882. He’s believed to have been a cook at the ranch that once occupied this land.

Friday night Donna attended a concert that her nephew, Connor, played in. He plays saxophone in the Bishop’s School band. Bishop’s is a private college prepatory Episcopal school in La Jolla. She said the school band is very talented. Connor performed several improvised jazz solos and also wrote a piece of chamber music for two alto saxophones and a euphonium.

While Donna was away, I modified my Marshall 112 speaker cabinet. The Marshall 112MX comes equipped with a Celestion seventy/80 speaker. I favor the sound of most Celestion speakers, but the seventy/80 turned out to be not such a favorite. It is a budget speaker in the Celestion line and I found the higher frequencies to be spikey and somewhat unpleasant. I ordered a Celestion G12T-75 replacement speaker from Avatar speakers in Idaho – they have the best Celestion prices.

The 112 cabinet back plate was very tightly fastened and it took some doing to get it opened. When I removed the seventy/80 speaker, I found some excess glue hardened into a ball where the dust cap meets the speaker cone. This couldn’t have helped its performane any.

Celstion seventy/80 speaker – note ports in the front baffle to enhance bass response

Arrow poimts to the hardened glue defect in the seventy/80

New speakers can be somewhat stiff and benefit from a break-in period. Avatar offers a break-in service on some of their speakers, but not the G12T-75. Their service involves 15 hours of break-in tones. I hooked my signal generator into the input of my Marshall 18 Watt amp and ran a 1000 Hz tone through the speaker for about 12 hours. Then I played through it for a few hours and I’m very happy with the sound of the Marshall 112 cabinet now.

In my last post, I mentioned a problem in the treble bleed circuit of my Stratocaster guitar. I should have mentioned that I didn’t wire this circuit originally – I’d ordered the pickups, control pots and selector switch pre-wired. However, I may have had a hand in creating the problem. When I shielded the control cavity, I needed to add a ground lug and wire it to the pot. I used some scrap16-gauge wire that I had on hand. I don’t know what I was thinking – 16-gauge is way heavier than I needed and it was really stiff. It may have interfered with the circuit once I installed the pick guard. I rewired it with 22-gauge wire which is plenty to handle the millivolts present on the ground and it’s flexible.

Donna came back Saturday evening and I picked her up at the airport. My two nights of bachelorhood were mostly uneventful – in fact, I was down for the count Friday afternoon and most of Saturday. I had shingles vaccine (Shingrex) and pneumonia vaccine shots on Thursday and it knocked me for a loop. I ran a low-grade fever (101.5) and had a very sore arm. I’m glad that’s behind me now, but I need a follow-up shot for shingles in a couple of months.

Tuesday was Pearl Harbor Day – December 7th. Eighty years ago, Hawaii was hit with a surprise attack. Four battleships were sunk, many others damaged and 2,335 people lost their lives. I always take a few moments to honor those that were in Pearl Harbor on that date.

Sunrise over the Superstition Mountains on Pearl Harbor Day

We are 12 days short of the winter solstice – the days have noticeably shorter with the sunrise coming later and sunset earlier in the evening. After December 21st, the daylight hours will start increasing again.

Yesterday Donna hit the golf course with some of her girlfriends. I was inside, reading a book when I thought they ought to be coming up to the fifth hole soon. I went outside to the rear deck just as they came into view. I watched them play the fifth hole behind our house.

While Donna was away and I was feeling punky, I didn’t have the best meals. Now that she’s back I’m getting much better nutrition. Sometimes it’s a simple thing – like the green chile bratwurst we bought at The Pork Shop served with fire-roasted corn and grilled zucchini and peppers topped with feta cheese.

Tuesday night I manned the grill and grilled bacon wrapped petite filet mignon from Basha’s – I still have it when it comes to the barbeque grill. The filets were perfect. Donna baked potatoes and steamed green beans.

The weather has cooled here in Mesa, Arizona. We’ll be lucky to see 70 degrees on the thermometer today. Tomorrow is predicted to be downright cold with a high of 59 degrees – in this climate that qualifies as cold. We probably won’t see temperatures above the upper 60s for the rest of the month.

