[Lowfer] 137 kHz activity

[JD]

>>> before I go out to the field for tonight's listening... >>>

Well, that turned out to be one of the world's shortest DXpeditions!

I arrived at the field and hooked up the coax to the antenna.  WWVB boomed 
in at normal nighttime levels.  At that point, I noticed the computer wasn't 
charging.  In the car, I've been using a Radio Shack 75 watt inverter to 
energize the computer's power supply when not actually listening, but the 
laptop clearly was getting no power.  I noticed the pilot light on the 
inverter was dark, too.

By way of background, the Saturn has two power points: one for the back 
seat, which is relay switched via the ignition switch; and one for the front 
seat, which is always hot.  The radio normally plugs into the one that's 
always hot, so I can pre-warm it for several minutes prior to undertaking a 
trip to the field.

I thought I'd unplug the radio briefly and see if I could determine whether 
it was the inverter or the power point that was inoperative.  Now, that 
turns out to be a false dilemma, as I quickly discovered.  BOTH were kaput. 
The power point was dead because its fuse (up under the dash somewhere near 
the steering column) was blown, which was because the inverter was 
defective...a conclusion I arrived at when I plugged the inverter into the 
front seat power point and the lights in the car immediately dimmed and the 
engine sputtered.  That was only a momentary effect, of course.  As soon as 
that outlet's fuse blew too, the car ran fine again--but the socket the 
radio depends upon was thoroughly dead.

Not having much of a selection of spares with me, and not wishing to be on 
my knees swapping out fuses in the field, in the cold and dark, with wolf 
spiders and/or other critters crawling up my pants legs, I abandoned the 
project for tonight.  I hated to do that, though, because we're about to 
enter at least a week-long spell of daily thunderstorm activity beginning 
Wednesday afternoon.

John