[Milsurplus] Eye iz mooved ... now comes the putting away of way too much stuff ...

[Michael]

Okay, the latest update 
 

 

To say it didn’t go smoothly would be a gross understatement.  I have never
had a move before that was so costly in time, money & materials (including
theft) as well as physically, mentally and emotionally.  At one point one of
my neighbors, a medico of some order (I forget what he is – something
impressive, though.), stopped in and threatened to have me hauled off to the
VA’s psych lockdown for a few days unless I took a time out.  I did but that
only made the stressing out worse.  It hasn’t passed and 
 well, those
who’ve talked to me on the landline will tell you I don’t stutter & stuff.
Or didn’t.  Now, words are a problem, let alone full sentences.  This too
shall pass.  I hope.

 

Part of the problem was – and is – not having a vehicle of my own.  I
finally wound up leasing a truck (for which I have a number of people here
to thank) then had it sit idle while my work crews didn’t show up.  Two
crews, two days each 
 what a riot.  And not in the good way either.  The
move is complete but the agoraphobia & anxiety still need to be dealt with
and I hope to find something nice and cheap in a pickup or van to manage
that bit.  The only real issue here is that “free” is about what I can
afford and not many roadworthy vehicles are available for that.

 

Space is a problem so I’ve gotten a 2nd storage unit and shall be combining
the two into an even larger one which, interestingly enough, will be less
expensive*.  My critical (mostly A.R.C. & military) books & manuals are in
storage where they’ll stay so they’ll be protected from fire, bugs, tsunamis
and hurricanes.  Oh, and me considering how graceful I am with a cup of
coffee.  The new unit will allow me to have shelving around the perimeter
with a small folding desk and chair in the center for a computer & scanner
for when I need info buried in one or more of the manuals and/or books.  

 

* The running joke at the storage facility is that I use the spaces for
keeping dead bodies.  Since the new large unit is right next to an elevator
where the carts are stored, it’s in a perfect location to do just that.
Kinda sorta.  After everything’s back to normal, I plan to pick up some
mannequins or something to make into “bodies” to hang and stuff into
otherwise unused corners.  They’ll be written off as “people who got too
nosy so were used for medical experiments which, in their cases, didn’t work
out so well.”  The hard parts will be remodeling the mannequins and getting
the flesh tones right.  (Living is easy; dead not so much.)  This should be
interesting.

 

The new quarters will have a 4’ steel wheeled shelving unit from the
apartment where, in theory, my ham rig will go (all 200+ pounds of it) as
well as the work space to handle electronics including everything from SMDs
to boatanchors.  The old wooden little roll-around workbench is here and it
will be joined by two 1’ by 2’ by about 30” tall steel ones, also on wheels,
to handle most of the old mechanical/machining functions but in a
significantly more compact arrangement.  The wooden one will handle watch
work as it originally did but with a little extra capability for other small
mechanical work while the new ones will handle the rest of the
mechanical/machine work with one doing all the lathe handling.  Two spaces
in the old shop handled lathes before, one for the Taig and one for
everything else, with lots of room for the tooling and accessories.  

 

Oh, a short word about the work surfaces.  A few years ago, a gentleman I
know dropped off some 2”x2” samples of approximately 1/4” thick kitchen
countertop material.  I don’t remember what it is aside from it looking,
feeling and acting a lot like stone.  (It’s not, to the best of my
knowledge, but it is stone-ish.)  There are also some 4”x4” pieces and some
narrow strips, some of which have grooves cut in them.  They vary in finish
from plain colors to an assortment of stone-like & terra cotta finishes plus
there is some variation in thickness.  The plan is to apply the squares to
the worktops in random order with some attention paid to thickness
variations as needed.  The steel units will get plywood tops beforehand but
the rest will get the tiles directly applied.  The smaller steel units will
also get illuminated magnifiers on extension arms while I’ll use my
watchmaker’s clip-on magnifier or a hood-type magnifier on the other benches
as needed, or that’s the current plan.  Somewhere I have pics of the tiles
and if I find them I’ll make them available to any who want to see them.

 

Not so much space here means extreme cleverness in design and execution.
Part of that extreme cleverness involves separating the tools from the
components/parts/raw stock then splitting the latter in two, some to keep at
the apartment and some to go into storage.  What will go where will be
refined over time but right now the general rule is small light general
purpose things go here and heavier and/or more specialized things go in
storage.  

 

The new drafting setup will be in the desk inside the closed part along with
a few other things.  I have recently acquired some new equipment with more
coming once things are settled down.  While I’m CAD-literate, I far prefer
old school board drafting with the occasional use of “crap-o-cad” (i.e.,
quick dimensionless freehand drawings) for fast computer sketches to show
ideas & concepts.  

 

All of the A.R.C. parts & equipment should have gone to storage so I can
sort it out and build up systems.  Unfortunately several boxes, including
the three heaviest which have nothing but dynamotors in them, are here.  So
are several loose units including a BC-A*-229 Rx that’s more useful for
perversion or parts than restoration and matching coil sets for 80 & 40m.
(It will be converted later on according to an evil  master plan.)  Some of
the pieces will give themselves up as parts horses so others can be
completed and made operational as designed, including some Type 12 & Type 15
pieces that were picked up for that purpose.  The parts horses still need to
be stripped and the components sorted out with the ones destined for other
projects kept separate.  Anyway, all the good stuff has to go to storage as
soon as I can get a truck and a crew to do the lifting I can’t do with the
parts horses coming here for disassembly.  

 

Since the A.R.C. setups will be assembled at the apartment then kept at the
storage unit, I need to ensure all of the required bitzenpieces are together
so I can grab ‘n go fairly easily.  This is complicated by the fact that, in
a few cases, the same units are used in several setups.  After the big
pieces all happily reunited, they can be divided into “systems” with the
most complex one being the modified FES-1240 (the mod being a 2nd RT-11 in
place of the T-25) as it was removed from a 1961 Cessna 310.  I still need
to find the 3 light marker beacon indicator panel, a mic & phone jack box
(not the same as a Type 12 one) and an appropriate speaker (which would have
built into the cockpit overhead) but they’ll happen as they’re needed.
Unfortunately there aren’t any 1961 310s around I can swipe them from.

 

Oh, and in the cute little details column add the fact that the phone jacks
& wiring was removed during the remodel and hasn’t been replaced [yet?] plus
the WiFi doesn’t go much further than the space where the main box is plus
is highly unreliable.  This means cell phones (which I hate), Vonage (which
has a toll free number piggybacked on it) and Clear.com.  Wonderful.  

 

At least the air conditioning works.  

 

Best regards,

 

Michael, WH7HG BL01xh
http://www.nationalmssociety.org/chapters/NTH/index.aspx 

http://wh7hg.blogspot.com/ 
http://kludges-other-blog.blogspot.com
<http://kludges-other-blog.blogspot.com/>  
Hiki Nô!