Typhoon Karen

I’ve fallen behind on posting – it’s December already! I hope you all had a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving. We had a great day with a Thanksgiving potluck feast with friends at Mike and Jodi Hall’s house. We watched football while Mike and I enjoyed cigars and, of course, ate lots of good food.

I received an unexpected piece of mail from my sister before Thanksgiving. It was a publication of the US Navy called Crossroads from November of 1962 – it took me back in time to another Thanksgiving. In November of 1962, I was six years old and our family lived on the island of Guam. Guam is a US territory in the western Pacific (Micronesia). The tropical island has an area of 210 square miles and great beaches with coral reefs.

I learned to snorkel inside the reefs when I was five years old and still love snorkeling in the ocean whenever I can. On November 11, 1962, Typhoon Karen hit the island dead-center. It was the most powerful tropical cyclone to ever hit the island and the 185-mph winds were devastating. The 20-page Crossroads paper my sister, Cori, sent me was entirely devoted to coverage of the typhoon and its aftermath. She had kept it for almost 60 years – I had no idea.

The island was wrecked – 95% of the homes were damaged or destroyed and more than 45,000 people were left homeless. We were lucky – we got through the storm without damage to our home after a long, scary night in total darkness. In the morning, we found twisted metal wreckage in our backyard – someone’s carport had been swept up by the wind, twisted into an unrecognizable shape and deposited in our yard.

Along the highway, we saw fishing vessels – sizable boats – along the roadside more than a quarter of mile away from the marina.

Rear Admiral John F. Coye, Jr wrote, “We in Guam have learned the true meaning of Thanksgiving Day. We have witnessed the devastating forces of nature, and our lives have been spared. Let us pause for a prayer of thanks and redouble our efforts to rebuild Guam. Guam was good and we’re going to rebuild it better.”

It was hard to believe only 11 people lost their lives amid all of the destruction. We left Guam soon after the typhoon and moved back to California. If you’re interested in reading more about the typhoon, here’s a link to a Wikipedia article.

I wrote about the oscilloscope I bought in a previous post. It’s something I’ve wanted for a long time. When I was younger, oscilloscopes were very expensive instruments – even a Radio SHack Heathkit model would set you back about two weeks worth of wages. Nowadays, digital technology can make them inexpensive – the Rigol model I bought was under $300. I’ve been having fun playing around with it – it’s nice to be able to visually track the electronic signal through various stages of amplification in my guitar amps. Donna thinks I’ve become a bit of a nerd watching YouTube videos to learn how to effectively utilize the oscilloscope.

One of the things I found was I had deferred maintenance for too long on a couple of my amps. I had replaced vacuum tubes in my Trainwreck and Marshall 18-Watt amps that I built nine or 10 years ago, but that’s about all I did. Time plus wear and tear from riding in the basement of our motorhome took a bit of a toll. I could see some noise in the signal path and could also hear how they were noisy compared to the Trinity OSD I recently built.

I took a little time to re-solder a few components and used a product called DeoxIT to clean the tube sockets and potentiometers. Much better! I watched a YouTube video where Mike Zaite – designer and owner of Dr. Z Amplification described his recommended annual maintenance. I’ll put that schedule in place for future maintenance of my amps. He also said why he uses vintage Russian military spec vacuum tubes in his Maz18 amps. He likes them because they sound good and are very robust – he thinks they should last at least 5,000 hours. He has a large stockpile of tubes that he bought from a retired Russian military officer – I wonder how that guy came upon a large quantity of surplus military tubes.

I saw another video where Mark from Gary’s Guitars in Portsmouth, New Hampshire went on about the old Russian military vacuum tubes. He once lived in Russia and he said every major city had radio parts swap meets at the time. Buying a transceiver in Russia wasn’t easy back then. People would scrounge parts and build them. He is a big fan of the old tubes from the Foton factory (it burned down in the early 1970s) and the Reflektor factory.

