I was doing a weekly visit to one of our FM transmitter sites the other day when I noticed this:
Looks like somebody has been whacking the deadbolt lock with a hammer or a wrench or something. Pretty sure that was not like that the last time I was here. Time to get one of those IP cameras and set it up on the tower.
This is the quandary that I have been in these last few months: Time, as they say, is money. The end product might not seem like it, however, this blog takes up a goodly amount of time. There is the writing, research, taking pictures, editing, and whatnot. Then there is back-end stuff, updating software, plugins, etc.
Then there is actual money expended: domain registration and website hosting.
In short, it is not free, at least not for me anyway.
I did place a few Google Ads in line with some of the content to offset the money part, which they have met that goal, but not much else.
While it is nice to have a hobby, and fun to tell stories about radio engineering, in the end, it really does not help me earn more money, support my family, advance my carrier, or my standing in the community. The children are young, but that will not stay that way for long. Before I know it there will be braces to pay for, a car or two, a college education, and whatever comes after that. Not to mention my own superannuation to look forward to, with such considerations as adding to the retirement account.
There is another shift in my status coming up, with my wife off to work again as a school teacher. I find there are not enough hours in the day to work the part-time radio engineering gig and meet the school bus to offload the children. Therefore, something has to give, that being the part-time radio engineering gig.
I am, therefore, looking for ways to make money at home. Developing this blog or turning it into a full-fledged radio engineering news website might be fun, but it would be much more work, and there is the rub. I can’t do more work on this site without seeing some return. I don’t mind working, in fact, I enjoy working, but I can’t do it for free.
So, I am open to ideas on how to monetize this blog or develop it into something else that will make some money. The third option is to let it go… I’d rather not do that.
It’s the middle of the night and the phone is ringing. That is never good. The transmitter is off the air. You call the remote control and try to put the main transmitter back on the air. No good. The backup comes up, no problem. Shaking off the sluggishness, you get dressed and head out the door. The transmitter is about 30 miles away, but it’s in the middle of the night, so there is no traffic. While driving, you are thinking of all the things that could be wrong. The blower motor was sounding a little loud last trip. The exciter has some reflected power. The PA tube is two and a half years old.
Upon arrival, there are several overload lights lit, including the driver’s plate. An investigation is in order. You turn everything off and open the doors. The trouble seems to be a bad IPA power supply. There are spares on the parts shelf, so you put one in. Put the transmitter into the dummy load. You turn on the filament and the transmitter comes to life again. Reset the overloads.
Now you are standing there looking at the plate-on button. Was it really only the IPA or was that just a symptom? Was there something else that took out the IPA power supply? What will happen when I press the plate-on button? Will it come on normally or go BANG! I hate BANG! By the way, my tradition in a situation like this, if on a mountain top somewhere, I go outside and pee. I give the situation one more run through the mental checklist, then come back inside and press the button.
Please excuse the blurry picture, it is hard to take a picture of yourself turning on a transmitter…
With the advent of computer file storage and automation came unmanned operation. Unfortunately, what often happens with unmanned operations is somehow the engineer becomes responsible for station operation and ends up getting all the phone calls when anything goes wrong:
I got sick of driving to the radio station when things got out of whack with the AudioVault, so I installed VNC on all the machines. From that point, I could log on from home and see what the problem was. It was great, when traffic goobers up the log transfer, I called the traffic director at home and had her go in a fix it. Untrained operators, called the program director. Unfortunately, I don’t have Bill Gate’s phone number, so the Windows issues are still on me.
All of this was great as long as my laptop was around. Being married, however, I had to occasionally listen to my wife, who insisted that we not take the laptop to dinner or the movies with us. There were those occasional times when it would have been nice.
With the purchase of the Android phone, however, I no longer have to worry about that. Android VNC is a free app that allows an Android phone to connect to any VNC server application. The user can save all the VNC connection information on the phone. It has several mouse options including a touch pad, touchpad mouse, mouse trackball, etc. It connects to most VNC servers: incl TightVNC, RealVNC on Win and Linux, x11vnc, and Apple Remote Desktop on OS/X. 0.4.3. Special commands such as ctl-alt-del are available through the menu. It is also fully zoomable. All in all, I can do almost anything with the Android phone that I can do on the laptop. My wife is thrilled.
It is a time saver.
