[DARARepeater] Prize booth sign...

[Tommy Phone]

At the committee meeting, Jim Tiderman apologized for not visiting the demo. It is not unusual for there to be important 'meetings before the meeting'. In the meeting, he also made it a point to recognize the work that has been done and there was a round of applause. 
Rue Wampler was there for most of the demo and liked it a lot. I spoke with him later and he had some very specific suggestions for modifying the mounting, which I will go over Thursday night. 
The pole did not fit the receiver box, as George mentioned, because yours truly messed up the one task he was assigned! I'll provide my defense testimony on Thursday. 
The fan out issue turns out to be a timing problem that we need to follow up. We figured it out too late yesterday to fix before the demo. 
The assembled pole certainly is top-heavy and may benefit a little from being shortened up a foot or two, but the height above the floor of the numbers seems very good, so this needs some thought. 
Thanks to all the people who have taken us this far; it is a major milestone for the project and we can be very proud of what we've done and how well we've worked together. 

From Tom Holmes, N8ZM

> On Apr 13, 2016, at 12:35 AM, Tigerwolf <tigerwolf at tigerden.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, 12 Apr 2016, Steve Reed wrote:
>> 
>> So... how did it go...
> 
> It went.
> 
> - We mounted all four fully checked out panels onto the pole, but only had
>  one panel working due to some issues with the fan-out board (cause/fix
>  TBD still).  The driving problem caused various digits to randomize
>  when the display command was issued.  The fan-out board wasn't completed
>  until Tuesday morning, so there was insufficient time (and fully awake
>  people) to debug and fix it in time.
> 
> - It was found the size of the pole we had was the same as the box welded
>  on the railing that our pole was to slide into, so it didn't fit the
>  receptacle.  There's got to be mods made (which may involve an adapter
>  part, or minor re-think of the design to allow possible alternate (and
>  perhaps) more flexible mounting.
> 
> - Although we had no particular problem raising/lowering the pole, it's
>  obviously very top heavy, so elevating it is a little tricky.  We'd tied
>  on some guy-ropes but you really can't space them out evenly, and
>  provided those lifting it are careful, are likely unnecessary.  If the
>  mounting design is altered, need to aim and position the pole into the
>  square receptacle box on the rail may be eliminated which would mitigate
>  some risk to having it topple while being lifted.
> 
> - The working panel was very visible from far end of arena.  We'd pulled
>  off the blue protective sheets on all the digits on that one as well.
>  It's nice and bright with good off-axis visibility.
> 
> - The mounting pole, the area rails it mounts to, and the receptacle box
>  are all square.  This means that one panel faced directly toward the far
>  end of the arena, and the 90-degree side panels faced the sides of the
>  arena.  So the panels aren't really aimed optimally, though the side
>  panels should be visible well enough to cover the flanking areas on
>  either side.
> 
> - It was commented that a slightly wider digit spacing may help
>  readability, and that may be easily possible since there's now spacer
>  blocks at each end.  Sliding the digits to the full width of the frames
>  with thicker spacers may be possible.  All the internal wiring easily
>  has enough slack and wouldn't require any change.
> 
> - A number of folks came to look, but the main officers didn't bother, and
>  we were unable to contact them by text/phone.  This was highly annoying,
>  since they were the ones we put on the show for.
> 
> So in all, a successful session, and no real show-stoppers were found with the basic design.
> 
>> anybody got pics??
> 
> I saw some folks with cameras, so I'd expect those to pop up soon.
> 
> -- 
> =^_^=  Tigerwolf
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