Gary said to look for a code which is OTK plus a number. That indicates the tube was inspected and passed military specification. In the old days, the quality control inspectors for the military were very thorough – passing a defective tube would result in a new assignment in Siberia. He also showed how to read the date codes. A while back, I bought some Reflektor 6V6 equivalent tubes that I thought were from the late 70s or early 80s. After checking the date code, I see they’re from 1974 – the year I graduated high school.

I found some old Russian military EL84 equivalents on eBay that are what I use in the Marshall 18 Watt. I ordered four of them and they came from the Ukraine! These are dated 1972 and are from the same Reflektor factory and have OTK codes. I read the Reflektor plant produced up 50 million tubes per year back in its heyday.

Now that I had my amps back up to snuff, I suddenly heard noise and sound dropping out while I was playing my guitar. Then it quit making sound altogether. Wouldn’t you know it, my Stratocaster-style guitar that I built last month was on the fritz.

I did some trubleshooting and found problems in the treble bleed circuit. I replaced the resistor and capacitor there – I always fix anything I find out of order when troubleshooting – but that wasn’t the problem. An open treble bleed circuit wouldn’t stop the signal from getting out of the guitar. I played around with it for a whole day and the problem was intermittent. It would work fine on the bench, but once I put it all back together, it quit working again.

Treble bleed circuit on the volume pot circled

The problem seemed to be centered around the volume potentiometer. I ordered a new pot from Amazon and got it the next day. I checked it and it was fine, so I installed it and it wasn’t fine. It seems like the wiper or carbon strip inside warped when I soldered it. This puzzled me as I know I didn’t overheat it – I’ve soldered lots of pots. I looked at the CTS branded pot more closely and I suspect it’s a Chinese counterfeit, not a genuine CTS pot. Yesterday, I drove to west Mesa and bought a volume pot at Milano’s Music. This was a CTS genuine article.

I installed the pot and replaced the wiring from the pot to the output jack. It works again! I plugged into my Dumble-style OSD and made lots of noise – I mean music. By the way, I never believed I would play or own an amplifier that I liked better than my Trainwreck-inspired amp, but the Dumble-style OSD tops it. It’s my all-time favorite.

Monday night, Donna made a new dish for dinner – it was Creole shrimp. It was bit labor-intensive with thinly sliced celery, onions and peppers, but it was so tasty.

Creole shrimp – the photo doesn’t do it justice

I won’t be eating such fancy dishes over the next few days. Donna’s flying to San Diego tomorrow morning to visit her sister, Sheila. She’ll be back on Saturday night.

The weather cooled considerably over the past week. We had highs around 70 degrees and overnight lows in the upper 40s. The week ahead calls for upper 70s to low 80s with overnight lows in the mid 50s. December in the Valley of the Sun – you gotta love it.

Queen Creek, Olives and Pork

Donna and I have fallen into fairly repetitive and predictable routines lately. After starting the day with pickleball yesterday, we changed things up a bit. We hopped in Midget-San and took a drive. It was a beautiful day – blue skies, not much wind and the temperature was a comfortable 80 degrees. Perfect for top-down driving.

We headed east to Ironwood Drive and followed it south through the desert to Queen Creek. It was a little over a 20-mile drive. Queen Creek is a town straddling the Maricopa and Pinal County line. It was mainly an agricultural town with cotton farms, cattle ranches and so on, but in the last ten years, its population has doubled as housing developments exploded. It was originally a small community at a train stop called Rittenhouse in 1919.

Our destination was the Queen Creek Olive Mill. The Queen Creek Olive Mill is a family-run olive farm encompassing 100 acres. They grow olives and press high-quality olive oil. They are the only virgin olive oil producer in Arizona. We signed up for their 11:30am Olive Oil 101 Tour.

This wasn’t really a tour, it was more of a presentation. We toured the Lucero olive oil facility in Corning, California and had seen how they operate first-hand. I posted about it here. The Queen Creek Olive Mill has an interesting story though.

Back in 1997, Perry and Brenda Rea visited Scottsdale, Arizona and were surprised to see olive trees growing in the valley. They got an idea – what if we could produce olive oil here in the Valley of the Sun? They found that olive trees flourish in this arid environment. They traveled to Italy to learn more about growing olives and pressing olive oil. Within a year, they left Detroit, Michigan and the auto industry to establish their farm on 100 acres of land in Queen Creek.

