Birthday - Ham

Photo by Surly

I've only got two days left to work - if this guy was still around we'd have to do something about that. As it is, I'll hoist one today for Johnny and one for myself on Wednesday.

Happy birthday, Bro.

Since this is my middle finger it kind of fits in with Brother John and the attitude he had towards a lot of things. In this case it's the discolored part that you should focus on. I was welding up a couple of pieces for the lab tech in the Weld Shop at the college the other day that required a small diameter stainless electrode. We have some 5/64" 309 rods that were perfect for the job at hand but for some strange reason, the small rods on the Miller machines go up in smoke once in awhile. They'll just vaporize even though the machine is set on only about 50 amps. This is an inverter type machine that has a choice of starting voltages. We keep them set on the higher voltage setting to facilitate arc starting, especially with the 7018 in the vertical and overhead positions, which may be the cause.

Anyway, I went to tack the piece on that I was working on, the rod went up in smoke and burned a hole in my glove and scorched my finger. No pain or real harm done to my finger but it pissed me off that I burned a hole in a fairly new pair of gloves. Plus I'm still not sure of the exact cause of the problem. I gave up on the Miller and moved to one of the Lincoln machines and didn't have any trouble after that. That's not the kind of thing you want to have to worry about when you're trying to weld something delicate together.

I went to the ham radio meet on Saturday. I was going by the article in the paper and apparently things weren't quite what they seemed. First of all the location had changed, but I found the group, all of whom were there to take the exam for their license, me being the only exception. Anyway, this is a new club that's forming and the vice president took a few minutes to fill me in on what's happened so far, what the group has planned for the future and some answers to specific questions I had. I'm going to start studying again after I finish everything up for the semester at the college and then take the test. If I had known they were giving the test Saturday, I would have reviewed my materials prior to that and took a shot at it. As it is, they meet once a month at a location not too far from the shack, and it looks like these are the guys to get me on my way to becoming a ham operator.