They started with 1,000 trees in 16 varieties. Now they have around 12,000 trees in those 16 varieties. Olive trees are native to the Mediterranean coast but are cultivated in many places. They are well-suited to the Arizona climate as they like heat and the dry climate prevents bacterial and fungal infections found in more humid climates. The heat in Arizona also precludes olive fruit flies – they can’t take the heat.

The older trees on the farm are grown in traditional spacing – 20 feet between trees with 20 feet between the rows allowing about 100 trees per acre. The trunks of these trees split into three to five different trunks and a canopy grows overhead after several years. Traditional trees must be harvested by hand.

The newer groves are higher density. These trees are pruned so that only one vertical trunk grows. They are spaced about nine feet apart and the rows are about 12 feet apart. These trees can be harvested with machinery.

They irrigate the trees for one week, then allow the soil to dry for three weeks before irrigating again. The trees bloom in April and produce huge numbers of flowers. Most of the flowers are blown away over time by the wind and they pollenate the remainders. Only about 4% of the flowers become fruit.

They start harvesting usually in October – a little later this year as they waited for cooler weather. The youngest olives picked become robust extra-virgin olive oil. It has the strongest flavor profile with a pungent, peppery aftertaste. Next they harvest olives for their balanced extra-virgin olive oil – this is the oil that Donna favors. Lastly, they pick the more mature olives to press their delicate extra-virgin olive oil.

There are six types of vegetable oil made from olives. The purest are extra-virgin and virgin oils. To be classified as extra-virgin, the flavor profile must display three positive sensory attributes – bitter, pungent and fruity. There are nine sensory defects that can show up and if the oil has any of these defects, it can’t be labeled as extra-virgin. Extra-virgin has 0.8% free acidity. Virgin olive oil may have up to three defects and no more than 1.5% free acidity.

The other types of olive oil are refined lampante olive oil and refined pomace olive oil. Refined olive oil is made from stocks that are unfit – they contain too many defects and require a physical refining process (lampante) or they are chemically refined (pomace). The last two types are misleading and I think many consumers are ripped off buying them. The fifth type is labeled olive oil and it’s made by blending at least 5% virgin olive oil with refined lampante oil. The sixth is the same thing but based on refined pomace oil.

Olive oil is best when it’s bottled in a dark glass container. It should be stored away from direct sunlight and heat sources. It’s best when used within 12 to 15 months of bottling and most quality olive oils have the bottling or pressing date on the label or bottle.

We had lunch at the Olive Mill – we ordered from the Italian-inspired eatery and took our lunch at an outdoor table set among olive trees. While we waited for our food order to come up, we shopped around in their market. Donna noticed something interesting – they had extra-virgin olive oil in three-liter bags like you can find in a box wine. Three liter bags sold for $60 – a good buy if you can used that much oil in 12-15 months.

After lunch, we hopped back in the Midget and drove east on Combs Road a couple of miles to another well-known Queen Creek establishment – The Pork Shop. They are a butcher shop that specializes in pork – they’ve been at this location since 1979.

The Pork Shop started when the owner, Greg Combs wanted to find a way to market the pork from his swine farm. He was a third-generation pig farmer at the Combs farm established by his grandfather in the 1940s. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Combs Road led to the old Combs farmstead. He started doing his own butchering and added a smokehouse and sausage making to his operation. It quickly grew and now he no longer raises pigs – all of his pork comes from corn-fed pigs raised in the Midwest.

We shopped a bit in this interesting little market. Donna selected a few sausages and a smoked pork shank for pea soup. I snagged a pound of pork belly to slice for uncured bacon.

That pretty much sums up a day out and about. The forecast for the coming week looks very fine – mid 70s to 80-degree highs and nighttime lows in the 50s. The forecast for Thanksgiving day is sunny with a high of 75 degrees.

*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!

Full Plates

Sometimes it seems like there aren’t enough hours in a day. I know that’s hard to imagine – after all, we’re retired and usually don’t have any pressing matters on our daily schedule. But, we’re active and have a number of things we like to do on a regular basis. None of it really can be regarded as work – I define work as any activity that occupies my time when I’d rather be doing something else.

My day usually involves a couple of hours on the pickleball court, a couple of hours practicing guitar, and sometimes I get on the air with my ham radio and make contacts all over. Sometimes I may have a household project to tackle. Donna is busier than I am. She plays tennis as well as pickleball, lines up a couple hours of work doing various things for others here in Viewpoint, she’s on the board for the Viewpoint Concert Band and also volunteers as a street captain. And she’s actively involved in the tennis club. Now she’s learning to play golf too.

I’ve been taking a deeper dive into electronics – particularly vacuum tube amplification. To that end, I recently bought a couple of pieces of equipment that will allow me to take a more certain approach to troubleshooting, maintaining and repairing amplifiers. I bought a signal generator – more specifically a Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) signal generator that can create various waveforms and frequencies. I also bought a Rigol DS1102 Digital Storage Oscilloscope (DSO).

I used the DDS signal generator to feed the input of the DSO and calibrate it. I also made a resistive, non-inductive dummy load to act as a speaker load when I test an amplifier. Amplifiers should never be operated without a load – usually a speaker. But to avoid annoying, loud tones while testing, a dummy load that doesn’t produce sound is the way to go. The signal generator can produce a consistent, known waveform to aid signal analysis. I also made an input jumper to connect the DDS signal generator to the amplifier input.

Now I can create an input of a known frequency and amplitude into the amplifier and check the signals progress through various stages of amplification with the oscilloscope.

DDS signal generator and digital storage oscilloscope

Improperly triggered waveform on the oscilloscope

100-watt resistive, non-inductive dummy load

After building and playing my Dumble-style Trinity OSD amplifier, it became apparent to me that my Trainwreck-inspired amp didn’t sound as good as it once did. I built that amp nine years ago and it rattled around in the basement compartment of our motorhome for eight years.

I pulled the Trainwreck chassis and ran a 100 kHz signal though it. It appeared as though the tubes were breaking up and distorting earlier than I expected. I’d recently replaced the preamp tubes, so I figured it was time to replace the power (output) tubes – they were the nine-year-old original tubes. I had a matched pair of EL34 tubes on hand so I changed them and reset the bias. I made a boneheaded mistake doing that. The idle current through the tube should be set with a bias potentiometer to around 42 milliamps. I couldn’t get it under 100 milliamps! This was no good. After futzing around and scratching my head, I realized I was still running a 100kHz signal through the amp. It wasn’t idling – it was powering up the signal silently into the dummy load! I disconnected the signal generator and made the bias adjustment with no issues.

The amp sounded much better after getting new power tubes, but I want to analyze the circuits further. I wanted to only make one change at a time, but I think I see a couple of things that I can improve to make this high-gain amp operate with less background hum. I’ll get busy on that soon. I may offer guitar amplifier maintenance and limited repair service for something to keep my mind active and make me feel useful.

I made myself useful last week by preparing Memphis-style dry-rubbed babyback ribs on the Traeger wood pellet-fired smoker/grill.

Rack of Memphis-style smoked babyback ribs

Donna served it with a medley of roasted vegetables and a loaded baked spud.

It looks like a small portion of ribs – it’s only two bones. But let me assure you, Donna and I had second servings of the ribs. They were outstanding!

Donna came up with an Asian-inspired flank steak recipe that also hit it out of the park!

Asian-inspired flank steak strips with brown rice and broccoli

The weather here in Mesa, Arizona keeps getting better and better. For the last week, we had highs in the mid-to upper 80s with overnight lows in the upper 50s. Today the forecast calls for a high of 82 degrees and the long-term forecast calls for highs around 80 and overnight lows in the low to mid 50s. Very pleasant!

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Saguaro Lake Ranch

Making It a Keeper

Three Quotes and a Decision

New Year Surprises

Christmas Treats

Short Days, Cold Nights

A Quick Trip and A Shot

Typhoon Karen

Queen Creek, Olives and Pork

Full Plates

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